#and has the capacity to affect the narrative like everyone else

[cryptocism]

yoohoo, I just need you to know you've ruined my life✌️ /j but like. finished reading frequency, what three days ago now? and since the moment I put it down, I have been. directionless. listless. I am consumed by, not DESPAIR, because despair is too passionate a word but. dissatisfaction? I miss the life I lived while I was still reading it. which is honestly rather appropriate considering some of the themes in the fic. I miss the person I was when half of my mind existed in the realm of the au. I fear I may never get over it and I may never recover the life I once had before this fic ruined me for all others, but I also cannot bring myself to regret reading it even if I never feel satisfaction again. I have tasted ambrosia, and the bread and wine of men shall forever be ash upon my tongue. pay my therapy bill.

i know these asks were sent in july but i love them and want to immortalize before they get buried in my inbox

first of all thank you so much!!! frequency has been one of my favourite projects to do over the past couple years i love that ppl are so into this absurdly niche fic. (i cannot pay ur therapy u simply must reread it forever rip (i mean writing it was like 50/50 self-indulgence and catharsis which means maybe reading it does the same thing lmaoo))

second yes! yeah it was Six who changed the timeline. a big old theme, possibly the main theme, of the whole fic is about change and who gets to create it. Six mirrors Thad in the ways that he believes himself unworthy of importance, and that the capacity to create change is inherently barred from him because of who and what he is.

so it was really important that Six was the one to make the choice to try change things - the guy whos entire powerset relies on being as inconsequential as possible. it shatters the original timeline, it results in his death, it causes a lot of very bad ripple effects, but he also saves Nathaniel. who saves Jude. who together both save Thad - who saves Bart and CRAYDL and defeats Three and discovers his own capacity for change in the process.

that was sort of the point of the whole "the spectrum of change is a horizon, not a tower" litany. there's no hierarchy. anybody can go towards it, they just gotta choose where they're going.

Six doesn't really save the day, but by wrenching the prewritten tragedy off its course, he creates the opportunity for Thad & co. to save it themselves.

[imfromthemiddlekingdom]

I love how stanikins bend over backwards to attempt to make Obi-Wan and the Jedi look callous and uncaring when all evidence points otherwise.

Obi-Wan is too harsh on him after he endangers his men and Ashoka to save a droid with confidential information on it which he didn’t wipe purposefully, oh no!!! He’s abusive!!!

Obi-Wan putting the good of the Galaxy above the ones he love because it’s his duty and philosophy to put the good of the collective above the good of the few he loves. Oh no!!!! He’s heartless!!! He should’ve let Anakin jump off the moving vehicle to save padme because muh love story!!!! He should’ve known that Anakin’s dreams about his mother dying was a vision and not a dream!!! Definitely not like Anakin told him it was a vision, “just a dream” verbatim from Anakin himself!!! Like if we take legends into consideration then Obi-Wan, someone who is strong in the Unifying force, would definitely have done shit if Anakin told him outright it was a vision but how was he supposed to know when Anakin himself 1) never had a vision before this and 2) never told his master what occurred in said vision?

Obi-Wan would’ve made Anakin fess up to the Tusken massacre if Anakin told him!!! He should’ve been a safe space for Anakin and been accepting like Padme and covered this horrendous miscarriage of justice out of love!!! He didn’t provide a safe space for a mass murderer therefore he deserves blame for it!!!!

The council didn’t want to admit a very clearly traumatized slave child who’s recently been freed because he would not be able to fully commit to their philosophy of non-attachment due to his experience and asking him to change how he viewed the world so shortly after being separated from his one support in life would be cruel so they denied him, therefore he was right to hate them!!! Especially Mace Windu because, checks notes, he was mean (???) to him (???) in the first act of the phantom menace???? Like have y’all not watched TCW and how Mace interacted with him????

Stanikins literally have every excuse under the sun to justify his every atrocity without giving him any agency in his own choice. His story is a tragedy!!! Let it be a tragedy!!! He was a slave boy with godly powers and traumatized beyond imagination! He could’ve been great if the circumstances were different, if one thing changed he would’ve been the greatest Jedi there were, but because he is literally doomed by the narrative, we cannot see him be the person he could be. He has great capacity for kindness of selflessness but because of his experience fear wins out and he desperately holds onto all the affection and love he could because his time as a slave taught him to do so. It’s a disservice to take away his agency, to make all his bad and disastrous decisions the fault of someone else, is to make him one dimensional. Let him be the villain he is and mourn the child he was and the person he could’ve been if he wasn’t doomed by the narrative before the prequels even came out. Let him be tragic. Let his decisions be tragic and doomed and unavoidable. Let him be sucked into villainy the moment he decided that his revenge is worth more than the lives of those that did not participate in the murder and torture of his mother. Let him be utterly unredeemable because of his actions. Let him doomed by his own actions as well as the narrative. Let him be himself instead of woobifying him into a victim of everyone else’s actions but his own.

He choose to massacre the Tuskens. He choose to massacre the Jedi. He choose to hunt any remaining Jedi left in the Galaxy for 20 years. He choose to put the life of his wife above the people who raised him and took him into their culture. He choose to do that himself. And it is tragic. It is sad. But it is no one’s fault but his own. His formative years shaped him into one who jealously hordes all forms of affection form those he loved most as a trauma response. He understands Jedi teachings (literally a whole arc in TCW where he teaches Ashoka what it means to be a Padawan and Jedi) he just doesn’t internalize it because of his trauma. He takes no one’s council but his own (showcased when he went to Yoda to ask for a method of cheating death and Yoda’s advice was sound if he were talking to any other Jedi other than Anakin).

Star Wars may be a a story of hope but it is also a tragedy. It’s about a boy how could’ve been great, it’s about a boy who was so full of hope and dooming himself because he’s too afraid and refuses to let the fear go so it turns into anger and hate. Taking away Anakins agency and blaming his actions on other people takes away the tragedy that is having someone great fall. A boy who was bad cannot fall and be doomed. It’s only those that have the potential to be great that falls the hardest and by taking away his own culpability in bringing in a genocidal empire (one he wished to rule no less) takes away the inherent tragedy of seeing someone so bright fall so low.

[loki-zen]

What's the news on saturated fat? My impression was that earlier narratives overly vilified it but that it remains kinda sus.

Well okay, my considered position is "we don't have enough evidence to support a blanket recommendation to everyone that they should alter their diets to reduce saturated fats."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794145/#:~:text=The%20idea%20that%20saturated%20fats,never%20establish%20a%20causal%20link.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210122/New-model-explains-controversies-over-saturated-fats-and-heart-disease-risk.aspx

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37777760/

As the authors of these papers often point out, official guidance and the practice of many health professionals is still to advise reducing saturated fat. This is probably a good amount inertia and bloody-mindedness. It is not uncommon for experienced doctors to weight their own idiosyncratic and biased-in-the-recollection clinical experience over the preponderance of evidence. Doctors and especially public health bodies like to display "caution" in their recommendations, which is not a terrible instinct necessarily, but I feel it is overapplied in this case.

Nutrition is horribly complicated, and the business of dietary recommendations involves things that people are really on just starting to figure out how to properly take account of in healthcare research, such as patient behaviour in the context of burdensome indefinite medical lifestyle intervention advice.

As it's horribly complicated just to figure out what advice to give one person who we have bloodwork for, it is next to impossible to figure out advice that it's a good idea to give literally everyone. With other kinds of medical interventions, such as drugs and anything with a financial or capacity cost to healthcare providers, 'caution' would mean that even if you had good evidence of benefit in a specific population, you would need evidence of clear benefit in everyone else before you could recommend it to everyone else. (Did you know your cholesterol can be too low? If you haven't got someone's bloodwork how can you know if their cholesterol is too high or too low?) And if a drug had excellent evidence but the papers were all fairly recent, caution might mean being reluctant to suggest it yet. However, in nutrition, "the advice we've been giving since the 1950s" is being treated as a privileged hypothesis in the same way that "not recommending a given drug" is the privileged hypothesis of any public health body or practice guideline until lots of evidence has been accumulated over many years.

I think this is because our models for thinking about medical interventions have double standards about lifestyle interventions. Doctors love them; drugs are scary. Only in recent years (perhaps in no small part due to the increase in published research by AHPs) have we even begun to consider the obvious truth that "not being able to eat the things you like" and "having to read a lot of nutrition labels" and "feeling guilt about what you want to eat" are negative quality-of-life-impacting side effects in the same way as headache or nausea might be negative quality-of-life-affecting side effects of a drug treatment.

Considering all the proper factors, the evidence does not support the recommendation of this intervention for the general public.

[shrack]

"but loki keeps absolutely fumbling the bag. you could have timeline shattering sex with that man who looks like he works in a bank, but no. you have to "save the world" or whatever"

You know what i think this is? This is the stage of unrequited love where the person with said love embraces every opportunity to be together, knowing full-well their time is limited and his feelings will likely not be returned. And Mobius seems to have made peace with that. As long as he can savor being by Loki's side and make snide comments about his fixation with Sylvie (which Mobius is jealous of but does not interfere with), great. He has chosen to privately enjoy what he can get.

This is the stage where the recipient of unrequited love does not know yet how much this person means to him.

The first time they were separated, Mobius was pruned, and Loki still felt strong emotions for Sylvie. The horror and grief were cut short because all three of them were reunited not long after. There was no time to actually perceive and process loss.

The second time they were separated, Loki was time-slipping. To his knowledge, /he/ had higher chances of dying. While we may interpret Loki's feelings for Sylvie as an act of self-love, Loki prioritizing saving the multiverse is an act of love of life. He has not yet reached the stage of having the capacity to welcome the love of another person distinct from himself. Further, I don't think he's aware Mobius waited for him longer than he should have, and I don't think he would have considered anyone would do that for him as a possibility. But Mobius did, and he is once again keeping all of this to himself because he doesn't think Loki will ever love him back anyway. Mind, I don't think Mobius feels any real bitterness about this. I think he enjoys having someone to feel this way about, even if the only person who will ever know is himself.

From a narrative perspective, these kinds of arcs and plot points come in 3s. I think it's well-established that Mobius is more than willing to make a sacrifice, a hard decision for Loki's sake, and I think Loki will not be okay with it the next time such a need arises. The culminative acts of love and affection without need of reciprocation will only become clear to Loki in hindsight.

i agree completely!! sillyposting aside i think theyre such a good example of "a fell first b fell harder"

like of course loki puts saving the world first. what would he do without life, without living? he's aware that this is his second chance, and he doesnt want to jeopardize what he's gained back, so of course that's his priority. and i think that's also why mobius is taking the "slow, cerebral approach" and thus teaching it to loki—they both love living. and mobius has only really gotten to discover how much he loves it because he's gained that freedom thanks to loki, whereas loki knows that freedom and would be remiss to lose it for everyone else. i think theyre such fascinating parallels that way

i think, unfortunately, this is similar to how his and thor's relationship ended up between ragnarok and infinity war. loki only really begins to understand how much thor cares for him a few hours before he has to sacrifice himself to save his brother. tva!loki gets to see thor mourn over his corpse and only then does he understand the depths to which his brother loves him. and i fear that the writers might fall into that pattern again; loki is an action man, and it might take mobius breaking from his slow approach and doing something drastic (again) for loki's sake before loki realizes just what he has in mobius.

all this to say that if mobius dies to save loki....good luck charlie

[chirpsythismorning]

Hi!

I want to ask a question which is eating me since july:

What is the narratively propose of the line "I feel like my life started the day we found you in the woods" ?

Because I am losing my mind on this one. The worst is I don't think it won't came back in s5, not like the painting.

But this sentence makes the all "asking to be my friend is the best thing i did" business a lie! From Will's prospective.

How much Will's lie will affect Mike in s5 is widely discussed, but what will be the consequences of Mike's monologue for Will ?

(Ironically, I don't think Will knew he was lying, he genuinely thought that El loved Mike that much. he genuinely thought that El loved Mike as much as he do)

So what do you think?

Bye <3

I never really thought about it that way, but now that you say it, ouch.

I would definitely say from Will's perspective, Mike's monologue to El contradicted his monologue to him in the shed in s2, and so therefore Mike asking him to be his best friend wasn't the best thing he did...?

Yeah that's definitely going to be circled back to in some capacity.

Honestly, I think s5 is going to be very tragic. So many casual fans expect Will to have this horrible ending based on this trend they've had for Will's character thus far. I think to subvert this expectation a majority of the audience has, the Duffer's are going to go all out... They're going to humor those fans expectations a little bit, meaning they are going to make Will (and all of the characters quite frankly) experience so much pain, that it'll have even the most confident bylers questioning everyones happy ending. And that's what's going to make the ending so gratifying. You can't know joy unless you've known sorrow. Those of us who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths. Don't mind this very relevant Anne with an E quote because the Duffers are anners.

This season upon season trend of the story sidelining Will, something even most casual viewers picked up on and critique as a bad thing... is literally setting Will up for a perfect ending. Because how would season upon season of a character losing again and again, be satisfying if it ended with him losing, again? Answer: it wouldn't be.

Will's dealt with the shit end of things for years, with s4 reaching new heights of making him feel like he deserves it.

All of this is going to come to a head in s5 with Vecna trying to get Will to join him. We already know that he wants to kill everyone else, except Will... and so, Will clearly isn't a target for him to literally kill or hurt technically, and yet Vecna will do what he has to in order to get Will to feel like he has no choice but to join him.

And I think this quote is going to play a part in Will's experiences over the last 3+ seasons finally being confronted head on in the story.

I also don't think Mike said that, knowing what it implied, otherwise he wouldn't have said it at all. Though I think both Will and El and maybe even Jonathan knew what it implied, and I'm sure it pissed them off a little bit. Like I know El was thinking Mike not only are you a bad boyfriend but your bad friend too because jesus!

This quote could honestly come to bite Mike's ass as well, because seeing Will at his lowest thinking no one cares, is going to make Mike feel responsible, because he's going to realize he played a role in part of Will having those negative feelings about himself in the first place. Actually thinking about what he said and how it made Will feel, and also rethinking other interactions between them, all while potentially finding out about Will's feelings/sexuality, that is going to destroy Mike honestly. Because this whole time they could have been together if he'd just not done those things.

Yes, Mike has made the effort to reconcile with Will in both s3-4 after their fights, but they've never truly confronted the problem. And that's all for a reason.

Because once they do confront the truth, it's going to be hard for them to not want to be together knowing they both feel the same.

But the reality is most stories don't operate like that because it's not satisfying, especially slow-burn romances.

When it comes to slow-burns, it's all about the miscommunication and the will they wont they and the balance of both parties feeling something while thinking the other couldn't feel the same.

But I think right now the story is sort of imbalanced in terms of clueing the audience in on Mike's feelings for Will, in comparison to clueing the audience in on Will's feelings for Mike.

And with s5 going back to s1-2 vibes, it's entirely likely s1-2 vibes Mike is making a return, so there is a good chance they're following through with how a slow-burn ship has to operate, meaning they are evening up the balance of those feelings to make their endgame feel worthy and satisfying.

I do think that quote from Mike's monologue will impact both of them in some capacity, because it also, like you said, questions the validity of Mike's monologue to Will in the shed. And so it needs to be confronted in a way that gives both Will and Mike closure.

And let's not forget about El. She was there the day she met Mike and Lucas and Dustin and she knows it wasn't love at first sight. I think she herself has had a similar understanding of their meeting as Mike does, where it wasn't fate, that they just got lucky basically and it worked out for them. And yet she had strong feelings for him that grew over time. And so him saying that even probably upset her a little bit, because she knew it wasn't true even from her take on things. And so why would it be true for Mike who has been incapable of saying i love you to her face, ever?

This rose-tinted lens on their relationship from the beginning by the people around them, society and most of all the audience, is what put them in this position in the first place. They need to acknowledge the truth with one another (without Will mediating) so that they can actually move on and grow and be friends in the way they truly want to be.

Season 5 is definitely going to be a wild ride from start to finish, and even if it feels hopeless in the beginning, it'll all be worth it. Trust!

[umbra-borealis]

TLDR, Elements of Chaos, a massive Sonic AU I've had for years will be in production, meaning most my spare time will go towards that. C0mms might still be open but I'll be more picky because I want to make sure I can actually deliver quality without overworking myself. It's just me, one singular guy, working on this passion project and while I'm okay with that, keep in mind that things might move slowly. I don't have the mental capacity, free time or funding to work on it full time. I'm still excited though and I hope you guys are too.

And of course, here's that ko-fi link I mentioned.

Transcript:

Umbra's 2024 look-ahead

Hello everyone!

2023 was a rather slow year for me as an artist but eventful for me mentally. Because of this I wasn't able to do as much as I had planned and that, not going to lie, hurts. But I'm also ready to leave that in the past and perhaps just push the pause button on some things to return to later because certain things (like the tarot card project) still live rent free in my head. These big long term projects are most impacted by the small amount of folks interested in them besides myself and before you think I'm complaining, this is actually a bit of a blessing because this means I can put a pin in that and things like it to instead focus on something more important to me...

ELEMENTS OF CHAOS.

This is a Sonic AU, yup. Lets get that out of the way first. I'm far from the only one to have an AU and turn it into a full length fic or comic but the thing is, I'm doing neither. Sonic has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It was a comfort during my most traumatizing years as a child when I had to navigate abuse on the daily, it was a reason for me to not commit sewer slide when I was at my lowest and I cannot begin to express the many ways it affected me as a writer and artist. Together with it's less well known sibling NiGHTS, the Sonic series is the reason I draw/write at all. But as we all know, the Sonic series isn't without it's flaws and just like so many others, I started re-writing bits and pieces I didn't like to form a new narrative.

This is a long haul passion project. The format has already been decided on and I plan to keep 'dev logs' for folks to keep up with if it interests them because I can't promise the release of it's first chapter any time soon. This project only has one person doing all the work and that person is me so if you're interested in supporting me I have a ko-fi link I'll attach to this post (and hopefully more options to come soon) They come with perks too so I don't feel like I'm just e begging, lmao.

Here's a little list of things I'm doing/have to do in order to start publishing.

Character references (Sonic is done already). This is because this story will also feature illustrations.

Website building. Yes, I plan to host a website on Neocities specially for Elements of Chaos.

Actual writing, doi. It's true that I have already worked on the first chapter and gotten positive feedback on what I have so far, but it's far from done!

Cover/page illustrations. This is a storybook type thing. I want to experiment and learn as an artist. This project will be my playground for that and hopefully you'll get to see that growth as the story progresses.

Development will happen in that order, so you can expect references before anything else.

For now, happy new year everyone! I'll share more fun stuff such as a synopsis, world building, stream news etc. in the near future. For now I'm going to enjoy what's left of the holidays before going straight back to work. I look forward to taking everyone along on this creative journey. Thank you!

[libracorpvs]

"I urge you to think very carefully, not sloppily, on this issue. Lives are at stake.

Yes, social isolation is one risk factor for suicide. We agree on that; we disagree on how this should be interpreted and applied.

The typical trans narrative looks like this: because social isolation is a risk factor for suicide, we must all rearrange society and bypass our instincts to make sure trans people feel included everywhere, even at the expense of safeguarding women and children, and other human rights issues.

But how far can this be carried out? Some trans rights activists (TRAs) would take this so far as to say that lesbians should accept males as partners. Is this what we’re willing to give up in the name of “inclusion” so this special class of victims doesn’t die of suicide?

And how can this be compared to parallel issues? In therapy, when we have patients struggling to feel accepted and loved, do we always hold their social environment accountable and reinforce the narrative everyone else is to blame for their feelings of rejection? Or, do we hold our patients at least somewhat responsible for how their choices affect their social lives? Are there times when we must challenge or temper their expectations of others, or help them discover ways to make themselves more appealing as potential friends, partners, or employees?

The truth is, trans people do face social isolation, and higher rates of singleness and childlessness. Their dating pool is substantially narrower, and comprised in large part by people with fetishes. Their capacity for sexual functioning or pleasure is often altered or destroyed by the medical procedures they’ve endured. Many have lost their fertility and are therefore not eligible partners for those looking for someone to have children with naturally. Oftentimes, according to the current models of healthcare I object to, this fertility was sacrificed at young ages, despite the fact we have zero evidence base for the assumption that people can accurately predict in youth whether they will want children by midlife. All of these are reasons that I take the stance I do. Why should we allow doctors to give drugs and surgeries to people that limit their relationship and family potentials when we know relationships and family play such a huge role in wellbeing and reduce the lifetime risk of suicide?

I am simply unwilling to accept the sloppy, daft thinking behind the idea that the social isolation trans people face is (a) everyone else’s fault or responsibility, (b) not a reason to think twice about promoting transition, and c) a reason we should all be celebrating trans-ness. I argue that the latter creates a social incentive for identifying trans, and encourages more people to put themselves in this same exact position, with these same risk factors. I am more concerned that the social isolation factor needs the sort of complex analysis I’ve given it here. It should not be weaponized to silence critics like myself.

The long term suicide risk of postoperative transsexuals has been found to be upwards of 19 times higher than age matched peers. If social isolation as a suicide risk factor could really be reduced to matters of identity-based intolerance, then we’d see similar suicide rates amongst all marginalized, oppressed, or persecuted peoples. But we don’t see that. We see resilience. Throughout history humans have endured much greater hardships, and not on the basis of belonging to a category one could simply choose to opt in to, and use the latest first-world medical technologies to inflict upon themselves. If “trans” as an identity is really so persecuted, why are people choosing it anyway? When Jews were persecuted in WW2, they hid their identities to survive. I’d be curious to see the suicide rates amongst people facing such levels of historical hardship. Can we really truly attribute suicidality to oppression, and make a sound case that the solution is to push acceptance, no matter the cost to other human rights, and even if “trans” is glamorized in the process, leading to more people opting into this permanently medicalized category of synthetic sex identities?

Social isolation is just one risk factor, though a big one. We need to also factor in the role of illness, injury, and incapacity in increasing the risk of suicide. Trans related medical “care” is full of iatrogenic harms. I argue it is incredibly irresponsible to inflict optional, medically unnecessary, iatrogenically harmful procedures on people with young, healthy bodies, whose young minds cannot possibly grasp what this entails for their futures. Try living with chronic pelvic pain, chest pain or numbness from lost breasts, bladder infections, an exposed and enlarged clitoris that rubs against your pants all day, being forced to do painful dilations daily in order to keep a wound open, the flesh of your arm missing, or peeing through a plastic tube that keeps getting infected… trust me this is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s painful, costly, debilitating, and humiliating. It leads to increased risk of opiate addiction, starting with prescribed post-surgical painkillers. I believe doctors have stepped way outside of the bounds of medicine and should not be doing these things to anyone.

So don’t blame the likes of me for the social isolation trans people face, or the higher lifetime risk of suicide in those who’ve followed through with these supposedly “life saving” procedures. Don’t try to force males on lesbians and into women’s sports, locker rooms, bathrooms and prisons. Think honestly about human nature and what most people want in terms of love, partnership, family, life, and health. Think about the fragile mental state of the young and vulnerable, and how long life is, and how little capacity we have at age 12 or 20 to anticipate our futures. Consider whether we should really be normalizing or glamorizing such a novel and debilitating lifestyle, given what’s at stake."

- Stephanie Winn

[pop-communications]

Crisis Management: How PR Agencies Navigate Brand Scandals

With the rapid dissemination of information and the ease with which reputations can be damaged in the digital era, crisis management has emerged as a critical service provided by PR firms. In the event of a brand scandal, public relations firms play a critical role in managing the storyline, minimizing harm, and repairing the company’s reputation. This article explores how PR firms handle brand problems, especially in places like Dubai, so that the businesses they represent come out stronger and more resilient.

Understanding Crisis Management in PR

The process of managing unforeseen circumstances that could harm a brand’s reputation is known as crisis management. For PR agencies, managing and lessening the effects of a crisis requires strategic strategy, prompt action, and efficient communication. The main objective is to minimize any long-term harm while safeguarding and restoring the brand’s reputation.

Strong crisis management plans are essential in an area as fast-paced and dynamic as Dubai, where companies must perform under constant inspection. An effective PR firm can make the difference between a short-lived dispute and a catastrophe that destroys a business.

The Role of a PR Agency in Crisis Management

Proactive Planning: Being ready for a crisis before it even arises is a crucial component of crisis management. Every client of a skilled PR firm in Dubai or the UAE will have a crisis management strategy that is unique to them. This include determining possible hazards, putting in place monitoring systems, and creating communication plans that are ready to go when necessary. For example, a social media agency will keep a careful eye on online forums and other communities for any indications of unfavorable attitude or new problems that might develop into major ones. Through the identification of these early warning indicators, the agency can move quickly to address the problem before it gets out of hand.

Swift Response: In the event of a scandal, timing is crucial. A slow response might make matters worse by allowing the populace more time to conjecture and disseminate false information. The prompt and decisive response of a PR agency can aid in crisis containment and deterrence. In order to directly address the audience, the response frequently include making a public statement, hosting news conferences, or using social media. In the UAE, particularly in Dubai, where digital communication is widely used, social media is an essential tool for crisis management. Public calm and stakeholder reassurance can be greatly enhanced by a well-crafted statement that handles the problem openly and sympathetically.

Control the Narrative: In times of crisis, narrative control is essential. If a brand doesn’t provide its perspective, someone else will, frequently with less advantageous results. PR firms strive to make sure that the viewpoint of their clients is conveyed intelligibly, emphasizing the facts and setting the scene. This could entail dispelling false information, updating the media on a regular basis, and interacting with the public directly via a variety of communication channels. Influencer marketing companies may also work with reputable influencers in a market like Dubai, which is driven by influencers, to assist build the narrative and uphold public confidence.

Stakeholder Communication: A crisis affects all of a brand’s stakeholders, including partners, employees, investors, and consumers. Sustaining trust and averting internal terror in these communities requires effective communication. A public relations firm makes sure that everyone involved is informed, frequently by means of internal memos, meetings, and focused messaging. An agency’s capacity to handle cultural sensitivities and guarantee effective communication amongst various groups is especially crucial in the United Arab Emirates, where companies frequently employ a diverse and multicultural workforce.

Restoring the Brand’s Image: After the short-term problem has been resolved, the long-term task of repairing the brand’s reputation starts. To regain the public’s trust, this could entail rebranding campaigns, starting new ones, or participating in CSR activities. In Dubai, where corporate success and brand reputation are strongly correlated, PR firms frequently use creative approaches to assist their clients in recovering. To reestablish the brand’s favorable image, this could involve utilizing the city’s dynamic media ecosystem, interacting with the community, or working with influencers.

Conclusion

Today’s connected world makes crisis management essential for any PR business, as even a small mistake can cause a large-scale backlash. A company’s reputation can be made or broken by its ability to handle brand scandals, whether they occur in Dubai, or elsewhere. PR agencies help firms weather the storm and come out stronger by being proactive, acting quickly, managing the narrative, and communicating clearly.

PR agencies will become more and more crucial in crisis management as long as companies are operating in the public eye. Working with a seasoned PR agency may give brands the security and comfort they need to handle even the most trying circumstances.

Check out the Original Article

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

I feel like I would have appreciated Tony’s stance on the Sokovia Accords so much more had they shown us a single instance of accountability on screen.

Like, it makes total sense that he’s the character calling for accountability. It’s the natural progression of his arc. He said it himself in the first Iron Man—he had become a part of a system that was comfortable with zero accountability. It was a huge function of the weapons business he was a leader of the industry in, and he was just realizing that it was wrong. Then, with Ultron, the mess happened because he didn’t consult anyone else. It was almost heavy-handed, how clear they made it—when he’s convincing Banner, and he says that he doesn’t want a town hall discussion. He doesn’t want to be told that man isn’t supposed to meddle. He sees a suit of armor around the world. And they can’t make Ultron without the staff and they only have three days with it… so they hide it from everyone else, rush to complete Ultron, something that has the potential to affect the entire world in three days, and they make the intentional decision to do so unilaterally because the others might disagree. Which is a shame, because maybe in that town hall meeting, someone might have brought up hey what if it goes evil and tries to kill everyone like every AI in every scifi movie ever.

(Probably Clint. I feel like Clint would have said it.)

Tony saying I fucked up and want to make sure it never happens again is a fantastic progression of his arc. It makes perfect sense. And it is great for his character, who started out as the war profiteer, who didn’t face any consequences for his actions to say, “actually no. I benefitted from the lack of consequences, but I’m the one saying we need them. We need to do better for everyone. I have been the direct beneficiary of this system and it was wrong.” That is fantastic development. 

But then the writers failed to actually back it up with the Accords themselves, and it made the entire arc fall flat.

Like, the Accords don’t even apply to him. Granted, he signed them, but the provisions themselves? He doesn’t fall in any of the categories. Let’s evaluate based on known clauses of the Accords:

He’s not enhanced. He won’t have to give up his biometric data, wear a tracking bracelet, be evaluated as a potential threat on something as basic as biology. Wanda will, and she landed in a shock collar. Peter Parker will, but he wasn’t even told ahead of time what it was about. 

All Avengers have to sign and be bound, enhanced or not, but as he says in the movie, he isn’t an Avenger. He’s retired at this point in the narrative. He’s not active duty. He doesn’t have to sign or act in an Avenger’s capacity, even though he does. 

He has the Iron Man suits, but that’s not covered by the Accords—there’s an exception in place for prosthetics, including ones that advance you beyond the capacity of human limits, and it was established in Iron Man II that that was what Tony had classified the suit as. 

The only provision that actively applies to Tony is the absolute prohibition against any Artificial Intelligence—which, honestly, fair, the last one went 2001 space odyssey on everyone—but we know he doesn’t follow that one either, because he gives Karen to Peter like, ten minutes after signing and makes E.D.I.T.H. somewhere down the line. Even though it’s supposed to apply, it doesn’t apply, because it isn’t followed and he is never shown to have consequences for breaking this provision.

Even if he agrees to only be Iron Man at the behest of the UN panel, we know he doesn’t keep that promise, because he breaks it in the same movie—just like legitimately every single person on Team Iron Man eventually did, only none of them land on the Raft. So we know again that ultimately, whether or not this is supposed to apply, it doesn’t apply. 

Who does the Accords apply to? Team Cap. None of whom signed. For a medley of legal reasons, the Accords haven’t been passed into law yet--treaties aren’t laws, they’re treaties, we sign treaties all the time but it doesn’t become binding on US law until 2/3rds of the Senate advises and consents. Even if it’s passed, it can’t actively violate the Constitution, which the Accords do. In. So many ways. So, at the time of the airport battle, it’s not actually law yet. At best, it can be considered a contract binding on the parties who signed. Which. Is not Team Cap. It’s Team Iron Man. Who also break them. But don’t. They don’t ever. Face. Consequences. Or accountability. For breaking them. Yeah. 

Like, setting aside the practical, legal problems with the Accords, once you take away any actual showing of accountability, all you’re left with is… guilt over Ultron and the bandaid slapped on it. They said the word accountability a lot and then failed to show any change in behavior. That’s not actual accountability. That’s pandering, and it does a huge disservice to his character.

You want the town hall meeting. You want Tony to look at a power like the power Ultron would have wielded, and actually say “no thanks. I don’t think we should have that. I don’t think we should be trusted with that. It could go wrong. It could hurt innocent people.” You want him to decide to never make an AI again, because even if this one doesn’t go wrong, it could. You want him to face consequences for actions, for breaking the Accords, because it shows that he helped build a system where everyone, regardless of their power and influence, face consequences for their actions. It is a good thing if he has to face ramifications for the Accords, because it shows that he actually meant it when he asked for accountability.  

That is the natural culmination of his arc. It is having the man who made weapons that killed a lot of innocent people, with or without his knowledge, say “no, I don’t trust that this weapon will be used properly. I think we need to discuss if it even should be made.” Having the man who thought that he was the one who got to decide Ultron for the world say, “I can’t make this decision. Nobody may be able to make this decision. We need to consider all of the people who might be hurt if it goes wrong, because we owe it to them.”

E.D.I.T.H. is probably the biggest showing in the MCU that Tony never learned accountability. An artificial tactical intelligence system that can execute someone via (an illegal, under international law, weaponizing space has been nominally illegal since the cold war) weaponized satellite with no oversight, no warrant, no trial, with so few safeguards it can be done by accident… sounds a hell of a lot like Project Insight. Like Ultron. No one, no matter how good they are, should get to call out a drone strike on someone so... casually. Especially if they’re a private individual, and not even an elected official. (Not to say that elected officials should, just that private individuals definitely shouldn’t.)  Even the access of electronic communications is a huge power violation. 

If the government wanted to access Flash Thompson’s embarrassing text messages, do you know what they would have had to do? Get a warrant. Show cause. Go to a judge and get them to sign off on it, after Flash had done something to show that it was legally permissible within the bounds of preexisting law. That is what accountability is. A structure of preexisting rules and people making sure you are allowed to do what you are doing, and penalizing you if aren’t doing what you’re allowed to do,

If Tony Stark, prominent but technically private individual wanted to access Flash Thompson’s embarrassing text messages, do you know what he would have had to do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because there is nothing he could have done to legally get those. He isn’t the police. He can’t get a warrant. Being able to access all private communication without any sort of hesitation, consideration, or permission is a massive abuse of power. 

E.D.I.T.H itself a huge fucking red flag, and I wouldn’t trust anyone with that power, no matter who they were.

But instead of making this point, instead of stating that the E.D.I.T.H. system was a power too easily abused, the MCU slapped a cutesy acronym on it, turned it into a gag, and turned the conversation towards who would be worthy of it, not whether anyone would be worthy of it. The problem with the E.D.I.T.H. glasses is not that they were able to unilaterally cause such destruction with no oversight and no due process and no safeguards—the problem is Beck. The evil evil man who got them by trickery. If Tony Stark had them, if Peter Parker had them, if the right person had them, it never would have happened. We need to ask who wields powers, not if the powers should even exist.

I honestly don’t think the MCU is interested in depicting accountability, not really. It’s a fun time, I love the movies and the characters, but it’s still military propaganda. The Pentagon funds these movies. They are never going to have an antiestablishment message. They are never going to say that there are powers that no one should have, not the military, not the government, not anyone. They’ll use the buzzword accountability, show devastating powers, and then ask who should have them? Who are the best people to hold others accountable, to be the guiding force behind these abilities?

And despite all the corruption that the movies depict, despite Hydra and Ross and all the messed up abuses that are in each movie, the MCU still implicitly answers, the government. The guy we actually see at the head of the Accords was Ross. “Lead it to Harlem” Ross. “Bruce Banner is the property of the US military” Ross. Human experimentation, war crimes, and effective enslavement Ross, who hunted Bruce Banner across the globe because he saw him as a weapon instead of a person. Funnily enough, no one ever examines if he will responsibly wield the power the Accords gives him. It’s a necessary deal with a necessary devil, and ultimately, it’s for the greater good. 

In the end, the people running the Accords are people in the same position as the ones Tony sold weapons to for years, the same ones who cut deals with HYDRA scientists and led them to infiltrate, the same ones that okay’d Project Insight and nearly nuked New York. 

Don’t get me wrong--accountability was not the only facet of Tony’s character arc, and I actually really enjoy his character. He grew so much in the course of the movies, in a lot of different ways. Tony Stark was a hero, and he was a man who tried to do the right thing. But part of doing the right thing is accepting that some powers are not yours to have, and that if you take certain actions, you need to accept the consequences that come from it. The Accords had the potential to actualize this. It would have been a fulfillment of an arc they set up from the beginning. Instead, he left the MCU the same way he entered: making weapons, empowering government officials, and having little to no accountability or oversight for his actions. 

[androgynousblackbox]

Seeing so many people railing against the netflix show Dahmer because it hurts victims and exploits their suffering got me thinking some kind of way about the way America in general portrays themselves on movies, more those that either want to attribute to America especial kind of values that apparently no one else has (”freedom”) or directly reference war or militaristic actions as somehow good. This is an idea I have been cooking for a while when I saw a review, that otherwise was fine, in which the youtuber said that the Iron Giant is “anti-military” and I was so patently confused because no, it’s not. The military is literally portrayed as the good guys who did the right thing and reacted to a credible threat, rejecting the actual bad guy of the movie because they are too good to ever even think about hurting a white american child. The Iron Giant himself is a weapon of mass destruction that has the capacity of killing everyone but chooses not to because Superman, a symbol of American Exceptionalism if I ever saw one, inspires him to heroically take on a dangerous mission for the sake of saving everyone and if that isn’t metaphorically bringing to mind the way that the USA is the owner of some of the most destructive weapons in the entire Earth, but it’s fine because they are the USA and they are the good guys, then I don’t know what to tell you because it sure looks like that to me. And, like, that got me thinking... there are people out there to whom that can be traumatizing. There are people who have died on wars, or almost did, because of america exceptionalism, because of their “freedom”, because they tried to get an american taste and end up dying on a cage without knowing what happened to their children. Colonialism has a body count, slavery has a body counts, America and the military  have body counts, and those can cause traumas that will probably remain on some cases with an entire family, entire communities. If you all felt something about the generational trauma on Encanto, but still argued more about Latine characters never being queer or neurodivergent, then just try to imagine for one second how it feels for the people to whom America meant pain and suffering to constantly being gaslighted into believing that they are a force of good, sometimes the only force of good that keeps the rest of the world safe from certain evil and that evil happened to be your home. Why is that trauma not talked about more? Why is that pain the one that has us stopping for a moment and consider “wait, is this right? Is this truthful? Is this something worth repreating even though we are literally rewriting history and putting on a bright smile over the dead bodies of these people”? I don’t even want to say those narrative shouldn’t exist, I mean that kinda of discussion is just never there on the first place when it comes to certain kind of victims. Why we treat “true crime” as this precious thing that has to be handled carefully because “the family of the victims could be listening” but there is never that type of care about history, especially that one that happened to affect to the “losers” of it? Pain is pain and unnecesary suffering is bad, so why it’s okay on one context in which it happened to one person or a group of person by the actions of one or more individuals but not when it’s an entire country on an entire demographic?  Rationally I know why. Because that is the foundation of American Exceptionalism and to believe that they could be the bad guys for someone else, someone that is just as valuable and good as they believe themselves to be, is asking to tear down the entire fabric of what being american even means. Not to mention that it’s hard to see an statistic about the many fucks up of the CIA on Latinoamérica and realize that there were people behind those numbers, sons and daughters and everything else, a victim that didn’t deserve shit. I get that, but at the same time it kinda underwhelming when I see leftist going all out about how this or that show shouldn’t exist or it’s especially bad because it had this effect on the victims, which are valid feelings to have, don’t get me wrong, but there is still a clear distinction between who even brings those ethical questions and who doesn’t. Anyway, I don’t mean to invalidate anyone affected for the crimes of a person or the people who care about them because pain is pain and unnecesary suffering is bad, but the whole talk about how ethical or unethical true crime content can or has to be got me thinking about this. Also Iron Giant sucks. There, I said it.

[chainofclovers]

Ted Lasso 2x11 thoughts

For an episode that ends with a journalist Ted trusts but has (understandably) recently lied to warning Ted that he’s publishing an article about his panic attacks, it was fitting that this episode seemed entirely about what all of these characters choose to tell each other. And after most of a season of television that Jason Sudeikis has described as the season in which the characters go into their little caves to deal with things on their own, it turns out they are finally able to tell each other quite a lot.

Which is good because, um, wow, a lot is going to happen in the season finale of this show!

Thoughts on the things people tell each other behind the cut!

Roy and Keeley. I absolutely loved the moment during their photoshoot in which they bring up a lot of complicated emotional things and are clearly gutted (“gutted”? Who am I? A GBBO contestant who forgot to turn the oven on?) by what they’ve heard. We already know that Keeley and Roy are great at the kinds of moments they have before the shoot begins, in which Roy builds Keeley up and tells her she’s fucking amazing. From nearly the beginning of their relationship, they’ve supported each other and been each other’s biggest fans. But their relationship has gone on long enough that they’ve progressed from tentative arguments about space and individual needs into really needing to figure out what they mean to each other and how big their feelings are and what that means in relation to everything else. Watching these two confess about the uncomfortable kiss with Nate, the unexpectedly long conversation with Phoebe’s teacher, and—most painfully—the revelation that Jamie still loves Keeley didn’t feel like watching two people who are about to break up. (Although I could see them potentially needing space from each other to get clarity.) It felt like watching two people realize just how much they’d lose if they lost each other, which is an understandably scary feeling even—or especially—when you’re deeply in love but not entirely sure what the future holds. Not entirely sure what you’re capable of when you’ve never felt serious about someone in quite this way, and are realizing you have to take intentional actions to choose that relationship every single day. I’m excited to learn whether Roy and Keeley decide they need to solidify their relationship more (not necessarily an engagement, but maybe moving in together or making sure they’re both comfortable referring to the other as partner and telling people they’re in a committed relationship) or if things go in a different direction for a while.

Sharon and Ted. I’ve had this feeling of “Wow, Ted is going to feel so intense about how honest he’s been with Sharon and is going to end up getting really attached and transfer a lot of emotions onto the connection they have and that is stressful no matter how beneficial it has been for him to finally get therapy!” for a while now. And Sharon’s departure really brought that out and it was indeed stressful. But the amount of growth that’s happened for both of these characters is really stunningly and beautifully conveyed in this episode. Ted is genuinely angry she left without saying goodbye, and he doesn’t bury it some place deep inside him where it will fester for the next thirty years. He expresses his anger. (I also noticed he sweared—mildly—in front of her again, which is really a big tell for how much he has let his carefully-constructed persona relax around her.) He reads her letter even though he said he wasn’t going to, and he’s moved. I don’t think Ted has the words for his connection to Sharon beyond “we had a breakthrough,” but Sharon gets it, and is able to firmly assert a professional boundary by articulating her side of that breakthrough as an experience that has made her a better therapist. And is still able to offer Ted a different kind of closure by suggesting they go out before her train leaves. No matter how you feel about a patient/football manager seeing their therapist/team psychologist colleague socially, I appreciated this story because IMO it didn’t cross big lines but instead was about one final moment in this arc in which both Ted and Sharon saw each other clearly and modeled what it is to give someone what they need and to expect honesty and communication from them. I liked that Ted ends up being the one saying goodbye. (The mustache in the exclamation points!) I like that whether or not Sharon returns in any capacity (Sarah Niles is so wonderful that I hope she does, but I’m not sure), the goodbye these characters forge for themselves here is neither abandonment nor a new, more complicated invitation. It’s the end of a meaningful era, and although the work of healing is the work of a lifetime, it’s very beautiful to have this milestone.

Ted and Rebecca. So, maybe it’s just me, but it kinda feels like these two have a few li’l life things to catch up on?! (HAHHHHHaSdafgsdasdf!) I really adored their interactions in this episode. I maintain that Biscuits With The Boss has been happening this whole time (even when Ted’s apartment was in shambles, there’s biscuit evidence, and I feel like we’ve been seeing the biscuit boxes in Rebecca’s office pretty regularly too), even if it might have been more of a drive-by biscuit drop-off/feelings avoidance ritual. It was really lovely to see Ted on more even footing in Rebecca’s office, joking around until she tells him to shut up, just like the old days. And GOSH—for their 1x9 interaction in Ted’s office to be paralleled in this episode and for Ted to explicitly make note of the parallel in a way Rebecca hears and sees and understands?! MY HEART. In both of Rebecca’s confessions, she is not bringing good news but it is good and meaningful that she chooses to share with Ted. In both situations, Ted takes the moment in stride and offers acceptance equivalent to the gravity of what she has to confess. And in both situations, he’s not some kind of otherworldly saint, able to accept Rebecca no matter what because he’s unaffected by what she shares. He is affected. When he tells her about Sam, you can see a variety of emotions on his face. Rebecca is upset and Ted is calm, and even if I might have liked for him to try to talk about the risk the affair poses to the power dynamics on the team or any number of factors, I also really liked that he just accepts where she is, and—most importantly—does not offer her advice beyond examining herself and taking her own advice. A massive part of being in a relationship with another person (a close relationship of any nature) is figuring out how to support that person without necessarily having to be happy about every single thing they do. It’s so important that Ted connects what she’s just told him about Sam back to what she told him last season about her plot with the club. These both feel like truth bombs to him, and he is at least safe enough to make that clear. These are both things that impact him, things that shape how he sees her and maybe even how he sees himself. He cares about her and is capable of taking in this information; he has room for it. But it’s not something he takes lightly, and neither does she. See you next year.

Tumblr user chainofclovers and the TV show Ted Lasso. My brain is going wild thinking about all the ways the next “truth bomb” conversation could go in 3x11 or whatever. Maybe they go full consistent parallel and Rebecca confesses something else, this time about her and Ted or some other big future thing that impacts him as much or more as the other confessions have. (The same but different.) Maybe the tables turn and Ted has something to confess to her. While the 1x9 conversation ended in an embrace and the 2x11 conversation ended with a bit more physical distance (understandable given the current state of their relationship and the nature of the discussion), the verbal ending of both conversations involved voices moving into a sexier lower register while zooming in to talk specifically about their connection to each other, so I have to assume there will be some consistencies in s3 even if the circumstances will be completely different. I don’t really know where I’m going with this and I obviously will go insane if I sustain this level of anticipatory energy until Fall 2022 but I have a feeling my brain and heart are going to try!

Sam and Rebecca. I know there’s been a lot of criticism about whether this show is being at all realistic about the power dynamics and inevitable professional issues this relationship would create. On some level, I agree; I like that pretty much everyone who knows about the affair has been kind so far, but you can be kind and still ask someone to contend with reality. But I also think that in nearly every plot point on this show, the narrative is driven by how people feel about their circumstances first and foremost. (It’s why the whiteboard in the coaching office and the football commentators tell us more about how the actual football season is going from a points perspective than anyone else.) This episode reminded me how few people know about Sam and Rebecca, and how much their time together so far has been time spent in bed. The private sphere. I thought this episode really expertly brought the public sphere into it, not—thank goodness—through a humiliating exposure or harsh judgment but through an opportunity for Sam that illustrates not only all his potential to do great things but how much Rebecca’s professional position and personal feelings are in conflict with that. Could stand in the way of that. I don’t have a strong gut feeling about where this will go, but I do think Sam’s face in his final scene of this episode is telling. He started the episode wanting to see Rebecca (his most recent text to her was about wanting to connect), and Edwin’s arrival from Ghana really exploded his sense of what is possible for his life. If he’d arrived home to Rebecca sitting on his stoop prior to meeting Edwin, he’d have been delighted. Now he’s conflicted, and whatever decision he makes, he has to reckon with the reality that he cannot have everything he wants. No matter what. And Rebecca—she has taken Ted’s advice and is attempting to be honest about the fact that she can’t control Sam’s decisions but hopes he doesn’t go, and even saying that much feels so inappropriate. And I’m not sure how much she realizes about the inappropriateness of the position she’s putting him in, although maybe she’s getting there considering she exits the scene very quickly. I’ve honestly loved Rebecca’s arc this season. I think it’s realistic that she got obsessed with the intimacy she thought she could find in her phone. I think it’s realistic that her professional and personal ambitions are inappropriately linked. (They certainly were for Rupert. It’s been years since she’s known anything different; even if she’s done some significant recovery work to move on from her abusive marriage and figure out her own priorities, she’s got a long way to go.) I know there are people who will read this interaction between Rebecca and Sam as a totally un-self-aware thing on the part of “the show” or “the writers” but what I saw is two people who enjoyed being in bed together and now have to deal with the reality that they’re in two different places in their lives and that one has great professional power over the other. If that wasn’t in the show, I wouldn’t be able to see it or feel so strongly about it.

Edwin and Sam. I really enjoyed all the complexities of this interaction. Edwin is promising a future for Sam that doesn’t quite exist yet, though he has the financial means to make it happen. He offers this by constructing for Sam a Nigerian—and Ghanaian—experience unlike anything he’s found in London. Sam is amazed that this experience is here, and Edwin’s response is to explain to him that the experience is not here. Not really. The experience in Africa. Sam has of course connected to the other Nigerian players on the team, but this is something else entirely. I’m really curious if Sam is going to end up feeling that what Edwin has to offer is real or not. That sense of home and connection? So real. And so right that he would want to experience that homecoming and would want to be part of building that experience for others. But at the end of the day, he went to a museum full of actors and a pop-up restaurant full of “friends,” and is that constructed authenticity as a stand-in for a real homecoming more or less real than the home he’s building in Richmond? (With other players who stand in solidarity with him, and with well-meaning white coaches who say dumb stuff sometimes, and an a probably-doomed love interest, and a feeling that he should put chicken instead of goat in the jollof, and the ability to stand out as an incredible player on a rising team.)

Nate and everyone. But also Nate and no one. Nate’s story is so painful and I’m so anxious for next week’s episode. For a long time I’ve felt that a lot of Nate’s loyalties are with Richmond, and a lot of his ambitions are around having given so much to this place without getting a lot back, and having a strong feeling that he’s the answer to Richmond’s future. But now I’m not so sure; his ambitions have transferred into asking everyone he knows (except Ted, of course), if they want to be “the boss.” But Nate is all tactics and no communication. When he wants to suggest a new play to Ted, he hasn’t yet learned to read Ted’s language to learn that Ted is eager to hear what he has to say. And while Ted has been really unfortunately distracted about Nate and dismissive of him this season, he clearly respects Nate’s approach to football and was appreciative of the play. Nate just can’t hear that. The suit is such a great metaphor of all the things Nate is in too much pain to be able to hear clearly. Everyone digs at him for wearing the suit Ted bought him (including Will, who’s got to get little cuts in where he can, because he’s got to be sick of the way Nate treats him), but when he gets fed up his solution isn’t to go out on his own and find more clothes he likes; he asks Keeley to help him. And then crosses a major line with her...and no matter how kind she was about it, she was clearly not okay. Everything is going to blow up, and I’m so curious as to whether Nate will end up aligning himself with Rupert in some way or if he’s going to end up screwed over by Rupert and in turn try to screw over his colleagues even worse than he’s already done. Or try desperately to make amends even though it could be too late for some. Either way, I’m fully prepared to feel devastated. (And there’s no way I’m giving up on this character. If he’s able to learn, I truly believe he could end up seeking forgiveness and forging a happier existence for himself. Someday. Like in season 3 or something.)

Ted and Trent. Trent deciding to reveal his source to Ted is a huge deal, and I’m torn between so many emotions about this exposé. I’m glad it’s a Trent Crimm piece and not an Ernie Loundes piece. I’m glad that Trent made the decision to warn Ted and let him know that Nate is his source. I fear—but also hope—that this exposure will set off a chain reaction of Ted learning about some of the things he’s missed while suffering through a really bad bout with his dad-grief and panic disorder. The things Ted doesn’t know would devastate him. I wonder if Ted will want to figure out a way to make Nate feel heard and reconcile with him, and I wonder how that will be complicated if/when he realizes Nate has severely bullied Will, gets more details on how he mistreated Colin, etc. I wonder if Rebecca, whom Nate called a “shrew” right before she announced his promotion, will be in the position of having to ask Ted to fire him, or overriding Ted and doing it herself. So many questions! I have a feeling it’ll go in some wild yet very human-scaled, emotionally-nuanced direction, and I’ll be like “Oh my GOD!” but also like “Oh, of course.”

This VERY SERIOUS AND EMOTIONAL REVIEW has a major flaw, which is that none of the above conversations include mention of the absolute love letter to N*SYNC. Ted passionately explains how things should go while dancing ridiculously! Will turns on the music and starts gyrating! Roy nods supportively! Beard shouts the choreography like the Broadway choreographer of teaching grown men who play football how to dance like a boy band. Everyone is so incredibly proud when they nail it. I love them.

I cannot believe next week is the end. For now. I’m kind of looking forward to letting everything settle during the hiatus, but I’ve really loved the ride.

[becauseanders]

so like with this week being the season and hopefully not but entirely possibly series finale of the orville, i am dying to know if we’re ever going to get to the true heart and soul of isaac

because let’s be real: isaac can and does feel

in his own way, at least, and with more than enough room for growth (as he has grown so much already)

so maybe not like biologicals or timmis, and we clearly saw the difference from when he gained and promptly lost the ability to feel on that same level but even then

like the extent, the depth of the emotion he expresses to claire, his intense declarations of “i love you so much,” or his talking about the way ty looks at him, that doesn’t come right out of the gate for experiencing any emotion at all for the very first time, and when she says she’d always hoped that deep down he had that in him, i firmly believe she’s right

and after isaac’s suicide in the season premiere when talla wonders how it could have come to this when he doesn’t have the capacity to feel and claire responds “i never believed that,” it’s because isaac has given her plenty of reason not to!

yes sure after john and charly bring him back he expresses that his suicide was for optimal crew efficiency and not genuine hurt or depression, continuing to insist he cannot experience that, but i don’t know, his note ending with “best regards to the finn family” contradicts that to me—especially adding the lens of learning he’d apparently been harassed by the orville crew for a significant amount of time, but it was specifically marcus’s hurt that pushed him over the edge

and oh yeah let’s not forget that HE TURNED ON THE KAYLON

HE LITERALLY SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT, HE HAS LEARNED AND GROWN AND HIS PROGRAMMING HAS BEEN IRREVOCABLY ALTERED BY CLAIRE AND HER FAMILY AND BY THE ORVILLE CREW AT LARGE, like when the kaylon have taken over the orville claire tries so hard to get it through to poor ty that isaac can’t love them back and participating in the kaylon invasion is something he can’t control or fight, but he does! he does fight it! he does change, and when he sacrifices himself to save everyone else, it’s because ty got through to him in a manner that should have been impossible!

(not even to mention the only time he and his “superior intelligence” ever made an error was because claire didn’t want to see him anymore…but sure, he doesn’t have real feelings much less real feelings for her)

every episode of this season has involved me screaming about “when are we going to cover that ISAAC IS FEELING AND HIS CAPACITY TO FEEL IS CONTINUING TO GROW!” and my fiancé supplied an interesting thought on it, that the narrative is taking it at the same pace as isaac, who has clearly not come to terms with how very deeply his time with biologicals has truly affected him but

come on, we need this to be addressed, for claire, for ty, for marcus, for isaac himself, and honestly now even the rest of the kaylon

he may not be timmis but he’s not just a kaylon anymore either, and timmis learned all at once because he was reprogrammed whereas isaac has reached where he is organically over time and i am just desperate to see this get the attention it deserves

(also regardless if this show doesn’t get renewed i will burn disney to the fucking ground)

[backinmypjs]

The reactions I've been seeing to the Roe ruling are mindboggling, both online and from my irl social circle. "The dems sat back and let this happen!!1!" no they fucking didn't, you're uninformed about the federal process and you need to read more than headlines of news articles. "No one thought they would actually do this" my buddy my friend what did you think was happening with the trans bans? Please rub those two brain cells together. You didn't show up to protect the bodily autonomy and right to medical decision making for people you don't like/agree with, and now its biting you in the ass because this country is built on legal precedent. "Now is the time to mobilize! #protest #fyp #MyBodyMyChoice #buythisproducttoshowyourvalues" fuck you.

Do you know how this decision even got made? How our political system works? Are you paying attention to the things your local and state legislature is doing? Do you know who your representatives are? ARE YOU GETTING INVOLVED??

Do you know why this decision was delivered today, specifically? Because the conservatives are very very good at controlling the narrative. If nothing else had dropped, coverage of what came out in yesterday's Jan 6 hearing would have dominated the weekend news cycle. Now, however, conservative pundits can hammer on the sanctity of the court using the SAME RHETORIC used in the hearing which stressed the importance of a DOJ that is not beholden to the majority party, AND everyone is debating whether a fetus is a person instead of the multiple felonies and attempted election fraud committed by a sitting president.

I know its a lot. I know your time is limited and its easier to not pay attention because there so many problems and you can't possibly solve them all. You're right, you can't. Thats why we work as a collective. I may not be able to protest the new stadium thats bankrupting our economic development fund & the dystopian police program targeting high schoolers & call all committe reps about common-sense gun control & volunteer with the phone bank to register voters, but I know people working in all those groups because I work with a group trying to stop the clear cutting of 750 acres of forest with mission remnants and a potential native burial site to build apartments. When we present to the commission, the others show up in support because they know we did the research, and we do the same for them. Solidarity. No one has the capacity to care about and affect change for every single issue, so just pick the two most important or accessible to you and SHOW UP.

Get involved. Pay attention. Think critically. Come to rallies, join a working group, call your reps, be an informed voter and know your school board and city/County commissioners. Tweet about it if you have to. But for fucks sake don't add me to a text chain of people asking how this could have happened.

[maxwell-grant]

Charlie Chan. Who is fascinating, because he was created explictly to be an anti-Yellow Peril character. Unlike most Chinese characters of the time, he's both intelligent, physically capable, and unambiguously heroic. In the novels, he's simultaneously proud of being Chinese AND proud of being an American citizen. He gives orders and instructions to white people, and the narrative treats this as perfectly normal and acceptable. There's a bit in the first book, when an attempt to trap the..(1/2)

(cont'd)There's a bit in the first book where an attempt to trap the protagonist fails, because a message supposedly from Charlie clearly isn't because Charlie's English isn't broken, it's like poetry. Etc. The movies made him more stereotypical, & played by white actors in yellowface, but still, he's a heroic Chinese man, who is as capable and patriotic as any white man. Nowadays, he's thought of as racist caricature. Which he is, but still, it makes one think.

I'm not nearly as acquainted with Charlie Chan as you are (and I definitely suspected he was less racist in the original books because that's nearly always the norm when it comes to pulp characters) but yeah, that "Which he is" is forever going to be the most unfortunate and saddest part of it all when it comes to Charlie Chan. For all the virtues that can be bestowed on Charlie Chan, for everything great that the character had going for him and inspired, the fact that the least offensive image of the character I could find to put here for illustration's sake is from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon kinda exemplifies the big elephant in the room when it comes to Charlie.

Charlie Chan is a great example of two things: One is the way progress is never a fixed quantity and often what was progressive and forward-thinking in it's time can become something outdated and backwards and downright offensive given enough time, and the 2nd is my constant stressing that this is all the more incentive to reclaim the pulps and either highlight or fix aspects of them, instead of dismissing every aspect of them based on the preconception that everything about it's history is unforgivably bigoted and must be handled with the nuance of a sledgehammer.

I stress time and time again the need to highlight and understand the prejudices that went into pulps, because either ignoring them or wielding them as a weapon to attack them does no favors to anyone. The pulps weren't exceptionally bigoted - look at literally any medium in it's time period and you'll find bigotry and prejudice and hatred - and they were exceptional in the number of POC heroes and heroines. Pulps were a medium of experimentation and cheap entertainment that gave way to much, much more varied kinds of protagonists than were permitted in films, serials, novels, comics and radio serials of the day. Imagine if no one was allowed to bring up and discuss superheroes without mentioning the Superman Slap-a-Jap posters or the Captain Marvel story so horrifingly racist it was recounted by an American ambassador after it deeply offended a friend's son and a major influence on the 1950s anti-comic trials. "Pulp fiction had deeply, unforgivingly racist depictions that deserve intense scrutiny and cannot be ignored" and "Pulp fiction was significantly ahead of every other medium at the time in regards to authors and editors striving to publish stories about heroic POCs, this cannot be dismissed and is something that needs to be perpetuated" are not exclusive facts. "A product of it's time" is not an excuse and never was, but it's a fact nevertheless.

Every time someone speaks favorably of Charlie Chan in any capacity, they have to start with a long preface of everything positive that the character had going for him. Yes, he's a deliberate subversion of the Yellow Peril, he's a heroic protagonist, he's plump and good-natured and humorous but far from a joke, he's friendly and pleasant and well-educated and wise, he's a good dad and family man and a terrifically sharp detective who's so good at his job he gets called to solve crimes all over the world, and none of these traits are apparent to people who have to google the character and repeteadly see a white man in awful make-up into every single image of the character, who watch the movies and cringe at the broken English. It's hardly relevant in the face of all the Asian-American critics who acknowledge the character's virtues but rightfully point out that this fortune-cookie spouting caricature, acting subservient to whites and whose virtues are based around his proximity to a white American ideal, doesn't represent them and they shouldn't pretend it does.

Which isn't to say that to like Charlie Chan is "wrong", a lot of East Asians love Charlie and the character's obviously got fans in Asian Americans. It's a complicated subject and I obviously cannot begin to vouch in a subject so heavily based around perceptions I cannot experience. And I deeply detest the idea of speaking for others on their particular experiences on this kind of matter, which is something Americans do a lot everytime they talk about representation in media.

So instead, I'm going to tackle this on a roundabout manner by going on an unrelated tangent to bring up an example of representation that isn't quite representative of what it's supposed to be, has a lot of issues that have been dissected by critics among the people it was supposed to represent, and none of that stopped the character from being popular and beloved and from being claimed anyway. And it's a Brazilian fighting game character, which means it's completely within my ballpark.

Yeah, obviously Blanka doesn't look like anyone who lives in Brazil (whatever resemblance he bears to redheaded jungle protectors of Brazilian folklore is purely accidental). Obviously neither Jimmy nor Blanka are Brazilian names or even exist in the Portuguese lexicon. Obviously there are issues in Street Fighter's approach to representation across the board, sure, and I'd actually say Laura is much worse than Blanka in that regard (again, my opinion, obviously not universal), but the fact remains that Blanka is and has always been pretty controversial. Obviously there's Brazilians who took offense to Blanka and they weren't wrong to do so, and I obviously do not speak for everyone here, that goes without saying.

Obviously the idea that Brazil's major representative in a global cast of characters, the first big name Brazilian character in videogames, is going to be a freakish jungle monster who roars and bites faces has problems, as is the fact that all the others get to be regular people representing fighting styles from their countries while Blanka doesn't. None of the Brazilian SF characters represent Capoeira, which is kinda shitty to be honest. And there's a whole stereotype of Brazil as a backwards land of beasts and savages that Blanka's creation played into. There's no shortage of ground to criticize Blanka's representation and Ono actually apologized in an interview once, but then he learned one teensy little thing:

Street Fighter is very popular on Brazil. Would you like to leave a message to the fans from there?

"Ono: Yes, I'm aware. At the time of Street Fighter II a lot of the arcade machines produced went there, so I knew we had lots of fans there. A message to Brazilians, well, I'd like to apologize. I know Blanka's a weird character and I don't want any Brazilian to feel uncomfortable with that.

When Blanka was conceived, we knew there were forests in Brazil, and so we thought he could look like that. I was actually kinda nervous knowing I'd meet Brazilian journalists. Still, this is the first Street Fighter in ten years, so we'd like all fans to play, including Brazilians, which are many.

Thanks. Well, but you should know that Brazilians love Blanka

"Ono: Ah, good! I was scared of getting beat up if I ever went to São Paulo! (laughs)"

(That's from a 2012 tv special called The Greatest Brazilian of All Time where over a million viewers voted to elect whoever they wanted, and Blanka was going to win. He was polling ahead of Aryton Senna and PELÉ, fucking Pelé, yes this happened. He wasn't even disqualified for being a cartoon character, it was an open poll, he was disqualified due to canon stating he had been born in Thailand, which I think may have been retconned since then. Again, A MILLION BRAZILLIANS voted for this contest, and Blanka was going to win.)

Blanka is great and sweet and lovable, he made the best out of the incredible shitty hands fate dealt him and became a cool and strong green man who shoots lightning and flies, a self-taught warrior who rides whales and planes to fighting tournaments, and he loves his mom and friends and kicks ass and after he's done he dances in joy and gives the kids of his village piggyback rides, and Brazil loves him. He doesn't represent any existing person or fighting style, he's rooted in a negative stereotype and incorrect assumptions, he's not even really Brazilian, and he's our boy and nobody can take him away from us.

No criticism of Blanka, no matter how in-depth or even right it is, is ever going to affect that, because regardless of what was wrong or misguided and offensive about him, we claimed him and loved him so throughly that Capcom kept playing up Brazilian representation in every subsequent game post Alpha, and because of Blanka's impact and reception in such a big game, Brazilian characters have become a staple of fighting games, and that's how we got much more diverse representatives in those games. Fighting games have more Brazilian representation than LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE on media not produced here. It started as BAD representation, with way less thought put into it than Charlie Chan, and it still mattered to a lot of Brazilians who reclaimed it and made it better than it was ever intended to be, and as a response to it, it gradually became better. 

Progress is not a fixed quantity, it's an uphill battle, and it's not unwinnable. Everything's gotta start somewhere.

The Good Asian is a ongoing comic that I think does the best job I've seen yet of handling an Asian American detective protagonist, which is not really a high bar in the first place, and more to the point, The Good Asian illustrates the 2nd part: the reclaiming. The Good Asian deals a lot with the realities that a 1930s Asian-American detective would run into, the strained circumstances and relationships between said character and the world around him, because it's born from an author who took a look at Charlie Chan and Mr Moto and the like and recognized the potential in those stories that could not be fulfilled in it's time period by the people writing said stories. 

The Good Asian pays little reverence to Charlie Chan, but it acknowledges that it cannot exist without Charlie Chan, and it reclaims the Charlie Chan premise at the hands of someone more adequately equipped to tell a gripping story that goes places none of Charlie's contemporaries would ever go. Regardless of how good or bad of representation Charlie Chan was, Charlie Chan mattered and was beloved and inspired a better example for others to improve on or rebel against.

I desperately wish that I could google Charlie Chan without having to look at a guy in yellowface, and the ONLY way that's going to happen is if the character ever gets meaningfully brought back and reclaimed for good by people who can meaningfully tackle the character and present him as he should have always been presented.

And then, I imagine it would be a lot easier to show people on how swell Charlie really is. A true, positive role model and hero, who no longer has to look like a gross cartoon to be able to exist at all. Who can finally be what he was always meant to be, and always was deep down.

[fursasaida]

re: music. please do tell

(for everyone else: this is about my commenting in some tags that the idea that music is "how we decorate time" vs architecture decorating space, or music as something that is pure time or happens purely in time, is bullshit)

there are two ways to look at this. one is practical (and snotty) and one is theoretical.

practical: the production of music depends at least as much on the manipulation of space as it does the manipulation of time (rhythm, pacing, etc). your larynx and vocal chords, string instruments, wind instruments, drums all depend on resonance chambers and distances (length of the string, pipe, vocal cord, etc; dimensions of the drum, shape you make with your mouth, etc). that musical sound of the tinkling brook has to do with the volume of water, size of the stones, length of the drops, etc. this is because music is sound, sound requires vibration, vibration has physical properties that vary with various attributes of extension that are undeniably spatial. even digitally recorded and manipulated music relies heavily on tools for simulating spatial conditions of production--different kinds of reverb, for example. not to mention: you can hear any of it because of your god damn ear, which is another kind of resonance chamber. not to mention: how could anybody make music without any space to move in. even slapping your knee requires fucking up and down. AND HAVE WE CONSIDERED ACOUSTICS.

theoretical: ok ok so we don't have to take this so literally. it can be kind of poetic--or, as in some philosophy etc., illustrative/theoretical. my charge here is that treating music as "pure time" is bad poetics and does not help us explain anything theoretically either. theoretically: space and time aren't separate. i do not blame some random twitter user for not getting this. i do blame somebody like henri cursed-be-his-name bergson. just because it can be useful for certain purposes to think of them separately (like, say, graphing something's speed) does not make it valuable to talk about a pursuit like music in only one dimension or the other. like, the cubists were inspired by bergson; they show you bodies from more than one angle because they're trying to give a sense of duration--the ways you would see it at multiple moments as you move. this is supposed to be full of time instead of static and timeless like perspective. this is also horseshit. there is nothing less spatial about this! it has to do with the fact that the body you're looking at looks different from different angles, i.e. it has shape and directions! perspectival painting shows you actions and processes all the time! arguably it is more timeless to collapse multiple perspectives and moments into a single image! i'm not anti-cubism particularly, it's fine, i'm just saying, like: did anyone think this through actually.

similarly, if you want to use music to talk about the way time passes, how it's always going but does seem to have a present-duration--the present moment is not knife-edge thin--you can use literally any process that happens at a perceptible speed to do this. and you do not need to ignore that whatever it is also has spatial qualities. how would you even perceive time without motion or change in space? music is supposed to be one way. but i'm sorry! a) for practical reasons it simply is not without such motion/change (not even as a digital recording), and b) since time and space manifestly are united in perception, what help is it to try to separate them if you are a phenomenologist (bergson) rather than a (classical) physicist or engineer? henri what the fuck. this has always struck me as mainly a way to completely fail to appreciate music while also being obtuse about time. to speak of music as time only, no space, means divorcing it from the physical process of its production. this means it requires believing in absolute time--something that would pass and would happen even without anything to happen in it. which is just as wild as absolute space (space with a priori locations that would exist whether there was any matter to fill it or not). not even isaac newton, who invented both of them, thought this was something you could perceive or measure empirically. absolute space and time was to him a purely theological-mathematical idea, something that had to exist for the sake of certain premises but could never be experienced as such. your measurements will always be relative, not absolute. so absolute space and time are both bad for theorizing how anything affects us or is experienced--you know, like phenomenology? also fwiw the fact that absolute time can't capture the sensation of duration is still, like, a big problem in physics.

going back to that reblog where i explained that not everybody has always even had the concept of "space" like we do now, there is no empirical reason to believe absolute time or space exists. duration and extension are properties of physical processes (at varying levels of materiality). and many of those physical processes are not better explained but rather impoverished by trying to make them "happen in space and time" rather than things that give rise to spaces and timings. this is why the idea of music as pure time or purely in time leads to such absurd questions as "how can you slap your knee without up and down." it's stupid! it's snotty! but that's because the premise is bonkers!

so. whether theoretically or poetically, music is much more suited to discussion in terms of place. places have or are both space and time. in fact it is to some degree wrong to talk about place as "space and time" at all; rather we get the two separate concepts more by extrapolating from place, in which they are so fundamentally unified that not even a word like "spacetime" really captures it. that is partly what makes place difficult to theorize: places are too much like bodies, or like people, or like communities; you can't pull them apart into axes like "space" vs "time" and not lose what it is you're trying to theorize. (you can, e.g., track and analyze traffic patterns quite well this way, and that can be worth doing! but does that capture the place? does it explain what a place is? probably not. it's a different purpose.)

why were european cathedrals designed to have great acoustics? because those were places for the glorification of ~the divine, which was to be accomplished through both light and sound; both its spatial form (extension, hardness, size) and its nature as a ritual site (repetition, endurance); these qualities or capacities could not be separated. did the music not "decorate" the place just as much as the paintings, sculptures, architecture, stained glass? of course it did. we've all seen videos of somebody stopping in an archway or a big bathroom or whatever and singing; the place is further beautified by that because it is an interaction with the place, its spatiality, its acoustics, its textures, the way it looks, the fact that it invited the singer to sing--whether congruously (maybe a church) or incongruously (the aforementioned bathroom). just like your neighborhood has a distinct soundscape; just like a city has refrains. just like i remember stopping dead in the middle of the old city of damascus because three different calls to prayer had, intentionally or otherwise, overlapped to form a perfect major triad for a moment. i will remember that forever. and i will remember where i was when it happened too. (souq al hamidiyya.) that is part of the place. it happened because of the number of mosques and where they were located. and similarly what kind of sounds, or what kind of music, happens in which places has to do with the normative character of places. some sounds, some musics, "belong" some places and not others, because some actions are held to be appropriate there or not, or because they are or are not held to be characteristic. i'm not saying that's a good thing in itself. it's just the way it is. (and there are some places whose function is specifically to be open to all kinds of music, of course.) but i'm saying it leads to much more interesting questions with much more explanatory possibility. for example we could ask about characteristic rhythms or speeds of sounds in different places and what that means. or look at conflicts over what sounds "belong" or don't and to what degree that is justified in terms of time (time of day, pace of life, epochal ideas like what is or isn't "modern," etc).

tl; dr: explain to me the concept of an echo (which we use as a metaphor for having a strong experience of time quite a lot) using time and no space. explain to me how putting it in terms of time alone, even if you could, captures something that including space, or better, a simple narrative set in a place, does not. now explain to me why you would want to do either of those things.

[mdramas]

Extracurricular is like someone binged Breaking Bad then watched an episode of Law and Order SVU then said, "But what if he was actually sympathetic? What if his continued criminal activity in the context of the time frame and the narrative both made sense? What if the motive behind this criminal activity was not just sympathetic, but accurate: he needs to commit crime to earn enough to survive and attain the opportunities he requires so he will one day be able to survive without having to commit crime to do it, a very understandable and true to life perspective? What if he was allowed to be both a victim of classism and economic inequality, as well as blatantly profiting from systemic misogynistic practices and patterns, presented in such a way that makes him personally responsible for very visceral losses and traumas, partially due to his willful disregard for others for the sake of his and his own, partially due to his own unwillingness to confront the nature of these choices,, and partially due to his lack of experience and his underestimating of others who are in the same or similar positions as him?

What if his female LI whom people may be inclined to bash unnecessarily actually was responsible for a good amount of what goes wrong, not because she is a wife or a mother or a daughter whose demands, something to do with family, the home, or social expectations, hinder his capacity to be a proper full fledged criminal, but rather because she encourages him to choose crime and business and profit over human decency? And then what if it was actually crucial to her character arc rather than just a plot device to explain why the hero can't catch a break? In fact, what if her initially treating the situation like a game and making decisions without accounting for real people was significantly highlighted as a result of the elitist and classiest habit of simultaneously romanticizing the circumstances of the poor and cheapenjng the realities? What if she is constantly using her power and privilege to save him and save him and save him and what if he's resentful of that because it's both not an option for him and because walking away from him and this will always be an option for her? What if the ability of the rich to walk away from decisions that cost everyone else dearly was a major point of discussion and contention between them? What if she was allowed to be both spoiled and entitled and much deserving of criticism for it, as well as someone deprived of and deserving of unconditional love, who pretends and feels equally and sometimes simultaneously, who deserves to feel good at something she chose for herself but just can't seem to get the only thing she ever has chosen right?

What if everything that goes wrong never would've happened if both protagonists had parents who genuinely valued and loved their children intrinsically? What if everything does happen because two utterly and completely alone self-proclaimed independents who once, because of their pasts with their family, saw relationships as only predatory or parasitic but inherently built on imbalanced power and neglect, stumbled into positions of mutual need, which mutates through the series into a sickeningly unhealthy and codependent lifeline that is still emotionally healing both to them and the viewers if only because it is the first time that either of these two youths - these two kids, both abandoned and hopeless if in different ways - have ever been prioritized or even counted or even known, as people?

What if our victim was allowed to be a victim of circumstance and unfairly coerced and making her own choices? What if she was allowed to be both sympathetic in her attachment and loyalty to the one adult man she's been protected by rather than attacked by, but also in her anger and fear and disgust and her exhaustion? What if the man that loves her doesn't appreciate her, but what if really he does, and what if he doesn't know because he doesn't care, but he actually does because does care? What if they're just dating and it's not real - but it is - and she's hungry, so hungry and tired and needing something real and tangible and consistent and she latches onto this weird, mysterious, incomprehensible, silent old man who represents her pimp but speaks to her like she matters and like he cares what happens to her and he wants her to care about herself too, because both of her parents are dead and her boyfriend says he doesn't care, so why does he and what if he stops, what if he has no reason to try to convince her to care, what happens to her then?

What if the whole thing was this love story between two broken, desperate kids who found themselves only through each other, but the consequences of their prioritizing that love were real, palpable, and affected characters we not only followed, but were forced to confront first as the shallow background characters that are so common in stories that glorify violent crime, like the naive new sex worker and the oblivious asshole in her life, only to have their depths and layers unraveled before we are forced to watch them, fully realized people we now care about, pay the ultimate price for not even our protagonists' victory, but mere survival specifically with each other?

What if the whole point is that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' isn't just about wishing you had what you lost? It's about never having been given something, never knowing it, and wanting so badly, so fiercely that it's debilitating. It's about getting a glimpse of what it might be like and going weak with yearning and all the while cursing yourself for even daring to speculate that it could be attainable because that distant, unacknowledged hope is sustaining you like an IV drip, prompting you like a park sign warning of wolves, but call your desires by name and the howling at your back and hunger in your gut never stops. It's about find someone else who has never had what you never had and suddenly you can give it to them and that gives it to you. It's about having all your life and having it ripped away, maybe because you didn't protect it, or maybe because someone else never had it and couldn't let you.