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nectar-cellar · 4 years

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RQOTD: Where is your OC from? What is/was their life like there? Do they consider this place their home? What ties them there? Have they moved on or do they stay there for their entire life, why or why not? (Feel free to answer and/or forward this to more people ♥)

I’ll answer this for both Amir and Dani since they are the only OCs of mine (so far) who are a couple, whose lives are intertwined. ❤️ The answers are based on a story I’m perpetually rewriting so please excuse me if there are any plot holes. I tried to mix realism with TS3 lore. A very long response is below the cut!! I don’t expect most people to read it all but if you do, just know that I appreciate you very much 💖

Also, the pics are unrelated, I just wanted to dress them up all fancy and take some pics of them together since I haven’t done that in a while hehe

Amir: Amir is from Egypt. His life there was materially comfortable, but his upbringing was very traditional and governed by rigid expectations. He never felt free to be his authentic self and always felt like an outsider in society. He does not consider Egypt his “home” in the truest sense of the word and he hasn’t visited his family in years, always citing school and work as excuses.

Several years ago, he came to the town of Sunset Valley, Simerica, to attend university on a scholarship. The Sunset Valley Institute of Technology (SVIT) was hardly prestigious, but he hadn’t been accepted to any of Simerica’s more famous schools because of his good-but-not-great high school grades. Still, he saw this as his one chance to leave his strictly controlled life in Egypt and see the world, so he took it.

His career goal is to become a journalist covering hard-hitting political and human rights topics. He wants to eventually move to a big urban city like Bridgeport, where there are more professional opportunities and a more progressive and open-minded culture. A recent graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, he is currently employed at a small local publication in Sunset Valley, writing mundane stories about the town’s goings-on, and he has no passion for it whatsoever, but at least it pays the bills. Amir feels disconnected from his family, his country of origin, and the white picket fence suburbia that is Sunset Valley. His co-workers are nice (some of them), and he has a few friends from SVIT, but the only reason that compels him to stay is because his first love Dani is here.

Dani: Dani’s mother emigrated from China to Sunset Valley to pursue her career when Dani was just a baby. Dani grew up in Sunset Valley but doesn’t consider it “home”, because they have almost zero friends here and their relationship with their mother has always been strained.

After high school, Dani went on to attend SVIT because it was the nearest and most affordable post-secondary institution available, and there they met Amir. The two fell hard and fast for each other. Unfortunately, since they were both emotionally immature young adults, their relationship didn’t last. Their whirlwind romance ended on rocky terms. Despite that, they have a hard time forgetting each other, what with being each other’s first loves and being what feels like the only 2 queer people in a small town and all...

A recent graduate like Amir, Dani currently works a dead-end food service job in the town centre which just so happens to be near Amir’s place of work. Nothing ties Dani to Sunset Valley. They have always wanted to leave, and the only thing they care about is saving up enough money to make it happen. Amir often sees Dani around town in passing, but only dares to watch them from afar, since for all intents and purposes they are strangers. Unbeknownst to Amir, food service is only Dani’s day job... their secondary source of income pays much better, and has allowed Dani to build up a large amount of cash savings in a relatively short period of time.

By the time Amir musters up the courage to reconnect with Dani, to try and start over, it’s a little too late. Just when their relationship seems to be improving, Dani disappears with suspicious circumstances, leaving Amir with a million questions and only a few clues. Curious, perceptive and determined to get to the bottom of things (he’s a journalist after all), Amir is soon hot on the trail of the one person he can’t let go of. (I don’t want to spoil the rest of the plot hehe.)

For Amir, Egypt is not home, not in a physical or emotional sense, and neither is the town of Sunset Valley because he’s an outsider with no roots here. For Dani, they have no strong social ties to Sunset Valley, and their house doesn’t feel like a home even though they’ve lived here their whole life. Their familial roots may be in China, yet that is a place they’ve never been to.

One of the reasons why Amir and Dani are so attached to each other is because they both don’t feel like they belong or fit in anywhere. Sunset Valley is just a place they’re both living in for the time being. Neither of them has a place to truly call home, given their personal histories. But with that also comes the freedom for them to redefine what “home” means. Perhaps “home” can just be the peaceful apartment you return to at the end of the day. Perhaps “home” is not where you were born but where your chosen family is. Perhaps “home” is something you have to create for yourself, over and over again as your life goes on. Idk, it’s just an interesting concept to think about, especially for queer people, immigrants, and people with complicated family relationships.

I wrote such an in-depth answer because the topic of “home” is central to Amir and Dani’s story arc. Thank you for such a thoughtful question @lazysunjade and thank you, reader, if you made it to the end of this VERY LONG ESSAY :)

#i was gonna take some pics in their everyday outfits but i decided to be fancy instead hehe #they look like a married couple here :/#i couldnt find a nice dress for dani so i had to make do with this oversized turtleneck and skirt combo #this blog needs more sims in skirts .#why did i write SO MUCH lol #this was a rly good char development exercise :3 #i updated danis face and theyre so fun to pose and dress lol i need to feature them in my pics more #*stares at my OC asks for arjun and benjamin which are also Very Long...*#those r coming i just need to take some pics of them so the posts arent just a wall of text #:D #sim: dani #sim: amir

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m0r1bund · 4 years

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Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!

10/12/20:

So. If you’ve been here a year or more, you might know that I have this little journal from back in 2018 that I try to update every year with works from local indigenous artists / created in collaboration with indigenous folks.

It was once hosted on another site, but that one’s since gone to hell! So, I’m shuffling it over here and giving it a little TLC : -) Enjoy!

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10/8/18:

You can probably glean from my work that I owe intensely to the people of the Sonoran Desert and surrounding communities. Since it’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I’m going to share a few works from (mostly southwestern) native artists that have really impressed on me. If you enjoy anything that I do, I think you’ll enjoy their work even more!

Tyler Bighorse and Suite 104

I was introduced to the work of Tyler Bighorse in downtown Flagstaff, where he runs a gallery called Suite 104.

If you're ever in the area I really recommend dropping by! He sells prints and originals of his works there, as well as other local artists' work. (snagged this sick Legend of Zelda spread for my bro while I was up there.)

Mulaka, by Lienzo

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Synopsis, from their website:

Dive into northern Mexico’s breathtaking landscapes with Mulaka, a 3D action-adventure game based on the rich indigenous culture of the Tarahumara. Renowned for their impressive running abilities, embark on the journey of a Sukurúame - a Tarahumara shaman - as you fight back the foulness corrupting the land, while drawing upon the powers of demigods.

Mulaka was developed by the Chihuahua-based game company Lienzo in conjunction with Rarámuri leaders and anthropologists. Lienzo also aims to keep their game dev local to Chihuahua, which I think is extremely badass.

And the music just. rules. ( Town of Paquimé / Nini Areware Ne Chunume )

Quantum Tangle (Grey Gritt and Tiffany Ayalik)

Quantum Tangle is really really good. Like, really really good. Blurb from their old bandcamp:

Fusing of old-world sounds and new-world flair, the Juno Award-winning group Quantum Tangle is embracing their blended background. Combining their talents of throat singing, haunting melodies and traditional legends, Grey Gritt and Tiffany Ayalik are excited to present pieces that look back through history to challenge, educate and encourage the next generation to be socially aware.

The unfortunate news is that their website went down earlier in the year : -( But the good news is their work is still floating around the internet. I believe you can find them on Spotify and other streaming services as well. Here is a favorite, a love ode of sorts called Igluvut:

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My other favourites for first-time listeners are Love is Love pt. 2 and Tiny Hands : -)

Oral History of the Yavapai, by Mike Harrison and John Williams

Three tribes of Yavapai got together at Bloody Basin. Kewevkepaya, Wipukpa and Yavepe. Three of them. They get together and cook mescal, cook deer. Get together and eat, dance and have a good time. But the soldiers met them there and killed them. Then the White people called the place Bloody Basin. Called it after our blood.

- Oral History of the Yavapai I originally stumbled across this book (in reality a word-for-word chronicle of oral history told by Mike Harrison and John Williams, two Yavapai elders) through one of the sources cited in this blog post: The True Victims of “Bloody Basin” Were the Yavapai.

It really struck me, because to that point all major publications that I'd read had unquestioningly ran the old U.S. Army account of how Bloody Basin got its name (Check out the Verde Independent’s article here, and AZcentral’s take here.) It frames the massacre not only as a “punitive expedition,” but also incorrectly names the victims as Tonto-Apache-- The Dilzhe’e are a distinct people, though the Yavapai people were often conflated with them. It’s much harder to get folks into books, but if you have any interest in the history of the Salt River Valley or surrounding areas at all, this was an invaluable read to me. Be aware that it is vibrant and devastating in equal measures-- but if you can handle it, I highly recommend it.

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10/14/19 Additions

The writing of Darcie Little Badger

The Whalebone Parrot and Owl Vs. The Neighborhood Watch were my introductions to Darcie's work and they are so, so full of wit, character, and ghoulish suspense... the kind of stories you would read to family and friends as Halloween closes in, this time of year. I am only familiar with her mystery and horror-adjacent short stories at the moment, but I hope to become better acquainted with her body of work in the near future. You can find a list here, many of which you can read online for free!

Anyway. Let me leave you with the Inherent Horror of Birds (from The Whalebone Parrot,) which I don't think I've seen any other writer capture so artfully:

I wonder if all parrots have dancing eyes. The pupils are in a state of constant flux, contracting and expanding. Big, small, big, small.

“What song is that?” I asked. Her pupils danced: large, small, large. She possessed parrot eyes and parrot songs.

10/12/20 Update: Darcie Little Badger recently published her first book, Elatsoe! Check it here : -)

Imagine an America very similar to our own. It’s got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day.

Seventeen-year-old Elatsoe (“Ellie” for short) lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect façade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family.

The pottery of Nathan Youngblood

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I learned of Nathan Youngblood's work scarcely a week ago, during a visit to the Heard Museum, and it very nearly made me start hooting and hollering in the middle of the museum. It is, without exaggeration, unlike any kind of craft I've ever seen before. His work is something of a marriage between the Santa Clara pottery tradition with Asian ceramics and other traditions world-wide, and it's a coupling that is at once startlingly familiar and yet completely unique.

The art, writing, and games of Elizabeth LaPensée

Elizabeth is perhaps best known for creating Thunderbird Strike!

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(synopsis from its website: )

In the 2D sidescroller Thunderbird Strike, fly from the Tar Sands to the Great Lakes as a thunderbird protecting Turtle Island with searing lightning against the snake that threatens to swallow the lands and waters whole.

But she has a very wide and rich body of work, and among my personal favourites are her visual art. She employs digital collage to create these sort of iconographic pieces, and to me there's a certain joy in the way her work employs silhouette and contour, tracing the shape of a body, the environment within that body, and its place in its environment. It's not something that I can really do justice by describing, so here's a favourite from her ("Thunderbird Circles") that I have on my wall:

#love this desert #long post -

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the-sparrow-sings · 4 years

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TIMELINE FOR MY SPARROW’S HEADCANON

I want to write a LONG fic series about her life going into the Hero of Brightwall’s life; but I do not have the time/energy to commit to that right now, so here’s a vague timeline since I REALLY want to talk about it anyway lol

Pre-Game

• Her parents were infamous Pirates, Rayven(her father, Hero blood), and Catarina

• Reaver knew them as friends before the girls were born; even held Rose once as a baby(somewhat uncomfortably)

• They were forced by foul weather to dock near Bowerstone some time after Sparrow was born; Rayven was captured and hanged, Catarina escaped momentarily with the girls

• Catarina hands baby Sparrow(around 1 year old) to Rose and tells her to RUN, and SURVIVE; she is then captured; but no one is looking for the children so little Rose escapes with Baby Sparrow

Post-Childhood, Pre-Main Game

• Teresa has a hard and fast rule that Sparrow is not to leave the valley, and specifically not to go to Bowerstone. She is concerned that Sparrow will have her parents’ natural desire for adventure and sign onto a crew for a life of piracy

• Upon reaching Adulthood, Sparrow is frustrated by Teresa assuming she still makes the rules for her; and she sneaks off to visit Bowerstone for the first time since her childhood

• She spends the day/night having a gloriously rowdy time with a man she only knows as Captain/The Captain(Spoiler Alert, it’s Reaver) and she fully intends to join his crew

• He has no idea who she is, though he is immediately reminded of his old friends; and unknowingly recounts tails of her parents adventures to her. He is more than a little astonished that someone drew out the urge to discuss something other than himself

• They spend the night together above Bowerstone’s bar; waking up at the crack of dawn to Teresa standing in front of the bed

• She all but drags Sparrow home with her, leaving Reaver both disappointed and a bit relieved; he was not sure he liked that she stirred up something in him

During The Game

• Sparrow is a Rowdy Girl with a love of fine women, dangerous men, and banditry. She loves the rough&tumble bandit lifestyle, but is good hearted enough that she tends to change towns for the better; this is why she loves Bloodstone, it’s a hard town that never changes

• Feels pressured to marry Alex, and feigns happiness for his sake; trying her best to be busy with quests to avoid being near him

• The Spire all but wipes out her formally sweet nature; seeing her adopt a much darker world view; this is where she transitions to pure evil, and becomes much more direct with her wishes and underhanded with her plots

• At first, she flat out refuses to see Alex after The Spire; she doesn’t see the point of it, and figures if he had any good sense he’d have moved on, since she was never in love with him in the first place

• When Alex eventually catches up with her, she attempts to let him down very concisely, but his entitled behavior toward “his wife” ends with a knife in his gut, and a disgusted sneer on Sparrow’s face

• She recognizes Reaver right away, though she has changed too much for him to recognize her. Her heart aches for the innocent young woman she was when she last saw him

• He puts the pieces together of who she is when he first fights by her side; reminded of fighting alongside her Hero father

• The pair share a moment in that cave, seeming to begin something before the collapsing rocks urge them to keep running

End Game/Post Game, Pre Fable 3

• Reaver steals her kill from her, and she is devastated; her sad state only compounded when Hammer reacts harshly to her desire to bring back her own loved ones

• At the end of things, she finds herself alone again, Rose off who-knows-where, her dog her only companion

• Having grown up in exceeding poverty, she spends her time and her gold buying up property left and right, putting former greedy landlords to death

• On a whim she purchases Reaver’s home, keeping it clear of squatters for him

• She finds his first journal entry, and promptly seals them all away in a locked box, not wishing to invade his privacy

• By the time Reaver returns, Sparrow is Queen; and he is more than thrilled when he sees her summons, an elegantly tied scroll left on his bed; concise in her own handwriting, “Captain, I expect a visit when you return, I’m sure you don’t need my address; Sparrow”

• Now, Reaver is both intrigued and mildly frightened

• He enjoys the prospect of having a shag with the queen (and, though he won’t admit it, he has missed more than her body); but he knows she was...a bit cross with him for leaving so suddenly after that business with Lucien was sorted out

• He is concerned that she may kill him/have him put to death, but ultimately decides that the potential rewards far outweigh the risks (with a healthy dose of understanding that it could prove unwise to ignore a direct summons from the Queen)

• On first glance, Queen Sparrow is hardly the girl he remembers from the tavern, or even the shoot-first-talk-later hero who sauntered into Bloodstone a year ago

• Her rise to power coupled with her emotional isolation have left her bitter; a fair yet harsh ruler. She was loved by many for her low rent prices and the protection she offered; but she kept the nobility on a very short leash, and had little patience for those who would waste her time

• That said, she did seem to be focused on keeping up appearances; at least, Reaver could scarcely believe all the exquisite finery and pompous ceremony was her doing

• Had he not been so gifted with perception, Reaver would have failed to pick up on the tiny cracks in her collected facade upon their public meeting

• She declared him her newest advisor, citing his heroic blood, worldly knowledge, and instrumental role in Lucien’s downfall as credentials enough

• When she received him in her private chambers however, the public mask of Royalty slipped away as she all but pounced him

• After a while, Reaver playfully tosses around the idea of them having a true public relationship; and Sparrow turns him down flat; refusing to make a toy of her heart

• Reaver does not quite understand why he feels disappointed; after all, he’s got a position of High Power in Albion now, and he gets to warm the Hero Queen’s bed with very few strings attached...he should be thrilled

• Eventually, Sparrow faces pressure (both domestic and foreign) to marry

• Reaver offers his “services”, talking of what a good king he would make, but Sparrow refuses on the grounds that his former life of piracy did not amuse every foreign power, and making him king could potentially amount to a declaration of war

• She marries some nobody from the aristocracy; the relationship, as well as the king’s power, being little more than an elaborate puppet show

• Reaver absolutely loathes the king; “Sparrow only has room for one pompous, arrogant, bastard in her life; and it sure as hell isn’t this spindly Lordling”

• The marriage certainly complicates Sparrow and Reaver’s cladenstine appointments; and his unexpected negative feelings almost push him to leave Sparrow’s Court

• Until she comes to his quarters one night, looking frantic and desperate; like she had been pacing around and pulling at her hair

• The king has demanded children, and old Albion Royal Law/Tradition demands she comply; Sparrow however, absolutely refuses to birth that man’s weak and “noble” offspring

• She asks Reaver to give her a child in secret; she assures him that he will have absolutely no fatherly obligations; but if she must bare children(which she knew from her vision of the future was inevitable) she wanted them to be strong with the blood of heroes

• Eventually, Reaver accepts, and Sparrow is sure that the child inside her is his

• Reaver does his best to avoid spending time with her, he has spent centuries avoiding these connections for a reason, after all

• But he can’t shake the hate in his heart each time he sees the king look so prideful of his impending heir

• The Baby is born with a thick tuff of black hair, and thankfully, is Sparrow’s spitting image as he grows

• Reaver does his best to avoid Logan, truly stepping in for the first time when the boy comes up missing

• Sparrow puts together the ransom at once, not willing to risk her child’s life with her usual bravado

• At the same time, Reaver uses his underworld connections to easily sniff out the kidnappers; going in secret to collect the boy before Sparrow even has a chance to leave the castle

• Reaver holds his son for the first time as he ends the lives of the scum who took him with a vengeance

• From that point on, Reaver is focused on watching over the boy; if from a distance

• He becomes prone to undermining the king when he is trying to teach some bullshit Strict Lesson to young Logan; cutting the king down with remarks of how Reaver has SEEN tactics like his in action...and they never bode well

• Reaver does not truly admit to himself his fatherly feelings however, until Sparrow accidentally becomes pregnant

• A little girl with beautiful brunette curls, who stares back at him with his own eyes; when he holds her for the first time, she squeezes his finger tight, and he knows he would move the earth for this child

• Princess Ophelia is a happy girl, running around the castle with very few unpleasantries like “rules” or “structure”, thanks to her intimidating “Uncle” Reaver pushing around the king and anyone else who would dare stifle her

• The King however, does not take kindly to Reaver’s increased intrusion on “his” family; becoming obsessively strict with the children each chance he gets

• Reaver doubles down on his mischief, often making a point to whisk the children away to festivals and other fun outings

• He is overcome with pride when little Ophelia proves to be a crack shot at the carnival’s various shooting games

• Once, a tiny Ophelia ran to him crying because she wished Reaver was her father instead of the king

• Sparrow has to intervene more than once when Reaver decides he wants to outright murder the king

• The king tries to put his foot down with Sparrow; demanding that Reaver be removed from Court and sent away

• Sparrow laughs at him, before recounting the tail of her first husband; and reminds him of the very strict limits to his own power

The Death of Sparrow

• Some time after Logan reaches his teenage years, the Queen is mysteriously assailed by a sudden and dire illness

• In my personal timeline-The Sickness is actually a curse laid on her by Teresa for refusing to follow her directive any longer; but this isn’t revealed until my Post-Fable 3 Plotline

• Reaver sits by Sparrow’s bed as she lay dying- truly and wholly distraught for the first time in centuries

• She grips his hand suddenly, with all the feeble strength she can muster, and the look in her eye tells him that the time he has dreaded is upon them

• She begs-orders him to watch over their children

• He pulls her into his arms. “Sparrow, I need you to know, I love-”

• “No,” she hisses, faint as a breath. “You don’t.”

• He is devastated by her final words. For the first time in perhaps centuries, he has decided to open his heart and admit those words...and she didn’t believe him...and now it’s too late to prove it

• He spends much of his time in the days following her death obscenely intoxicated-more than usual, trying to wipe away the regret he feels for not making her feel loved while she was alive

• Reaver comes to her balcony often, to look out over Albion in the cool night air-and consider hopefully-perhaps foolishly- that the wind ghosting his hair against his cheek is more than just an act of nature

• One night, he arrives to find the king standing in his usual spot; and perhaps it is his own melancholy that moves him-but he actually believes the king has come to mourn

• Until he speaks to him of course. The king is only in the room to decide how he wishes to redecorate it for when he takes a new wife to be queen

• Reaver is enraged by how casually the king speaks; how quickly he thinks to replace Sparrow. His mind fills with the image of some power hungry political climber marrying this idiot for the crown

• Reaver was no stranger to political intrigue. How often did new royals arrange for the tragic deaths of their stepchildren, so that their own children might have a better chance of inheriting the crown? Reaver could not take that chance

• One bullet, ringing off into the night, was all it took to send the King’s corpse crumpling unceremoniously to the ground

• Eventually, Reaver is captured, and Walter(as chief among Sparrow’s advisors) personally orders(and intends to carry out) his execution; however he is stopped by the arrival of the young-now king-Logan

• Ignoring everyone, Logan crouches down to where the guards have forced Reaver to kneel, and simply tells Reaver that he knows, before ordering everyone to leave them in private

• As it turns out, Logan had taken the task of sorting through his late-mother’s things when he stumbled upon Reaver’s journals-and an entry that makes note of his feelings for her

• Following that discovery, Logan had done diligent research and digging; and had come to the conclusion that he and his sister were almost definitely the result of Reaver’s long term affair with their mother

• He demands Reaver tell him everything, and surprisingly, Reaver does. He comes clean about it all-everything from the Court of Shadows to Sparrow’s dying wish

• This is why Logan trusts Reaver to remain his advisor

• The secret of their parontage is kept from Ophelia however. After all, it was a secret for a reason, and she was so young at the time that she could hardly be counted on to protect such a secret; she doesn’t learn Reaver is her father until breaking into his home in search of information

• No longer in danger of execution, Reaver feels he has no choice but to down a bottle or two of fine wine, and write to his former companions of Sparrow’s death

• He keeps it very short. He wasn’t their friend-he wasn’t even on good terms with them

• “She’s Gone; R.” Is all the letters say, and they think him callous and uncaring for it; but they cannot see the waste bin of crumpled papers where his writing had been shaky in his grief or the tears stained the pages

OKAY THAT’S WHERE I AM GOING TO STOP BECAUSE BEYOND THAT WE START REACHING INTO FABLE 3 TERRIROTY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR READING THIS

#fable 2 #fable ii #fable reaver #mypost #my timeline #sparrow x reaver #longpost #long post #spreaver #reaver x sparrow #fable 2 reaver #fable #fable 2 sparrow

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adapembroke · 5 years

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How to Evaluate Sources Like An Academic

One of the most difficult things about being a new student is knowing who to listen to. When you're more advanced, you know the big names in your field. You know where the battle lines are drawn and what the schools of thought are, and you have an idea of who you are and who you want to listen to. A beginner doesn't. Fortunately, knowing how to evaluate sources is a skill that can be learned. Once you learn it, you can apply it to any field from the very beginning of your studies.

Before I launch in, a note on biases: Everyone has biases. Ancient authors have biases. First person witnesses have biases. Scholars have biases. And people lie for lots of different reasons. When you do research, you are not looking for unbiased sources because they don't exist. You are looking for people whose biases you can see so that you can evaluate them--which is often running them by your own biases. Learning is unavoidably messy.

Before you read anything, consider who wrote it. Evaluate authors the way you would evaluate a teacher. Is this a person you want to learn from? Who are they? Do they have first hand experience of the thing they're writing about (primary source), or are they primarily a scholar (secondary source)? What are their credentials? If they are a scholarly source, how much education do they have and from where? If they are not a scholarly source, who are their teachers and influences? How much time have they spent working in the field? What type of experience do they have? Do they belong to any organizations whose beliefs and biases you can investigate?

If you're reading a book, a lot of this information can be found in the author's bio. The bio is usually found on the back cover or near the front or back of the book. The author and their publisher include the bio to establish the author's credibility, so the bio usually includes relevant information about their education and experience. But the bio will usually not include things that are controversial. Remember, the publisher is trying to sell you a book.

If you're reading something on the internet, that information might not be as easy to find. Bloggers often include an about page somewhere on their site, but access to information about authors is hit or miss on social media because people are trying to be approachable or don't want to look like they're bragging. If there's a website linked, check it. The author might be downplaying their credentials.

Consider the author's influences. Everyone who writes is standing on the shoulders of giants. Those who are honest acknowledge it somewhere. People who write are also participating in a conversation with other people in their field, and it's important to know what this conversation is because certain context (or the intended audience) may be left unspoken because the author and publisher assume you're picking up the book because you're part of the conversation. People often get unjustly offended or confused because they don't know that the author they're reading is not part of the same community as them.

The publisher of the book or article can tell you something about its contents. Journals and magazines are usually fairly self-explanatory. Witches and Pagans tells you exactly what types of articles you will find inside. Books can be a bit more difficult to parse. Academic books are usually published by mainstream publishers (Eg. Random Penguin House) or academic presses. Academic presses often have "University" in the name. Specialty subjects often have their own presses. Llewellyn and Weiser are common sources for Pagan/New Age/Occult books. Good books on obscure topics might be independently published. It's especially important in those cases to look into the author.

In an informational book, there is usually a bibliography or list of sources in the back of the book. Books that draw on primary/ancient/other language sources may include a note on translations in the front of the book that mention what texts they draw on. What types of books or articles are cited? Are they mainly academic or experiential? Do the books that are cited look like books you would either want to read yourself or have someone read and interpret for you?

If there is an index, look through it for the authors that are actually cited in the book. There is often a difference between the sources the author thinks you should read and the sources they actually drew on for their work. This isn't a sketchy thing. Authors tend to cite people they've read recently, and if they have been studying for awhile, they probably aren't still reading the texts they think beginners should read.

If there isn't an index or bibliography, the work may be primarily intended for entertainment, but an acknowledgements section is often used to credit sources in highly researched works (Eg. The Outlander books). Books that are written from experience also may not include sources. In that case, it is extra important to know who wrote the book and whether or not you trust them.

Again, on the internet, people often don't cite their sources. This isn't necessarily a sign of sloppiness. Experts in the field regularly contribute to conversations on the internet or post their work assuming you are listening to them because you know who they are. You may need to Google them. If you're new to the field, you might be surprised who's hiding in plain sight.

Consider when and where the source was written. The time period when a source was written can tell you something about the person's biases. If you are reading a book of witchcraft from the 70s by a woman, there's a fairly good chance the text was influenced by second wave feminism. A book from the 1880s that uses "men" as a universal word for humanity is participating in its culture. A book from 2019 that uses "men" as a universal word for humanity is making a political statement.

Old isn't necessarily better or worse. Everyone has a point of view, and every written account of an event is a translation of reality, filtered through a person's brain, experiences, and culture. Hesiod might know a lot about ancient Greek mythology because he's a couple thousand years closer to the time when the poets were first coming up with it, but he will never be anyone other than an ancient Greek. His view of women and slaves won't be the same as yours. Part of the discernment necessary to do research that is at all historical in nature is to learn how to recognize and work with and around beliefs and lifestyles that are different than yours. If ideological purity is essential to your health and well-being, anything written before 2018 is not for you.

Don't be a snob. This seems like a strange point to make in an article on evaluating sources like an academic, but good academics aren't snobs. A source that is more scholarly isn't necessarily a source that is better. If you want to understand your familiar, which source is better: A book by a historian from the 70s who wrote about early modern witchcraft or a witch who has been communing with their familiar alone in the woods since the 1970s? The answer depends on what you're looking for. If you want to understand the familiar in its historical context, the scholar might know more than the witch. If you want your kitty's assistance with spells, the witch will probably be more helpful. Knowing what kind of information you're looking for will help you know who to listen to. A person who is a good source of one type of information might not be a good source for other types of information.

Along the same vein, a more experienced author isn't necessarily better for you than a less experienced author. Experienced authors may have a hard time remembering what it was like to be a beginner. They might not remember things that were difficult when they were young, and they might be so concerned with making sure you don't fall into pitfalls that you'll potentially run into later down the line that they confuse your beginnings. Younger authors are closer to your experience level and remember what it was like to be you and can empathize with your experience better. They may not be experts in the field, but they may be the best teacher for you now.

Putting It Into Practice

Now that you've gotten this far, why don't you start by evaluating me as a source? What unmentioned community am I talking to? What biases do you think I have?

Here's a bio to get you started:

Bea is a New England native currently living in Portland, Oregon. She has a BA in English language and literature and an MFA in creative writing. As part of her graduate studies, she wrote a thesis on poetry in translation and spent a semester in an interdisciplinary MA program primarily focused on building academic research skills. She has been practicing divination for nearly a decade and has studied in Steven Forrest’s apprenticeship program, been mentored by Paul Richard, and taken Tarot workshops with Rachel Pollack. She is a spirit worker and channel with a rather odd, non-devotional thing going on with Odin. When she’s not slinging cards, she’s researching her 17th century historical fantasy novel Witch Wars or wandering the woods with her camera. Links to all of her various social things can be found at beamagical.com.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to @grimnirslee (tumblr) for the inspiration for this post and @magicinthestorm (tumblr) for talking through this with me while I was writing it.

This post was originally published on Patreon on 30 April 2019.

#witchblr #research #paganism #witchcraft #studyblr

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years

Text

Stan Lee [1922 – 2018]

Stan the Man.

. . .

I tell people that after four guys with Liverpudlian accents, the greatest influencers of pop culture in America in the 1960s were four editors.

A lot of us looked on them as uncles -- and an aunt -- who served as inspirations / role models / guideposts / influencers during our lives, especially our impressionable preteen through early adult years.

Uncle Hugh was the worldly bon vivant: Suave, sophisticated, erudite, hip. He showed us what it meant to be a grown up even if our parents disapproved of his lifestyle.

Aunt Helen was kind of Uncle Hugh’s female opposite number, trash talked a bit because she was a female and “women just shouldn’t behave that way” but y’know what, every family needs an eccentric-bordering-crazy aunt and she was America’s.

Especially for tens of millions of young women and girls to whom she demonstrated there wasn’t just one lifepath stretching before them but thousands.

Uncle Forry showed us it was okay to be obsessive and geeky about weird interests and, contrary to our parents’ advice, to seek community with others who shared those interests. Okay, so maybe there was something a little odd, a little off about him, but he showed us how the magic was made, and thus steered thousands of us into creative careers.

And Uncle Stan? Uncle Stan was the avuncular raconteur, the enthusiastic cheerleader crackling with energy, the slick yet charming salesman so good at his job it never seemed like he was selling anything even when he was most blatant about it. He got us excited about what he was selling, and unlike our other uncles and aunt, he would drop by once a week with some new adventures to share with us.

He was our storyteller, our mythmaker, and in a very real sense, our prophet.

I’ll leave it for you to decide if he was a false one or not.

. . .

Luck matters.

Talent is tremendous, perseverance a plus, and skill a must, but it’s better to be lucky than good.

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922, the son of a working class immigrant New York couple. He grew up in a manner very typical for New Yorkers and Americans of that era, struggling through the Great Depression, catching odd jobs where he could find them, finally landing a gig as a nepotist at a company owned by the husband of a cousin.

That cousin’s husband was Martin Goodman, and the company was Marvel (nee Timely) Comics.

If it had been a dress making factory we would have never heard of him.

. . .

Decades later, The Cannon Group -- that slapdash conglomeration of ruthless ambition and genuine love of cinema held together by the thinnest threads of artistic ability -- released their version of Captain America and erroneously attributed the character as “created by Stan Lee”.

To his honor, Stan was embarrassed by this gaffe and when asked would be quick to cite Jack Kirby and Joe Simon as the actual creators.

Stan entered the then nascent Marvel Universe early in 1941 with issue three of the Captain America comic book, penning a two page text story: Captain America Foils The Traitor's Revenge

And credit where credit is due: From the very beginning of his creative association with Marvel, he was adding innovative ideas (in this case, the first instance of Cappy using his shield as a frisbee to attack bad guys).

But that was far from the most important thing young Stanley Lieber created in that story.

The bigger, more important, far more influential invention?

Stan Lee

. . .

Take a moment to understand how important writers were in American culture between the two world wars.

Hemingway kicked over the anthill.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis probed deep down through the upper crust into the American psyche, John Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair did the same in the opposite direction with their stories of working class people.

Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler looked at the underbelly of American cities while William Faulkner dug deep in the old south.

Anita Loos and Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley and James Thurber and even irascible Alexander Woollcott brought sunshine and laughter.

These people were not just celebrities, they were looked upon as key influencers and trend setters, seeing where the culture was going and commenting on it, illuminating the way forward for the rest of us.

And that’s not counting the hundreds of other authors who wrote popular books and magazines, who filled the best seller lists with novels that became hit movies.

The American people read and they read a lot. Every week The Saturday Evening Post would deliver a half dozen top flight stories and articles to your home. Liberty and Collier’s and McCall’s and The Ladies’ Home Journal and Redbook would also bring dozens of well written stories to you, and that’s not counting the vast pulp market or publications like Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Review and The New Yorker which offered literary criticism not for a high brow elite coastal urban audience but for Americans all across the country.

We read more, and thanks to pre-TV radio we listened more, not sitting passively as images washed over us.

Being a writer was a big deal back in those days, even if it wasn’t the most reputable of professions.

My father wanted to be a writer, but after the Korean War he put that aside and started working in a dress factory.

You’ve never heard of him.

. . .

Like many young people between the two world wars, Stanley Martin Lieber harbored literary ambitions.

He’d written for his school newspaper, did some small scale copywriting for neighborhood advertisers, and briefly worked with the W.P.A. Theater Project as well as a couple of other entry level jobs typical then and now for teens after school or on weekends.

His initial employment at Timely Comics was pure schlub work: Sharpen the pencils, refill the ink wells, erase the pencil lines once the inkers were done.

I can easily imagine him pestering Joe Simon, co-creator and editor of Captain America, until Simon finally said, “Sure, kid, write a two page story for me” just to get him out of his hair.

(Sidebar: Back in the early days of comics, there was some question whether they qualified for the cheaper second class periodical mailing rates. The formula of two text pages per comic took root as the minimum number needed for a publication to get that postal designation, so that’s why there are literally tens of thousands of crappy short-short stories in old comic books; they just had to be text, they didn’t have to be good.)

When Stanley Martin Lieber turned in Captain America Foils The Traitor's Revenge, he didn’t put his name on it.

He was saving that for his big / important / serious work.

Rather, he put his pen name on it: “Stan Lee”

. . .

In all fairness, young Stanley Martin Lieber proved a fast study.

Within a year he was writing then creating back-up features for the various comic titles Timely published.

When the powerhouse creative team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby left Timely towards the end of 1941, Martin Goodman installed Stanley Martin Lieber as the company’s new editor.

He was 19 at the time.

Now, while that is a laudable accomplishment, it’s also not as impressive as it sounds.

Low rent entertainment companies operate like assembly line factories: The creative talent throws their work into the hopper at one end, the distributor hauls the finished product out at the other.

If the basic structure is sound, it doesn’t need a lot of attention to function smoothly.

Proof of this is that almost no sooner had Stanley Martin Lieber been promoted to editor than he was drafted, and from early 1942 to mid-1945, while he was in uniform, Timely Comics chugged along quite nicely in his absence.

At the end of the war and his military service, Stanley Martin Lieber made a fateful decision: He went back to work for his cousin’s husband.

. . .

To understand much of Stan’s career and later years, you have to look at his mid-1940s mind set.

Stan had never really worked for a living.

As noted, all his earlier jobs had been teenage entry level work.

While he was happy to have the income and helped with his family’s finances, he never had to support himself, much less a family of his own.

Compare this to Simon and Kirby, who had hit the streets and hit ‘em hard during the Depression, scrambling for every odd job they could find, building their portfolio and reputation while supporting themselves.

There sat in the hearts and minds of the freelance writers and artists he employed a certain tough confidence that Stan never enjoyed.

His freelancers and co-workers who, like Simon and Kirby, would and could take principled stands were forever citizens of another country, another land that Stan could only gaze upon wistfully but never enter himself.

Draw your own Moses parallel.

. . .

If returning to Martin Goodman’s employ was a fateful decision for Stan, it was certainly a financially sound one.

Like many vets, he married soon after the war ended, in this case to Joan Clayton Boocock, a British hat model working in New York.

Of the many improbable things in Stan’s life, few are as improbable as this odd romance. The couple enjoyed a very happy and long, long life together.

Seventy years married.

We should all be so lucky

But the blessing of this marriage was clouded by Stan’s anxiety over providing for his family.

He worked hard to support his wife and daughter.

But he never had the courage or confidence to look elsewhere.

When he married Joan, for all intents and purposes Stan married Marvel as well.

. . .

While comics publishing in general and superheroes in particular did well during World War Two, the market changed drastically afterwards.

Superheroes faded fast, replaced by true crime and horror comics.

Even super patriot Captain America went the horror root with the last two issues of his book being retitled Captain America's Weird Tales before being retired in 1949.

The true crime and horror craze was soon scuttled due to Dr. Frederic Wertham and the subsequent Comics Code.

Timely renamed itself Atlas, and for the 1950s Stan busied himself on a variety of titles: Westerns, funny animals, teen, nurse (yes, there was a market for nurse comics), romance, teen nurse romance, and monster (a highly sanitized kid friendly version of the now banned horror comics).

He also got to know and work with an astonishing array of freelance talent: Jack Kirby (now bouncing from project to project), Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr., Marie Severin, Gil Kane, and Wally Wood among others.

He enhanced his income with an odd assortment of side projects, including a comic strip based on a radio show and a pamphlet on how to write comic books.

Stan joked that he was just Goodman’s interim editor, that he would leave Timely-now-Atlas the moment a better gig showed up.

Stan didn’t look for a better gig.

The better gig came looking for him.

. . .

There are numerous versions of how Marvel Comics came about.

They all start with the Justice League over at DC.

As noted, after World War Two superhero comics faded and faded fast.

All the superhero titles vanished except for Action Comics (featuring Superman), Detective Comics (featuring Batman and Robin), and the occasional Wonder Woman cover story published by DC.

And the reason those three titles stayed in print was that if DC failed to publish them, they would either lose the license (in the case of Wonder Woman) or open themselves to the possibility of their creators reclaiming them.

And greedy scum that they are -- hey, these are comic books we’re talking about, a.k.a. the sleaziest industry on earth -- DC wasn’t about to let those properties go.

Despite efforts by other companies to relaunch superheroes (including a failed attempt by Stan and Atlas with Captain America in 1954), the kids just weren’t buying.

But in 1959 DC comics reintroduced Aquaman and Green Lantern, added their revamped but lackluster Flash, plucked the Martian Manhunter from the sci-fi bin, and added them to their big three (or 3.5 if you count Robin) as the Justice League of America in a one shot story.

To their delight, they captured lightning in a bottle (or at least on the pages of a badly printed comic).

Now, there are three primary variants in the Marvel rebirth story.

The first is that while Martin Goodman was golfing with Jack Liebowitz of DC, Liebowitz couldn’t help bragging on the Justice League’s success and Goodman went back to the office and told Stan to come up with something similar.

The second is that Stan had noticed the success of Justice League and suggested it to Goodman when they were brainstorming ideas for Atlas.

The third is that Goodman was on the verge of shutting Atlas down, the offices were already being packed up, Stan was in a dither, and Jack Kirby told him to relax, they’d figure out a way of staying in business before Goodman lowered the boom for good.

What really happened?

Who knows…

Kirby’s version certainly sounds more in character for the men involved, but the paper trail points somewhere between the Goodman and Stan versions.

Maybe (probably?) some combination of all three, with each participant remembering only the part that seemed most important to them.

Whatever the true impetus, a decade and a half writing, drawing, and editing romance / soap opera and goofy monster comics served Stan and Kirby well.

The unique gestalt of The Fantastic Four flew right in the face of DC’s “super friends” approach: This was a team of superheroes who had their own personal problems, who didn’t like each other all that much, and who had to spend as much time fighting their own personal discord as they did the supervillains that threatened them.

DC caught lightning in a bottle.

Marvel (formerly Atlas, and before that Timely) caught…a spark.

The popular history (and we’ll get into how that was shaped in a moment) is that The Fantastic Four and all the other Marvel titles were huge hits from the git-go, steam rolling over all opposition to dominate the industry.

Ehhh…not quite.

Insofar as they sold well and kept the doors open and attracted a good audience response and an appreciable amount of ancillary merchandising, yeah, that they did.

But DC outsold Marvel for most of the decade, including the roll out years when all their big characters / teams / franchises were introduced.

There’s a phrase I use: The jazz musician’s jazz musician.

I use it not to just specifically reference jazz but to point out the innovators who are doing highly influential cutting edge stuff that mainstream audiences just don’t get.

Those in the know -- other jazz musicians, or in the case of Marvel, other artists and writers and editors -- grasp what’s happening immediately, but it isn’t until they begin reinterpreting it and filtering it through more audience familiar styles that the innovators’ true impact is felt.

And then, if they’re lucky, the innovators finally come into their own much later as the mainstream catches up to where they once were decades earlier.

Marvel didn’t exactly struggle, but they had to work hard to remain competitive during the 1960s -- and there was a lot of competition out there.

But the pay off came in the mid-1970s, when the young fans (and we’ll get to them, too) grew up and started entering the business.

I state this without equivocation: All American comics from 1975 to the start of the manga boom in 2000 -- every single one of ‘em -- were direct or indirect responses to what Marvel had been doing from 1961 to 1967.

What part did Stan play in all this?

. . .

There are almost as many ways to create a comic book as there are comic book creators, but the two chief styles are DC full scripts and Marvel outlines.

At DC, writers handed in scripts broken down panel by panel, dialog included; the artist followed the script as closely as possible and made no major changes without editorial permission.

At Marvel, Stan would discuss a story idea with a writer or sometimes directly with the artist. At most this would result in a short outline (three pages max for a full length comic) that laid out the basic idea of the story, described the characters and conflict, and gave some idea how things should wrap up. The artist then broke down and laid out the story by themselves; the editor would either add dialog themselves or send a Xerox copy to the writer for them to come up with dialog.

If you have a proficient hard working art crew, the Marvel method lets you produce a lot of comics very fast, and relatively cheaper since the editor and artist can knock out a story idea over coffee, thus sidestepping the writer for at least the first half of the process.

Stan and his artists had been working this way for a decade and a half.

They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, how to play into the former and avoid the latter.

Any competent bullpen can produce comics this way.

The Marvel bullpen had a lot of good, talented artists.

But it also had

J*A*C*K FREAKIN’ K*I*R*B*Y

The most interesting, the most innovative work in any art form gets done around the edges where the gatekeepers are loath to visit.

“Yeah, sure, whatever, knock yourself out, just have it done by Thursday…”

Low budget filmmakers, late night TV, garage bands, cruddy comedy clubs, fanzines, these are venues where the cutting edge bleeds, where most of the stuff is crap because nobody cares but because somebody cares part of it is dynamite.

Jack Kirby cared, and cared a lot about comics.

So did Steve Ditko.

So did Jim Steranko.

Stan was smart enough to see that and get out of the way.

. . .

So what part of Marvel’s success can be attributed to Stan?

Based on what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard, and what I know, I’d say anywhere from as little as 20% to as much as 33 1/3% of any specific title reflects Stan’s input.

Stan was no dummy, Stan had talent, Stan had skill, Stan had good ideas.

But Stan also had little time and even less help.

He’d throw the idea at the artists and the artists would throw their execution back.

Stan, to varying degrees, would refine the story in the dialog stage so that it fit in consistently with the rest of the titles they were publishing.

But the success of Marvel as an entity?

That’s 80% Stan’s doing.

. . .

I said Kirby and Ditko and Steranko loved comics.

Stan did, too, but he loved Stan even more.

He’d spent half his life laboring in relative anonymity.

His dreams of a serious literary career had come to naught.

His resume’ consisted solely of working for his cousin’s husband’s middling successful comic book company.

He lacked the courage and confidence that the artists in his bullpen possessed, courage and confidence they’d acquired by knocking on doors and chasing after jobs.

In 1961 he stood on the edge of middle age, with nothing significant to show for himself.

And while The Fantastic Four and Thor and The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man may not have equaled the successes at DC, they sure were more than anything he’d experienced before.

And by promoting them, he also promoted himself.

The Marvel method made lengthy continuities and crossovers easier to execute than DC’s formally scripted method. His lack of time led to multi-part stories and to setting those stories not in mythical Metropolis or Gotham City in real life New York so he wouldn’t have to provide artists with references.

These lengthy continuities and crossovers, as opposed to DC’s standalone stories, got Marvel readers to pick up more and more titles, and to become more and more deeply involved in the Marvel Universe.

Stan interacted with these fans of Marvel comics (and they were enthusiastic, if not numerous). His column, Stan’s Bullpen, came out every week, whenever a new Marvel Comic hit the stands. He handed out No-Prizes to sharp eyed fans who spotted errors, getting those fans to read even more Marvel Comics.

“Face front, true believer! Excelsior!”

. . .

For all his delight in leading the fans in The Merry Marvel Marching Society, Stan didn’t lead his bullpen with the same enthusiasm.

Something transpired between him and Ditko. Ditko famously came in with the finished art for Spider-Man #38, dropped the pages on the desk of Stan’s secretary, said, “That’s that!” and walked out, never to darken Marvel’s doors again.

A few years later, as Marvel characters began booming in popularity and raking in licensing deals, Kirby approached Stan and suggested they present a unified front to Marvel’s owners to demand a slice of the pie they were generating for the company.

Stan asked for some time to mull the prospect over…

…and immediately raced to Martin Goodman and signed a long term contract stating that all the work and characters he and Kirby had created for Marvel were done under a work-for-hire contract, and that the company owed no shares or royalties to either of them.

Kirby left Marvel and, ever the jazz musician’s jazz musician, went over to DC and created new comic book series for them.

Marvel’s onerous work-for-hire contract (essentially by endorsing one’s paycheck one signed away all rights to work one had done) came under legal scrutiny, and when changes in US copyright law created the potential for the Kirby estate to sue to recover the copyright on the characters he had co-created, Marvel sued the estate to prevent them from going to court.

The Kirby estate was blocked again and again in their effort to regain their right to sue, but when the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Marvel capitulated rather than run the risk they might win the right to sue and might prevail.

When Stan would go on vacation, Marvel employees would tremble.

Stan hated personal confrontations, and rather than fire someone face-to-face, when he would go on vacation it would befall some other member of Marvel management to discharge the employee.

(Stan would feign ignorance when he came back, and would promise to “see what I can do” to help the discharged employee, but of course that never happened.)

. . .

Stan’s hard work promoting Marvel as a brand paid off, and by the mid-1970s he and the company were dominating comics sales.

Ancillary merchandising and marketing varied from year to year as audience interest ebbed and flowed, but Stan was always quick to make sure his name got mentioned in every press release, his cameo in every live action movie and TV show.

And to be truthful, it was hard not to like Stan.

He bubbled over with energy and enthusiasm, he tirelessly promoted Marvel (and himself), and constantly engaged with fans.

For me, one of the highlights of my professional career was to pass Stan in the hallway of Marvel Productions in the early 1980s and to have him recognize me and call me by name.

I felt I had arrived.

Stan’s daily involvement with Marvel diminished over the years, first because he moved to California to make deals for Marvel movies and TV shows (not that many at that time), later because he no longer connected with the story telling style Marvel evolved into.

He formally split off from Marvel in the late 1990s (though retaining a healthy retainer from them) and got involved in a number of questionable ventures.

Our orbits intersected again during the short lived existence of Stan Lee Media (SLM), ostensibly his effort to create a new brand of superheroes for a new century, in reality a stock manipulation scheme that saw people sentenced to lengthy prison terms and the mastermind behind it fleeing to Brazil.

Stan, it should be pointed out, was as much a victim as Merrill Lynch in all this, but it also reflects a key shortcoming in his character.

I had, thanks to the intercession of Mark Evanier, been briefly employed as Stan’s vice-president of creative affairs for SLM.

From the beginning of our employment, I and most of Stan’s other staff wondered how SLM was supposed to make money, and couldn’t follow the business strategy of Peter Paul, the former lawyer turned convicted drug smuggler who had insinuated himself in Stan’s life.

Something was rotten in the state of California, and the more one questioned the wisdom of Paul’s strategy, the more likely one was to be shown the door.

When it became apparent my neck was next on the chopping block, advice from Steve Gerber and several other former Marvel employees helped me secure a nice severance deal. The advice they gave was to approach Stan first before he had to bring the matter up, point out the fit didn’t seem to be working, and allow Stan to fall over himself in his eagerness to settle the matter without any negative confrontation. Which I did, and which he did, and we both came away happier for it.

Shortly after that, the company imploded as the stock manipulation became apparent, and Paul’s secondary scheme was revealed to use the same copyright provision Marvel and Stan fought against re the Kirby estate to lay claim to Marvel characters.

Stan moved on from there to POW! Entertainment, another effort to capitalize on Stan’s celebrity status, and while that company was legit, it did not generate the response they anticipated.

During that period, however, thousands of missing pages of Marvel artwork was discovered in a storage unit Stan rented.

The official story was that these pages had been accidentally scooped up when Stan left Marvel’s New York office, but that doesn’t pass the smell test. Those pages were supposed to be returned to the original artists; selling them as collectibles was an ancillary form of income and one that comics publishers allowed (the art having been transferred to either print film or digital files by that point).

Another thing that didn’t pass the smell test was the “lost” original outline for the first Fantastic Four story, a one and a half page document that had been displayed under glass at SLM office. The story of how it was “found” seems awfully suspect, and more than a few of us think it was a =ahem!= “recreation” typed up at a much later date.

POW! tried promoting him as a still viable, still vital creator, but anyone who had a meeting with him knew how much of his success rested on the talents of his co-creators. They tried promoting him as still current in pop culture, but he was too old and frail to sell that idea.

They actually tried circulating a “fake Stan Lee™”, an actor hired to go and do a Stan Lee impersonation at local conventions, but that idea quickly died an embarrassing death.

Eventually POW! and Stan dissolved their formal relationship, and POW! sold out to foreign investors, leaving Stan to his own devices.

The man who always feared not having somebody to work for was finally on his own.

In his latter years, Stan appeared in the news again and again, this time as an elderly man abused by at least some of his caregivers.

Stan sure could pick ‘em, huh?

That’s not the sort of publicity anyone deserves to have, much less endure. The abuse included dragging him around the country to conventions to promote…something.

Footage of him in a very disoriented state, being told how to sign his own name for autograph hounds who had just paid a hefty fee for same, outraged his fans, even those of us who recognized his complicity in his own misfortune.

. . .

Uncle Hugh did not age well. For a man so worldly and debonair, he never recognized when it was time for him to leave the party. After a while his hanging on became an embarrassment, like the old geezer trying to teach the young kids all the hot new dances such as the foxtrot and the twist.

Aunt Helen was more savvy in that respect, and she found that by stepping back a bit, she could wait for the occasional question to be directed at her, and for her answer to be taken seriously instead of with an eyeroll.

Uncle Forry was indeed a bit “off”, downright creepy in fact, and while much of his influence on others was for the good, a significant portion was not. We look back and say “we shoulda known, we shoulda known” but the truth was he validated our interests when no one else would, and for that we were willing to overlook a multitude of sins.

And Uncle Stan? He lived long enough to become a cautionary tale…

. . .

It’s impossible for me to dislike Stan.

Roz Kirby, Jack’s wife, hated him with an unholy passion, but she earned that right.

Steve Ditko clearly had an axe or three to grind, but he’s maintained his silence.

Steve Gerber had his friction points with Stan, but in the end bore him no animosity.

Another comics pro, when news broke of the discovery of the missing Marvel artwork, shook his head and said with a rueful smile, “Stan never fails to disappoint, doesn’t he?”

Stan the Man.

The man who was Marvel.

The mythmaker of modern superhero culture.

We want him to be as heroic, as noble as the heroes he wrote.

But he wasn’t.

He was all too typical of too many people.

Too anxious.

Too easily swayed.

Too eager to succeed.

Too quick to take short cuts.

He loved his wife.

He loved his daughter.

He was charming and gracious in person, and there are few meals I’ve shared that were more delightful than those SLM business lunches.

There was good in him, but not enough strength.

We want our heroes to be strong.

Stan the Man.

Stan the human.

R.I.P.

#Stan Lee #Stan Lee Media #comics #Marvel #obituary

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machetelanding · 6 years

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MILAN — Italy’s government is pushing draft legislation that would revolutionize the country’s divorce laws, abolishing child support and taking custody away from parents who bad-mouth their exes or try to otherwise harm their relationships with their children.

The idea behind the bill, which is supported by Italy’s governing coalition and has a good chance of becoming law, is to enforce what it describes as “perfect co-parenting.” Children of divorced couples would spend the exact same amount of time living with each parent — young children currently tend to live with their mothers — and each parent would pay for the children’s needs when taking care of them. If one parent were unable to pay, the wealthier parent would pay for those needs directly rather than writing a check to his or her ex-spouse.

The bill’s supporters contend that this would make child support obsolete, but the left-leaning opposition and women’s groups fear that the bill would harm women.

Nadia Somma, a representative of Demetra, an anti-domestic-violence center in Turin, wrote for the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano that the proposed law would “turn back the clock 50 years on women’s rights.” Sen. Valeria Valente of the center-left Democratic Party said it would make “life impossible for mothers."

In Italy’s conservative society, less than 50 percent of women work outside of the home, and most of the burden of child-rearing falls upon mothers. Because women with children struggle to find stable employment, critics argue that the abolition of child support would raise the poverty rate among divorced mothers and could make them unable to provide for their children. Critics fear that the bill could encourage women to stay in abusive marriages rather than opting for a divorce with no child support.

The proposed law also endorses the disputed notion of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), a term first coined in the 1980s by American psychiatrist Richard Gardner. PAS holds that a parent can belittle or bad-mouth the other parent to the point that their child becomes hostile and no longer wants to spend time with them. But PAS is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and the American Psychological Association has “no official position” on whether the syndrome is real, citing a lack of evidence that supports its existence.

Critics worry that claims of PAS could be used to strip custody from mothers or even be used in court to deflect attention from abusive parents. Evidence from the United States also suggests that PAS has been disproportionately used against women: According to a 2017 examination of 238 U.S. court cases involving alienation claims, fathers not only made the vast majority of alienation claims but also won their cases at a much higher rate than women making claims against men.

“Fathers who alleged alienation were more than twice as likely to receive a custody outcome in their favor as mothers who alleged alienation,” read the paper, which was published in Law & Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice, a law journal at the University of Minnesota Law School.

The bill’s main sponsor, Sen. Simone Pillon of the far-right League party, is well known for his hard-line conservatism on social and gender issues. He is one of the organizers of “Family Day,” a yearly anti-gay-marriage event, and often campaigns against what he describes as the “gay lobby.” In a recent interview with Vanity Fair Italy, he said his next step will be proposing a law that would punish women who accuse their husbands of domestic violence if the husbands are not convicted. Pillon has also vowed to make abortion illegal.

Pillon, who is a lawyer by profession and a registered family mediator, has also been accused of pursuing the changes for his own professional gain: His bill would introduce mandatory family mediation for couples considering divorce. Pillon declined to comment to The Washington Post.

To become law, the bill needs to be approved by both houses of Italy’s Parliament. Although government support means the bill is likely to pass, it will probably take a while: Italy’s notoriously slow political system means that approving a law usually takes from six to 17 months.

*****

Holy shit! This part right here!

. . . taking custody away from parents who bad-mouth their exes or try to otherwise harm their relationships with their children.

Children of divorced couples would spend the exact same amount of time living with each parent — young children currently tend to live with their mothers — and each parent would pay for the children’s needs when taking care of them. If one parent were unable to pay, the wealthier parent would pay for those needs directly rather than writing a check to his or her ex-spouse.

I love the sound of that!

#washington post #italy #divorce #laws #relationships #parenting #children #anti feminism #anti feminist #anti sjw #child support

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poeticsandaliens · 6 years

Text

In the morning hour she calls me (post-finale MSR )

This is my take on the post-MS IV canon compliant babyfic. Title is taken from Country Roads (John Denver). Based in part off a post from @foxmulders about Mulder and Scully’s magic teenage son who can explode heads but knows nothing practical about adulting. Tagging @today-in-fic.

Pairing: MSR

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Slowly and strangely, Mulder and Scully reconnect with their son.

He bought the ring years ago. She saw it tucked away in his underwear drawer, once, during the early days of living with him. Two silver bands twirled around each other in a neverending optical illusion. It had taken her a second to realize what it was, another second to realize what it meant, and a third to remember that no, they weren’t already married. They certainly fucked like newlyweds, on every surface that would hold them and some that wouldn’t. They had cracked every piece of furniture but the coffee table.

She wondered for months if he’d actually do it, drop to one knee and go through the romantic motions. Or if he’d wander into the living room one day, unshaven, hands shoved in his pockets and casually ask her to marry him. The funny thing was, meeting Mulder had solidified her desire never to get married. He was everything she found attractive in a man, and he irritated her endlessly in spite of it (and in hindsight, at least partially because of it).

He never asked. When she peeled out of the driveway with her life measured in boxes and medical journals, she was glad for it.

They are slurping cheap shaved ice at a roadside shack, indulging the July heat. Scully has one hand wrapped possessively around a cup of mechanical snow and raspberry syrup, the other shoved into her pocket, pressed flat against her stomach in an ongoing attempt to even process the last week’s events. She can still feel her muscles ripple beneath her touch. She wonders what will come first: the vanishing of her taut abdominal muscles or the baby’s fluttering kicks. What will she hear first: a new heartbeat on a sonogram or her son’s heart beating itself back to life on the river bottom, some confirmation he sends her that he is alive and well? She feels it in her gut, but she waits for him to tell her himself.

“Hey Scully,” Mulder’s hand is on her shoulder. “You okay?”

She nods vacantly. “Thinking,” she replies. About what, she doesn’t have to say. She eyes the grape slush at the bottom of her cup. “Ready to go home?”

“Yeah, but first,” he says, almost sheepishly, in his something to say that I want to be a surprise voice that she always indulges. “I was thinking too, about everything that’s happened in the last couple weeks. I mean, Spender’s dead, Monica’s dead, Skinner isn’t out of the woods yet, William…” he trails off. William is—their son is. Mulder rummages around his jeans pocket. “And I realized, why don’t we get married? Not now, exactly, or even at some set date, but sometime.”

Her bottom lip trembles. “Mulder…”

“Scully, will you marry me sometime?”

And there is the ring. The wedding band he saved for over a decade, that Scully had all but forgotten about, in his outstretched palm over the sticky table. His hands have blue syrup on them. Her eyes water.

“Yees,” she promises. “Sometimes.” She takes his face in her hands and plants one on him, right there between the shake shack and the Taurus. He tastes like blueberries and cheap candy.

That night, between shuddering orgasms and sweet breath and beads of perspiration, they finally break the coffee table.

* * * *

Sunrise curls through the window. Her stomach churns at ungodly hours of the morning, so she kneels each dawn before the porcelain god, then compulsively organizes the kitchen. She needs something to do, even more so since Kersh had informed them of their suspension. So she moves the salt shaker three inches to the right to make room for a potted succulent.

Hey, Dana. Nice plant. It’s Willam’s voice. She’s never heard it in person, but God, she’d know it anywhere. That cavalier, undeniably Mulder-ish tone, as if he were a stranger who could waltz into her life without preamble.

“William…” Her lungs flatten into her ribcage. “Jackson…”

I’m sorry about the whole dying thing, he says carefully. But you understand why I had to do it. They have to believe I’m gone. They have to believe their experiment failed.

“William—”

He cuts her off. Do you think you could answer some questions for me?

“William they may claim ownership of you, call you their experiment. But no matter what, you’re still a person. No matter how afraid and bitter I ever sounded. You will always be our son, and you have a place here if you want it.” She sighs through her nose; she hopes he knows what she’s telling him.

Worry about the little one right now. Of course he knows about the baby. For a moment she’s squared up to give him a talking to for being a know-it-all, but he’s such a stranger to her still. She lacks that kind of authority. That thing’s… what, the size of a blueberry? William continues. That’s what you told that Mulder guy. It’s a lot more fragile than I am. I just need to ask you a question. There is an awkward pause. She counts second until finally, William mutters, if I cut the mold off a sandwich, can I still eat it?

She can’t see him, but oh, she sees Mulder’s son. She stifles a weepy laugh. He isn’t making promises, but she chooses to focus on the fact that he hadn’t refused to come home, either. She’ll see him soon—she can feel it written like a prescription in the fiber of her bones.

* * * *

William communicates sporadically, over the next few weeks. She will be swinging on the front porch, as Mulder collects dead branches and hurls them across the property for Daggoo, and William’s voice will slice into her consciousness. Images will flash through her mind, sometimes the mundane and sometimes the extraordinary. One day he asks, What is it called again when you can make an object float? Telepathy or Telekinesis? The next day, can I put this burrito into the microwave with the wrapper on? And so on. What’s an easy way to hide the bullet scar in my head? How do I get coffee stains out of a white t-shirt?

Sometimes, he sticks around in her head long enough for Mulder to notice. He catches that glassy look in her eye, asks her to tell William he loves him, wishes he would come home. She always says the first part, never the second. She understands now, she cannot ask William to simply melt into their family. “He’ll come when he’s ready,” she promises Mulder, curious if William can still hear her.

I don’t feel like a William, he muses one day. That’s what you named me, right? I don’t feel like Jackson either, but I’m not sure if William is what I want to be called forever.

“We can call him Will,” Mulder suggests cautiously, hunched at his desk. He’s taken to inscribing their adventures in brilliant fiction. His reading glasses suit him.

I’m okay with Will. Like that boy from Pirates of the Caribbean, the one who died and came back. He was pretty cool. Man, I loved those movies as a kid. He’s stopped paying attention to what he relays to her. She enjoys those oblivious moments before their connection is severed.

* * * *

She lies on their tattered couch, a medical journal propped half-heartedly against her knees. She’d stopped reading awhile ago, when the flopping and fluttering began in her stomach. She’d felt it earlier, tiny jerks of movement from the inside, but nothing like this. This is the most tangible, physical reminder of the impossible baby developing inside her. She has softened, her body less wiry now, but still, she’s hardly showing; only Mulder takes notice, and he’s particularly interested in her breasts. She presses her fingers into the side of her belly and is rewarded with somersaults that make her wonder if the baby that make her think of acrobats in the Cirque de Soleil. She thinks of an old X-file, a town of Floridian sideshow performers. If it seemed odd once, she and her family would fit right into it now.

There’s a knock on the door. Skinner comes first to mind—he is their only contact with the FBI, the only person who knows where they live. She and Mulder aren’t the type to make couple-friends at local restaurants.

Mulder thumps downstairs to the door. “I’ve got it, Scully. Don’t get up—” his words catch in his throat.

“Mulder? Who is it?” Scully swings her stiff legs over the couch and moves to join him. She fetches her sidearm from a drawer, just in case. Her heartbeat quickens as infinite possibilities flicker through her head—agents, assassins, aliens, for God’s sake. Even that crosses her mind, if only for a second.

But oh–there are no thick-coated men in black outside the door but her son. Their son, lanky and shaggy and taller than his father. He wears a denim jacket, ratty black jeans that cling to his legs and a t-shirt with what Scully presumes is a band name plastered across the front in such spectacular lettering she has to squint to make sure they’re letters.

“Hey, Dana. Mulder. I’m in town for a few days and I thought, maybe I could crash here?” He looks almost guilty, his lower lip sticking out like Mulder’s. She’s struck by his rumpled, rebellious frame and how closely it resembles Mulder in his youth. And if there was ever any doubt who his father his, she can cite the genetic tendency to die dramatically and spring back to life.

“Of course,” Mulder says and wraps him into a hug, and he lets out a little oof of surprise. He takes it in stride, though, turning to Dana with a twinkle in his eye that wasn’t there before. When she hugs him, her arms fit around his waist and not his shoulders. God, he’s a foot taller than her.

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

He shrugs awkwardly. “I didn’t want you to.”

“Come,” Scully says, because she’s not sure what else to say, here on the front porch of their unremarkable house. “Come inside.”

He follows her into the house, glancing around at the creaky furniture, explosions of books and manila folders, and a smile spreads across his face. “This is a cool place.”

“I’ll show you the spare bedroom.” Scully gestures to the stairs. But when she turns around, Will’s eyes are fixed somewhere else. Her breath catches, because there on the desk is the first sonogram of her unborn child. The other physical evidence, paired nicely with the barrage of kicks where her belly pokes almost unnoticeably over her slacks.

“How old is it?” he asks, and there’s an unidentifiable cadence to his voice.

“Thirteen weeks.”

He nods slightly. “You two are cute parents.”

Her heart cracks at the present tense. Are, she thinks, not will be. Are. She remembers that when three days later, he vanishes from their lives once again.

* * * *

They see him once or twice more in the coming weeks. Scully has learned to recognize the rat-tat-tat of his beater car pulling into the driveway. When he does come back, he often brings some strange, uniquely tourist-y food from wherever he’d last stayed, and they work it into the evening meal. Mulder reminds her that their son has a lot to unpack at his age.

She gets mental postcards of his life. Breathtaking scenery, shadowy forests backlit by an industrial flashlight, harkening back to her youth. He asks about laundry at first, then about her old cases. Verbally, in immense detail as she’s walking or reading or shopping for a shitty IKEA crib, she gives him the X-files. Every case feels like a pound of weight off her shoulders. She tells them like an epic, passed orally from bard to bard. It is Will’s turn now.

* * * *

Whoever called it a ‘baby bump’ had an extraordinarily easy pregnancy, she muses bitterly. Twenty-three weeks, she was a fuller, freckled, flush-faced painting of herself. A little heavier, probably healthier if she’s not lying. She’d hit twenty-four, like a fucking timer, and done a double take in the bathroom mirror. She looked pregnant—not long gone due-any-day, but undeniably with child, her midsection smooth and rounded out, protruding slightly even beneath her pajama shirt.

Mulder had looked at her like she’d plucked the sun out of the sky and handed it to him. She had lain in the backyard grass next to him and it felt like they had come out of time. He pressed his hands to the sides of her belly and grinned. He had, in the course of one afternoon, told the baby about Flukeman, Sasquatch, and the Mothmen in vast detail.

Strolling through the supermarket, she feels exposed, like her life is laid out for the world to see and judge. To line up her crow’s feet with the stretch marks on her stomach. She swears Will wasn’t this big at twenty-four weeks, or perhaps the frame he grew into hadn’t started out as tiny and tightly wound.

“Did you ever hear the one about the woman who gave birth to a beetle?” the check-out attendant asks her. “When he got older he really bugged her!” The guy belts out a jolly laugh, and if she were anyone else she might take it in stride.

She purses her lips. It’s not his fault that he hits too close to home. She can’t think about it, or it’ll all consume her again—Pennsylvania fields littered with tiny, mutated bodies, devil-children cremated outside mansions, insects pulled from women’s wombs. Will sliding into the world in some Godforsaken ghost town into the arms of a woman who seventeen years later would inevitably die in vain.

The woman who gave birth to a beetle? He came out of her screaming and wide-eyed and wet, like any other baby but greener than poison. He suckled her breast with pincers. She read it in an X-file, once.

It’s too much. She presses herself into Mulder later, kisses him hungrily, seeks in him the antithesis to all her anxieties. He takes her from behind because that’s all they can manage now, and she comes so quickly and loudly it’s almost embarrassing.

* * * *

Mulder pokes the peak of her belly. A foot pokes back. She indulges him—all smiles and salt-and-pepper stubble, pushing up her t-shirts reverently touching the ponderous curve of her. She remembers his absence seventeen years ago too distinctly. She pretends not to adore the wonder in his eyes.

The rhythmic puff of a shitty tailpipe rouses them. They know that car. He helps her off the couch in a daze of frantic limbs as they hurry to the door because he’s here, in all of his snarky, ratty adolescent glory. He looks good. He looks genuinely happy, for the first time since they met him. He looks stronger than last they saw.

“Will,” Mulder calls across the driveway because he can’t help himself. Will waves at him with a crooked smile, ambling up to the door. He has a backpack with him, and a box of what appear to be butter croissants.

“Hi Mulder,” he says as he’s engulfed in a hug. “Hi Dana.” His gaze flicks to her stomach; hi eyebrows shoot up, and does he realize how long he’s been gone?

She smiles at him. For a brief moment she’s worried she should have more to say, but Will has been a more constant presence in her life than in Mulder’s simply because he can slip in and out of her mind as he pleases. Right now, she’s said enough.

“I need to put these on the table,” he says, holding up the croissants. “They’re to share.”

They sit around the cramped kitchen table. They bustle awkwardly, preparing sandwiches and opening windows to let the evening sunlight in. With it comes a summer warmth, a red glow on the windowsill. “Why don’t we go outside?” Will suggests. Every time he opens his mouth, Scully expects him to tell her how long he’s staying. Or, she expects an apologetic air, to be able to read the conflict in him and know he will leave in a day or two. She hasn’t felt it yet.

Scully nods and moves to get up from the table. Slowly, with a conscious effort she resents. She sways as she stands, her balance off-kilter. It’s been so long since she’s looked like this. It shocks her how unprepared she is for the shift in her center of gravity. These days it feels like her skin his made of leather, her bones of cold ceramic, and before she can reassure her near-grown son, say, “oh this is normal, you know,” Will’s hand shoots out to steady her.

The heartache flares. It should be the other way around. It should be the other way around. She should have been there to hold him up as he tottered. “Dana?” he asks, and his voice is laced with unanswerable questions.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m just not used to this yet.” She smooths her hand over her belly, her palm jumping as the baby’s foot protrudes out one side. She feels Will’s dark eyes on her, suddenly so much younger than the rest of him. Perhaps he thinks of his own birth. She certainly does. She thinks of how Mulder put his hand right there when he kicked, and how painfully long ago it all was.

“Remember,” she tells him, “we can’t be young forever.”

Will looks at the otherworldly shape of its foot, pushing on her like a drumskin. He looks at the sharp lines of her cheekbones undercut by the quiet, tranquil determination in her eyes when she touches the errant limb. He looks at Mulder looking at her, with unadulterated wonder. It slips out of his mouth, clearly unexpected. “Can I feel?”

Scully is misty-eyed—some combination of hormones and her body awash with history—when she nods. She sways again; it’s all so overwhelming, and Mulder moves behind her, his hand on the small of her back. She takes Will’s callused hand, her eyebrows raised at him to make sure it’s okay, and places it on the hard mound of her belly.

He grins. “I can feel it move.” A laugh escapes him. She guides him to where the foot pushes out lopsided. He taps it, and it taps back. She flashes back again to Mulder, in the hospital, his palm flat on the skin that enclosed the amoebic creature to become Will.

William is a boy tailed by Death; it clings to his skin like spiderwebs, haunts him wherever he flees to. She hopes Will finds peace here, feeling his sibling move inside her. It is unspeakably weird, all of it, to have the baby she mourned for decades turn up grown before her eyes. In a way, she’d always pictured him outside of time. But neither does he last forever, so here she stands with stubbled spook-writer Mulder, her adult son holding her steady and clinging with one finger to her unborn child.

She wishes they could hand Will the sun, but all they can hand him is home, whatever that may be.

#the x-files #txf fanfic #fox mulder #dana scully #william scully #jackson van de kamp #ms iv #ms iv post-ep #ms iv fanfic #baby fic #msr fanfic #today-in-fic

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therealreverendchris · 3 years

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Hey so I found this pretty funny/disturbing post that others here may find interesting. OG post is here: https://ift.tt/3gBQUYH PASTAOG post starts here:So this is a story I think people in the field of journalism should find shocking. It raises the question of how free western media truly is. It starts with a comedian who does good journalism mocking a corrupt ("allegedly", but again I say that in quotations because there is a lot of evidence for this alleged corruption) and ends with the deployment of a counter-terrorism unit. At the same time is is absolutely hilarious until a recent dark turn. If you care about free speech, journalistic freedom or koalas you may find this of interest. If you want to cut to the chase here is a video depicting the use of police to gag a western journalist while attacking his mother and dog. (WARNING THIS IS DISTURBING): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXtq4a8829g&tIf you want some context as to why a man in a Luigi suit appeared in that video read on. This will be long but worth your time, even if you are not Australian. So for some context FriendlyJordies is a comedic youtube channel which covers Australian politics recently they have been is a very long spat with the Deputy Premier of New South Wales (NSW). NSW is the Australian state with the largest economy in the country also the state where its federal political body governs from. The host of FreindlyJordies, Jordan Shanks has been attacking John Barilaro for corruption and oh boy does Mr. Shanks have a lot of ammunition for these accusations. One example I personally find shocking it Mr. Barilaro using bushfire relief money to fund local election campaigns for Liberal seats (the Australian center-right conservative party).Here is the guardian reporting on this particular claim: https://ift.tt/35xQtbE work, which I recommend people check out, is very high quality journalism. Thoroughly researched and well cited. I will link three videos below so you can see for yourself. The first of these videos Jordan Shanks delivered from a massive property Mr. Barilaro himself owns and rents on Air BnB. Jordan delivers the accusations in a bathrobe and proudly proclaims to have "f**ked in your bed John". The whole point of doing this being to use comedy to draw attention to the question of how a public servant can afford a multimillion dollar estate? Mr. Barilaro is far from having a clean criminal record either he lost his license for texting and driving for instance (https://ift.tt/3jK5Umu) and openly brags about pork barreling (the act of using government funds intended for a public service as electoral funds, so you ostensibly say your funding an arts institute and then you pay for some local representatives advertisements during an election). Jordan has alleged John Barilaro committed perjury 9 times. Throughout these videos Jordan refers to Joh Barilaro as "bruz", a "Giant meatball", "Giovani", or simply "a big fat wog cock" often does a highly offensive impersonation of Barilaro while wearing a Mario outfit. Bruz is often compared to a mafia don or a corrupt roman official. Jordan has also had a rather hilarious string of merchandise based on Jon's likeness including a shirt based on the doom video game cover with John as Doomguy crushing a horde of Koalas under foot and shooting machine guns at them (https://ift.tt/3fz7AOI), or more recently a key chain which depicts Barilaros face on an anthropomorphized scrotum..Bruz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihoirTYqf2c(the video delivered from Barilaro's estate, and is highly recommended it is rare to see any politician so viciously mocked and called out for their bullshit). Another video detailing illegal dealings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgy_FblYNh4Secret Dictatorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AiYvpe6qfs -this video describes how Barilaro is personally connected to a poorly designed water refinement project clearly built as cheaply as possible to allow people connected to the local liberal council or just friends of Barilaro to skim tens of thousands of dollars off a grant intended for infrastructure. The facility is poisoning local residents, even giving one families son permanent neurological damage and is drowning some farmers lands with tainted water.Barilaro is hiding his corruption behind banality and the veneer of authority and legitimacy. People simply don't have time to look into local politics and explaining it is boring so no one cares. The problem is John Barilaro is not only corrupt he is destroying Koala habitats, his policies have lead to a huge amount a land clearing which destroys Koalas living spaces and their only food source, the eucalyptus plant. At 14 minutes into the Bruz video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihoirTYqf2c)Jordan Shanks describes how Mr. Barilaro essentially sold a national park for 10 000 dollars. Eventually Mr. Barilaro sued Jordan Shanks for defamation, Jordan decided to turn this lawsuit into a public carnival. If you are wondering if that was a good idea, no probably not but the whole point is to draw attention to Mr. Barilaro's corruption.Jordan proceeded to crash a university event where John Barilaro was dressed as Luigi. Go to 38 minutes in to see that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUhNFSyHGyE&t=312sThey then taunted the lawyers sending them the lawsuit and finally Jordan's producer, Kristo Langker ran into John in the street and approached him to clarify the address on the document served to them. John Barilaro is a provincial official but has listed his address as the federal parliament a fact Jordan is probably trying to mock.Now this is where this gets dark. Within hours of that incident happening some one gave the Australian police a falsified police statement and a counter terrorism unit was deployed to arrest Jordan Shanks's producer at his own home. A video The producer is a key witness in the defamation lawsuit but now is under a criminal bail conditions which prevent him from speaking about John Barilaro or possessing's and image or caricature of the Deputy Premier. How is he supposed to speak in court during the defamation lawsuit if he is not allowed to even talk about John Barilaro? Jordan Shanks's lawyer points out as much in an interview. The lawyer representing Jordan Shanks says it is likely a warrant out for Jordan as well.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsqjPUu8LkY(interview with Jordan Shank's Lawyer)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXtq4a8829g&t=1s(The video detailing the arrest made by the "Fixated persons unit" posted at the beginning)https://ift.tt/2U6zBWX news piece describing how this fixated persons unit has been used in the past to intimidate journalists who don't tow the Liberal party line)To make matters worse most of the media landscape in Australia is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the guys who runs fox news. 70% of all news outlets in Australia are Newscorp and Rupert Murdoch is unsurprisingly very buddy buddy with the Liberal (the Australian conservatives). So you would think given the context of what I have described here the Australian press would be running stories about the counter terrorism unit deployed to put a gag order on a journalist exposing corruption. Nope! Google "FriendlyJordies arrested", you will find a string of articles nearly copied and pasted titled "FrinedlyJordies Producer arrested for stalking" with a favorable picture of John Barilaro in a suit painted as a victim of stalking and the only mention of him using public funds illegally as "alleged corruption". Not even a mention of what the allegations are, because that might make people wonder if they are true and no context given for the arrest or mention that is was performed by a counter terrorism unit. The interview I posted earlier, was the only interview longer than 45 seconds with Jordan Shanks's lawyer and it was removed from the facebook page for fear of legal action as Jordan Shanks is being sued for defamation. That YouTube link is a recording that has been shared online. Jordan has made numerous attacks on the Australian press where it is a common tactic for politicians to refuse to give interviews to journalists who give them unfavorable coverage. These "drops" are then dangled like carrots in front of journalists and basically used to control their career advancement. Here is one example of this happening to an AM radio host who pointed the failing of the Murdoch press to report on Barilaro's doings and now has been denied access to parliamentary members granted to other members of the press (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR67gwv7Gns). This of course will limit his ability to actually report on Australian politics.EDIT: Now that a couple days have passed some other non-murdoch publications have begun turning out some stories with a more balanced slant, pedestrien, crikey, the brag, have all given more than fair coverage (despite being targeted by Jordan Shanks in the past, honestly cudos to them). Googling FriendlyJordies arrested turn out some decent coverage but you should note the swarm of nearly copy pasted Murdoch publications with headlines designed to make it seem to a reader cursorily grazing the headlines that FreindlyJordies was arrested for stalking.Here is one (non-Murdoch) report that gets it right: https://ift.tt/3wRLApK I think it adds a lot to this story to get the full picture of Jordan dressing as mario and comparing John Barilaro to a meatball. The doom shirts and the keychains are a particular favorite of mine. Not to mention a reminder that free speech is something that even in the west we need to fight for. You may disagree with the methods Jordan Shanks used but bear in mind he succeeded in making John Barilaro a household name, beforehand John was just this boring local politician no one thought much about despite the fact that his policies may drive Koalas further to extinction and he is thoroughly corrupt. This is how evil hides, behind boredom and banality. Indeed Mr. Barilaro has hidden behind the curtains polite society affords him for years, and when Jordan Shanks put on a Mario-cap screaming "LOOK AT THATA GREAASY MEATBALL" people in Australia finally started to pay attention. Mr. Barilaro's defamation lawsuit against Jordan Shanks is a reminder that sometime parody carries more weight and power than politely worded attempt at informing citizens.Not feeling a defamation lawsuit was enough the deputy premier lied in a police statement and is now putting Jordan's producer at risk of going to jail for 3 years...because Kristo (the producer) mocked Mr. Barilaro in person at a public event and bumped into him on the street? Because of that a counter terrorism unit was dispatched to enforce a gag order for "stalking". Mr. Barilaro has also sued google for defamation for hosting the videos and this may go on to have wider implications for how big tech designs their algorithms to handle political content via /r/Corruption

#reverend chris #Corruption

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austenmimetics-blog · 6 years

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Austen, Mimetics, and Fanfiction (introduction to the blog)

Lately, I have been struck by the recurring thought that Jane Austen is treated unlike any other author. The many views of Janeites seem largely paradoxical at times. Jane Austen has been appropriated to communicate both alt right (https://www.chronicle.com/article/Alt-Right-Jane-Austen/239435) and liberal feminist (https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-jane-austen-can-teach-us-about-sexual-harassment-1514822957) ideals. She is heralded as mother of “chick lit” (Harmon, 201) and game theorist (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/books/michael-chwe-author-sees-jane-austen-as-game-theorist.html).

The purpose of this blog is to examine Jane Austen’s own work, as well as her continued fandom, in relation to meme theory and fanfiction. If I can gain a better understanding of why and how ideas survive, than perhaps I can gain a better understanding of the cloud of truths which surround Austen. In this introductory post I will give a brief definition of meme theory and fanfiction, relate them to each other, and finally relate them back to Jane Austen, specifically her novels Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice. Northanger Abbey because of its meta engagement with meme/fanfiction, and its general engagement with all things Austen (social class, marriage plot, sarcasm). Pride and Prejudice because it is arguably peak Austen fandom (who doesn’t swoon over Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy?).

I’ll start with meme theory. Meme theory was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his popular science book The Selfish Gene and it has continued to gain traction since. Dawkins presented meme theory to discuss culture in terms of genetics/Darwinism, and in doing so, he framed the possibility of a fit idea. Think back to whatever you’ve learned about Darwin in the past. Survival of the fittest. Dawkins explained meme “as a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” (Dawkins, 192). He even named memes to rhyme with genes. Dawkins explained that the part of an idea which make up a meme, is the thing about it which many individuals hold in common, as opposed to all of the disparate parts. When we think about the act of reading, we might think about reading different books in different languages, but generally, we all imagine the act of internally spelling out letters and words on a page which string together to create some larger meaning.

It must be noted, that considering culture in terms of Darwinism is a bit terrifying (Darwinism was used to justify racism, and colonialism generally, for a long time), and that shouldn’t be ignored (Dawkins does seem to ignore that fact, however). Thinking about the ways in which ideas are alive/act similarly to living organisms, however, doesn’t feel inherently harmful. So let us remember the ways in which dominant cultures can aid in the survival or death of particular memes as we go forward.

This brings me to fanfiction. Fanfiction are “stories produced by fans based on plot lines and characters from either a single source text or else a “canon” of works” (Thomas, 1). Fanfiction allow narrative worlds to be expanded upon (outside of the original text). When fanfiction meet internet platforms this expansion becomes basically limitless.

Fanfiction, in my opinion, are interesting to think about in relation to meme theory. They represent an expansion of ideas which are so obviously shaped by those who consume those same ideas. Fanfictions expand on the original meme, or multiple memes, which a book represents. In doing so fanfiction aids in the survival of the original meme(s). The more forms these memes are willing to take, the more people who interact with them, the more likely they are to be passed on. Simultaneously, fanfiction allow fans to play a role in potentially mutating the original meme. It makes sense that a meme (like genes!) would mutate over time to become better suited for their current environment. With fanfiction, these meme mutations can happen almost instantaneously. In What is Fanfiction and Why are People Saying Such Nice Things about it, Bronwen Thomas points out that “fan communities proudly boast about the influence they have on people’s engagements with the storyworlds about which they write”(10). Fanfiction, especially that which is written online, is not always created by the dominant culture, or even by the dominant fandom. Many platforms allow for different voices to contribute more equally. The interesting thing about Austen fandoms and fanfics, however, is that they “tend to be quite conservative and fiercely protective of the Austen legacy” (Thomas, 6).

So what is the central meme we can draw from or around Jane Austen? What is it that fans set out so fiercely to protect, even within their own fanfic? Let’s take a closer look at a couple of Austen’s novels to gain a better understanding of the stakes. Every Austen novel contains a marriage plot. Every Austen novel simultaneously contains a lot of wit and irony. It is not always certain how these two things interact, but their combination leave a lot of room for interpretation.

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey functions through sarcasm and the marriage plot (as most of her novels do). Northanger Abbey, a kind of gothic fanfiction in its own right, ends with the marriage of Catherine and Mr. Tilney. Much of the novel’s tension resides in the uncertainty of romantic feelings between the two. A tension which moves the plot equally, however, is the central irony. Northanger Abbey begins, “no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine”(Austen, 5). This beginning shows irony through a meta-awareness of format which continues throughout. Not long after this intro, the narrator openly defends novels, “I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding”(Austen, 22). In this, the narrator defends Catharine’s enjoyment of novels, while once again showing self-awareness of form.

Peak engagement with gothic fiction as a genre comes through at the points in which Catherine interacts with the Tilney’s own abbey. Catherine asks Henry Tilney if the abbey is “a fine old place, just like what one reads about” (Austen, 107), and Henry responds by explaining it as gothic, with “sliding panels and tapestry” (Austen, 107), “gloomy passages” (Austen, 108), and beds with “a funeral appearance” (Austen, 108). Although the abbey does not end up fitting these gothic descriptions, Catherine leans into every gothic mood which strikes her, eventually convincing herself that the General Tilney has murdered his late wife. By engaging with stereotypically gothic images and tone, Austen expands the world of gothic fiction in her own right. Northanger Abbey can thus be taken as a fanfiction, while the meme of gothic fiction is passed on.

Although similarly framed through irony, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a more classic example of Austen as marriage plot meme. In Pride and Prejudice there are multiple proposal scenes, and the proposals themselves make up the major plot developments within the novel. The novel begins with the line, “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Austen, 3). This line might be ridiculous, and obviously untrue, but it nevertheless alerts readers to the tensions to come. Elizabeth Bennet is proposed to three times, once by her cousin Mr. Collins, and twice by Mr. Darcy. Each proposal represents a peak in her character development. The first by Mr. Collin’s allows for her to the assert the separation of her own needs from her parents desires for her, the second proposal (first of Mr. Darcey’s) provides space for Elizabeth to begin questioning her own view and judgements of the world, while the third proposal finally ends with an engagement to Darcy. Without the proposals, Pride and Prejudice would be plotless. The irony of the first line does not negate this fact.

The role of irony and marriage plot together ultimately serve to complicate the larger meme of Jane Austen. In a way, irony allows for people to take the marriage plot as seriously as they want to. You can imagine Austen as lover of the institution, lover of marriage, or as institutional cynic; both are supported within the original texts. This makes the meme of Austen, although difficult to pin down, perhaps especially mimetically fit. Austen can continue to mean a lot of different things to different people, and the two major conflicting memes which exist within her novels, allow for these external conflicting views to align with her as a larger cultural symbol. Perhaps the extreme adaptability of Austen as a meme is why Austenites feel such a need to defend her. Memes are adaptable when they serve people or cultures as a whole. Austen’s ironic marriage plots give the people stories which help situate themselves to the paradox’s which surround them everyday.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. New York: Norton & Company, 2004.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Norton & Company, 2001.

Cohen, Paula. What Jane Austen Can Teach Us About Sexual Harassment. The Wall Street Journal, 1 Jan. 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-jane-austen-can-teach-us-about-sexual-harassment-1514822957.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Harmon, Claire. Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World. New York: Picador, 2009.

Mirmohamadi, Kylie. The Digital Afterlives of Jane Austen: Janeites at the Keyboard. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Wright, Nicole. Alt Right Jane Austen. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 Mar. 2017, https://www.chronicle.com/article/Alt-Right-Jane-Austen/239435.

Schuessler, Jennifer. Game Theory: Jane Austen Had it First. The New York Times, 22 Apr. 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/books/michael-chwe-author-sees-jane-austen-as-game-theorist.html.

Thomas, Bromwen. “What is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice Things About it.” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 3, 2011, pp. 1-24.

#Jane Austen #Janeites #Meme theory #Mimetics #dawkins #northanger abbey #pride and prejudice #meme #literature #fanfiction

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khalilhumam · 4 years

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‘The house search was the last straw': colleagues react to Russian journalist’s death

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/the-house-search-was-the-last-straw-colleagues-react-to-russian-journalists-death/

‘The house search was the last straw': colleagues react to Russian journalist’s death

Slavina's self-immolation has shocked Russia's journalistic community

Russian journalist Irina Slavina. Photo from Irina Slavina's Facebook account.

On October 2, Irina Slavina, editor of KozaPress, died in Nizhny Novgorod, after setting herself on fire outside an interior minister building in the city. In her last Facebook post, Slavina wrote: “I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death.” Slavina’s death has shocked many, with several groups calling for a criminal investigation into the actions of Russian law enforcement that may have contributed to her death. On 1 October, Slavina’s home was searched as part of an investigation into the Open Russia movement – local law enforcement broke down the door to her apartment and confiscated all her computer equipment. She is survived by her husband and daughter. Slavina’s website KozaPress covered a range of local issues — from public utilities and pensions to property development and the security services — and by 2019 was the second most-cited media in the Nizhny Novgorod region. In 2017 and 2018, Slavina wrote three articles for openDemocracy — about how people who migrate to Russia are targeted by the security services. This work included exposing a horrendous fabrication of an “Islamic State” plot in her home region. The Russian online publication Holod.Media asked people who knew her for their reactions, which was translated to English by oDR, openDemocracy's section on Russia and the post-Soviet space. RuNet Echo republishes this text with the permission of both publications. Alexey Sadomovsky, deputy head of regional Yabloko party in Nizhny Novgorod Irina was the founder, publisher and chief editor of the most popular independent media in Nizhny Novgorod — KozaPress. In recent years, she dedicated her entire life to working on this media. It’s clear that she was completely independent, because the security services pressured her constantly. They created several administrative cases against her — about insulting [a representative] of the authorities, the “undesirable organisation” law, for organising a march in memory of [Boris] Nemtsov, some other cases. She lived under constant pressure these past few years, in constant fear, anxiety. It seems she couldn’t take it anymore, the search of her apartment was the last straw. Before she entered journalism, Irina worked as a school teacher. She worked for different regional media in Nizhny Novgorod, then she decided to set up her own – she lacked space for self-realisation, she didn’t want to be limited by some kind of administrative barriers, she didn’t want to serve, she wanted to tell the truth. She built the outlet from the ground up. She collected money including via donations. I donated too, like other people here. When we first met, KozaPress had not been set up yet, but Irina was already a journalist. She loved Russia very much, her city, she wasn’t planning on emigrating, she wanted our society to become more civilised and for it to become a nicer place to live. She was always joking, and seemed happy. Now it’s clear that there was a lot of anxiety behind this, but she never talked about this publicly. As a journalist, she was marked out by the fact that she always tried to get to the truth, whatever it cost her. There’s no other journalist like her in Nizhny Novgorod. Public officials knew her well and were afraid of her. The last time I saw her was last week when deputies to the city council were receiving their mandates. There was nothing depressive, no strange remarks from her — we had a normal chat, then she asked me for some photographs to publish with an article. She never published any article that investigators could have had a go at. You have to understand that the case wasn’t started against her, but someone else who had a lot of administrative cases outstanding, enough to start a criminal case. We don’t have Open Russia in Nizhny Novgorod. She couldn’t have worked with them. I think that the pressure of the court, the house search led to her taking her own life, nothing else. As someone whose home was also searched yesterday, I can say that it’s a lot of pressure. Especially when it happens over a couple of years. This can totally lead someone to take their own life. It’s hard to live like that, it’s true. Stanislav Dmitrievsky, rights defender It’s very hard to speak. Ira Slavina is one of the best journalists I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. A person of extreme professionalism and at the same time very strong civic position. To many people, she gave the impression that she was like a stone wall, but actually she was a very sensitive person. People will say a lot of things now, that it was an act of weakness… What she did is awful, but it wasn’t weak. It seems it was a cry of desperation, to protest against the horror that is happening. I punish myself: today I was going to drop some money to help with the computer equipment… As soon as I saw her post, I wrote her, but she didn’t answer. And then news came. I spoke to her last yesterday, I asked what help she needed. She said that it was very hard for her to speak, that she hadn’t yet recovered from the house search. As far as I understand, it was her first experience of that. We’ve got used to it, you see – a house search, so what? They’ve taken your computer equipment… But Ira had not developed cynicism. Just like with Anna Politkovskaya — the more she encountered the horror of war, the more sensitive she became. There are people who cover themselves with an armour of cynicism, there are people who just take the stronger side, they sell themselves. Take a look at our propagandists on television — many of them used to be perfectly decent journalists and decent people. But then there’s regression. Ira was someone who was hurt, traumatised by what happened around here, she couldn’t make her peace with it. There are moments when you are filled with anger to the point where it’s hard to live. Some people develop their own armour against this, but she didn’t. For her, the ideal of a real journalist – independent, dispassionate, unbiased — was very important. Read her last reportage — it’s about the house searches. She doesn’t even mention herself hardly in the text. Just facts, just facts. For her, the idea of journalism as a part of civilised society was a very important value. After all, she hardly ever spoke righteously. Of course, sometimes she did get mad and was annoyed, but she never let herself express it. Sometimes it’s better to express it and say, you’re all rotten, but she kept it inside, and then it exploded. I knew she was an emotional person, and I was, of course, afraid – but not that she would take her own life, that didn’t occur to me. I was afraid that she would lose it, give it all up… She reacted very emotionally to injustice. Not towards her! She had an instinctive sense of following the truth as a fundamental part of the world. She wasn’t religious, we spoke about this a lot, but she had an incredible sense for truth — which comes from above, rather than a person. She was killed by that gap between the truth that should be, and what she had to constantly face. Everyone loves to say the right thing and look good, but not everyone’s ready to sacrifice something for the sake of the values that they live by. What happened is awful, but she remained true to herself to the end. I just punish myself that I didn’t see it coming. Perhaps, that’s a lesson for everyone. Perhaps if we were more sensitive in Nizhny Novgorod, then perhaps we would have been worried earlier. Unfortunately, I only became worried when I saw her Facebook post, and then a few minutes later found out she had died. Too late. We’re all guilty. Of course, the cops and the FSB will just wipe their hands. But we’re guilty. Arkady Galker, chairman of Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Memorial human rights organisation This news has knocked me off my feet. Irina and I were in touch yesterday about the case connected to the house searches. I sent her the case materials that we’d managed to get, she thanked me, wrote something on social media on the basis of those materials. We offered her legal aid via Memorial and OVD-Info. It should be noted that seven activists’ homes were searched yesterday and, as far as I know, only two faced nasty treatment – Irina Slavina and [Mikhail] Iosilevich both had large groups of security services, who used chainsaws to cut down their front doors. Iosilievich has a specific situation, he’s the main suspect in a criminal case. In Slavina’s case, I think this was most likely an attempt to scare her by the state. The goal was to demonstrate state terror, to show that she was vulnerable to the state. It’s clear that all these searches aren’t really connected to Iosilevich’s activities. It’s just the state has taken the opportunity to scare people and get as much blackmail material that they can take off people’s devices. They hit Irina Slavina as hard as they could. Obviously it was very difficult for her. Irina and I met at an event to commemorate Boris Nemtsov. She was a resilient and courageous woman. There was an episode with the fourth march in memory of Nemtsov, when she was brought up on administrative charges. She came to the gathering point and then went ahead of the column with a small portrait of Nemtsov. She was basically leading people. She had this capacity for leadership, courage. And of course, I didn’t completely understand how much she was traumatised by the state’s act of terror. We used to seeing her a certain way and didn’t understand how hard it was for her. I feel an enormous sense of guilt, we didn’t support her as we should have. Nikolay Rybakov, chairman of Yabloko Irina was a journalist who didn’t just cover events drily. She wanted to influence them. She was a very soulful, good-natured person. We even had to put out a fire once together: we came to a polling station where someone had set something on fire, and we put it out, called the fire brigade. She was someone who could not brush past some problem. Of course, the current government isn’t ready for these kind of people — they want people to keep themselves to themselves, to stay quiet. It’s completely awful and unexpected that she made the decision she did, because it’s not worth it. She just couldn’t withstand the pressure from the security services, the persecution that was going on in recent monhs. Of course, yesterday’s house searches were the last straw. Law enforcement thinks that everyone is made of steel around them. But not everyone is made of steel. And now it’s the responsibility of those who organised this, the people who created this atmosphere in the country. Svetlana Kuzevanova, legal counsel for Center for Defending Media Rights Ira was a fighter. She was never afraid to write and speak, she always refused to be more neutral and accurate in her texts. And she loved and believed in her KozaPress. On 17 September, we went together to a court hearing in Nizhny Novgorod — I represented the interests of her media. I didn’t know her well, but I didn’t see anything concerning. Yesterday I offered the help of our centre, to appeal against the house search. We had a normal chat, I’m in shock at what has happened. Askhat Kayumov, director of Dront ecological centre This is a gigantic loss for the city and a huge sadness for people. Irina, it goes without saying, was one of the few honest journalists in Nizhny Novgorod. We were in touch on ecological issues connected to protecting the environment in the city, citizens’ environmental rights. And she always wrote about them honestly. Dmitry Mitrokhin, blogger Irina was a journalist with a capital J — a clear example for all the city’s journalists of how to work. Over the course of several years, she made her own news agency, which successfully competed with larger media companies. A news agency based on one fragile woman. I was always in awe of her capacity, her speed, the amount of information she could process to then produce quality texts. Honestly, I never saw this in Russian journalism – that one person could set up a serious news agency. And she was principled — most likely, this is what caused the tragedy. She could never give up those principles that she believed in. Pavel Miloslavsky, cultural manager Irina was an incredibly honest person. Perhaps inside she was afraid of something, but she was always fearless in what she did. And if she was completely sure of something, she either got it, or made other people understand what her point of view was. Of course, she represented the kind of person that’s hard to find today — someone who has a concept of honour. The fact that she took her life, I think she thought this through. Judging by the Facebook post that she published yesterday, she was in her right mind. There’s our swamp — we make some movements, we express dissatisfaction with our country. But real acts, like those by Nemtsov or Navalny now… She probably decided that she had to do something to draw attention to what is happening in our country, in our city. But what kind of act? Examples of self-immolation are well known. I think she decided that this would be a serious event that could bring people together, people who are not happy with what’s happening in the country. And the country is a piece of shit, we can see that already. Dmitry Gudkov, politician I knew Irina very well. In 2013, in Nizhny Novgorod, we set up a nationwide office for returning direct mayoral elections. Irina was one of the few journalists who actually covered it. I gave her interviews often — there’d be situations where everyone was banned from covering a press conference, and she would come along with a few local journalists. She knew Nemtsov. She was an independent journalist with opposition views, she always helped all the protest groups, always covered their protests. I heard the following: they constantly humiliated her, the security services constantly pressured her, the counter-extremism officers tried to frighten her. She was very concerned about this. She brought these problems to me when I was an MP [2011-2016]. I’m shocked at what’s happened. They did this to her. They pushed her to take her own life. And that’s a crime. Interviews conducted by Mikhail Zelensky, Liza Miller, Sofya Volyanova, Maria Karpenko, Olesya Ostapchuk, Yulia Dudkina. Editor: Alexander Gorbachev

Written by Holod Media

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antoine-roquentin · 7 years

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It can be hard to keep quiet when those around you reinforce the notion that you ought to be proud of your work, even as you are expected to cloak it in doublespeak. Take voter ID laws: since the 2012 presidential campaign, it’s almost as if every Republican official has been itching to take credit for their effort to prevent minorities and the poor from voting, starting with Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Mike Turzai who bragged: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: done!”

Despite the backlash, this wasn’t even a one-off. A number of other GOP officials came out with similar, bizarrely honest remarks — including the GOP consultant Scott Tranter, who mused about his party’s “toolkit”: voter ID and long lines at polling stations — eventually prompting a Washington Post article titled Republicans keep admitting that voter ID helps them win, for some reason. As the cherry on top, a GOP precinct chair named Don Yelton, a minor party activist interviewed by The Daily Show in 2013, said of voter ID: “If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it!”

Donald Trump, too, periodically utters truths that are not supposed to be uttered, as happened again just a couple weeks ago with regard to the shipping industry’s interests in Puerto Rico. But anything at all can come out of his mouth, and does: from drivel, to conspiracy theories, to the left-wing critique of American foreign policy, to more drivel. (And anyway, let’s not talk about Trump.)

He’s quite different from another gaffe-prone leader under whose government I’ve lived. I’m currently based in Hong Kong, and arrived here three years back at a historic moment, just days before the pro-democracy Umbrella Revolution kicked off. Throughout the most tumultuous phase, Hong Kong’s then-leader kept his feet firmly planted in his mouth. CY Leung, the widely-despised chief executive (up until last June), turned into a veritable gaffe machine, high on truth serum. My favorite moment was at the onset of the Year of the Sheep when, in his prepared message for the Lunar New Year’s celebration, he advised Hongkongers to “be more like sheep”.

This was an even more ill-advised choice of words than you might think, as Leung was called “the wolf” by his detractors, one of many puns on his name. As tonal languages, both Cantonese and Mandarin are great for wordplay which often figures into political sloganeering and mockery. (For the same reason, the mainland banned puns a few years back, citing “cultural and linguistic chaos”.)

Thanks to Leung’s nickname, a toy animal sold by Ikea became a mascot of the Umbrella Movement after someone hurled “Lufsig” the wolf at him during a town hall meeting in 2013. The adorable critter — fond of “mischief” according to Ikea’s website — became a sensation and soon sold out. As it turns out, Lufsig’s name was innocent enough in Mandarin, but the same Chinese characters read in Cantonese can be made to sound quite crude. The Swedes were no doubt horrified to find that the local name of their “lumbering one” (as the original roughly translates) could mean “your mother’s pussy” in Cantonese. Worse still, “throw a Lufsig at you” can be translated as “fuck your mother’s pussy”.

Another unforgettable Leung moment was when the chief executive explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times how the problem with democracy is that poor people would influence policy. “If it’s entirely a numbers game,” he elaborated, “then obviously you’d be talking to the half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than US$1,800 a month.” It’s almost refreshing when a leader is so clueless that they just come out and say it — imagine how many in the political class think this.

One that jumps to mind is a man whose great-great-grandmother (also his wife’s great-great-grandmother, as it happens) once ruled Hong Kong: the gaffe-prone Prince Philip. Visiting General Alfredo Stroessner — the Nazi-admiring dictator of Paraguay who wiped out entire indigenous populations through ethnic cleansing and slavery — he remarked: “It’s a pleasant change to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.” (In another moment of honesty, he told a 13-year-old schoolboy dreaming of space travel: “You’re too fat to be an astronaut.”)

Hillary Clinton, too, has been quite upset at how the electorate inserted itself between her and her coronation. In her new book, Clinton sets out to thoroughly explain how what happened in the presidential election was not her fault, and thus, she cannot forgive those who didn’t vote for her.

It’s hardly surprising that someone this out of touch — unaware she should be asking for forgiveness rather than withholding it — would also be as blithe about modern-day slavery as Sheriff Prator of Louisiana. If there were some way to measure the degree of earnest monstrosity — a “Kinsley scale” of sorts — Hillary Clinton’s infamous admission of employing slaves at the governor’s mansion in Arkansas would be its Planck temperature. As many have noted, this is not rhetorical hyperbole, either: the black prisoners serving her Flavor-Blasted Goldfish Crackers were slaves by any technical or legal definition, fully in accordance with the Thirteenth Amendment.

The Clintons bare a lion’s share of responsibility for turning the USA into the for-profit incarceration nation it is. Hillary Clinton recounted these fond memories of her unpaid servants in the book It Takes a Village, which came out just days before her infamous “superpredator” speech — a term attributed to the bigoted rightwing nutcase John J. DiIulio — about black youths who must be “[brought] to heel”. In her own house, she was strict about enforcing rules, and anyone who “broke a rule” was sent to prison.

Clinton makes no bones about her mud-sill-theory notions of forced labor, either, and sees a happy alignment between the civilizing influence and financial benefits of the arrangement. These people aren’t criminals as a “result of inferior IQs or an inability to apply moral reasoning”, she tells us, but due to an inability to “control their emotions”. Luckily, though,

“…difficult as it may be, it is never too late to teach the elements of emotional intelligence. The structure imposed by the responsibilities of work and the enlightened assistance of concerned people in the prison system and at the governor’s mansion helped those onetime murderers I knew in Arkansas to achieve a greater understanding and control over their feelings and behavior.”

None of the many people involved in writing, editing and publishing the book seem to have seen anything problematic about any of this. That’s pretty much as honest, and terrifyingly so, as it gets.

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toongrrl-blog · 4 years

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“The Mommy Myth”: Revolt against the MRS (Part One)

MRS: As explained, “Today we acknowledge that women inhabit many identities throughout the day, and they can be in conflict with each other, so we are constantly negotiating among them. But what the feminine mystique exposed was that all women, each and every one of them, were supposed to inhabit one and only one seamless subject position: that of the selfless, never complaining, always happy wife and mother who cheerfully eradicated whatever other identities she might have had and instead put her husband, her children, and the cleanliness of her house first. Once you grew up, you were supposed to encase yourself in this subject position as if it were a wetsuit, and never take it off. This asphyxiating and disciplining subject position might best be called Moms ‘R’ Us, or MRS, the wife/mother...”

The Women’s International Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH), Mother’s Day, Cleveland, 1969. Broadsides were posted on telephone poles reading:

Today, one day of the year, America is celebrating Motherhood, in home...church...restaurant...candy shop...flower store. The other 364 days she preserves the apple pie of family life and togetherness, and protects the sanctity of the male ego and profit. She lives through her husband and children. She is sacrificed on the alter of reproduction...she is damned to the dreary world of domesticity by day, and legal rape by night...She is convinced that happiness and her lost identity can be recovered by buying--more and more and more and more.

“Wages for Housework”

We clean your homes and your factories. We raise the next generation of workers for you. Whatever else we may do, we are the housewives of the world. In return for our work, you have only asked us to work harder...we are serving notice to you that we intend to be paid for the work we do. We want wages for every dirty toilet, every painful childbirth, every indecent assault, every cup of coffee, and every smile. And if we don’t get what we want, then we will simply refuse to work any longer. Now you will rot in your own garbage. We want it in cash, retroactive and immediately. And we want all of it.

Gloria Steinem’s hopes for the future in U.S. News and World Report, 1975

Responsibility for children won’t be exclusively the woman’s anymore, but shared equally by men--and shared by the community, too. That means that work patterns will change for both women and men, and women can enter all fields just as men can.

The late 1960s for women:

Men got paid more than women for the same exact job.

Women could get credit cards in their husband’s name but not their own.

Many divorced, single, and separated women found it hard to get credit cards at all.

Women could not get mortgages on their own and if a couple applied for one, only the husband’s income was considered.

Women faced discrimination in education, scholarship awards, and on the job.

The collective marriage property was legally the husband’s.

Women kept out of various jobs, like: doctor, college professor, bus driver, business manager.

Knocked out in the delivery room.

Birth Control options were limited (and abortion was illegal).

1960 statistics (it’s not all Leave It To Beaver)

40% of the work force were women, even with young children.

It was not reflected in the law or the media.

“Yeah flirting is fun. A man opens a door for me, I thank him, he smiles---and electricity ripples through us both. A year later I’m flushing out a diaper and he’s opening other doors.” Carold Hanish and Elizabeth Sutherland, Women of the World Unite--We Have Nothing to Lose But Our Men!

In March 18, 1970. Several feminists came into the offices of Ladies Home Journal to stage what would be an 11 hour sit-in to suggest changes to it (and after that, all women’s magazines) where they asserted as the magazine was a magazine for mothers and wives, they needed to establish an on-site childcare center for employees with young children and it’d be run entirely by women and that “the magazine seek out nonwhite women for its staff in proportion to the population”, then added minimum wage and worker participation in editorial decisions. The Editor in Chief, John Mack Carter agreed to an eight-page insert in the August 1970 issue.

The insert contained articles and sidebars entitled “Housewives’ Bill of Rights” (demands for paid maternity leave, paid vacations, free 24 hour childcare centers, social security benefits for years of labor in the home, health insurance”. “Help Wanted: Female. 99.6 Hours a Week. No Pay. Bed and Bored. Must Be Good with Children” talked about the inequities of homemaking and the less glamorous parts of homemaking and with all the work to make the home comfy they are greeted by smirking husbands asking what they have done all day.

“Babies Are Born, Not Delivered”, the writer/new mom documented what happened in the maternity ward (to Susan Mayfield, Karen Wheeler, Mrs. Sinclair, Claudia Henderson): pubic hair shaved off, being wheeled into a room on her lonesome, being told by a resident when she would actually have the baby, being told her pains weren’t real and she’d have to wait for the doctor, when about to deliver an anesthesiologist appeared and gave her a spinal despite her protests, doctor pulled baby out with forceps.

The articles spoke to the readers like they are comrades together rather than “I am the expert and you’re not” tone.

In 1972 (first appearing as an insert in the NYT in 1971), Ms. Magazine was born. Letters to the Editor had women of all ages and backgrounds flooding the section with letters about their grind with sexism. Jane O’Rielly wrote her famous essay “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth” with her “click” moments where she writes that:

I thought that most of my clicks were behind me, but tonight, as I cleared the table, I had a new one. I was complimenting myself (since no one else had) on a meal I’d gone to some trouble to prepare. I began to wonder why so many of us wait trembling for “the verdict” at every meal; why my mother and so many others risk antagonizing their families by asking outright if everything is okay.

I decided it’s not just neurosis. We really know they’re judging even when they don’t say so. Housewifing is an occupation in which every single waking act is judged by the persons who mean the most to you in the world. Is the house clean? Is the food good? Are the children well-behaved?

A thousand times a day our contracts come up for renewal. No wonder our nerves are shot.

Here are some following article titles from actual Ms. articles:

1973 had “Job Advice for ‘Just a Housewife’” in the November issue and it’s May issue devoted to motherhood with Letty Cottin Pogrebin writing “We care deeply about children whether we have our own or not. We work to improve educational curricula, child-care facilities, health services, and the childbirth experience. We are saying that men are parents too; that fatherhood need be no less important or time-consuming than motherhood...Truly, feminists are talking about choice: about making the decision to become pregnant and choosing a motherly role that is right for ourselves and our children.”

1974 had articles titled “New Help for Mothers Alone” (February), “How the Economy Uses Housewives” (May), and “Surviving Widowhood” and “Must We Be Childless to be Free?” (October).

1975 had “Kids in the Office, and What-Else-Is-New with Child Care” in March, “How Hospitals Complicate Childbirth” (June), and a special section on mothers and daughters in June.

Earlier that decade, writer Alix Kates Shulman (of works like Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, the ultimate Karen Wheeler book, and planned the 1968 demonstrations outside of the Miss America contest) wrote about that her previously equal companionship with her husband deteriorated when they had children.

Now I was restricted to the company of two demanding preschoolers and to the four walls of an apartment. It seemed unfair that while my husband’s life had changed little when the children were born, domestic life had become the only life I had”

His work demanded more travel and late nights, so they wrote a marriage agreement where they asserted that “each member of the family has an equal right to his/her own time, work, values, and choices...The ability to earn more money is already a privilege which must not be compounded by enabling the larger earner to buy out of his/her duties and put the burden on the one who earns less, or on someone hired from outside” and that domestic jobs be shared 50/50 and any “overtime in any domestic job, she/he must be compensated by equal extra work by the other” and had a job breakdown that included childcare duties like: waking, getting clothes ready, making lunches, seeing notes and homework and money and passes and books must be collected, getting babysitters (hours of phoning), calling doctors and checking symptoms and filling prescriptions, staying home with sick kids, providing activities. Shulman and her husband became happier, she wrote more books for adults and children, and her husband after 4 months of the agreement heard their daughter say “You know Daddy, I used to love Mommy more than you, but now I love you both the same.”

Soon magazines started writing sample marriage contracts with even Glamour magazine featuring an article how to write your own contract. There were also men staying home as househusbands with one telling Time magazine in 1974: “I love my son Adam, but I can see how taking care of a kid can drive a woman up the wall.” Dr. Spock (and other childcare experts) were taken to task for assuming that whatever happened with kids was Mom’s fault and her responsibility. Gloria Steinem cited Department of Labor stats that put the value of a housewife’s work value to be around $8000-$9000 a year because that is what would cost her husband to pay for the services of a housewife, including prostitution (see Marital Rape and faking orgasms). Naturally people cried “Communism!” or “offensive to middle-class sensibilities”. McCall’s magazine citing a study from Chase Manhattan Bank economist noted that for a man to hire a cook, laundress, nursemaid, chauffeur, and gardener he’d be paying $10 grand a year back then and nuns did about the same work as housewives but were entitled to Social Security. Clare Booth Luce, in 1977 for The Saturday Evening Post, wrote that the work of housewives and mothers was now worth $20,000 a year.

Childcare became a hot topic, even though President Nixon claimed there was no need for national child development programs and such a program was anti-family. Also the idea of artificial pregnancies became attractive sounding to some (hey think about it, maintaining dress size and drinking booze and eating whatever and riding roller coasters?). Shulamith Firestone, author of The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, argued women will always be kept down until they were freed from “reproductive biology by every means available” and until artificial wombs were created, moms should be compensated for labor and dads be involved, Ted.......Also that children would benefit by being cut loose from dependency on parents who’d pass their issues on to their children and more kibbutz style households over the nuclear family model. In contrast, Jane Alpert, wrote “Mother Right” where she insisted motherhood was a source of female power and be harnessed in service for liberation and that mothers can pass on the values of empathy, pacifism, cooperation, intuition, protective feelings towards others to counter competition, individualism, and aggression.

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not-poignant · 7 years

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CANCER UPDATE:

I am actually sick with a cold at the moment. *thumbs up* This is the virus that never ends. It seemed like I was starting to turn a corner, and then it was like 'haha no, here's the sequel!' I'm unimpressed. Just imagine me staring into the camera like I'm in The Office.

A quick summary for those new to the game: I have the SDHD gene fault, also known as Hereditary PGL PCC, which is a hereditary genetic neuroendocrine cancer disease (the most inheritable genetic cancer disease in the world along with the other SDH~ faults). For me, it causes tumours called paragangliomas to grow primarily in the head/neck. I think of them as koalas clinging to my nerves and arteries.

I have a 50% chance of metastasis at any point, and this disease is incurable. I grew a very rare form of tumour called a carotid body paraganglioma at 18 that was removed. Now, at 35, I have three paragangliomas - a glomus vagale para (the rarest type, at a 1 in 5 million occurrence rate) called Thelma, a carotid body para called Louise and a glomus tympanicum or glomus jugulare para called Caramello that's currently too small to be seen on MRI, but has been spotted on the PET scan. I am very good at growing these paragangliomas and my ENT surgeon called me a ‘tumour machine’ and I call myself a ‘tumour incubation factory.’ Managing my case are: an Endocrinologist, a Radiation Oncologist, an ENT Surgeon, a Vascular Surgeon and a Neurosurgeon. (Or as I like to call them, a boy band).

(The rest under a Read More cuz there’s a lot).

It's been an interesting few days. Despite making noises about cancelling and rescheduling (Monday - Radiation Oncologist, Tuesday - ENT Surgeon, Wednesday - Neurosurgeon), I did manage to keep all of my appointments. So here's the deal:

I'm leaning towards choosing stereotactic radiosurgery (Cyberknife specifically) as the first and major line of treatment. This does not shrink the tumours, it doesn't make the tumours disappear, all it does - if it works - is make the tumours stop growing. Random fact for you, only 40,000~ people in the world have had Cyberknife radiosurgery! The only Cyberknife machine in Australia is here in Perth. It's similar but not quite the same as Gamma Knife radiosurgery.

The risks/side effects for low dose radiation to the head and neck, while still significant, are still way lower than what Dr. S helpfully called a surgery with 'high high morbidity.' The most promising risk is that there's less than a 1% chance of damage to the cranial nerves 9-12, and that any damage is likely to be temporary anyway. Dr. H (Radiation Oncologist) has seen about 20-30 patients with paragangliomas over a significant breadth of his career (more than any of my surgeons), and so he could report with some confidence on the kinds of side effects I could expect.

Obviously, the main side effect to radiation therapy is of course the chances of developing another form of cancer. I'm not one of those people who goes 'it's evil, it's poison.' I'm one of those people who goes: 'look, this is how sick I am, this is my best option, let's be realistic here.' Dr. H was very honest about this, and he said the biggest risk for me is thyroid cancer, because the carotid body paraganglioma is very near the thyroid. He even asked if I could get the carotid body para removed via surgery (I cannot for reasons relating to the internal carotid artery).

Even developing thyroid cancer is still a way lower quality of life risk than having the surgery, honestly. Especially since it's one of the more treatable forms of cancer, and I'll be under intense imaging surveillance for the rest of my life. They'll know, lol. To be honest, just having the genetic form of this disease and having recurring paragangliomas puts me at 50% risk of metastasis at any point of my life - the risk of radiosurgery giving me another form of cancer is actually WAY LOWER than just my...disease giving it to me randomly, for fun.

I've talked with a few other patients who have glomus vagale paragangliomas in particular, and all of them have recommended Gamma Knife or Cyberknife radiosurgery over 'lets open your whole head up' surgery. Those who've had the surgery, sometimes regretted getting it so soon, or talk about how many options there are now, citing such post-surgery affects like - total and irreversible loss of voice, stroke, suffocating/choking and vomiting every day, inabilities to swallow, and in one person, total baroreceptor failure (i.e. dangerous, life-threatening blood pressure spikes, followed by fainting from dangerously low blood pressure, many times a week - this is often highly unmanageable).

It does mean sort of readjusting how I'm thinking about these tumours. Instead of something to be evicted as soon as possible, I need to mentally wrap my head around the fact that I will likely have these tumours forever. These koalas are on the road with me now, and just permanent parasites that live off my blood, my resources, and generally don't do very much. Spiritually, I've been contemplating how well so much of nature tends to deal with parasites, or if not 'well' - it certainly tries to deal with them, and sometimes not through the process of elimination, so much as just...adjusting. Trees with their galls, still flowering year after year, and whole ecosystems that make it work. If anything, this situation makes me realise that the ecosystem of my body is much closer to those in nature that I respect, more than I've sometimes realised in the past.

We're in no rush to do radiosurgery. Right now, I have no major symptoms from the tumours, and both radiosurgery and surgery present side effects that are significant. So why do either? While it's much 'lesser' for me to be dealing with swollen ear canals, or likely losing my sense of taste for a couple of months etc. that's still...something I'm not dealing with right now and therefore, don't have to. Dr. H said it was all about the right timing, and that's what this journey is about now - the right timing for treatment/s.

Imaging in MRIs now show that the glomus vagale paraganglioma is currently not growing (YAY), and the carotid body paraganglioma has grown about a millimetre in a 6 month period. But Dr. H, the Radiation Oncologist, wants to wait to establish a definitive growth pattern before treatment. Basically, when we can start seeing signs of definitive growth, we'll treat them.

They won't get treated at the same time. In all likelihood I'll have one bout of Cyberknife/radiation for the carotid body first, possibly as soon as next year depending on how fast it's growing, and then I'll have another bout of Cyberknife/radiation for the glomus vagale when it starts growing or I start showing symptoms.

The third tumour - called Caramello - is likely a glomus tympanicum or glomus jugulare, is too small to be seen on MRI and we're leaving that alone for now. The most common side effect for that one is tinnitus and deafness.

I see Dr. W - my Endocrinologist - to confirm all of this in September. And then I will do nothing until 2018, where I'll get some more imaging done to look at growth rates (unless of course I start showing characteristic symptoms of the tumours, but so far, so good.)

Dr. S reminded me yesterday - after looking through my art journal and all of us, with the student doctor, having a good chat - I can always get the surgery in the future. I have options. There's a certain measure of stress that comes with living with tumours that can metastasise at any point, for the rest of my life. There's a certain measure of anxiety that comes from knowing I could grow more, knowing that I'm not someone 'rushing to get rid of cancer' so much as just...working on a chess board to stop it from ruining my quality of life, which is what matters most, of course.

Now, we wait for the tumours to make their next move, and then we parry and riposte - in hopefully a few years, and on it will go, until they win. Sometimes I think of it as 'death in slow motion.' But aren't we all dying in slow motion? So that's neither here nor there.

I've never been great at strategy, but I have some of the best doctors in the country on my side, helping me out, and I have a lot of faith in their care and their knowledge. More than anything, I also really respect how much faith they have in me and my knowledge. They all respect my own research, my thoughts, and Dr. Neurosurgeon today even said I came across as very philosophical. I expressed confusion at that, and he pointed out that most other patients in a similar situation would probably not seem as calm or cheerful.

But clearly he just hasn't caught me on a bad day. ;)

In the meantime, this is the last official cancer update for a few months I expect, unless Dr. W disagrees with my choice to privilege radiosurgery over surgery (he won't - given he pointed me in that direction in the first place). Hope you're all doing great, and as always, feel free to ask any questions since I can never explain everything properly in these (huge) posts anyway.

#cancer #hereditary pgl pcc #sdhd gene fault #personal #when i'm not writing i'm going to doctor's appointments #and rolling around trying to figure out how the hell i'm supposed to live with this #since it goes against society's main cancer rhetoric #which looks something like 'gettitoutofme'#ah well #i've never walked much of a mainstream path anyway

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