#also people were less racist to my dwarf so that's fun too!!!

[5mcsinatrenchcoat]

hello dragon age tumblr may I introduce you to Rine Tabris

so far the attempt to give DAO a fresh start with a completely new character for the first time in eight years is Really Working

[chrissyslittleartwork]

Heads up, this is MY personal opinion. I'm sorry if one of your favorite Disney princess is not in the place you feel like they should be. But again, these are my personal ranking of where I feel each Disney Princess lies. Let's go down the list... 1) Belle: Out of all the Disney Princesses and their moves in general, Belle is by far my top favorite. And Beauty and the Beast is my top favorite in the Disney Princess movies. It was my childhood. I loved it so much and I loved how strong Belle was. She is certainly my idol and I will always love her. (Not going to mention that stupid live action one. Ugh...) 2) Tiana: Princess and the Frog comes in second for my favorite movies and Tiana is awesome. I also like how she is focused on trying to achieve her goals but in the end, she learns that it's also good to embrace the little things. Otherwise, you will miss it. This is a really good lesson to learn. 3) Rapunzel: Rapunzel reminds me of myself when I was younger. Creative and also naive. She will always be in the top three for me. I really do love Tangled. It's a fun adventure and the songs are great. 4) Mulan: Rewatching Mulan has made me love her even more. I can understand why people enjoy the movie so much and I do too. Mulan is a great role model. She isn't perfect but that's fine. And it's not also because she's Asian like me. (Again...gonna ignore the horrible live action remake.) 5) Pocahontas: Okay unpopular opinion, but, I really love Pocahontas. Both the first and second. I guess I can see why people didn't like the movies in general, but for me, it's like with the Don Bluth Anastasia. I like historical fiction. And I feel both did great with these two. I love Pocahontas's spirit and how she fights for her people. I do think the one drawback I have is John Smith. It really boggles my mind people prefer him over John Rolfe when Smith is still a freaking racist sexist guy who only liked Pochontas for her pretty face and wanted to change her. Rolfe loved her for her who she is. Yeah, Rolfe all the way for me! 6) Kida: Ah yes, the forgotten queen. Recently I have watched Atlantis the Lost Empire and I really enjoyed it. The characters were great and I also liked the story. Kida is really kickass and able to look it while doing it. So yeah, awesome queen. 7) Moana: I really love Moana. Both her and her movie. Moana is a great character. Love the songs and I love how Disney went all out in doing their research to make such a beautiful movie. And of course, let's not forget The Rock playing Maui. XD 8) Megera: I have always enjoyed the sassy types and Meg is no different. I loved her no nonsense and then turning into a better person in the end. Plus Hercules is one of my favorite movies too. I love the style and I love coming back to rewatch it. The songs are seriously catchy too. 9) Elsa: Elsa is an older sister like me, so I can see where she comes from. I have seen people stating she is a horrible sister in Frozen 2, but honestly, I just don't see that way. Yes she should have told Anna about the voice, but let's be real, she grew up pushing Anna away because she was forced to. She's not used to being so open. And honestly, I know Anna is allowed to worry for her but um...I always felt she was too clingy. Frozen 2 I feel has some major issues, but I will explain that a bit more when I get to Anna. Bottom line, I prefer Elsa and her songs Show Yourself and Let it Go are still my favorites. 10) Esmeralda: In my childhood, I have never seen the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Reason why is that I just never was able to get the movie. But it did look awesome. I remember having a Esmeralda shirt when I was little and it was one of my favorite shirts. She is one of my favorites and I love how she never judged anyone until after she got to know them. 11) Ariel: Okay, we're kinda in the neutral zone right now. While I did enjoy The Little Mermaid for the most part, Ariel wasn't exactly my favorite. But don't get me wrong, I didn't hate her either. I guess I didn't know what to feel for her. Though I do like her singing and her voice actress Jodi Benson. 12) Jasmine: Again, like with The Little Mermaid, while I did enjoy Aladdin, Jasmine is just neutral to me. I do admire her for not wanting to marry just for the sake of it. And having a pet tiger is awesome. But she doesn't really stick out so much for me. So yeah... 13) Aurora: Considering Aurora doesn't have the biggest screen time compared to the other princesses, I seriously can't be too harsh on her. Sleeping Beauty is a nice movie and I love the art in it. But I felt the movie was more about the good fairies than Aurora herself. So it's why she falls in the D category. She didn't have enough screen time to give us a proper characterization. 14) Cinderella: This was kinda tough...Cinderella wasn't exactly my favorite movie. Though the character herself is fine. She doesn't have the most unique personality but I do admire for her staying kind and hopeful despite living with such an abusive family. I also feel bad that most people misinterpret her character who has to be saved all the time. 15) Merida: Ah yes, now to finally tell my real thoughts on Merida. Honest truth, she is really not my favorite. Far from it. If it wasn't for the Big Four fandom, I would have cared less about Merida. Her actions in her movie were...seriously selfish. And I know, she doesn't want to be married, I get that. And I have see her fans act like it's her mother's fault for doing that. But, keep in mind, her mother was doing it because she wanted to keep peace with the clans. Merida's actions almost sent them into an all out war. But I also feel Brave has some major issues. It could have been an awesome movie but it wasn't. It was one of Pixar's weakest and Merida isn't really all that great. 16) Anna: I don't know why, but Anna falls low on this list too. I have never been the biggest fan of her and she did not do herself well in Frozen 2. I know she loves Elsa, but she put herself in danger by running into the fire. Elsa didn't run into it, ANNA DID. And she treated Kristoff not so well either. She was more tolerable in the first because I know she just wanted to reconnect with Elsa. I feel like Disney tried to give Anna way too make quirks that...meh, I don't think I can really put up with her. Again, if it wasn't for me liking the idea of her being the daughter of Jack Frost and Rapunzel, I would care less about Anna. 17) Snow White: I know she's the very first Disney Princess and the fact she is in the first movie ever. But honestly, she's my least favorite due to her being kinda bland and forgettable. Though I did like her interactions with the Dwarfs. All in all, she's meh to me. So there you have it. My real thoughts on the Disney princesses and where they fall under for me. I'm sure people will have different opinions on this and that's fine. For me, this is what I truly think of them.

[abbeyfangirl]

dragon age: all characters (companions)

I’ve been in this fandom for a hot minute now and I want to update my opinions on characters :)

Origins

Alistair: super sweet dude who literally is not the stereotypicalchantryguyfightme. He’s a great example of healthy masculinity and I totally wish he was bi because I have an entire essay on that— also: he’s a poc! His mum was brown. In game he’s got dark features. if you really want a blond/blue-eyes/white guy, make your warden that. or accept that brown people can be noble and moral. or just draw cailan, idk. just because BioWare whitewashes doesn’t mean you should.

Leliana: someone hug my singing girlfriend before I crush her under with my own hugs. Also: nugs. Yes! Shoes. Yes! She likes how I style my hair? YES!! I honestly think she’s super duper and it pisses me off whenever someone’s like: yeah she enjoys killing people and the Game. ok. and michel de chevin willingly participated in genocidal marches through the alienage he grew up in with his elvhen mum. 

Morrigan: dirty swamp witch that i stan and also have a v big crush on. tiddies. Have a son with a GW so we can raise him with our tiddies out in the forest. she’s also white-passing, as her father was chasind and all people we’ve seen that are chasind are black. therefore, she is biracial. therefore, poc can be goths and don’t shy away from giving morrigan a darker skintone. if the devs had of been thinking, she’d have a darker skintone.

Zevran: Actually is the best romance, I think. Loves consent, therefore I will stan him so hard my skull cracks a little. Also: he is a very brown boy and if he’s white in da4 I’m seriously going to throw all canon out the fucking window. genuinely a good person who needs to be told so. 

Wynne: grandma who only likes my friends who go to church. but also super sweet and I’d rest my head on her bosom (in a platonic way omg ZEVRAN)

Sten: angry quiet boi. the bestest boi. I totally would give him a kitten for a gift and bake him cookies. Thicc softie. I think if I had DA:O and i knew how to use mods i would mod the fuck outta him. sorry.

Sha(y)le: who’s gender? idk her. See also: fuck birds and authority. pound ur ass into the ground you feathery meatbag little shits. fuck songbirds.

Dog: such a good boi. thicc. thinks Alistair is a whiny fuck and is Morrigan’s only friend. love him. he’s the cutest companion. bet.

Ohgren: honestly forgot about him bcc he’s such a shitbag. also: he could’ve been a really cool addiction recovery type but NOPE. probably would have a trump shirt in a modern au and would catcall wlw and hit mlm. no thanks.

Awakening

Anders: he acts like rlly straight but he’s so gay I can smell it. also he’s rlly cute and fun and I love him so much.

Justice: MAYBE i’M selF CONSCious OF THE twitchING. is the friend that genuinely doesn’t get dick jokes but is ur 110% ride or die.

Nathaniel Howe: honestly is sort of a white knight/neck beard a little, but it’s kind of charming with his whole velanna m’lady?? grump boi. annoying soul patch that I’d mod out SO FAST—

Sigrun: would have ROMANCED the FUCK out of her. why she even entertains the idea of fucking with ohgren makes me realize most of the writers are dumbfucks.png. peppy little emo. 12/10 would die if she kissed my cheek teasingly.

Ohgren: why. why. why. I’d have brought Shayle over. Maybe Zev? Definitely Dog.

Velanna: she was written to be an annoying feminist and you can tell but I deadass am a kindred spirit with her bcc I too am deadpan annoyed with Thedas’ general population too. love her. Would’ve loved to romance her. She’d totally be one of those who’d get all tsundere and be like “n-no i hate you” *kisses the fuckin soul out of you then blushes so hard she’s now a tomato*

Dragon Age II

Anders: fuck the cops. i don’t care. fuck the cops. (vine reference). also: do i hate him for blowing up the chantry that would eventually annul a huge collection of his people? no. read dalishious’s meta on Anders. v intriguing. didn’t they retcon the fuck out of the reported deaths too? like there was like eight Templars and Elthinia in there. Templars killed more “abominations” in a day than Anders in the game canon—

Aveline: initially thought she was fine and then realized she’s shit to my lil brother and I will fucking clap her ginger ass. See also: whorephobia isn’t a joke so fuck off with treating Isabela badly, you tit.

Bethany: sunshine. Literal sunshine. I feel my freckles grow in her presence and i love it. she’s my little baby sister and I’d slam that ogre so fuckin hard before it touched either twin.

Carver: there has to be a mod where both twins survive. I love them both to bits. My babies. carver is my bitter, angry little brother and I can relate because I too am very angry and would totally clap my own ass. hes so genuine and I don’t get the competition between Beth and Carver. Like, both are fuckin stellar in different ways. In this essay I will—

Fenris: honestly, I don’t get the general hate between him and Anders. Fenris’ main arc should’ve been a recovery arc, not drunken moping and revenge. he deserves better. give him a soft sweater instead of his spikes and let him love himself as much as I love him for MAKERS SAKE. like when you really think about their relationship, it could’ve been an eye-opener for fenris and finally some legit sympathy for anders. but we all know that if they had of teamed up that Meredith would’ve been dead before the end of Act 1 so.

Isabela: whorephobia is not a joke. oversexualizing your only appearing brown woman is so poorly written. how about we appreciate her and her lovely bosoms but also let people tease her about her heart of gold? her innate understanding of freedom? instead of just a wave of dick? please?? can we give her some pants for when she fights? can we accept that i fall for rogues who hate themselves?? fuck. also whomever draws her x femHawke x Merrill literally is after my own heart.

Merrill: my fucking babygirl MARRY ME. Fenris could’ve been her older brother type, but NO. she and Isabela should’ve been canonical gfs instead of Isabela/Fenris (no shaming the pairing tho!!). I love how she’s written as neurodivergent. V nice. Sometimes I just look her up and cry because she’s fucking everything. Also: she’s in the Dalish origin and she’s far from being white. Why did they make the most innocent/naïve character really white? hmmmm.

Sebastian: whew that boy. Would totally be that annoying Mormon at your door but you still let him in bcc he’s super sweet. Also: huge ass bible thumper and should get his head slap because you said the maker loved all his children why do you defend a complicit old hag you annoying attractive fuck—

Varric: totally is a bard and the devs couldn’t handle the idea of him being one bcc it might make him look less straight. is the only grey morality person I don’t want to fucking bash in with a fry pan. he sees people and I like that, but you totally know he’s siding with mages every time bcc him and Anders are like besties. I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules. “Professional Younger Brother”.

Tallis: I know nothing about her but she seems okay. I think she was an escaped slave and honestly? Fucking props. Spy on a shitting organization, idk what you’re doing, but your VA was that cool lesbian from SPN so I think ur okay?

Inquisition

Blackwall: Redemption Arc 101. Love him to bits. Sad dad bunwall. good man. actually atoned for his sins by actively becoming a good person. his initial design is 80% hotter im so sorry but so not.

Cassandra: was way browner in the last game. would romance the fuck outta her. I love me a butch lady who melts at my dorky recitation of poetry. BioWare is a coward. also is the worst choice for divine. but not a bad person. could use some more guidance or get her ass whipped by a dalish elf about religion or a circle mage kid whos like “yeah bud i didn’t ask for the templars to whip my ass everyday for existing.”

The Iron Bull: I think the Qunari/Vashoth were a little based off black people (the whole anti blackness thing where ppl are scared of them bcc of whatever reason) and it pisses me off that he had a weird ass dubcon thing with Dorian in banter. It doesn’t make sense— he’s an A+++ dom and would not jump straight in role play without at least checking in at first like wtf BioWare.

Cole: his mother was chasind so he’s like not supposed to be that white? or like biracial? albino? idk. love him to bits tho. He’s neurodivergent and I deadass love him. romancing him? idk. I see why ppl think it’s fuckin nasty but also like as a writer I’d age him the fuck up so fast before my inquisitor even THOUGHT about that. like idk. I’m down with him being a sweet little bro character tho. he’s a babe. love him.

Sera: had the worst fucking writer I’ve ever seen and I willingly read the twilight saga twice by a shit ass racist white lady who okay’d pedophilia. like. Fuck you Kristjanson suck your own dick you fuck. had the worst options in regards to speak to her. has a thicc case of internalized racism that literally most of the fandom just loves to use against her. my lesbian neurodivergent queen. Would write a thousand fix it fics for her. Love her to bits. im gay.

Varric: I haven’t played DA2 so i don’t get why everyone wants to romance him but like. a dwarf romance? yes please. Idk he reminds me of my uncle so I only see him as fun uncle material. Deadass should adopt Cole and Merrill and co parent with Blackwall for Sera. dads? fuck yeah. love me some wholesome, present fathers.

Dorian: is a gay stereotype that I love/hate so much. and he’s also just as bad about being a creep bcc he sexualizes qunari men (in banter). I attribute that to shit writing tho. I want to protect him from all the “omg gay best friend!” people. he’d clearly be that tired gay that wouldn’t give a diddly damn about ur het romance. wanna talk about politics? he’s ur guy/gay.

Solas: “me, an intellectual:”. I don’t hate him, but I’m not about him. He comes off as mysterious and suave (which he totally is) but I deadass would not save him from himself because he’s a racist, exclusionist eggshell. idk. not my cup of tea, but I can totally see the appeal. And he’s interesting, I’ll totally say that. “I think the Dalish are garbage but they made you” is not a compliment. it’s so offensive. and such bait for “quirky girls” which I’m no fan of. Would be Achilles and let Patroclus (Lavellan in his case) die before he realized how his pride is literally a waste of time. If he gets a redemption arc I hope Lavellan gets to slap him before getting him to teach all about ancient Arlathan and show that the Evanuris weren’t all total dicknozzles. (Aka I really have a hard time believing that they’d be slavery cult things. especially since they’ve compared elves to indigenous ppl, Jews and the Romani.)

Vivienne: it’s so racist that they’d make a black woman be pro-slavery. That’s such internalized racism. She could’ve been the cool ass “educate yourself first before you speak, fool” ice lady, but NO. the devs could’ve kept the “Templars are a tool that I proudly can mandate” and the “circles are very good education” and we. Could. Have. Romanced. Her. Like. Fuck. Sake. I just wanna give her a hug and say “love yourself omg!!” and not even in a romantic way. Also: she and morrigan should not have been so antagonistic towards each other. I’d expect them to have great respect for each other, as they both moved up in the world through hardwork and very little help. They could learn different magic from each other too and still maintain that rival respect “oh you” mood. Sidenote: probably the cooler option for Divine. if her approval is high enough she’ll love and be loyal to you forever and i can’t see her agenda being bad. she improves the circles exponentially and tells all the antis to suck her pretty painted toes.

Josephine: an actual disney princess. romanced her my first playthrough. I love her so much. she just makes me so happy. And she’s like: “Integrity, Loyalty, peace. That is what it means to be a GREY WARDEN good fucking person.” she’s the person who would let you hold her hand if you got anxious and she’d be that person who shouldered the whole group project with finesse and poise and would probably lie for everyone as to not be mean. i love josie. her and leliana’s relationship is so cute, too. whether it’s romantic or not: women supporting women.

Leliana: if you leave her hardened you must hate her. why. she becomes so against herself. i like how shes feminine and lighthearted because that’s so powerful-- to remain hopeful when the world is hopeless. (its hard to know when to soften her/harden her so i get it but. google it. she deserves to be happy and sweet again.)

Cullen: uwu war criminal with shit ass “redemption arc” that was actually a half-assed (at BEST) recovery arc. Recovery isn’t linear, it isn’t pretty, and even the broken need to be told they are wrong in order to heal right. Like I’m offended by that bullshit. I’ve had to do some mental health recovery in the past and unlearning lots of toxic ideologies— which I’m still unlearning— and it bothers me that he gets an easy pass because he’s hot. It’s one thing if you like Cullen, it’s another thing if you hold him accountable.

[littlestsnicket]

the witcher: four marks

I think it’s interesting that we meet Yennefer and Jaskier in the same episode

What is Istred doing here? Is he really trying to protect her from Tissaia? Cause if so, it’s not super effective, and I would think he would know that? Also, I feel like Istred would think it was best for Yennefer to study magic? 

“That woman’s a witch, you know what she will do.” What is that supposed to mean? They certainly can’t suspect what she actually does to young girls that don’t make the cut.

It’s really cruel that Tissaia haggled like that. She could easily afford 10 marks for Yennefer, but she wants to make a point that Yennefer is worth less than a pig in the eyes of her father, and that is really messed up psychological manipulation.

Clever Ciri, hiding her hair! And she looks so cold, poor baby. 

Dara is excellent. He’s so patient with Ciri while she gets over being casually rude and dismissive. But he’s also never like a dishrag, doesn’t endorse her bad behavior. And she shares her gloves :)

“You think you're safe” of Jaskier’s song overlaps with Ciri entering the encampment where she thinks she will be safe!!! AAAAAAAAH!!! Also, what is up with Posada? That tavern is in an absolute batshit location that doesn’t really match with where they end up going looking for the devil.

All the tavern patrons just looking at Jaskier, lol. He’s also clearly dressed better than anyone else there. He can (or could until recently) afford really nice clothing but it 

“They don’t exist” what was Jaskier playing before the “abortion” song cause I’m sure Geralt knows that people having ill advised sex exist. 

So, I’ve seen people make fun of this (Jaskier stating the obvious that Geralt is a Witcher), but Jaskier knows who Geralt is, specifically, by name. And the kid that gives Geralt the job, even though he is clearly desperate, doesn’t approach him until after Jaskier has identified Geralt as a witcher. 

“I could be your barker, spreading the tails of Geralt of Rivia, the Butcher of Blavikin.” Jaskier is not stupid. Does he possibly really think that Geralt is not upset about that story? Depending on how it is told, he probably comes across as competent and ruthless and efficient, and “taking no prisoners”, which would be good things for a witcher to trade in on for work. It does make a certain amount of sense to assume that a Witcher (especially as they are known not to have feelings) wouldn’t mind being associated with that story.

Tissaia’s outfits are all great, but I particularly like this pin-strippy one. The silhouette and the sleeves!

“You should have let me die, at least I had control over it” --that’s a big thing for Yennefer.  

I like that they don’t try to hide how short the actress that plays Tissaia is. It makes her presence that much more impressive when she is so small. 

The face Tissaia makes when Yennefer eats the flower, like she puts together where that came from that quickly. 

“Doing my part to avenge the lives lost in Filavendral’s uprising” which WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF THE ELVES HAD STAYED WHERE THEY WERE OUTSIDE OF POSADA!!! Actions having far reaching and unintended consequences is a witcher theme. What is Jaskier doing all the way out there?

(Since I paused to look at the map, Arteuza is really close to Oxenfurt, huh.)

“Oh child your shoes, let’s get you a fresh pair.” this is so uncomfortable. Like this woman is so cruel and racist (speciest?) but she’s kind to Ciri--possibly only because she can identify her as someone of high class. There’s a lot going on. (“Don’t worry, he’s one of the clean ones” eeeeeh!)

Jaskier clutching his lute case strap when Geralt moves past him too quickly. He has some amount of self preservation instinct after being sucker punched. But then he is also like “ACT TWO BEGINS!” 

You have to admire Yennefer’s nerve just lying to Tissaia like that. That’s crazy. 

“Even if you were a beauty, still no one will love you.” --this colors so much of Yennefer’s behavior.

Istred is so kind to her. Maybe he’s the first person to do so. “Are these the things you love? These are the things I thought you would love.” That is such a subtle poetic difference, I love it. 

Shouldn’t someone know who Geralt is and be able to tell Ciri? There are a bunch of points where he seems like almost a household name. 

“That’s impossible, No, it’s magic” it seems like Tissaia has taught them nothing. 

“There are mages like Sabrina who ignore their emotions, then there are mages like us who are consumed by them” You have to wonder what Tissaia is like when she lets her emotions out.

Jaskier seems to speak Elder pretty well. And goes from delighted to concerned about Geralt headbutting elf lady so quickly!

Jaskier’s education on elves at least started as part of a deliberate misinformation campaign, though that was probably generations ago. It’s interesting that he seems to be fairly unquestioning about it while he clearly has his own highly developed skills in the area. But he does take being wrong in stride, so he must be well versed in propaganda, just hadn’t questioned that specifically?

Filevandral is “not a king, not by choice”

“One human, and you can let him go”

“The lesser evil, no matter what you choose, you’ll come out bloody and hating yourself.” --someone is speaking from experience :(

“They’ll make slaves of us, pharias of half blood children” — I doubt Yennefer’s deformity actually has anything to do with being part elf, sounds like racist fear mongering.

“Show the humans that you are more than what they fear you to be”

Oh, Yennefer is lying about being sent home. But i think most of this is her using her real feelings to manipulate Istred rather than actually lying. 

“Rewriting history with the stories we tell, the songs we sing about our own triumphs, it’s what we do.” the “plot arc” in this episode is questionable at best, but all of the different threads tie together so nicely! They all build on one another despite taking place decades apart. 

Stregobor!!! In this moment, he’s not doing anything worse than Tissaia, but he still makes me angry just by being there. 

I don’t even know what to say about that bit with the mother and how the dwarf stabs her. I don’t blame him?

Dara rescuing Ciri!

So there’s a bunch of points earlier in the episode where Yennefer asks questions and is ignored. It feels important. 

When are mages supposed to learn that Aretuza is powered by eel-girls?

So how did Jaskier end up with Filavandrel’s lute? Was he just like, you broke my lute give me a new one?

“That’s not how it happened, where’s your new found respect?”

“Respect doesn’t make history.”

The face Geralt makes is pretty close to “oh no what have I unleashed on the world? Should I do something to stop this?” he’s underestimated how clever and ruthless Jaskier is. And it’s also too late, this is Jaskier’s thing and Geralt does not have the skills to counter it if he wanted to. 

“He wiped out your pest” also lines up with Yennefer sweeping the eels into the lake. (And of course, as the writer of the episode mentioned on that podcast, Yennefer is on screen with the line “a friend of humanity”)

Yennefer and Tissaia smiling at each other in that last moment. This is probably the one singular moment where Yennefer is taken in on the whole being a mage thing. It gets more complicated for her again very quickly.

[softshelltaakos]

what’s up everybody! it’s time for part 2 of my taz graphic novel review.

part one covered (most of) my beef with the writing and storytelling choices. this part is gonna cover character designs!!! you should know going into this that my opinions are not positive. this post is also a lot less analytical in tone than part 1, because art is not my forte.

disclaimer: i love the mcelroys. i truly do. taz has gotten me through some very difficult stuff and i have a tattoo. all this to say i’m not doing this because i hate them or because i like hating things. if you feel the need to message me about how i am overreacting, specifically to green taako, or about how i should just calm down and ignore it, or about how it’s sad that i’m getting so worked up instead of just enjoying the show, i’ve heard it and i don’t care. you will not be taken seriously. save yourself the energy.

there are spoilers for the graphic novel under the cut.

alright. i’m getting the elephant in the room out of the way first because it’s the most important thing to address, and once it’s out of my system i’ll feel better goofing on the rest of the designs. as i mentioned in the disclaimer: Green Taako Is Bad.

[ID: a panel focusing on taako. he’s skinny and minty green with chin-length light blonde hair and a big, pointy nose.]

now, a lot of people have made posts about this before, and i’m not saying anything new about it by any means. i’m also not the most equipped person to talk about why green taako is bad, because i’m a white gentile (i’ve heard conflicting opinions on whether or not green taako is antisemitic, but it feels remiss not to mention that there’s been discussion) and therefore not part of any groups affected by this whole debacle, but in short: when pressed for more diversity, specifically in taako’s case as a pretty large chunk of his arc involves literally inventing a mexican cultural food (fun note: that’s never mentioned in this book,) carey pietsch decided he should be green and the mcelroys were down with it. this is not an issue that cropped up when this design was released; it was something that there was already a ton of discourse surrounding, and it should never have gotten concepts drawn, let alone made it to publish.

this article by natt cuesta has been linked before on the subject, and i think it’s a good, concise explanation of why green taako is bad as well as why aracial characters in general are bad. this is a racist design.

now that we’ve gotten those ethical ramifications out of the way... i’m sorry, but it’s an ugly design, lmao. he looks like a palette-swapped version of pearl from steven universe with less character. the ONLY thing about this design that i like is the prominent lower lashes, if only because they’re the only thing that keeps him from looking entirely generic. because, like, y’all, when has anything about taako been generic?

[ID: a panel focusing on magnus. he’s a muscular fair-skinned man with auburn hair, a bushy beard, and a scar over his left eye.]

generic is a word that’s going to come up a lot over the course of this review, because i genuinely can’t think of a more apt descriptor for pietsch’s designs. it feels like she went with the lowest common denominator of every character’s design, a synthesis of all of the most popular (and most boring) ones, except in instances where that would lend any personality to a character’s design. magnus fits what brief description we’re given in the podcast: auburn hair. beard. big. and i guess that’s all you need?

i understand that by appealing to the most common and basic designs for these characters you’re inviting a lot less ire than you might by going with something more individual, so i get the motivation behind it -- or i would, if her designs hadn’t always been about this dull. but it’s bizarre to me that in a story as unique as the balance campaign, we ended up with the most basic ass Fantasy Hero lookin’ dude in the world as one of our protagonists.

i just really don’t have a lot to say about this. i’m just bored by it.

[ID: a panel of merle. he has medium-dark skin with a smooth white bun and beard.]

merle is simultaneously the design i like most out of the boys and the one that throws me the most, because i feel like he’s the most out on a limb one. which... oof. most merle designs i see give him a floral motif (i guess he has a few petals in his hair, maybe?) and big coke-bottle glasses, and i miss those things with this design, but at least it doesn’t totally feel like pietsch threw every merle she could get her hands on into a blender and poured it out on a page, although honestly, that might have been more satisfying. people do some really fun shit with their merle designs, but again, he’s. generic.

as the cuesta article mentions, with how much of an issue it was to get any of the boys to be poc in the first place and in conjunction with minty up there, this design also feels like tokenism -- an appeasement rather than an honest attempt at diversity or god forbid because the artist actually headcanons merle as a person of color. personally, i wish that she’d gone a step beyond re-coloring his skin and idk given him a natural hairstyle or something. he still feels very much like a recolor to me rather than a character who was designed as a person of color from the beginning.

i feel like he looks more like a cleric than he looks like a merle, which i feel like is pretty contradictory to who merle is.

[ID: a cutaway showing griffin, a white man with brown hair and glasses wearing a collared shirt.]

i’ve said before that it feels a little odd to talk about her design of a real person, so i’ll keep this brief, but... you know how every drawing of a basic white dude looks a little bit like griffin mcelroy? you know how that one arthur character looks a little bit like griffin mcelroy? you know how everyone is constantly messaging mysillycomics about how her avatar looks like griffin mcelroy?

how did carey pietsch manage to actively attempt to draw griffin mcelroy and miss the mark? it boggles the mind. he doesn’t not look like griffin, i guess, but he doesn’t look like griffin, either. i don’t know, man

[ID: a generic gerblin. he has yellowy-green skin, slight tusks or fangs, and weird, nubby little horn-type things.]

i hate these gerblins. they are ugly. next

[ID: two images of klaarg/g’nash. he’s a bugbear with brown fur and yellow eyes as well as a mouth full of pointy teeth. in the first image he looks pissed off; in the second he’s starry-eyed and delighted.]

klaarg is probably my favorite design in the book, and that’s just because he looks like a cute dog for most of the time he’s on the page. he’s fluffy and i love klaarg anyway, so like. did not take a lot to reach this mark. especially considering how i feel about most of the other designs lmfao

i do definitely think he keeps up the trend of looking generic, though.

[ID: an image of barry bluejeans. he looks like tom arnold, kind of; he’s square-jawed and white with thick-rimmed glasses. he also has a light brown mullet.]

i hate this. i hate the mullet. i’m sorry, y’all, i really, truly, cannot stand the mullet. i don’t feel like barry has mullet energy. i feel like it’s too powerful a move for him. it wouldn’t be a good move, mind you, but it would be a big one. i don’t know y’all it’s just bad

[ID: an image of killian. she’s a green-skinned orc woman with prominent eyelashes, eyebrows, and tusks, and straight brown hair.]

i can’t have been the only one who was hoping for a badass, visibly muscular, maybe even butch killian design, right? that wasn’t just me being a big old lesbian, that’s a pretty common theme of killian designs? i guess kudos for going out on a limb again, but then, like, take the kudos back for going out on the most boring limb possible again. i could hang with the face if her hair wasn’t so boring, but it’s... it’s so boring

[ID: an image of magic brian. he’s a drow with long white hair and an oblong face and oddly shaped nose.]

for how many of her designs are syntheses of popular ones, i..... don’t understand how this happened. i don’t understand how whimiscal and flamboyant magic brian who’s often drawn as taako-but-a-goth-dark-elf ended up looking like this. he looks like he used to play football and got his nose busted up and peaked in fantasy high school. he looks like the first quarter of a monster factory video where the thing’s just ugly but doesn’t have a personality or any endearing traits yet. he didn’t have to be the goth twink we all know he is but what.......... is this

[ID: an image of gundren rockseeker/bogard. he’s a light-skinned dwarf with dark long hair and a matching beard.]

..........listen i know they’re cousins and distant cousins at that but all of merle’s cousins are light-skinned and, like, not to say that that can’t happen but having them be anywhere near merle’s skin tone would’ve been such an easy way to help bolster the obviously inaccurate idea that this is a work concerned with diverse character designs, or rather to help ppl claim it was being bolstered, and yet

[ID: avi, a fair-skinned man with long dark hair kept up in a ponytail and slight scruff on his face.]

i feel like maybe avi is intended to be east asian so i think at this point that brings the count up to a whole two characters of color. we’re almost done with the book. cool. he’s cute, i guess, but guess what word i’m about to say again (it’s generic)

[ID: a panel of several unnamed cameo characters. from right to left: carey fangbattle, a light blue dragonborn; brad bradson, a green orc man with a long brown ponytail; and presumably lucas miller, a tan human with glasses and dark hair.]

ok. deep breaths.

first off, there’s another panel w these three as well as boyland, who looks fine, but i didn’t grab that one bc it’s harder to make out detail. carey is cute. brad is fine.

i assume the third guy is lucas miller because i’m not entirely sure who else he would be, and... oof! as you may know i can’t stand lucas miller, which has nothing to do with his necromancy or nerdiness and everything to do with the various human rights violations he commits in the small time he’s got focus as well as the fact that he’s got a theoretical redemption arc that’s not actually an arc so much as us being told he’s better now. lucas is an entitled jackass who repeatedly uses other people’s bodies and minds without their consent, from the obvious offense of using the bugbears as brainwashed chore-doers (read: slaves) to the less-oft discussed dragging of noelle and others out of the astral plane into robot bodies, again to do his chores for him. because of this, it has always sat very uncomfortably with me when people make lucas a poc, because everything about him screams Shitty White Nerd Boy to me. it sits extra uncomfortably coming from carey pietsch, given how white all of her other designs are.

it’s a little hard to tell because i took all these pics with my phone camera in my room’s lighting so they’re not super high fidelity or anything, but pietsch’s lucas is noticeably darker than any other character we’ve seen so far save merle. maybe he’s just a white guy with a tan, but all the same, it strikes me as incredibly skeevy to have one of so few characters of color be this fucking guy.

[ID: johann, a black man with an oblong face and textured dark hair.]

johann’s design is fine, although this is a similar face shape to that brian from earlier and i just. i don’t. understand it. it’s not especially interesting, but hey, at least he’s not another generic white guy.

that being said, as i mentioned in part 1 of this review, johann’s role is severely cut in this -- he’s reduced to three panels, when in the show itself he’s the one who escorts the boys to the voidfish’s chamber and inoculates them. as i mentioned in that post i understand that they shifted it some to give lucretia a more prominent entrance, but as i also mentioned in that post, they should have compensated for that. three panels.

johann is not a character with a great deal of screentime as it is, but he’s a character with a major impact. he is the reason story and song happens. his song serves as a direct foil to john’s nihilistic conversion of his own home plane into the hunger. the fact that he’s been reduced to three panels with little to no characterization at this point, especially in conjunction with the fact that he’s one of very few poc, makes me really, really uncomfortable. avi is in more panels in this book than johann is, and while i love avi and as i said i am parsing him as an asian dude, he’s also still light-skinned enough and the style is nondescript enough that there are definitely people who will parse him as white, and also, avi’s role in the story is not as big as johann’s.

it doesn’t sit right with me.

[ID: an image of davenport, a fair-skinned man with a big red mustache and slicked back red hair.]

ginger davenport with a big mustache. groundbreaking.

[ID: an image of lucretia, a slender black woman with short white hair dressed in blue layers.]

and finally, lucretia. now, i’m biased, and it’s hard for me to see a lucretia design i don’t like. i also think that this is, compared to a lot of the others at least, one of the more interesting designs in the book, at least as far as her clothes go. it’s not a long robe that would be hard to move in, and i appreciate that -- it strikes me as a pretty practical outfit while also being ornamental and wizard-y. and she’s pretty, and she’s not whitewashed, and that’s all great. i like her earrings.

all that being said, i feel like it’s not enough. luc’s hair continues a theme with merle’s and johann’s (as well as the preview we’ve seen of angus,) which is that it strikes me as very low-effort on pietsch’s part. it’s short and it’s definitely not straight, but it doesn’t feel to me like it had as much thought put into it as, say, minty green taako’s hair. we could’ve had a lucretia with a big beautiful afro, or long box braids, or so many other natural hairstyles; we got this. it’s not bad, but i do think it’s disappointing. without going looking for it and without being a person who reads a great deal about character design, i’ve seen a fair amount of discussion from black women (artists, writers, and none of the above) about the portrayal of black women as it pertains to their hair. they’re never designed to be as feminine as their white counterparts. their hair is never treated with the same amount of detail or respect as their white counterparts. it’s short, maybe curly if you’re lucky.

i’m gonna circle back quickly to killian’s hair. it’s long and smooth and kept down, despite the fact that killian is an action-oriented women and might not want it to be in her face all the time -- it could have at least been braided or in a bun. it could’ve been short! and that would’ve made sense. and i don’t mean to say that lucretia couldn’t have short hair, but she’s a very elegant woman whose dress is described as intricate. she wears business regalia. she could have any number of hairstyles, from something elaborate to something simple but more out-of-the-box than this, but she doesn’t. i found this on a quick hunt through my ref tag -- it’s a tutorial for drawing black folks with just a small selection of interesting things you can do with afrotextured hair. these resources aren’t hard to find! and i’m doing this for fun -- carey pietsch is a professional artist who was paid for these designs. if she’d put in more than the bare minimum effort, we could’ve had some really interesting shit going on, but she didn’t.

and that’s the core of the issue here. i truly do not feel like pietsch put the same amount of care into the designs for the few characters of color we see as she did into the white ones, and that’s upsetting and emblematic of a larger problem in the work: neither pietsch nor the mcelroys put in very much care at all for the fans of color who spoke up and asked for representation.i know i said i was getting taako out of the way first so the majority of the post could be goof-heavy, but goddamn, y’all, it’s hard to goof about when it’s so blatantly shitty. pietsch’s designs are boring at best and racist at worst, not to mention conspicuously lacking in anyone who is not skinny, muscular, or a dwarf. people have praised this thing so uncritically, including people whose opinions i generally really respect, as if the fact that the mcelroys signing off on green taako made it above reproach.

it didn’t, by the way. there’s no such thing as an unproblematic fav, because everybody fucks something up now and then, but even then, this is a pretty egregious fuck-up! and it was willful!

i’m not saying y’all need to burn your copies of the gn or stop listening to the mcelroys entirely or anything of the sort -- you may remember the disclaimer at the top of the post where i say i really, really love them, and more specifically, i really love taz: balance. but i am BEGGING YOU to think critically about their work. good, good boys can do bad, bad things. white people can produce work that’s racist even if they’re gay women. it’s not mean to critique the boys and it’s not homophobic (or god forbid reverse racist, which is still not a real thing) to critique carey.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the real kicker of this whole thing for me is that there’s a small fanart gallery in the back of the book. most of them aren’t labeled with the artist’s handles, just their names, but there are some truly beautiful pieces featuring diverse designs -- galacticjonah and milkychai both have beautiful latino taakos featured! galacticjonah’s is fat, too! but even after the backlash against green taako, even aside from that being the design that people are going to accept as canonical, there are pieces in the gallery of green taako, as if doubling down on it was the right move.

and by the way, yeah, i’ve read griffin’s apology. but i thought we all learned in kindergarten that an apology doesn’t count if you don’t act on it.

[yasbxxgie]

Superman should be black.

By that I mean he should have dark skin, and not that he's African-American or any other person of color. After all, the Man of Steel is from the planet Krypton, not Earth. That said, Superman could indeed be played by a black actor in future superhero movies.

My argument for why Superman should be black is based on science. Before I explain the reasoning, however, we need to address a sensitive subject: race. Many people use skin color as shorthand for ethnicity, but 'race' has little meaning in biology – it's a social concept that describes recent ancestry.

Race matters for superheroes because it contributes to their identity. And over the past few decades, comic book publishers and movie studios have increasingly changed characters to reflect a society's ethnic diversity.

While that should be applauded in principle, identity changes are often short-term publicity stunts. It might sound cynical, but if publishers and studios had pure intentions, changes would be permanent. As long-time comic fans know, major heroes almost inevitably revert back to their original identities.

Rather than promoting diversity just for diversity's sake, I believe the case for changing a character's identity is made stronger if the rationale makes sense based on origins and powers. The change is more likely to be welcomed – and become permanent – if it's based on logic, not gimmick. And that brings us to Superman.

Because most superpowers break the laws of physics, explaining why they're impossible is a pointless exercise. For the science of superheroes, it's more fun to focus on what's plausible. So while Superman's powers probably require unrealistic amounts of energy to work, we can at least imagine how to maximize the energy he'd need.

Solar-powered cells

In the movie Man of Steel, Superman asks his biological father why he's different from humans. As Jor-El explains: "Earth's Sun is younger and brighter than Krypton's was – your cells have drunk in its radiation, strengthening your muscles, your skin, your senses."

The fact Superman is powered by solar radiation – light – is also shown in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In one scene, he regenerates after bathing in the Sun's rays, paying homage to the comic that inspired the film, 'The Dark Knight Returns', when he tells Mother Earth: "The Sun's power... fuels us both."

Almost all life on Earth is ultimately powered by the Sun via photosynthesis: plants and other organisms use light to make food (carbohydrates) from CO2 and water. Their photosynthetic cells also release oxygen, which can be used to burn the energy-rich carbs that fuel metabolism.

Superman's cells would carry out a process similar to photosynthesis. Instead of making carbs, maybe he synthesizes fictional molecules that store even larger amounts of chemical energy.

Light rays consist of photons, subatomic particles that behave as both waves and pure energy. The length of a wave determines a photon's energy: short wavelengths – gamma rays, x-rays and UV light – are at one end of this spectrum, long wavelengths like infrared at the other.

High-energy radiation such as UV damages living tissue and can trigger genetic mutations (potentially causing cancer), whereas low-energy radiation is harmless but has low energy. As a consequence, Superman would absorb photons from the visible spectrum.

In complex organisms, photons are harvested by specialized compartments, such as the chloroplasts in plant cells. Chloroplasts contain proteins that funnel photons toward pigments, which convert energy from light.

When photons hit a pigment molecule, its electrons gain enough energy to leave their associated atoms. Electrons are then passed along chain reactions to produce molecules that can later release the energy stored in their chemical bonds, which is used to synthesize carbs.

Colored pigments

On Superman's home planet of Krypton, the best pigment color for absorbing solar radiation would be black.

Light-capturing pigments act as antennas tuned for picking-up photons with a particular energy, and their colors – how they look to our eyes – is determined by which photons they absorb. Blue photons have more energy than red photons, but few manage to reach our planet's surface.

Air and water filter-out certain wavelengths. On Earth, land plants have evolved to use the red-absorbing pigment chlorophyll, which looks green. Not all photosynthetic organisms are green, however: some plants have red leaves, while purple bacteria can even absorb infrared.

Photosynthetic organisms on distant worlds would use whichever pigments are most appropriate to the available wavelengths of light. Green may be common on Earth, but other colors could be more popular on other worlds. This could be exploited to detect signs of extraterrestrial life, as described in a brilliant article in Scientific American by biometerologist Nancy Kiang of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

As Kiang explains in her article, 'The colour of plants on other worlds': "The limiting factor is not the feasibility of novel pigments but the light spectrum available at a planet's surface, which depends mainly on the star type."

While the light that reach the surface is affected by which wavelengths penetrate the atmosphere, it's ultimately dictated by which rays are emitted by nearby stars.

And as comic fans know, Krypton orbits a red star and Superman gains his powers thanks to Earth's yellow Sun.

In Man of Steel, Jor-El sends his son to a planet "orbiting a main sequence yellow star." What does that mean? Many stars have a lifespan lasting billions of years, which often includes a 'main sequence' – the period when it carries out nuclear fusion, forcing hydrogen atoms together to create helium. This generates massive amounts of light energy.

Sun of Krypton

Astronomers classify stars according to 'spectral type' – basically, temperature and luminosity. There are 6 types (O, B, A, F, G, K and M). Rare O-type stars are hot, bright and look blue, whereas M-type stars – such as red dwarfs and red giants – are relatively cool and dim. Our Sun is somewhere in-between, a warm and yellow G-type star.

After accounting for atmosphere, the peak wavelength of light reaching Earth's surface is around 685 nanometers. For an M-type star like Krypton's Sun, it's about 1045 nm. In Man of Steel, a Kryptonian soldier says atmospheric conditions on their spaceship isn't compatible with humans, so the peak wavelengths would be slightly different due to filtering by air and water vapor.

Photosynthetic species – including a Kryptonian like Superman – living on a world orbiting a relatively inactive star would therefore need dark pigments to harvest light.

As Dr Nancy Kiang explains in her Scientific American article: "A planet around a quiescent M star would receive about half the energy that Earth receives from our Sun... Evolution might favour a greater variety of photosynthetic pigments to pick out the full range of visible and infrared light. With little light reflected, plants might even look black to our eyes."

Dark skin

The dark pigment that Superman's cells would need to absorb sunlight has a different function to melanin, the brown pigment that humans and other mammals use to protect against damaging UV radiation.

After humans migrated out of Africa 200,000 years ago, those populations exposed to less light would have been under weaker evolutionary pressure to spend metabolic resources on making UV-blocking pigments, which is why their descendants now have white skin.

Characteristic features of species are usually the result of natural selection, adaptations to their local environment. Because Superman has powers, light-capturing pigments must be useful to the survival of Kryptonians.

How did superpowers evolve? One possibility is that abilities were favored by evolution on Superman's home planet, and his ancestors lost their powers when the star turned red. Alternatively, they never evolved super-strength or super-senses – light was simply an energy source for ordinary metabolism – and Earth's yellow Sun artificially boosts their abilities.

Will we ever see a black Superman? In fact, Kryptonians of color already feature in comics. On an alternate version of Earth, for example, Calvin Ellis is not only Superman, but President of the United States (the character was modelled on Barack Obama).

But ethnic diversity hasn't always been politically correct. One issue of Superman describes Vathlo Island as 'home of a highly developed black race'. Such cringeworthy statements were typical back in the 1970s, but as comics writer Mark Waid points out, "A lack of ethnicity was an error of omission, and I'm not sure given the time that it's fair to call that 'racist'." It's less forgivable that the Kryptonians in Man of Steel (released in 2013) were all white.

DC Comics regularly relaunches its continuity, but it's unlikely the company would make Superman black, partly because he has so much history. A hero's race influences whether people identify with that character too.

But there is a precedent for changing ethnicity. Most famously, Nick Fury – traditionally depicted as white – was reimagined as Samuel L Jackson in comics. Life then imitated art as the actor was cast in the Marvel cinematic universe. Fury is a relatively minor character, however, and changing a major superhero might be met with more resistance from long-term fans.

The companies that own superheroes – publishers and movie studios – could follow the example of their heroic characters and make brave decisions. Henry Cavill will play Superman in Warner Bros' Justice League films, but what about the inevitable reboot in a few years' time?

Science says Superman should be black. Hopefully the next time we see him on screen, the Man of Steel will be a more realistic, solar-powered superhero. [h/t]

[furynewsnetwork]

The last time I stood for the National Anathema was − as near as I can recall − somewhere back in the early Eighties.  It was against my will; I was in the Air Force, and many things I did then were against my will.  Haircuts, corframs … corfams?  Whatever they were.  Those artificially shiny plastic shoes that alleviated the mission-critical procedure of shining ones shoes to satisfy the dress code.

My beef with the National Anathema goes well beyond forced artificial patriotism, though.  It is a horrendous song combining a pretentious and maliciously self-congratulatory poem with a hideous melody spanning nearly two full octaves.  It can only be sung well by a trained vocalist and is otherwise only seriously attempted by the sufficiently inebriated.  …which is fitting, as the melody was lifted, outright, from a London drinking club’s arsenal of tunes to be besotted by.

The poem itself describes a battle the US lost in a war the US never won a single battle until three weeks after the war ended.  Thank you, Old Hickory.  But somehow, because the flag still remained atop the standard over Fort McHenry on the shores of the Chesapeake, it comprised a moral victory against the juggernaut Limeys.  What is less widely publicized is that the fort’s survivors were holed up in the basement and didn’t want to risk dismemberment to stop the shelling by taking the damned thing down.

Since the end of Reagan’s first term when I left the service, I cannot remember standing for the National Anathema a single time.  I quite possibly did, no doubt to be polite, but I do not remember.  I usually find some excuse to be off doing something else whenever the thing would start gearing up for its interminability.  Buying beer, returning the previous beer to the sewer … something.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I don’t particularly have an issue with people who don’t want to stand for the National Anathema.  I’m with ya!

I don’t care why they don’t.  I don’t even really have an issue if those people are over-paid, self-pitying attention-whores trying to signal their virtue with more or less deliberate dishonesty.  Or ignorance.  Or hypocrisy.

It all started with Colin Kaepernick two years ago refusing to honor the flag because the country behind it, specifically the country’s cops, kill too many certain people coincidentally and superficially like himself.  No, not over-paid, third-rate NFL quarterbacks with a chip on their shoulder so large that it would alter the planet’s rotation if it fell.  Blacks; what most people currently euphemize to “African-Americans”.

Here’s a hint: Barry Hussein’s father was an African-American.  Barry is not.  He’s a mixed-race American mutt who should have been − but pointedly was not − happy and proud of the fact.  Colin Kaepernick is also not African-American.  He’s a black kid who was adopted by a wealthy white family as an infant and learned all he ever knew about black culture from watching Fresh Prince.  He reeks of white privilege, moreso than virtually all whites not named Trump.

But many blacks, Kaepernick whines, are killed by cops.  And this is racist.  Somehow.  What he fails to mention is it’s nearly always while committing crimes.

The fact that whites are killed by cops three times more often than blacks − also nearly always while committing crimes − rarely manages to get aired.  And when it does, it’s uniformly excused by pointing out that whites outnumber blacks by five-to-one, so the ratio shows a 1.67::1 bias in favor of cops shooting blacks than whites.

Yet, when someone points out that blacks are four times more likely to be involved in felonious activity than whites, thus erasing − and then some − the racial bias so critical to the agenda of those whose social conscience still has not emerged from the 1950s … well… math, we are told by the Progressive Ninny, is an indispensable tool of the modern racistsexisthomophobe.  Not enough feels.  Objectivity is so … objectifying.

The spreading anti-standing stand has departed from Kaepernick’s stilted and mealy-mouthed position by insisting it’s not a protest against the flag, as such, nor even the National Anathema, nor the military, nor our cops.  It is a silent protest, now on bended knee, to raise awareness.

Awareness of what?  That blacks are four times more likely to be committing crimes than whites, but less likely to be shot for doing so.  Apparently.  Because that is the mathematical reality of it.

However, the point that almost a thousand Americans of any and all races a year are killed by a cop’s gun is a worthy issue to raise awareness of.  There are simply too many laws in our free society with a government defined to have almost no power to get bossy and authoritarian justifying too many interactions between cops and citizens.  That issue, though, isn’t being raised by the self-pitying attention-whores.

Indeed, removing certain of those inappropriate laws would disproportionately free blacks from interaction with cops, and thus disproportionately reduce even further their chances of getting killed for it.  It would probably greatly expand the opportunity, at least in the short-term, for more blacks being killed by other blacks − which already dwarfs, by orders of magnitude, the figure for Death By Cop.  This is also another worthy issue to be raising awareness of that is not even on the radar of pampered, over-paid, self-pitying attention-whores.

What we’re left with is a group of rich, privileged, black athletes protesting something, but not what anyone thinks they’re protesting.   Furthermore, they’re being paid to pout, ultimately, by their fans who are mostly of a straight-line sentimentality between symbol and reality.  These people see over-paid, self-pitying attention-whores kneeling during the National Anathema and they conclude they don’t love the country.  It’s what they see, and they won’t see anything else anytime soon.  Whether it’s true or not − just like whether it’s true that cops kill more blacks than whites or not − is irrelevant.

It’s the exact same phenomenon as all the black protesters in St Louis willfully refusing to see that the latest black martyr was anything but a career criminal who attempted to murder a cop with his car.  Even if the cop deserved it [and chances are good he did] there’s too many feels involved for reality to matter.

When fans pay large sums of money for tickets, and obscene amounts of money for what passes for American beer, just to get their own personal feels insulted by over-paid, self-pitying attention-whores, they’re soon going to stop paying that money.  Attendance at NFL games is down, for the second year in a row.  Television ratings are tanking, and commercial sponsors are losing their shirts.  It won’t be long before NFL salaries come down simply because there’s less ticket and sponsor money to sustain the current wage scale.

Rule number one of marketing: know your audience.  The audience for the NFL is the simple, straight-forward schlub male.  He probably voted for Trump.  The audience for the over-paid, self-pitying attention-whore is the Progressive Ninny who likely wouldn’t watch a pro football game on a dare.  Somebody hasn’t done their market research, and it’s not the fans.

The libertarian sees all this as a wonderful exercise in First Amendment protest.  Millionaire athletes are protesting something that doesn’t affect them, is the wrong issue besides, and insults their fanbase while doing so. The fanbase protests right back by finding something else to do on Sunday afternoons, offending the Progressive Ninny in the process.  The Progressive Ninny protests fans’ subtle racism and spurs on the millionaire athletes to double down.

What marvelous fun.  I’d pause to ponder where it will all end, but merry-go-rounds are notoriously predictable.

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