#a non-negotiable ultimatum

[honorhearted]

@melpomeneprose liked for a short starter!

Benjamin's head ached and the taste of iron filled his mouth, his lashes fluttering once a boot pressed down painfully onto his injured shoulder. "You might as well k.ill me," he said, his voice a low rasp. "Everything I know, I'll take with me to the g.rave."

[inevitablysomber-dark]

Ladybug (Chapter 5)

Intensely Dark! Rafe Cameron x Acutely Aware! Reader

WARNING: Non-Consent, Manipulation, Kidnapping, Stalking, forced interactions, Causing trauma, unhinged obsession. MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY. MINORS DNI

Summary: After a fresh breakup with her ex, Kyle, a chance encounter leads to an entanglement between Ladybug and her friend, Sarahs, volatile brother, Rafe, who had long standing conflicts with her friends. However, what began as an accidental hookup, quickly spirals into a troubling situation as Rafe's infatuation takes a darker turn. His fixation becomes a source of distress, as his persistent harassment disrupts Ladybugs Peace.

Series Masterlist

Ward Cameron requested a meeting with you. Sarah had informed her father about the incident with Rafe and mentioned that he wanted to discuss the situation with you before deciding on the next steps. Sarah had given you a heads-up before Mr. Cameron reached out to you.

Initially hesitant due to the uncomfortable prospect of visiting your assaulter's residence, Mr. Cameron assured you that Rafe would be absent during your conversation. Reluctantly, you agreed to meet the next morning.

As you found yourself in Mrs. Featherstone's house, tidying up the place, you reflected on your recent efforts. Having thoroughly cleaned The Chateau from top to bottom, even receiving compliments from Kie about the transformation, you began feeling anxious with the prospect of idle time at home. Seeking a constructive outlet, you reached out to Mrs. Featherstone, who readily agreed to let you work on her home, while she was out working on a few errands.

Currently immersed in the cleaning process, you made sure to focus on the main rooms, steering clear of any private spaces. Keeping yourself occupied with the tasks at hand provided a sense of purpose and distraction from the troubling events in your life.

Halfway through your cleaning routine, a text from Sarah and a subsequent call from Mr. Cameron interrupted your tasks. Now, you found yourself sweeping the living room, contemplating the potential conversations you might have with Mr. Cameron.

Initially, you assumed that he would have no option but to support you. Allowing his son to go unchecked could tarnish the Cameron family name. However, as you recalled the trail of trouble Rafe had left across the island, hurting people and breaking laws, you hesitated about meeting with Ward. The realization hit you: Rafe might have faced consequences for his actions long ago if his father hadn't intervened.

Doubt crept in, and you began to question whether Ward would truly be on your side in this ordeal. Yet, you recognized the potential for negotiation. Knowing that Ward would go to great lengths to shield his son, and faced with the inability to turn to the law, you contemplated presenting him with an ultimatum, and you had a clear idea of what you could request in exchange for your cooperation.

By the time you finished cleaning Mrs. Featherstone's home, the sun was setting. Since she hadn't returned, you messaged her about returning to scrub and paint her cupboards, which showed signs of yellowing. As you headed to the front door, you noticed something familiar through the curtains—a sight that made you close them firmly. Rafe's truck was parked ominously right in front of Mrs. Featherstone's house, and fear hit you like a brick.

Questions flooded your mind. Why was he here? While you knew he occasionally visited the cut for his "recreational activities," his presence seemed off. Was he waiting for you? Did he follow you?

Amid the panic, you paused to consider your next move. The back door came to mind. Mrs. Featherstone's neighborhood had an unusual layout, with a clearing behind the houses leading to a forest. You knew of a house that resided in that forest, and if you could reach it, you might escape Rafe for another day. Gathering your things in your backpack, you left the cleaning supplies in Mrs. Featherstone's maintenance closet and sneaked out the back.

Climbing the fence felt daunting, with barbed wire posing a threat. Despite a couple of nips, you made it to the other side. As you climbed out, you heard a vehicle starting, Rafe's truck. Peeking through the gaps between houses, you watched as his truck moved down the street. Rushing through the clearing, you hoped he hadn't seen you.

Yet, catching his truck turning the corner, you immediately sprinted. His truck sped up as he tried to catch up to you. Unexpectedly, he drove ahead, reaching the entrance to the forest. However, you reached it before he could get out of his truck and intercept, and all you heard was his growl echoing your name.

"Ladybug!"

You disregarded his shouts, focusing on your destination despite Rafe's pursuit.

"Ladybug, get back here!" he bellowed before leaping onto your back, sending both of you tumbling to the ground. He straddled your body, pinning your hands above your head.

In your face, he sneered, "You've been ignoring me," irritation lacing his tone.

Fear had fully taken hold, adrenaline coursing through your veins. "Let me go!" you screamed, but he only chuckled at your futile attempts to escape.

"I did mention I didn't want any resistance, but I didn't specify what would happen if you did resist," he said, lowering his face closer to yours. "How about I show you?"

In a moment of defiance, you headbutted Rafe, catching him in the middle of his face. Distracted, he released one of your hands as he nursed his injured nose. Seizing the opportunity, your free hand delivered a swift punch to his crotch. He doubled over, and in his moment of distraction, you shoved him off, quickly getting up to run toward safety.

Though Rafe called out to you, you ignored him, choosing to press on.

You alternated between jogging and running, fatigue making its presence felt, and in about half an hour, you reached your destination.

An aged wooden house stood before you, with an overgrown yard and a truck that seemed to be on its last legs.

Approaching the porch, a sense of disgust washed over you. Bugs scattered, the house looked like it was fighting a losing battle, and you dared not contemplate the bucket of dirty water by the molding rocking chair. Taking a deep breath, inhaling the unpleasant odor, you knocked.

After a few beats, footsteps approached. When the door creaked open, a weathered man, hunched over with a full and graying beard, greeted you.

"Hi, Dad," you said.

He squinted for a moment before realization dawned. "Ladybug?"

When your father had left you at twelve, it had shattered your world. His whereabouts were unknown, and your mom seemed relieved to be rid of him. A few years later, after your paternal grandmother's passing, she disclosed his address. The only time you visited him at sixteen, he yelled at you to leave and never return.

Now, in a desperate situation, you explained your predicament.

"I know you probably don't want me here, but someone is trying to hurt me, and this is the only place I could think to come to," you hurriedly explained, glancing back to ensure Rafe hadn't found you.

He nodded and stepped aside, allowing you to enter.

"Go on and have a seat. I'll bring you a water bottle." Moving towards what you assumed was the kitchen, you fought the urge to start cleaning the grimy living space, choosing instead to perch on the couch he had gestured to.

When he handed you the bottle, you quickly inspected it in a way that he wouldn't notice, to ensure there weren’t any irregularities. It seemed safe to drink when you began gulping it down.

"So, who's trying to hurt you?" he asked, taking a seat on the Lazy Boy next to the couch.

Being there felt incredibly awkward with a man who had never wanted you.

"I just need a place to stay for the next few hours, and I'll be out of your hair," you stated.

"It's gonna be pitch black in the next few hours. How exactly do you plan on getting out of the forest?"

"I can call my friends," you said, reaching into your pocket for your phone, only to find it missing.

"Fuck," you whispered, frantically searching your pockets and rummaging through your backpack, even though you knew it wasn't there. "I lost my phone," you stated.

"It seems like you're stuck," he said.

You give him a look before putting your things back in your bag.

"It's fine. When the coast is clear, I'll just go look for it."

"Again, how do you plan on doing this in the dark?" he asked.

You shrugged. "I'll figure it out."

He gave a long sigh. "Look, we'll wait an hour, and if you want, I can take you to find your phone, if it's still even there, and I'll take you home."

You looked at him and simply said, "If you want." with a shrug.

At that moment, beggars couldn't be choosers, and if you were honest with yourself, wandering in the dark forest wasn't a good idea.

So, he turned on the TV, and for the next hour and a half, and you watched reruns of The Nanny. You always liked Fran’s outfits.

When the hour was up, he took you in his old, dirty, and dusty truck, which you were still surprised was working, to where you thought your phone might be. It was pitch black, so he brought along a couple of flashlights. Rafe seemed to be long gone, at least you were hoping he was, and after about 20 minutes of looking, your father had found it. But he seemed to be very confused by it.

When you both got in the truck, he voiced his concerns, “Why would your attacker leave your phone behind?”

You shrugged. “Why would he take it?” you asked.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” he grumbled.

You paused, not sure if you wanted to reveal anything else to him, but you decided to go for it.

“It’s Rafe Cameron,” you blurt.

Your father stops the car.

“It wouldn’t be beneficial for him to take it,” you said.

“Rafe Cameron? As in Ward Cameron’s offspring,” he gives you an incredulous look, causing you to look down at your hand before nodding at his inquiry.

“What? You don’t believe me?” you ask.

“No, it makes sense.” You look up at him, and he just goes on driving, keeping his eyes on the road.

You notice he’s heading toward your mother's house, and you correct the route.

“What, you don’t live with your mother anymore?” It seems like he's joking, but you respond to him with a flat no.

“Oh.”

Aside from your directions and the truck's sputtering, the ride to the Chateau was a quiet one.

When you get there, just as you’re about to hop out of the truck, your father grabs your arm.

“Look, I know I basically told you I didn’t want you around, but if you ever need anything—money, an ear to listen to, a shoulder to cry on—you can come to me.”

“Sure,” you respond.

“I know I said and did some hurtful things, but things got really complicated with your mother and I just didn’t know how to handle the emotions that came with them.” He lets you go. “I regret what I did all those years ago and have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out ways to make it up to you, so if you don’t mind?”

You look at him, and for a moment, he just looks like such a sad old man.

“You can start by cleaning up a bit so the next time that I decide to visit you, I won’t feel as gross.” You wanted it to hurt a bit, but all he did was laugh.

“Alright, you got it.”

You nod and head into the Chateau.

Your father looked genuinely apologetic for what he put you through. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to keep him around.

Tags:

@applelovesposts

[mariacallous]

In November, I met Hamas-held hostage Liri Albag’s father, Eli Albag, in Tel Aviv. As he sat in the middle of Begin Road holding a picture of his 19-year-old daughter, he said he backed the government’s military campaign to put pressure on Hamas. “Do you think Hamas would let go of hostages on their own?” But Albag seems to have run out of patience. In late March, in an ultimatum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he told the local press that the families would no longer hold rallies but gather on the streets, joining an expanding anti-Netanyahu protest movement. 

The trouble is that while hostages’ families see the return of their relatives and Hamas’s removal from their neighborhood as victory—in that order—many have long known that those two war aims have been at odds. But Netanyahu has deliberately prioritized the elimination of Hamas over the release of the hostages since the beginning of the military campaign without actually having a coherent plan to achieve either. 

The prime minister increasingly stands accused by military analysts, and a growing portion of the Israeli public, of merely reacting to events while lacking a vision that could end the war, free the hostages, and usher in any semblance of peace. 

Yet he remains indignant. In response to the protests, Netanyahu said that in “the moment before victory,” early elections would “paralyze” the country and only benefit Hamas. He has now set his eyes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where more than a million Palestinians have sought shelter. Any such attack will not only cause international outrage but make negotiations with Hamas much harder. 

Soon after Hamas rampaged through Israeli towns and kibbutzim on Oct. 7, 2023, and killed 1,200 people and abducted more than 250, Netanyahu declared war. The underlying message to hostage families was that the bombing of Gaza would pressure Hamas into releasing its captives and at the same time eliminate the group. 

But he skirted more fundamental questions over exactly how he intended to eliminate a group that has massive public support not just inside Gaza and other Palestinian territories but also bases in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. According to an annual threat assessment compiled by U.S. intelligence, Israel could face years of resistance from Hamas, an assessment backed by two senior Israeli security officials who spoke with Foreign Policy. 

Even if, after years of counterinsurgency operations, Israeli security forces manage to destroy the group in Gaza, what about future reincarnations? Even if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) destroy Hamas’s offshoots over an even longer period of time, how would Netanyahu eliminate the idea of armed resistance without a political solution on the horizon? 

“We have destroyed 18 out of the total 24 battalions of Hamas, but how far are we from eliminating the group? That is a big question,” a senior security official told Foreign Policy on the condition of anonymity. “We can eliminate Hamas, but we don’t have a timeline, and, yes, other groups can emerge.” 

Israel’s military operations inside Gaza have significantly damaged Hamas’s infrastructure and military capabilities, but they haven’t guaranteed peace. The fact that Israel’s world-renowned defense forces and security services haven’t managed to nab the two masterminds of the Oct. 7 attack—Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar, who are still hiding somewhere in Gaza’s crevices—is telling of the country’s limitations and the support that Hamas’s leadership still receives. 

In February, when Netanyahu finally announced the outline of a plan, it was scant on details, quickly dismissed as a “non-plan” by an Israeli expert who described it as “untethered from reality,” and more than anything else sounded like a road map to reoccupy Gaza. 

Netanyahu said he wants “security control” of Gaza for the foreseeable future and will only allow reconstruction once the area has been completely demilitarized. He wants Palestinians to be deradicalized and has ruled out recognition of Palestinian statehood. Any agreement, he said, would only be reached “through direct negotiations” between Israelis and Palestinians, but he hasn’t offered any timeline. According to reports, the plan circulated states that the civilian administration in postwar Gaza would be run by non-Hamas nonhostile local elements.

At first glance, it makes sense to Israelis who are understandably terrified after Hamas’s brutal attack and want to live in safety. But on closer scrutiny, it doesn’t add up. For starters, Netanyahu hasn’t clarified if he is going to depute Israeli boots on the ground for an indefinite period or wants unimpeded Israeli access to the strip as and when required. The former would amount to reoccupying Gaza and the latter to its de facto control. Both options have yet to be presented to the Israeli people and Israel’s international partners. 

Even if Netanyahu agrees to a multinational force composed of Israel’s newest Arab allies to take over security in Gaza, there are questions over how such a force would gain credibility among Palestinians. Demilitarizing all of Hamas’s battalions might be a short-term task but to fight its remnants, and reincarnations, will take years, maybe decades. Tackling an insurgency is still a more manageable task for security forces than monitoring an antagonistic proto-state, but it will inflict heavy costs on Israeli forces. It is unclear whether the costs will be worth it since Israel’s heavy-handedness could either discourage Palestinian attacks inside Israel or encourage them. 

The goal to deradicalize Palestinians, a former Israeli security official said, was more in the direction of lasting peace. “Deradicalization is key because we need to change the perception of Palestinians that we are a transient phenomena and sooner or later would crumble under pressure,” said Eran Lerman, a former Israeli deputy national security advisor. Deradicalization programs in schools and mosques would be aimed at those who do not “accept Israel’s right to exist.”

But Palestinians say it’s yet another Netanyahu tactic to delay a two-state solution. After all, Palestinians aren’t merely opposed to Israel due to Hamas’s propaganda. Many have been victims of dispossession by the Israeli state and settlers—and that’s before the suffering imposed by the current war. Netanyahu hasn’t revealed any plans for how to shape Palestinian ideas of self-determination in a more productive fashion. 

Netanyahu’s suggestion that locals will be handed eventual civilian control also seems disingenuous. Who exactly does he have in mind? One Israeli security source said locals beholden to Israel-friendly Arab nations of the Abraham Accords—particularly the United Arab Emirates—would pass the test. But any such leaders would be seen as Israeli puppets who may lack standing among Palestinians. They might become just as much a subject of ridicule as the subdued Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. 

Netanyahu’s campaign to decimate Hamas, demilitarize Gaza, and deradicalize Palestinians in effect amounts to the strip’s reoccupation. Even if reoccupying Gaza is not what most Israelis are comfortable with, that’s where Netanyahu’s non-plan is headed. “Israelis don’t want to use the O-word, but they don’t have any choice,” said Jonathan Conricus, a former spokesperson for the IDF. 

Last month, the United States abstained from a vote at the United Nations Security Council that called for a cease-fire. Gaza’s reoccupation will further widen the rift. Netanyahu’s strategy, in other words, may be headed for a pyrrhic victory in the form of responsibility for Gaza and its 2 million inhabitants, an increasingly alienated U.S. government, and growing international isolation. 

[something-tofightfor]

Hi! I was just wondering, is Fools Gold going to be a poly story? Like Oberyn will be with both Ellaria and the reader character?

Just wondering because it is tagged and now with them getting to Dorne.. I just wanted to know haha :)

Hey, anon! Thank you for sending this over, it's a great question. I'm going to answer under the cut just in case people want to be totally surprised.

It's going to be poly in the sense that Oberyn will go between Reader and Ellaria once they're in Dorne, yes. But Ellaria and Reader will never be with him at the same time, at least that I've plotted out or plan to show in the story. HOWEVER - this also isn't confirmation that Reader chooses to stay in Dorne permanently, because that's one surprise I won't spoil.

In my mind, Ellaria is a non-negotiable part of Oberyn's life, and he in hers - they're both willing and happy to let the other explore and develop relationships outside of their own, but if I were to use any term to describe O/E, it's soulmates, and cutting her out of his life for someone that he just met weeks earlier feels wrong and out of character.

With that being said - since none of this is from Oberyn's POV, I don't plan on writing smut for him and Ellaria - it's going to be implied, but won't be "onscreen".

I can also tell you that there won't be any ultimatums given by any of the three in regard to how the relationship/s play out. That feels wrong, too, and it wouldn't end well for anyone, which isn't what I want to do with this story, because the only person things should end terribly for is Cersei (as always).

I know that the poly stuff isn't for everyone, and that there are a lot of people that couldn't be with Oberyn if they knew he was still sleeping around (even only with Ellaria), so I hope that the choices I make with this/them make sense when you read it. That's one of the reasons that I've held off on Reader/Oberyn actually having sex - I felt like it needed to be an informed decision, and in the story, Oberyn drawing that line was meant to highlight that there's more to this (and the way he's thinking) than just immediate gratification like in the past.

The tags on the main masterlist do include Oberyn x Ellaria, but the chapters themselves will be updated to reflect that moving forward after she becomes a physical presense in the story.

I hope you have a great rest of your weekend, Anon!

[aldamiriel-necrococo]

It’s 5AM and it definitely hasn’t hit me fully yet because I’m so groggy from sleeping probably 40 of the last 48 hours, the painkillers, and general fucked uppedness from getting cut up, but I’m just laying here crying in joy over having finally finally gotten this hysterectomy. Like it was for medical reasons, I couldn’t have a period without DANGEROUS levels of pain and disregulation, fully passing out, vomiting til I broke blood vessels in my eyes.

But truly even better than knowing that issue is taken care of now is the feeling of knowing I can never be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. I can never get in a situation where I’d get far enough in a relationship where it would be an agonizing decision on my end whether to break up cuz I refuse to breed or force myself through the nightmare of a pregnancy and being responsible for raising a kid. Like I check at the LATEST on the second date whether someone I’m interested in wants kids and make it clear that’s a non-negotiable for me but that can change for people. But now that’s 100% on them, no ultimatum on me. I never have to go through the phobic panic and sickness of taking a plan b after fully protected sex in a way that could THEORETICALLY result in pregnancy despite being on regular birth control and using condoms. God this is gonna unfortunately result in me having so much more cishet sex.

I had to go through so so so much horrible treatment from doctors for 5 years to get to this point but finally finally finally. It was worth it.

[mulchthegovernment]

Canada was one of only nine countries, including the U.S. and Israel, to oppose upgrading the UN observer status of the Palestinian Authority from "entity" to "non-member state."

Abbas speech 'combative' says Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird

There has been speculation that Canada will ask the Palestinian delegation in Ottawa to leave, or not renew its $300 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority over five years.

However, the minister appeared to discount that in an interview, saying the government values its relationship and dialogue with the Palestinian delegation in Ottawa.

"Sometimes you have to work with people that you disagree with," he said. "That's the nature of diplomacy and the nature of my job."

He said there was no intention to break off relations with the Palestinian Authority.

The minister objected strongly to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's remarks before the UN voted Thursday.

"He basically accused the Israelis of some pretty heinous crimes, ethnic cleansing," Baird told CBC's Heather Hiscox.

"It was a combative speech, no tone of reconciliation. It was an opportunity for him to be magnanimous, to reach out to the Israeli government, and we're disappointed that he didn't take that opportunity."

Canada 'now on the sidelines'

Paul Dewar, the NDP's foreign affairs critic, said that Canada, once seen as a bridge builder, is now on the sidelines in any negotiations between the two sides.

"Most people will just look at Canada and say, well, they're obviously not interested in playing a role here and they'll ignore us and we'll be isolated. And that has deep ramifications not just on this file, but in our reputation in the world and our capability to actually be an honest broker and be a player in world affairs," he said.

Dewar said that the NDP, if it were to form the government, would not have voted against the resolution.

Diplomacy doesn't work by issuing ultimatums or by theatrics at the General Assembly, Dewar said.

"This government has actually made it more difficult for Palestinian representatives to enter our country. We know that, because visas have not being given. And this is with the moderates. So what they're doing is driving the moderates away from any kind of relationship with Canada," he said.

Bob Rae, interim leader of the Liberal Party, said that he had no objection to Canada voting against the resolution.

But it's a "big deal" Rae told CBC News, "to say we're going to cut aid, and we're going to reduce our diplomatic engagement with Palestinians." Such gestures will affect Canada's ability to talk to all sides, Rae said, to the point that, "We're not doing our job in the world, that's who we are as a country, that's what we've always done."

Friday, the chief representative for the Palestinian General Delegation in Canada, Said Hamad, issued a statement, saying that the Palestinian Liberation Organization "fully respects votes cast by all members in the General Assembly, irrespective of whether they were in favour of, abstained from, or were cast against the resolution." He did not mention Canada.

But reporter Iris Mackler told CBC's News Network that she was in Ramallah Thursday when people were listening for the results of the vote and was told, "You're [Canada] on the wrong side of history."

[theculturedmarxist]

Posted onJune 8, 2023 by Yves Smith

Russia is living out a risk that’s even made its way into pop culture. In the movie Elizabeth, Cate Blanchette as the queen intones, “I do not like wars. They have uncertain outcomes.”

Despite Western efforts to claim otherwise, Putin is risk averse. He seemed agitated when he announced the launch of the Special Military Operation, an underpowered attack which some non-neocon US military experts argue was meant to show Russia would no longer tolerate attacks on its border and the West continuing to arm Ukraine. The invasion initially did achieve the desired outcome of bringing Ukraine to the negotiating table. But after the initial talks showed progress, Boris Johnson visited Zelensky and scuppered the peace initiative.

European leaders no doubt read Putin’s cautiousness since the start of the conflict in 2014 and may also have seen it as an admission of military weakness. They snookered him into the Minsk Accords, which the Russian side took seriously. Since then, gloating Western leaders have revealed it was a sham to buy time to better arm Ukraine.

The comparatively small group of Westerners who are militarily/intelligence savvy and opposed to US adventurism have generally called the trajectory of this conflict correctly, even if they clearly thought or hoped it would be closer to resolution by now. Russia, after realizing the US and NATO would not stomach Plan A of a negotiated settlement, geared up for a war of attrition along an already extended line of contact. That took some time, but despite the bad optics of Russian pullbacks in Kharkiv and Kherson, Ukraine didn’t profit from Russia having to take time to train newly mobilized men and restructure operations. Russia was aided in this by its overwhelming advantage in artillery, superiority in air defense, and missile and drone capabilities, which have only increased over the course of this still comparatively short conflict. In fact, as many have pointed out, Russia has essentially gone through the original Ukraine armed forces and a second army constituted by the West, and has been grinding through what is effectively a third set of forces.

Conventional wisdom in these circles (and I generally subscribed to it) was Russia would wait for the Great Overlydiscussed Ukraine Counteroffensive, and at most cede some territory for a bit while further chewing up Ukraine men and materiel, and then see what to do next, as in, say, whether to engage in further comparatively localized operations to further bleed Ukraine, like taking some important towns and cities in Donbass (actually not a small task given the natural fortifications of sturdy old Soviet-era buildings) or whether the Ukraine would be so degraded at that point that a big offensive might finally be in order.

But again, consensus views in this cohort have been along the lines of Russia needing to take at least its four annexed oblasts in full and probably now Kharkiv to better protect the Russian border. The next mission objective might be to march up to the west bank of the Dnieper and issue some sort of ultimatum, more for appearances’ sake that out of an expectation than a belief it might be entertained. These experts then posit that Russia’s next objective is Odessa; Colonel Douglas Macgregor pointed out that Russia recently destroyed a bridge near Moldova that would have been essential for any NATO ground defense of Odessa. Macgregor’s conclusion: “Odessa is now on the menu.”

There was an implicit optimists’ case in term of the war ending on an equilibrium where what was left of Ukraine would be so weak that it would not be able to threaten Russia on its own. If Russia controlled the Black Sea coast, the industrial production in the East, and a fair bit of the best agricultural land, what was left of Ukraine would be very poor and dependent. And if Russia could keep up its slow grind, it would drain Western weapons stocks to the degree that rearmament woudld be very costly and take a very long time.

Western rearmament is further complicated by many EU members having their own weapons systems, which makes it hard to work out joint logistics, as Ukraine is showing in real time now. National arms makers will not want to cede power and prestige to Airbus-style joint design and manufacturing initiatives, even before getting to the long time it would take to sort out what to do assuming agreement. And that’s before getting to the fact that Project Ukraine is becoming increasingly unpopular among the European public. It will become more so as structurally higher energy costs mean more de-industrialization, which means higher arms spending would eat even more into social safety nets and other services.

Or shorter, there was a conceivable, if narrow path, to Russia being able to conclude the war at least reasonably to its satisfaction without occupying or otherwise neutralizing western Ukraine. One option was the Medvedev map: of Ukraine windup up as Greater Kiev, with the rest of western Ukraine eaten up by Poland, Romania, and Hungary.

The events of this week point in another direction. Even though Ukraine’s first moves towards its counteroffensive are by many accounts going not at all well despite much more use of high end Western armaments (see Alexander Mercouris, Dima, and Simplicius the Thinker, among others, for details), the big infrastructure attacks suggest Ukraine will salt the earth rather than let Russia have it.

While there are many, starting with Ukraine president Zelensky, who blame the catastrophic failure of the Kakhovka dam on Russia, circumstantial evidence and cui bono point strongly the other way.

First, let’s consider another major infrastructure hit, 24 hours before the dam breach, to an ammonia pipeline. The pipeline, the subject of dispute in the grain deal. Despite the popular label. Russia had treated being able to resume fertilizer deliveries as integral to that pact. Some backstory via a John Helmer post yesterday:

The Russian government has repeatedly accused the UN and the Ukrainians of refusing to honour the reciprocal export provisions of the food export initiative, so that Russian grain and fertilizers will not be blocked in the European ports,  or at sea where vessels carrying the Russian cargoes have been denied Anglo-American insurance. The UN publications, statements and press releases published by Guterres’s staff have reported the full 26-paragraph text of the grain agreement;   they have omitted the text of the fertilizer agreement.  The combination of the two makes the difference between the grain deal and the real deal:  for the Russians the latter was the precondition for their agreement to the former. [UN Secretary-General] Guterres’s office has acknowledged that the real deal was more than the grain deal, and that compliance also required the US, the UK and the European Union (EU) states to lift the sanctions they have imposed on Russian shipping, port access, vessel insurance, and commodity exports…. Of the 43 releases which have followed from Guterres’s office since last July,    not a single statement, press release, report,  or update identifies the terms of agreement on Russian grain and fertilizer exports, or acknowledges Russian protests against Ukrainian, UN, EU,  and US  non-compliance. On March 23, [British lawyer Martin] Griffiths announced he had met Russian officials, and claimed:  “The discussions focused on the implementation of the two agreements signed on 22 July 2022: the Black Sea Grain Initiative between the Russian Federation, Türkiye, Ukraine and the United Nations; and the Memorandum of Understanding between the Russian Federation and the UN, to facilitate unimpeded exports of food and fertilizer. The UN Secretary-General expressed today that the UN remains fully committed to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, as well as to efforts to facilitate the export of Russian food and fertilizer.” Griffith’s last sentence was lying. The Russians had told him they would agree to extend the grain deal until July on condition Guterres and Griffiths did what they promised they were doing. They didn’t…. Because Guterres and Griffiths refused, Russian officials have announced that the current 120-day extension of the grain deal to July 17 will be the last. In the meantime, because Russian ammonia exports are still stopped, Ukrainian grain cargoes have been blocked from Odessa and Chernomorsk, and restricted to Yuzhny (aka Pivdennyi).   In retaliation, the Ukrainians have attacked the  new ammonia and LPG export terminals at Taman with drones.

Now for the update. Be sure to click through to read the full text:

The man recording even says, “I’ve never seen this in my life.”

Meanwhile, at the moment, the locks are still open in DneproGES (Ukrainian controlled), which means that the Ukrainian leadership is not interested in stopping the flood…and the Western media is silent

Vladimir Rogov appears to believe that the lowering of the Kakhovka Basin water levels will actually increase the risk of Ukraine landing to try to seize the ZNPP nuclear plant at Energodar:

The lowering of the water level in the Kakhovka Basin due to the weakening of the dam of the hydroelectric power plant of the same name located downstream of the Dnieper increases the risk of landings by militants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to capture the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant.

This was stated by Vladimir Rogov, leader of the “We are together with Russia” movement.

And on the note of the Dnipropetrovsk hydro-electric plant being opened up by Kiev prior to the Kakhovka event to raise water levels, we have the first truly high level Russian confirmation of this. Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev stated the following:

Patrushev: Kyiv released water to Dnipropetrovsk HPP a day before the attack on Kakhovka Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolay Patrushev said today that, on the order of Kiev, water was released in the Dnipropetrovsk hydroelectric power plant, a day before the attack on the Kahovka HPP. “On the orders of Kyiv, 24 hours earlier there was a massive water release at the Dnipropetrovsk HPP, and then there was an attack on the Kahovka HPP, which led to terrible consequences,” said Patrushev, TASS reports.

Another recent event, which didn’t get the attention it warranted, perhaps because it was so cringe-makingly detached from reality, was a speech by Anthony Blinken in Helsinki on June 2. Blinken among other things argued Russia has failed comprehensively in the war, was becoming more isolated, and the US had been willing to negotiate but Putin kicked the table over. The last claim is probably the worst of the many howlers in the talk.

But what is signifies is dangerous: the hawks are absolutely not backing down and despite evidence, are convinced they will prevail. Blinken gave the usual bromides about US controlled freedom-loving Ukrainians and the US being committed to Ukraine for as long as it takes.

These new infrastructure strikes, which harm civilians and may do lasting environmental damage, seem likely to force Russia to pursue the war to the destruction of the Ukraine government, as opposed say to a mere dictating of terms of surrender. As Lambert put it, “Russia can’t permit a fascist state on its borders.”

The ever-careful Putin has even changed how he speaks about Ukraine. The Washington Post on May 31 quote Putin as referring to it as “hat territory known as Ukraine,” suggesting it has no standing as a government. That framing, particularly in connection with the two blasts, may lead Russia to cross the Rubicon and designate Ukraine as a terrorist state. That means among other things no negotiations. Simplicius set forth evidence of more hardening of attitudes among top officials, beyond the usual Medvedev bad-coppery. For instance, he hoisted this section from a post-Kakhovka disaster RIA Novosti interview with Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev:

The new goal of the SMO is the demolition of the Nazi regime in Kiev. It seems that new specifics have been added to the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine as the goals of the SMO. “Washington and London created the Kiev Nazi regime, which must be replaced, giving Ukraine the status of a neutral state in practice,” said Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev (pictured) in an interview with Belarusian Security Council Secretary Alexander Volfovich.

Now many have assumed that capturing and subjugating such a larger territory as Western Ukraine would be an incredibly costly and corrosive task. But yours truly has pointed out there are ways, albeit not at all nice, to square this circle, and if yours truly can come up with one, there are surely much better ideas being considered in Moscow.

As we pointed out, if Russia takes Ukraine west of the Dnieper and the Black Sea coast, what is left of Ukraine is not all that valuable, save perhaps some farming areas.

Russia gained a huge amount of knowledge about how the Ukraine grid works and repeatedly disabled it severely enough to force Ukraine to commit meaningful amounts of its dwindling air defenses to protect big cities, and also forced Ukraine to deplete its equipment reserves. Remember the West does not make any of this gear; it can only look to its spares and perhaps those of former Warsaw Pact states. If Russia were to fully de-electrify Western Ukraine, only Russia could restore it. And it could decide what to restore.

So one option for Russia would be to destroy the grid in areas of Ukraine it did not want to attempt to subdue. The result would be something like the unorganized territories of Maine, a land of prepper beardos. Remember that no electricity means no heated pipes and water pumping in the winter, so many would burst in the winter, further reducing the number of habitable structures.

Russia could even conceivably take out power in a way intended to herd the population into Europe. In Japan, the media carefully follows the so-called sakura line, where cherry blossoms are going into full bloom. Russia could march a de-electrification campaign across Ukraine, starting closest to the areas Russia wants to keep and rebuild, then moving gradually west and north, to give Poland and NATO time to get the message if they had not worked out what was in store,

Now making a huge part of a country largely uninhabitable is a very ugly end game. Aside from recognizing that punishing citizens, as opposed to decision makers, is to be avoided if at all possible, Russia also cares about its image around the world. So the idea of de-electrifying huge sections of western Ukraine would be a not-so-hot fallback to a costly and difficult occupation. But the fact that any such fallback exists suggests there might be less terrible ones. So the highest levels in Russia may be thinking hard about such possibilities.

Yours truly said from the very outset of the SMO that Russia could win the war but lose the peace. Even though it has repeatedly exercised restraint in the face of Ukraine provocations like the Kerch Bridge bombing and the strikes on Belgorod, which endanger civilians, the escalations, which also look intended to draw NATO in, are also forcing Russia to consider more comprehensive solutions.

[enby-denby]

I know this a personal anecdote, and I should probably make my own post, but I want to share this story to show that censorship of queer themes and characters starts as soon as writers and artists start putting forward their work in any media space.

So I was in a high school creative writing class in 2010, emphasis on the specific year and subject. We were given a singular prompt: the first page of a first-person mystery/noir narrative, where we were expressly told by our teacher Miss Patty Sloan (I don't care about censoring her name, if she's still alive she deserves to be shamed for this) that we could write our main character to be any gender, race, or personality type. Again, for emphasis, we were expressly told to get creative with the narrator's character as part of the creative exercize.

So I, being a baby gay in the school's GSA, wanted to make him a typical gritty noir protagonist... except he's gay. What a cool concept, right? A dame walks into his office and he has no reaction-- not a stoic exterior while his internal monologue is gushing over her fence Fatale beauty or whatever, genuine disinterest. He follows a lead into a non-gay bar and is genuinely worried he will be hit on by women and have to out himself to get any useful answers. But the biggest reason why I wanted it: the villain was also going to be gay, but instead of making out about it the protagonist would talk him through his internalized homophobia that he was unhealthy dealing with by experimenting on unwilling male subjects.

So we had a few in-class check ins before it was due, and I proudly described my concept alongside my classmates. But rather than praise me for my creative subversion of noir tropes, Miss Sloan pursed her lips with what I now recognize as disgust.

"I don't feel comfortable reading about queer characters written from a straight person's perspective."

This criticism led me to out myself to the entire class, to prove that as a lesbian (and now a nonbinary pansexual) that I had the "right" to write to write about queer characters. Then her excuse changed to it being "not appropriate to talk about sex and sexuality" in a school assignment. So a man kissing another man is too vulgar, but another man surgically implanting flowers and loose organs in other people's bodies is just fine? Years later, I would sympathize a lot witha certain quote from George RR Martin.

I even told her I had no intention to show either man in sexually suggestive situations: no kissing, no longing looks, nothing. Being gay was just a fact, a fact that would inform both characters and their actions. A necessary plot point. Non-negotiable.

And indeed, it was not: she gave me the ultimatum that if I made any of my characters gay, she would fail me for "not following instructions."

So I had to rewrite the entire story... and in malicious compliant fashion, I did. I gave the villain character a pet dog, a morality pet that was only put in to replace the heartfelt discussion on identity and the nature of love that was the crux of the original story. And how does the main character interact with this animal, while trapped in the villains lair and with nothing binding him to the villain but the physical binds he just escaped?

He holds the dog at gun-point, threatening to blow its brains out if the villain doesn't let him go and turn himself in.

So sure, the characters aren't gay anymore, bit I can still link them in some way: they are both sociopathic monsters now, the kind of villains old boomers like Patty Sloan seem to think all gay people inherently are. In this way, the Hayes Code coding came back with brutal avengence.

She graded this version of my narrative fairly, but my classmates feedback reflected their discomfort at my "survivalist ending". I wonder, if their discomfort would be more or less than if I had put forward the work I had wanted to... considering how many of my classmates have since come out as LGBT, I imagine they would have been thrilled with my original concept, had it been allowed to manifest organically.

There is one other epilogue to this story: I am still very queer, and still doing a lot of writing. Not for publishing, not yet, but I have an oc that I used in a traveller campaign. He is a greaser, he is very bisexuality, is very open with his preferences.... and he rides a Sloanobike Model XK-7000 hiver bike. If I ever publish the adventures of Zen and his friends, I might have to change the name of the bike for defamation reasons... but I will fight tooth and nail for him to continue to be bi, along with his girlfriend, his gender queer alien copilot, and his very trans-coded robro.

But maybe I'll get lucky, and the powers that be won't fight with me on any of these factors. Maybe they won't find this post, and accept the catchphrase justification for the name ("Is it slow? No! It's a Sloanobike!"). Or maybe they won't care at all, writers have gotten away with even pettier digs in their writing.

But yeah, tl;dr: even the baby gays are getting their works censored by gate-keeping, and the solution appears to be make all media so unhinged that they no longer have the capacity to care about the LGBT characters swept up in the madness.

Something I don’t think enough people recognize when it comes to making shows more diverse, there is so much going on behind the scene that you literally can’t “just add them.” 

Alex Hirsch had to wait until the end of Gravity Falls to show that Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland were in love so that way the show didn’t get prematurely cancelled. And even still, that was censored in other countries. 

________

The Owl House has a bisexual afro Latina protagonist that falls in love with a white lesbian. They kiss several times on screen and say “my awesome girlfriend.” It also has Disney’s first nonbinary character (Raine Whispers), their bisexual love interest (Eda Clawthorne), and an aro/ace woman (Lilith Clawthorne). However, because like five people said that TOH wasn’t the “Disney brand” the show is prematurely cancelled. So even with everything that TOH did, it only won battle but lost the war. 

________

The art crew for Encanto had to fight to make Luisa buff. And when they were finally able to make her buff, Disney didn’t make as much Luisa merchandise because they thought little girls would want Mirabel or Isabela’s since they’re more “feminine.” (I think the same thing happened with Namaari when RATLD came out but I’m not sure. So don’t quote me on that.)

*Also, Luisa out preformed. So that’s a win. 

________

Bubblegum and Marceline couldn’t kiss until the series finale of Adventure Time because it would’ve been cancelled. So throughout the entire series, the crew always just had to imply undertones about their past. Since HBO produced Obsidian, they were able to kiss on screen.

________

Korra and Asami’s relationship had to tempt down so that way Nick could continue airing the show and they weren’t allowed to kiss until the comics. 

________

Turning Red got so much unwarranted criticism because not only did Mei’s mom say “pads” but she showed them on screen. (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if that made you uncomfortable, that’s a sign that we need to do this more and not less.)

________

Some countries marked She Ra as 18+ because Catra and Adora kissed on screen. (Once again, I’m not sure if this completely true but Nate Stevenson had to fight to actually show them kissing on screen instead of a fade to white.)

________

Steven Universe is the gayest show I’ve ever seen in my life which was both good and bad. It was good for obvious reasons. Example being that it was the first show that introduced to me nonbinary people in a way that wasn’t “haha, look, she uses they/them pronouns. She’s so funny and quirky.” 

And it’s bad because it put a target on it’s back. SU has been censored so much that it’s honestly a miracle that we got an ending. And in most of the countries that censored SU, they usually portray Ruby as a man. So I can’t imagine how bad the censors were when the wedding happened and Ruby wore a dress and Sapphire wore a suit. 

________

Also, you have to remember the outdated idea that gay/trans topics are “too mature” for kids to handle (there’s an episode of Adam Ruins Everything that talks about this). So it’s easier for shows with an older audience (like Arcane) to have queer/trans rep.

Not to mention, if you ever go on Insider’s website to look at the queer/trans characters in cartoons [here], most of the characters are revealed to be queer only online and not in the actual show.

________

All of this BS because God forbid that kids find out that other people exist. 

Representation is important but please, just be aware of the actually struggles that go on that you don’t see and be thankful that this is where we are now because even though it might seem like it at times remember that this is actual progress. We need to keep pushing studios to do more. I’m sure that there’s millions of untold stories that would be made if not for this prejudice. 

[hardynwa]

Strike Threats: Tinubu still committed to implementing MOU with labour – Onyejeocha

Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha has reacted to the strike threats by organised Labour, saying the implementation of the sixteen-point agreement to alleviate the plight of workers over subsidy removal was still on course. Recall that the organised Labour comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress had issued a 14-day ultimatum to the government to meet demands reached following the removal of subsidy by the government. But reacting to the threats, Onyejeocha said the government is fully committed to honouring its obligations to workers and the less privileged in Nigeria. She said the government will ensure the complete implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) entered into with Organized Labour, stressing that their word is a bond. “I can confidently say that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration stands firmly with the people, and the President is tirelessly working to ensure that everything is done to address the needs and concerns of the nation”. Speaking at a press conference on Friday, in Abuja, Onyejeocha acknowledged concerns regarding the difficulties currently experienced by Nigerian workers. “This government acknowledges the challenges faced by Nigerians and has demonstrated sincerity in its ongoing negotiations with the trade unions. “You will also agree with me that negotiations are often a gradual process, with resolutions unfolding in stages, however, the Government is assuring Nigerians of its continued commitment to addressing labour concerns and fulfilling all agreements as we move forward together. “The government would also like to assure the organised labour of its commitment to maintaining open and constructive communication with them to foster positive labour relations and guarantee a supportive working environment for all workers,” she told reporters. According to her, the N35,000 wage award agreed upon between the government and organized labour is currently being implemented. She said complaints regarding non-implementation in some public sector organizations as well as the private sector have been received, which the Ministry is actively addressing to ensure compliance across all sectors. She said, “Two days ago, I mediated between the National Union of Civil Engineering Construction, Furniture and Wood Workers (NUCEFWW), Civil Engineering Senior Staff Association (CCESSA), the Federation of Construction Industries (FOCI) (Employers). Consequently, the parties have signed an agreement to resolve the issue. Read the full article

[pericardio-relicario]

Since this century has taught us, and continues to teach us, that human beings can learn to live under the most brutalized and theoretically intolerable conditions, it is not easy to grasp the extent of the, unfortu­nately accelerating, return to what our nineteenth-century ancestors would have called the standards of barbarism. We forget that the old revolutionary Frederick Engels was horrified at the explosion of an Irish Republican bomb in Westminster Hall, because, as an old soldier, he held that war was waged against combatants and not non-combatants. We forget that the pogroms in Tsarist Russia which (justifiably) outraged world opinion and drove Russian Jews across the Atlantic in their millions between 1881 and 1914, were small, almost negligible, by the standards of modern massacre: the dead were counted in dozens, not hundreds, let alone millions. We forget that an international Convention once provided that hostilities in war 'must not commence without previ­ous and explicit warning in the form of a reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war', for when was the last war that began with such an explicit or implicit declaration? Or one that ended with a formal treaty of peace negotiated between the belligerent states? In the course of the twentieth century, wars have been increasingly waged against the economy and infrastructure of states and against their civilian populations.

— Eric Hobsbawm, from AGE OF EXTREMES: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, on The Age of Catastrophe,

[gyls23unsc]

Ukrainian Separatist Group Claims Responsibility for Anthem and Colorado, Issues Ultimatum

The Wall Street Journal

28 December 2023

In a video statement livestreamed on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the relatively-unknown Ukrainian separatist group Luhansk Solidarity has claimed responsibility for the hijacking and kidnapping of the passengers and crew of the Anthem of the Seas and the Maersk Colorado that occurred yesterday. This included the presentation of a number of key hostages taken, including the captains of both vessels. 

Their demands were as follows:

1. The complete emancipation of the DPR and the LPR from Ukraine, which is a non-negotiable request.

2. The complete and total removal of sanctions on DPR and LPR leaders, including the paramount leaders of both the DPR and the LPR. 

3. The recognition by the United Nations Security Council of the independence of the DPR and the LPR from Ukraine, and that they have been granted accession rights to the Russian Federation.

Failure to agree to these demands will lead to the execution of ten randomly-chosen hostages per day by members of Luhansk Solidarity.   

Luhansk Solidarity has asserted that it is not affiliated with the authorities of both the DPR and the LPR, which have condemned the hijacking as a needless use of force against civilians in contradiction with international law.

[yesthatssadirichardslove]

Hollywood actors strike reaches 100th day

LOS ANGELES

While screenwriters are busy back at work, film and TV actors remain on picket lines, with the longest strike in their history set to hit 100 days on Saturday after talks broke off with studios. Here's a look at where things stand, how their stretched-out standoff compares to past strikes, and what happens next.

Hopes were high and leaders of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists were cautiously optimistic when they resumed negotiations on Oct. 2 for the first time since the strike began 2 1/2 months earlier.

The same group of chief executives from the biggest studios had made a major deal just over a week earlier with striking writers, whose leaders celebrated their gains on many issues actors are also fighting for: long-term pay, consistency of employment and control over the use of artificial intelligence.

But the actors' talks were tepid, with days off between sessions and no reports of progress. Then studios abruptly ended them on Oct. 11, saying the actors' demands were exorbitantly expensive and the two sides were too far apart to continue.

“We only met with them a couple of times, Monday, half a day Wednesday, half a day Friday. That was what they were available for," SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher told The Associated Press soon after the talks broke off. "Then this past week, it was Monday and a half a day on Wednesday. And then “Bye bye. I’ve never really met people that actually don’t understand what negotiations mean. Why are you walking away from the table?"

The reasons, according to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, included a union demand for a fee for each subscriber to streaming services.

“SAG-AFTRA gave the member companies an ultimatum: either agree to a proposal for a tax on subscribers as well as all other open items, or else the strike would continue," the AMPTP said in a statement to the AP. "The member companies responded to SAG-AFTRA’s ultimatum that unfortunately, the tax on subscribers poses an untenable economic burden.”

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, one of the executives in on the bargaining sessions, told investors on an earnings call Wednesday that “This really broke our momentum unfortunately."

SAG-AFTRA leaders said it was ridiculous to frame this demand as as though it were a tax on customers, and said it was the executives themselves who wanted to shift from a model based on a show's popularity to one based on number of subscribers.

“We made big moves in their direction that have just been ignored and not responded to,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA's national executive director and chief negotiator, told the AP. "We made changes to our AI proposal. We made dramatic changes to what used to be our streaming revenue share proposal," Crabtree-Ireland said.

The studios said just after the talks broke off that the per-subscriber charge would cost them $800 million annually, a figure SAG-AFTRA said was a vast overestimate.

The AMPTP later responded that the number was based on a union request for $1 per customer per year, which was lowered to 57 cents after SAG-AFTRA changed its evaluation to cut out non-relevant programming like news and sports.

The actors are in unscripted territory, with no end in sight. Their union has never been on a strike this long, nor been on strike at all since before many of its members were born. Not even its veteran leaders, like Crabtree-Ireland, with the union for 20 years, have found themselves in quite these circumstances.

As they did for months before the talks broke off, members and leaders will rally, picket and speak out publicly until the studios signal a willingness to talk again. No one knows how long that will take. SAG-AFTRA says it is willing to resume at any time, but that won't change its demands.

“I think that they think that we’re going to cower,” Drescher said. “But that’s never going to happen because this is a crossroads and we must stay on course.”

The writers did have their own false start with studios that may give some reason for optimism. Their union attempted to restart negotiations with studios in mid-August, more than three months into their strike. Those talks went nowhere, breaking off after a few days. A month later, the studio alliance came calling again. Those talks took off, with most of their demands being met after five marathon days that resulted in a tentative deal that its members would vote to approve almost unanimously.

Hollywood actors strikes have been less frequent and shorter than those by writers. The Screen Actors Guild (they added the “AFTRA” in a 2011 merger) has gone on strike against film and TV studios only three times in its history.

In each case, emerging technology fueled the dispute. In 1960 — the only previous time actors and writers struck simultaneously — the central issue was actors seeking pay for when their work in film was aired on television, compensation the industry calls residuals. The union, headed by future U.S. President Ronald Reagan, was a smaller and much less formal entity then. The vote to strike took place in the home of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, the parents of current SAG-AFTRA member and vocal striker Jamie Lee Curtis.

Mid-strike, the actors and studios called a truce so all could attend the Academy Awards — a move forbidden under today’s union rules. Host Bob Hope called the gathering “Hollywood’s most glamorous strike meeting.”

In the end, a compromise was reached where SAG dropped demands for residuals from past films in exchange for a donation to their pension fund, along with a formula for payment when future films aired on TV. Their 42-day work stoppage began and ended all within the span of the much longer writers strike.

A 1980 strike would be the actors' longest for film and television until this year. That time, they were seeking payment for their work appearing on home video cassettes and cable TV, along with significant hikes in minimum compensation for roles. A tentative deal was reached with significant gains but major compromises in both areas. Union leadership declared the strike over after 67 days, but many members were unhappy and balked at returning to work. It was nearly a month before leaders could rally enough votes to ratify the deal.

This time, it was the Emmy Awards that fell in the middle of the strike. The Television Academy held a ceremony, but after a boycott was called, only one acting winner, Powers Boothe, was there to accept his trophy.

Other segments of the actors union have gone on strike too, including several long standoffs over the TV commercials contract. A 2016-2017 strike by the union's video game voice actors lasted a whopping 11 months. That segment of the union could strike again soon if a new contract deal isn't reached.

The return of writers has gotten the Hollywood production machine churning again, with rooms full of scribes penning new seasons of shows that had been suspended and film writers finishing scripts. But the finished product will await the end of actors strike, and production will remain suspended many TV shows and dozens of films, including “Wicked,” “Deadpool 3” and “Mission Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part 2.”

The Emmys, whose nominations were announced the same day the actors strike was called, opted to wait for the stars this time and move their ceremony from September to January, though that date could be threatened too.

The Oscars are a long way off in March, but the campaigns to win them are usually well underway by now. With some exceptions — non-studio productions approved by the union — performers are prohibited from promoting their films at press junkets or on red carpets. Director Martin Scorsese has been giving interviews about his new Oscar contender “ Killers of the Flower Moon.” Star and SAG-AFTRA member Leonardo DiCaprio hasn't.

[phoebeyates-archive]

It was strange that making such a big step didn’t even feel like it was one. In fact, it just felt right. Like despite the conversation they needed to have, adopting Misty was the next natural move. Foster had made Phoebe feel stable in a way she hadn’t felt for a long time, if ever. And whilst she was convinced the ‘L’ word would never be uttered from his lips, she knew he liked her for all she was. And was here, in a pen of adorable animals, smiling wide and cheesy for picture in a way she would never imagine him doing a few months prior. And if Phoebe were smart, this would be enough.

“Don’t you dare even pretend you have Teddy’s best interests at heart, since the poor thing is banned from the bed!” She mock lectured, though her stomach did swoop unpleasantly when Seb’s name was mentioned. Phoebe was realistic enough to know that not everyone would get along or be best friends, and she couldn’t even fault Foster for his impatience regarding the other man. Seb was stubborn, rude, selfish, impulsive, and extremely annoying.

But he was also someone who got Phoebe almost as well as the man holding their soon-to-be kitten did. And their friendship was non-negotiable. Foster understanding that was just the cherry on top.

It would just be easier if Seb could put his best foot forward as well.

“I’m so sorry about him,” Phoebe uttered for what felt like the thousandth time. “He shouldn’t have ambushed you like that. I really thought you would be free from running into him, since he’s usually not up that early. Guess I’m just gonna have to trail you around all your catering gigs like your own personal security huh? I could train Misty to claw at him.” She stared down at the puddle of gray in his lap, heart melting. Far too gentle. “Thank you. For…bearing with him. I know a lot of people wouldn’t tolerate it and I get it, I do. I want to give him a good shake sometimes,” She laughed. “But he means well, I promise.” Spencer had — on numerous occasions — tried to give Phoebe an ultimatum, to force her into making a choice. Him or me, he often offered up. And at first she couldn’t decide, pleading with her ex to see things her way. Then it was easier to pick, choosing Seb more and more often. If Foster gave her that choice now, it’d be impossible.

“C’mon then, let’s go make this little cutie officially ours.” Phoebe needed to move, to let the distraction of the craziness around them absorb in so there was no need to dwell on the past anymore, her heart skipping a beat at how natural the word felt. Ours. Theirs. Like they could have a future together…and maybe they could, she just needed to stop being so scared. To be so expectant of one thing when she all but had it laying right out in front of her.

@foster-notmatty

With the little kitten curled up on his lap, he couldn't help but think of that one small, terrifying word he'd used not even a half hour earlier, a throwaway gesture that now landed like a boulder on his chest. Girlfriend. Was Phoebe his girlfriend? It hadn't seemed like that big of a deal describing her like that to his father's lawyer, a man who likely didn't give a shit beyond getting his commission, but that was before Phoebe had asked for his input in deciding to adopt a cat. They were kind of adopting a cat together! And in light of that new fact, maybe one word shouldn't make a difference, but the weird thing was... he kind of wanted it to.

I mean... she was, wasn't she? They spent more nights together now than they did apart, and any rule he'd put in place for himself, Phoebe had barrelled right past it. There wasn't anyone else; he didn't want there to be anyone else. So why was it that taking that leap, asking her to be his girlfriend, felt like such an awful, daunting proposition?

Because it would hurt more when it ended, the answer came to him instantly. And getting a cat wouldn't change that, but — maybe it could delay the inevitable just a little bit longer...

He stayed put as Phoebe instructed so that she could take a picture, a wide, cheesy grin as he looked down at the cat on his lap. "Y'know, we're gonna have to make sure she and Teddy get along," he teased, referencing the huge stuffed animal they got at the amusement park. "I'm putting my foot down after this. Between them and Seb, no more strays for a while..."

[nientedenada]

The Strange Death of Jarl Hrolfdir

Originally posted on r/teslore

My father died trying to negotiate with the Forsworn, back when that was possible. They took his shield to those Hagraven beasts they consort with. - Igmund

Many fans remember Igmund's father's death at the hands of the Forsworn, and naturally assume that Jarl Hrolfdir died at the start of, or during, the period of Madanach’s Forsworn kingdom. However, Cedran the carriage driver says of Igmund:

Wasn't surprising he stayed loyal to the Empire. His father helped capture Ulfric Stormcloak after the Markarth Incident.

And Raerek tells the Stormcloak PC that the Empire made him, his brother, and Igmund swear oaths to abandon Talos so as to be allowed to keep control of Markarth.

So, Hrolfdir lived past the Markarth Incident, the enforcement of the White-Gold Concordat, and Ulfric’s imprisonment. How then did he end up killed trying to make peace with the Forsworn? In my post on war-crimes in Markarth, I pointed out that Hrolfdir has to have been the Jarl in Braig’s story, the one who executed Braig's small daughter. Does this man really sound like a peacemaker?

There is some context that makes Hrofldir’s fate a bit more understandable. Here’s Igmund’s account of the period:

When the Aldmeri Dominion invaded the Imperial City, the Legion all but turned a blind eye to the other provinces. Many of the disgruntled natives of the Reach used the opportunity to depose the Empire, and founded what they called an independent kingdom. It was little more than a chaotic uprising, but the Reach was removed from Imperial authority for two years before we reclaimed it. But the leaders of the uprising refused our offers of peace. They fled into the hills and became the Forsworn.

You’ll notice that the offers of peace come after the reclaiming of Markarth, which fits with the timeline established. And “peace” as offered by the Reach’s Nord establishment is exploitation and slavery in the Silver-Blood mines. In my post on Ulfric, I drew a distinction between the character of Ulfric’s alleged crimes and the Markarth establishment’s. Ulfric was accused of treating non-combatants as if they were combatants. He’s not accused of enslaving the Forsworn, but killing them.

In contrast, Thonar Silver-Blood’s diary reveals that he convinced Jarl Hrolfdir to imprison Madanach instead of executing him. The Jarls, Hrolfdir and his son Igmund after him, collaborated with the Silver-Bloods to re-establish their regime of exploitation over the Reach.

Why did Hrolfdir think he could safely go make peace with the remaining Forsworn? Well, he had their king in his prison. Thonar doesn’t explain how he convinced Hrolfdir to keep Madanach imprisoned, but I think it likely he convinced Hrolfdir that keeping Madanach would give him a hold over the remaining Forsworn. Hrolfdir had demonstrated his power over the people of the Reach with his executions of unfortunates like Braig’s daughter, and the imprisonment of others. His peace talks were probably more of an ultimatum he thought the last remnants of the Forsworn were bound to accept.

And so he got killed, because he didn’t understand how determined the Forsworn were. That they weren’t ready to buckle under.

Hrolfdir’s ignorance of the Forsworn is likely reflected in his son Igmund’s conversation. Igmund after all ignores Raerek and Faleen’s warnings about their inability to match the Forsworn in the field:

"Cowards, the both of you. My father would not sit idly back and wait while evil men take over his lands.

Raerek in particular sounds like he was exasperated by his brother’s approach in the same way as his nephew’s.

I advise Igmund the same way I advised his father. Caution, caution, caution.

Neither of them took his advice.

(I was impressed that Faleen even tells Igmund to his face that the Silver-Bloods may be working with the Forsworn. Girl has good sense. After combing through so much of the Markarth dialogue, I came to the conclusion that the best thing for the Empire would be to exile/execute the Silver-Bloods, send Igmund on vacation and let Faleen and Raerek run the place.)

[catncore]

❝      i’d  like  to  remind  everyone  that  if  you  decide  to  date  joshua,  you  WILL  be  dealing  with  me  on  an  active  basis.  i  am  his  non  negotiable.  you  will  not  separate  us,  and  should  you  try  an’  give  him  an  ultimatum  of  ‘it’s  him  or  me’  it  will be  very  embarrassing  for  you.  i  am  written  into  the  contract  you  sign  when  being  his  boytoy.  an’  on  top  of  that  you  will  occasionally  have  to  deal  with  me  walking  in  on  you  both.  sometimes,  he’ll  even  tell  me  to  stay  in  th’  room.  again’  i am  not  negotiable.  i  listen  to  him,  not  you.        ❞

[kelseyeroberts]

Pointless War in Howl’s Moving Castle

How Miyazaki Renegotiates Imperialist Assumptions By Kelsey Roberts When the 75th Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was declared to be Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, the room erupted into enthusiastic applause for the director and his passionate team at Studio Ghibli. However, neither Miyazaki nor any of his employees stepped forward to receive the award. In fact, his presence, or lack thereof, was quickly and conspicuously glossed over by the Award announcer, Cameron Diaz, who accepted the award on behalf of the Academy before the show continued on. That Miyazaki would miss an invitation to his first nomination, and only win, at the Academy Awards was indicative of something much more powerful than recognition for the arts. Two years prior, on September 20th, 2001, United States President George W. Bush addressed the nation after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. In his impassioned speech, Bush declared that any forces opposed to the United States and their War on Terror, were choosing to side with terrorism. With lines clearly drawn in the sand, Hayao Miyazaki stood back and said “no” to making any decision at all. In fact, he made it very clear on several occasions that he would not visit a country that was dropping bombs on another. At the time of the 75th Academy Awards and the success of his movie Spirited Away, Miyazaki remained resolutely in Japan, working on an emphatically pacifist cinematic reply to the ultimatums presented by the world’s most boisterous military presence.

English poet and novelist Diana Wynne Jones published Howl’s Moving Castle, the first novel in a series of magical children’s books, in April of 1986. The plot centers around a young woman named Sophie Hatter and her dealings with the eponymous Howl Jenkins, a womanizing wizard who travels through time and space via a magically “moving” castle. Ingary, the fictional country in which the story takes place, is full of magic and fairytales, supplying a handy backdrop for deeper questions the character’s face throughout the story. Does a character’s agency matter if fairytales are true and magic supplies near limitless power to some and not others? Sophie, believing a fairytale assumption that she has nothing to achieve other than quiet spinsterhood, resigns herself to this fate, just before being dumped headfirst into an epic romance featuring curses, witches, and kings. Howl, with the might of magic on his side and no earthly consequence to face in result of his endless agency and selfishness, realizes the impressive force of responsibility, though only when it comes to the people in his care. He willingly chooses to lessen his own agency to protect and provide for Sophie and his family. The end finds them reaching an equilibrium of agency and responsibility, of destiny and magic, to live happily in their mystical country. Unfortunately, Wynne Jones’ novel remained unawarded during the original print of the novel, and faded quietly to the shelves of children’s libraries until Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki happened to read it while visiting Strasbourg, France.

Struck by the magical environment of Ingary (no doubt flavored by his recent trip to Strasbourg) and the question of just how a magical castle would move, Miyazaki quickly had Studio Ghibli purchase rights to a feature length film. In 2001, the studio announced that it had begun production of the film with Miyazaki at the helm as director and featuring a musical score created by the equally prolific Joe Hisaishi. Entranced by Wynne Jones’ descriptions of Ingary, Miyazaki chose to return to France, this time to Alsace, to study both architecture and surrounding natural settings to use in his storyboards. The film’s castle designs, and by extension all representations of both technology and magic throughout, were heavily inspired by the French artist and novelist Albert Robida. Robida, a futurist who died in the 1920s, envisioned future technology to be integrated more fully into the everyday, rather than the notions of mad-scientists and scientific abominations that were more popular with his peers. This naturally absorbing technology is reflected in the aliveness of Miyazaki’s interpretation of the moving castle and the visual incorporation of Industrial-era technologies into the practice of Ingarian magic. After spending 3 years in production, and consisting of approximately 1400 storyboards, Howl’s Moving Castle was released to Japanese audiences on November 20th, 2004vi. The film was distributed by Toho in Japan before being dubbed into English by the Walt Disney Company for release in the United States on June 10th, 2005. Howl’s Moving Castle was nominated for Best Animated Film at the 78th Academy Awards and as of 2020, it stands as the fifth most successful film released by the country of Japan.

Methods

By choosing to create a film to critique the war practices of the United States of America, Miyazaki is likewise critiquing the ideologies that lead nations like the United States to interfere politically, economically, and militarily in other countries. These ideologies, also called hegemonic structures, work to perpetuate themselves in the minds of the privileged that enact these ideologies upon the oppressed. In an effort to define the differences between those privileged by Western ideology and those oppressed under it, Albert Memmi suggests that he doubts that an entitled citizen’s “gullibility can rest on a complete illusion.” In other words, those that privilege from Western ideologies are at some level aware of this inequality and choose to deny its existence to preserve their own benefits. While the recent actions of the United States military, including the invasion of the country of Iraq, have been analyzed and critiqued politically, there have been few direct consequences to those that directed the military. In fact, military expenditure in the United States is still the highest of any country in the world. Only by directly confronting the concept of war, without valorizing or propagandizing the actions and reactions of countries or ideologies, can violent hegemonies be broken down and effective discussion can truly begin.

The strength of these hegemonies is aided by the continuous circulation of information and media that reinforces them. Western education and Western art, including cinema, reinforce the economic, moral, political, and militaristic dominance of the Western culture. One of the only ways to actively combat these hegemonic mediascapes is to produce and analyze media from outside Western structures of thought. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam call this active combat “multiculturalism” in their book on Unthinking Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism, this continuous domination of Western ideology, “sanitizes Western history while patronizing and even demonizing the non-West.” By choosing to represent Western cultures as the only morally correct and only forward moving culture, while systematically infantilizing other cultures and ideologies as “developing,” Western education and media pick and choose exactly what histories and lessons deserve legitimacy and which do not. Hayao Miyazaki was born in Tokyo in 1941 to a father that manufactured parts for Japanese imperial fighter planes. By the time he was four years old, he had been evacuated from three different homes and had witnessed the fire-bombing of his country. As such, Miyazaki has a significant perspective about Western notions of war, having experienced both sides of an imperialist military force. Imperial Japan provided his father with a job and his family with protection, until United States militarism tore through his home, his family, and his national identity. Eurocentrism, particularly the valorization of the United States’ Pacific campaign during World War II, would not allow for Miyazaki’s unique perspective on imperialist war practices to be critically disseminated. Shohat and Stam’s call for multiculturalism as the solution opens the door for Hayao Miyazaki to provide many varied filmic representations of his unique perspective of both Japanese and United States imperialist hegemonies.

Hayao Miyazaki, in looking to discuss these significant concepts from a safely fictional distance, actively confronts both his own Japanese cultural identity, and the individual identity of the spectator. The encouragement of this feedback loop of dialogue is reminiscent to Stuart Hall’s considerations of cultural identity in his essay, Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation. Singularly important to Hall’s analysis of cinematic representation is a duality of identity that could be similarly identified as a feedback loop. First of these cultural identities is the concept of a “shared culture, a collective ‘one true self,’ hiding inside the many other...selves.” This shared culture is rooted deeply into common experiences and social codes that allow society to continue functioning with relative stability. The discovery and expression of this deepest cultural identity is attributed to powerful creative and representative force that allows marginalized peoples and ideas to express themselves outside of the more restrictive hegemonies of cultural identity. The second definition of cultural identity conversely involves strong points of difference and individuality present in each person, which as previously noted, are entirely at the mercy of hegemonic structures looking to reinforce their own supremacy. Hall calls this second definition a “becoming” of identity, that is continuously redefined and negotiated in relation to both recent history and present considerations. Miyazaki, choosing to confront both definitions of cultural identity with his cinema, presents his audiences with the tools to renegotiate their own cultural identities and preconceived notions.

One of the most intense differences between Diana Wynne Jones’ original novel and the filmic adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle is the narrative inclusion of war. The original novel talks about war only tangentially, with Ingary’s King requesting Howl’s help to find his missing war-general of a son. With impending war relegated to a sub-plot, the bulk of the story focuses on how Sophie and Howl grow closer together through prolonged disagreements and magical shenanigans. The narrative of the novel paints a distinctly Western perspective on the valorization and presumed agency of those involved with war, by choosing instead to focus on a relatively privileged wizard who can shirk responsibility in favor of womanizing and magical travel. Memmi likewise considers a colonizer to be a man of this type: “If he preferred to be blind and deaf to the operation of the whole machinery...; he is then the beneficiary of the entire enterprise.” Ignorance of the harmful constructs of war, using war as a subplot as though there are not direct consequences to war, makes the original plot compliant with hegemonic constructs. Conversely, Hayao Miyazaki’s adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle drags the war to the forefront of the narrative. Fear of war and death is the motivation for Howl’s selfishness, and the motivation for him to gain responsibility for the safety of Sophie and his country. By bringing war to the forefront of a children’s narrative about assuming responsibility for power and the abuses of those powers, Miyazaki creates an environment to confront the complex duality of his own cultural identity as a Japanese man, and to confront the similar injustices he saw in the United States occupation of Iraq.

Analysis

Hayao Miyazaki is a master of visual shorthand; every shot does as much heavy lifting as possible to assist the audience towards personal connections. From the first second Sophie’s hometown, a village in Ingary, appears on screen the audience is bombarded with militaristic propaganda, including an ever-present national flag. Featuring unfamiliar and highly visible strips of pink and yellow, hardly a shot of Ingarian civilization is shown without one or many Ingarian flags hidden in plain sight. Miyazaki elevates this level of nationalism to uncomfortable levels early on, highlighting his own experiences with imperialism. Soon after we meet Sophie, we witness her pass by a highly detailed grand parade of troops and war tanks.  A crowd of civilians cheers the soldiers’ uniforms and perfectly timed goose-stepping, waving Ingarian flags as heavy brass trumpets play something heroic and distinctly European in style. Throughout the film, as the war causes casualties, Sophie overhears civilians casually discussing the lack of motives for the fighting and their superior military technology. In 2004, this kind of patriotism may have seemed familiar to the population of the United States. After the attack on the World Trade Center, Walmart sold approximately 116,000 American flags, and another 250,000 the next day. Nationalism was pouring through the streets of America, and that nationalism looked like stars and stripes. Concurrently, anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States rose by over 800%, and the Patriot Act was implemented, removing safeguards against government surveillance and seizure. Shocked beyond reason, United States citizens overlooked the stripping of their own rights under the guise of national security and patriotism.

While it is quite clear that Miyazaki recognizes the visual affect that is attached to military performance, he does not hide his distaste for the valorization of war. Everything outside of the Castle seems to be focused exclusively on Ingarian nationalism and wartime propaganda, and yet inside there is a distinct absence of hegemonic structures of any sort. When Sophie first enters the Howl’s abode, she immediately learns several seemly disconcerting things; Howl is a terrible housekeeper, and a sarcastic fire demon pilots the whole Castle. A small child named Markl is left alone to watch Howl’s business aliases while the wizard disappears for days on end. Within a few scenes, Sophie’s previously “predetermined” constructs of home, trust, and family are broken almost beyond repair. Two of these hegemonies just happen to be civic duty and citizenship. Howl elects to keep the Castle moving through the untamed Wastes of Ingary, far from military occupation and government control. Rather than the lawless and desolate wasteland that Sophie first believes, the Wastes prove to be glorious mountainsides and lush green lands, reminiscent of Miyazaki’s travels to France. Though extremely capable of leaving his country entirely, Howl chooses to remain in the countryside of Ingary, removing any reminders of the violent constructs which he does not feel represent the natural beauty of his home. In this way, Miyazaki contrasts two drastically different forms of nationalism. One is focused on the outward enforcing of hegemonic constructs on other countries, and the other is focused on the inward appreciation of the natural resources and beauty that a country can provide its citizens.

Unfortunately, Howl is not able to fully escape his own moral imperative to help people. Though he hides from the draft notice issued by the King of Ingary, Howl travels to the frontline to protect civilian homes from the carnage of battle. Scenes showcasing indiscriminate battleships dropping firebombs punctuate Howl’s interactions with his family, providing a clear connection to his reason for fighting. While in battle he confronts several less powerful wizards that are mutated with magic. Later, Howl comments sadly that these wizards readily turned themselves into monsters under the King’s orders, and as such will never regain their humanity. Throughout the film it is implied that Howl’s dedication to Sophie and to his own personal freedom are the only things that prevent the loss of his own fragile humanity. The emotional and physical cost of war is not limited to either side of the confrontation. All individuals that take part in the structures of violence are affected. Clear connections between these wizards and the soldiers that fought in the War on Terror are made, focusing on their difficulty to return to civilian life and their struggles with the atrocities that they commit. A database called the Iraq Body Count has been working diligently to try to document the countless Iraqi civilians that were killed by the United States invasion. Unfortunately, they are only able to provide a rough estimate of between 185,497 – 208,547 deaths from violence. Miyazaki’s urge for victims of war and soldiers to lean on family and nation while under these stressors, while a bit simple in concept, reflects a lack of compassion shown in Western media for both the civilians of foreign nations and soldiers who do not return proud of their accomplishments in war.

Comparisons could be drawn between Howl’s active pacifism and general Japanese cultural identity post-World War II. After the total annihilation of two of their cities by nuclear bomb, and the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians by firebombing, the Japanese Imperial Government surrendered to the United States on August 15th, 1945. After their country brutalized in the name of imperialism, it was likewise brutalized in the name of Western democracy. Soon after, a constitution was put into place to usher in new political constructs, one of which being the intensely debated Article 9. Within this article is the assertion that the Japanese government will never again have a standing military presence, or more specifically: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace...the Japanese forever renounce war as a sovereign of the nation.” In choosing to directly confront the ideological structures that preclude war as a part of politics, Japan opens larger conversations about pacifism that Miyazaki makes great narrative use of. Outwardly expressing his opposition to amending Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, Miyazaki emphatically declared that “Japan is not a country where a war can be fought.” Unlike the boisterous, illogical military might continuously pushed into the audiences’ face, Howl exists as a direct example of the Japanese ideal of active pacifism, to actively choose peace in the face of injustice and violence.

The simplest way to illustrate Miyazaki’s own difficult reckoning with his unique cultural identity is in comparing the depiction of technology in the beginning and ending sequences of the film. Howl’s Moving Castle begins as many Miyazaki films do, with an introduction to a main character. However, the main character portrayed in this first shot is neither Sophie Hatter nor Howl Jenkins, but the infamous Moving Castle, stalking its way through a heavy fog in the Ingarian countryside. Direct attention is paid to the lifelike mechanics of the Castle’s movement, the creaking and groaning of enormous gears and bellows of its anthropomorphic “face,” as four spindly chicken legs hold up the incomprehensible weight of the underbelly and spike-like towers. Each mechanical piece, though entirely disparate and featuring a slap-dash sort of connectivity, works together within the whole of the Castle to provide an astounding feat of both the technology and magic that permeate the narrative’s universe. In these first shots, the audience is introduced to the “human technology” favored by Albert Robida; a living, breathing home for the other protagonists, something that audiences can connect to. Technology of this sort is the technology that Miyazaki experienced as a child; watching his father create flying machines that he envisioned as vehicles to adventure. Quickly, as in life, the peace of these beginning shots faces a violent juxtaposition, and in the next sequence spectators watch as the Castle hefts its girth behind a cloud of fog, just as two small military planes bearing Ingary flags pass by.

The final shots of Howl’s Moving Castle, after Sophie has successfully restored Howl’s heart and the family has both actively and passively saved their country from catastrophic destruction, feature a reversal of the initial sequence. Through a thick blanket of thunderhead clouds, a hole reveals enormous and anonymous battleships flying in formation. Their muted sounds and shiny seamless technology, seen throughout the film in direct contrast to the hodge-podge hominess of the Castle, is rendered soulless. None of the life of the Castle is present in the machines of war. For Miyazaki, technology used for the object of violence and death cannot be alive. Instead, the technology is stripped of all liveness, just as the wizards who submit to Madam Sulliman lose their humanity. With the war ended and yet not won, these violent machines are castrated, and their purpose has ended. They disappear, covered by the blanket of darkness that their purpose has covered them in. Then, from behind a curling tuft of cloud emerges the newly restored Castle, into an endless bright blue sky. This third iteration of the Castle, featuring sweeping wings, is no longer tied to the ground. Instead, Howl and Sophie stand romantically at the helm, watching as Calcifer pilots their home towards a brilliantly sunny horizon.xxv While this ending may seem saccharine in comparison to the more realistic ambiguity of the outcomes of war, Miyazaki seems to favor the notion that those who fight for the safety of their country deserve a measure of peace at the end of their service. Whether or not Miyazaki thinks that measure of peace should be afforded to those in control of these soldiers is decidedly less certain.

Conclusion

Hayao Miyazaki’s distinctive personal history, coupled with his complex cultural identity as a Japanese citizen, makes him uniquely determined to speak on matters of pacifism and war. As an animated film director, his medium allows him a certain distance from distinct hegemonic structures and allow him to confront difficult concepts in a gentler fashion. This is not to say that Miyazaki is in any way ambiguous about his intentions. As depicted in Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki uses visual storytelling to paint the country of Ingary to be a fictional mirror of the nationalism present in the United States in the early 2000s. Ingarian flags hang from every building outside of Howl’s sheltered Castle, reminiscent of the patriotic fervor that gripped the citizens of the United States at the beginning of the War on Terror.  Howl himself provides the audience with a character that reflects Miyazaki’s own distaste for this sort of brute nationalism, instead choosing to appreciate his country in more passive, classically romantic ways. Soldiers and wizards that brazenly choose to fight for their King are treated with compassion and pity, lamenting their lost humanity, while Howl’s dedication to his family and his country are the only thing that prevent him from meeting a similar fate. With design cues and philosophy borrowed from Albert Robida, Miyazaki crafts clever shorthand to portray technology in both militaristic and humanistic ways, highlighting the liveness and the hominess of humanist technology, and shunning the militaristic technology as sleek but soulless. Doing so provides Miyazaki an outlet to confront his own disconcerting childhood, having spent his youth connecting the technology of adventure to the machines of imperialism. Though his opinions on war, pacifism, and the United States brand of nationalism are overt in this film, Miyazaki as a single director is unable to completely dismantle the hegemonic structures that he critiques. However, Howl’s Moving Castle does provide a thoughtful and methodical meditation, allowing for the beginning of discussions about the ideologies that power the machine of war. Bibliography

Cavallaro, Dani. Hayao Miyazakis World Picture. McFarland & Co., 2015. 

Cavallaro, Dani. The Animé Art of Hayao Miyazaki. McFarland & Co., 2006.

Hall, Stuart. “CULTURAL IDENTITY AND CINEMATIC REPRESENTATION.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, no. 36, 1989, pp. 68–81. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44111666. Accessed 26 Jan. 2021.

Iraq Body Count, www.iraqbodycount.org/database/.

MacCarthy, Helen. Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation ; Films, Themes, Artistry. Stone Bridge Press, 2010.

Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized: Introd.by Jean-Paul Sartre. Beacon Press, 1972. 

“Miyazaki, Hisaishi, and Their Collaboration.” Joe Hisaishi’s Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro, 2020, doi:10.5040/9781501345159.0008. 

“President Bush Addresses the Nation.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 20 Sept. 2001, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html. 

“The United States Spends More on Defense than the Next 10 Countries Combined.” Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 15 May 2020, www.pgpf.org/blog/2020/05/the-united-states-spends-more-on-defense-than-the-next-10-countries-combined. 

Yazbek, Yara. “Miyazaki Hayao's ‘Howl's Moving Castle’: Environmental, War-Related, and Shojo Discourses.”