#and her media was deeply conservative to begin with | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

torgophylum · 1 year ago

Text

FAR CRY 6: IT IS USELESS TO RESIST

This essay contains spoilers for Far Cry 6 For all of its bombastic flair, confident swagger, and funhouse style mad-cappery, Far Cry 6 is an anxious game. It is a game which highlights the problems inherent to trying to say something in a mass media format intended to appeal to all audiences. But, when it does decide that it is time to say something real, Far Cry 6 cannot decide what side it is on except for a deeply cynical core belief: Revolutions will never end, because revolutions are pointless. No one who seeks power can be trusted, and those who would depose someone in power are similarly suspect. The only thing which can be trusted in Far Cry 6 is violence, and violence will never let you down.

At times both leftist and wildly conservative, Far Cry avoids coming to direct, didactic conclusions about the future of its fictional Latin American island nation, Yara, preferring instead to sit in its profound anxiety regarding the nature of revolution and revolutionary figures. Far Cry 6 offers often contradictory messaging and a bleak, nearly hopeless vision of the future of revolution. This collection of conflicting ideas is most apparent in the game’s cast of characters, many of whom primarily express a desire to fight above all other causes.

Dani Rojas:

The game’s protagonist does much to focus the games themes primarily around what it means to be a revolutionary figure. Far Cry 6 is a bombastic, tonally diverse, game full of chaotic energy and hardline idealogues. It often comes as a surprise therefore, that its main character Dani Rojas, flits about her allegiances and beliefs throughout the narrative, resolving her (the game allows you to play a male or female version of the character, but I played through as female) story with little more than a shrug regarding what they thinks should happen next, and a commitment only to continuing to inflict guerrilla style violence regardless of who is in charge. Dani begins her narrative as a typical reluctant hero. Though they are no stranger to violence, having served for a short time in the hyper-oppressive Yaran military, Dani dreams only of leaving the island as soon as they can with her friend to open a mechanic shop in the US. It is only after her friends are slaughtered in front of her by the nation’s brutal dictator, Anton Castillo, that Dani begins to consider a life as the muscle behind the revolutionary Clara Garcia and her ragtag resistance, Libertad.

Dani is a different style of character than the franchise’s previous entry, Far Cry 5, in which the player embodies a nameless deputy with no discernable personality beyond what the player imbues themselves. Dani, by contrast is given miles of script, painting a picture of an often standoffish, serious, foul mouthed, and mistrustful individual who becomes a loving, compassionate, and devoted friend when the ice has been broken through. Critically, Dani never offers any beliefs beyond what is immediately in front of her. Dani does not believe in Libertad’s political goals, hell, they are barely even aware of those goals might be. But Dani does believe in Clara Garcia, and in her journey, believes in the strength of several other characters they recruit to the cause.

Dani’s allegiance to Clara also hinges on Clara’s own ambivalence about revolution. Clara has many ideas about how things should be run - her propaganda regarding her plans and her grievances with Anton are surprisingly detailed and can be gathered in pamphlets throughout Yara, the game’s form of environmental storytelling. However, Clara tells Dani that she believes she will likely die before the fight is over, that she will never see the future that she is hoping to create. Dani is swayed ultimately by this promise, “fight for me because I do not want power, because I am honest about not knowing what happens after.”

There are some ways in which Dani is still ultimately a product of how the player would like to embody her. In what is considered a joke ending by many, at any time beyond the game’s introductory tutorial Island, Dani is free to leave Yara by hopping in any boat or plane and flying beyond the country’s borders. Doing so will trigger a scene in which Dani is enjoying a cocktail on the beach in Florida, while listening to a news report about the death of Clara Garcia and the end of Libertad. In the open world genre, which emphasizes choice, it is interesting that this game includes the choice to leave the conflict as an explicit win condition for Dani. But it also, potentially reflects Dani’s ongoing ambivalence. Dani’s commitment to Libertad is only as strong as the players.

The gameplay is familiar to the Far Cry franchise. Armed with that belief and an assortment of comically violent animals, and an absurdly large arsenal of mega weapons known as Supremos provided by Dani’s mentor and foil, Juan Cortez, Dani begins her rampage across Yara. Framed as recruitment efforts of Yara’s most influential potential rebels to join the cause of Libertad, Dani is enlisted to kill hundreds, possibly thousands of Yaran soldiers, clearing checkpoints and capturing military bases. These actions, in conjunction with missions specific to each region, endear several important groups to join Libertad and march on Anton Castillo’s stronghold of Esperanza. They also usually result in the death of Anton’s most trusted generals, which Dani carries out specifically with the goal of revenge for atrocities inflicted on Yarans generally as well as her friends. These victories come at cost, however. By the end of the game, Libertad has won, but Clara Garcia is dead, and Dani’s extensive contributions to Libertad make herthe necessary leader. While Dani has been very successful at recruitment for Libertad, Dani has not actually picked up any significant convictions or beliefs about what should happen next, and abdicates power immediately after winning their revolution. “They will never hold free elections”, Juan Cortez remarks to Dani after they leave control of the country up to her revolutionary allies, a sentiment that Dani readily agrees with.

Cortez himself is a deeply ambivalent character, who fully confesses that his only interest is in violence and fighting. Cortez warns Dani constantly that she will end up just like him eventually - a premonition that will indeed come to past although she protests. Cortez and Dani take on some of the dirty work needed for the revolution so their leader, Clara, can keep her hands clean. This includes working with the CIA to overthrow Castillo; a realistic but also shocking acceptance of imperialist help that not even Anton Castillo, the game’s protagonist, would have stooped to. In the end, Cortez only finds himself at odds with Dani over one issue, namely whether or not Anton’s son, Diego, should be kept alive. Even this is not enough to permanently come between them, however.

Dani’s journey represents a strongly held ambivalence that there will ever be a meaningful end to violence. As the game’s resident poet remarks, “Revolution is over when we all are free.” Such an end will not come at the end of this game, and following its logic, should never have been expected. Dani believes in people, but not people in power - a wholly contradictory stance to take from one who takes power through such profound amounts of force. Dani is a defacto anarchist in many senses, but professes no allegiance to that as a philosophy. Dani has no ideas about what should happen next, and is annoyed with people who do. In the end, all Dani wants to do is keep fighting.

Dani’s arc, the change she progresses through the story, is not to come to any sense of beliefs about the future, but rather to become an almost mythic legend of the Yaran people. Far Cry 6 is as much about the invention and concept of folk heroes as it is about revolution - Dani taking on the mantle of another mentor, El Tigre, a “Legend of 67’” that takes her under his wing. To emphasize this point, through a long but easily achievable quest that connects Dani directly to the indigenous peoples and religions of Yara, Dani is eventually blessed by the gods of Yara and given a panther guardian and the ability to shoot through walls. Compared with Far Cry 5’s Junior Deputy, Dani is essentially a demi-god of death by the game’s conclusion, her exploits wholly unbelievable except that you have lived through them.

Dani allowing herself to take on and love the mantle of folk hero, revolutionary, guerilla, “the lucky one”, is the emotional journey they complete by the game’s end. But what does that have to do with Yara? Does it even matter, ultimately, what they fight for?

Of course, Far Cry’s themes are often not present in the protagonist, but in the antagonists, who after all, tend to take up the majority of space on the cover art. So, let us examine Anton.

Anton Castillo

Anton, played by the excellent Giancarlo Esposito, who was featured heavily in the advertising for the game, is the president of Yara and the son of its previous dictator who was killed by revolutionaries in 1967. That revolution resulted in a short lived democracy. Anton won his election by all accounts honestly, through his wealthy connections of interests, and through his close involvement in the discovery of “Viviro”, a cancer killing chemical that grows naturally in Yaran tobacco leaves, and can be enhanced greatly by the use of a chemical fertilizer that is deeply, immediately poisonous to everyone who handles it. Both Clara Garcia and Dani Rojas say they voted for him, and another revolutionary group, La Moral, is lead by someone who used to work directly with Anton to develop his technological dominance over communications throughout Yara.

After cementing his power, Anton quickly upscaled production of Viviro, which required hard and dangerous labor that would quickly kill anyone who performed it. This required the use of forced labor, which Anton employed extensively throughout Yara. Anton justifies this action by a familiar tactic of strongmen autocrats: he divides his population into true Yarans, who support him and look forward to a modern Yara with power on the world stage, and fake Yarans who seek only animalistic depravity and destruction. Anyone who Anton decides to use as forced labor is of course, retroactively a Fake Yaran who needs to be punished.

As mentioned previously, one of the longest quests in the game is also one which seems designed to rebuke Anton’s “true yaran” claim by accepting it; becoming an even truer Yaran. Through the exploration of various caves, Dani helps return three artifacts related to the local gods of native Yaran’s - by doing so Dani unlocks two weapons to their arsenal which transform the games challenges into a breezy jaunt. The gods first bless Dani with a Supremo (super weapons normally made by Juan Cortez), that allows her to shoot through walls with a one shot killing sniper rifle for around 20 seconds a pop, more than enough time to clear an entire army base. Secondly, the gods provide Dani with a phantom panther, a powerful cat that will often clear the base for you before you even get going. By showing deep respect to the cultures and customs of the land, Dani becomes essentially a folk hero demigod; the truest Yaran there could be.

While this is an obvious tactic to divide his populace, reinforcing his power, Anton soes in fact divide the world into two types of people. Anton considers himself and his lineage to have a pre-ordained right to rule; in one of his longest speeches to his son, Diego, Anton reveals that he believes his family to be “lions” among the “sheep” of Yara. It is this binary by which Anton is easily able to justify his decisions to enact modern slavery and widespread death on his island in the name of progress. Anton views the people of Yara as he does Viviro - resources to build the future.

Further informing Anton’s actions is his deep resentment of colonialism - a concept that the game in particular is very concerned with. The first shot of the intro sequence is of a menacing crocodile eyeing the arrival of spanish conquistadors, deftly introducing the games major concept that Yara is a place of endless, centuries long conflict between oppressors and the oppressed. As in Far Cry 5, what we are presented with is a funhouse mirror version of reality. There, it was a distortion of the populism of Trump, the growth of the evangelical right, and the opioid Epidemic, a stew resulting in a dangerous and mystical cult. Here, the funhouse mirror is turned on Latin American revolutionaries and dictators in Cuba and Venezuela.

Anton, like all Yarans, seeks to end this conflict permanently on the side of the oppressor; creating a state of such wealth and prosperity that not even invaders and imperialists will ever threaten it again, let alone revolutionaries from within. In particular, Anton makes it a point to not provide Viviro to Americans, and taunts journalists who question this move by pointing out the inherent hypocrisy of Americans who question his use of slaves. America built its wealth and prosperity on the blood of slaves and conflict, and continues to do so throughout the world; to Anton, this is simply how prosperity is accomplished. Why should Yara be held to higher moral standards? The lions would agree, it is the only the sheep who would have a real problem with this, and who cares about the sheep?

One might notice a distinct similarity between Dani and Anton from this description; neither has any real political beliefs or convictions beyond the belief that through violence is the path forward. Like Dani, Anton Castillo is a contradictory figure. Deeply egotistical and self interested, and at the same time, deeply and seemingly selflessly concerned with the fate of Yara as a prosperous, independent nation. He is a student of history and intensely interested in revolution, but convinced that he will never be overthrown after committing countless atrocities throughout the nation. Often, Anton’s characterization seems overstuffed; a mish mash of every popular conception and angle on Fidel Castro. Anton does not represent what such people are really like or what their goals might be; rather, he is the amalgamation of every American idea of what such a person is like, informed by America’s own insecurities about themselves and who they are. Why does Anton seek power? Because he believes it is who he *is*. There is no reason beyond that which seems very interesting to him.

One of the tragic failures of Far Cry 6 is that the imperialist phone call is coming from inside the house; this is not a story about Latin America. Ultimately this is an expression of US anxieties about itself, transposed on a fictional island where the characters all speak spanish for flavor, and english to be understood.

Diego Castillo

Diego is the son of Anton, first introduced in the game’s introduction as the direct cause of the very slaughter which inspired Dani to join Libertad. With the help of a servant, Diego begins the game attempting to flee Yara. It is not revealed exactly what spurred his escape, but through his reactions to his father’s various atrocities, it is clear that he feels a moral disgust with the happenings in Yara under his father’s rule, and a basic unwillingness to continue his father’s work.

There is some ambiguity to this however. Through various cut scenes, we see Anton begin to have more influence over his son’s worldview, coaxing him to become more comfortable with murder and applying a sense of entitlement to his position. How much of this success is a true transformation of Diego, and how much of this is a survival tactic is left deliberately uncertain. What is clear by the end of the game, however, is that Anton considers Diego’s life to only be worthy if Diego can be formed in Anton. This is a fact that Diego is distinctly aware of.

Diego’s mother is a white woman who is the media face of Anton’s propaganda arm. While their relationship continues behind the scenes, the public only has rumors to substantiate Diego’s parenthood. Why Anton chooses to lie about Diego’s mother is not spelled out, but it would expose some hypocrisy to Anton’s supposed righteous anger towards the white imperialist world. When she is killed on live television (The result of Dani’s handiwork), Anton and Diego grieve in solemn and angry silence.

Dani remains an influence on Diego as well. During a failed assassination attempt on Anton, Dani stumbles across Diego, whom she unthinkingly spares; he in turn helps her escape capture by directing her towards Anton’s garage. A bond is immediately formed between the pair - one which is challenged by all of Dani’s compatriots, who urge her to kill Diego whenever she may next get the chance. This bond is further strengthened when Dani is captured and tortured, and is once again saved by Diego’s intervention.

Dani’s attempts to protect Diego can most effectively be read as one in which she is keeping the last vestiges of her humanity. By not seeing a “Castillo” in the place of a confused child attempting to survive a dark world, Dani’s soul remains committed to the idea of a better future, though she is unclear about what that might look like. This is contrasted, it must be reiterated, against Dani’s otherwise extremely judicious use of violence throughout the rest of the game.

And so it is set up for the perfect catharsis: Two opposing forces, both committed to the use of extreme and unrepentant violence to achieve their ends, attempting to win the heart of a powerful young boy who detests violence and only seeks escape. Who Diego eventually sides with will ultimately decide who will take on the future of Yara.

Except, that’s not what happens. In the last moments before his death, Anton senses that Dani will never be able to protect Diego from her bloodthirsty compatriots, and kills him himself. Diego refers to Dani as “the lucky one”, and passes away in her arms, echoing the last words of her friend, who also died by Anton’s hand. Dani’s extreme efforts to save Diego’s life despite the total indifference of everyone she is fighting with, suggests that it is his death which radicalizes her to believe that fighting and revolution, as well as her part in it as a guerilla, will never end.

Further details also point to the pointlessness of the Libertad revolution; In a late game revelation, it is revealed that Anton was likely one of the first patients to be treated with Viviro, to treat his leukemia. The treatment, however, has ceased to work, creating a few implications about what might have happened in Yara had Dani and Libertad not intervened at all. Viviro eventually would have been revealed as not the miraculous cure it was purported to be, drastically changing Yara’s potential importance on the world stage as well as the value of Anton’s moral compromises. Anton would have died regardless, leaving Diego in charge.

While it is left intentionally ambiguous as to what kind of leader Diego would have been as a 14 year old presidente, the glimpses we get were provided with suggesting a strong handed but compassionate dictator, with a great deal more internal conflict and moral consideration than his father had. But we will never know; a person like Diego was never going to survive long enough in this world to make it into a better one.

Pointless Revolution:

For a game that does not wish to take strong political and moral stances, Far Cry 6 occasionally takes for granted several rather conservative ideas. In a late section of the game, Dani encounters a mobster priest named Bebo, who puzzlingly tries to make a distinction between what Dani does and what he does, remarking to Dani, “you may have killed, but you are not a killer”, when he is threatened by her.

One must laugh at the absurdity of this attempted distinction; it is likely that just on the drive over to this mission, the player as Dani has casually flicked a knife out of her window while driving into the brain of a soldier on the side of the road. Dani does not just kill at a distance or in unscripted “non-canon” ways - the first kill they make in this game is with a machete, straight through the gushing throat of a soldado. In the sense that Dani is willing and able to kill at a moment’s notice, never expresses remorse and the killing they are required to perform, often participates in drunken celebrations after significant killing, and ends the story with the commitment to continue killing far into the future, Dani is indeed a profoundly adept and uncompromising killer.

So what is meant to be taken from this? In one sense, this is the instinct of the writer to keep a positive spin on the central protagonist, who is on the face, an affable enough person. For example, Dani is also very good with animals and has several animal sidekicks with varying levels of adorableness and ferocity, a classic signal of inherent goodness. A killer? Would a killer have a daschund in a wheelchair named Chorizo?

A Killer might own Chicharron however

The rights of people to commit acts based on “who they are inside” is the essence of conservative thinking. We see it portrayed, and indeed critiqued by the game’s perspective, in Anton, who justifies his right to kill on his status as a Lion among Sheep. Dani, likewise, is given free moral reign to kill thousands in the name of Clara Garcia because she is a Guerilla at worst, and “not a killer” at best. A true Yaran can do no wrong, a fake Yaran can only do wrong. A crime is not something which is against the law: A crime is something that a criminal does. Similarly, a war crime is something a war criminal does. Dani is not a war criminal, and therefore, slaughtering thousands of people is not a war crime. Bebo is of course, not to be taken at his word (he’s a criminal, dangit!!), and his observation is in direct opposition to the game’s central anxiety. What if there are no good people? What if there are no good systems? What if all revolutions are simply the oppressed trading places with the oppressors in an endless cycle? How does one be moral in such a scenario, except to be a victim of it? Once war and imperialism is brought to your shores, can it ever be fixed - or does the history simply live on, as indigenous to the land as the crocodile? Dani’s brand of anarchism is an expression of this exact hopelessness: My fight will never end.

Log on with your friends for the next season of the FoREveR WaR

A bit of optimism. A bit.

The 2021 film “One Night in Miami” explores similar anxieties about revolution, in a much more powerful and thoughtful way than is achieved by Far Cry 6. Malcolm X, Mohammed Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown share a hotel on the night of Ali’s first heavyweight title victory. The night evolves quickly into impassioned arguments between Malcolm and Cooke about the right way to achieve justice and equality for Black people in America, either through militant revolution or through the systems already in place.

Furious with Malcolm after constant belittling, Cooke leaves the hotel room with Ali. Drinking in their car, Ali tries to explain the value of power to Sam. “Power just means a world where we’re safe to be ourselves. To look like we want. Think like we want. Without having to answer to anybody for it. After all we put in, don’t black folks deserve that much?” Here Ali explores a different version of power than one which is defined by compelling others; he speaks of power as a sense of security in one’s place in the world.

This version of power is a starkly different version than the one which is explored throughout much of Far Cry 6. However, there is one character present which is of interest. Paolo de la Vega, a trans man who DJ’s for the musical duo “Maximas Matanzas” with his girlfriend, Talia, is the most reluctant member of Clara Garcia’s revolution. Like Dani, when we meet Paolo, he has a foot already off the island; he is working off a debt to Bebo for a safe trip out for he and his girlfriend. Unlike Dani, he is not so easily swayed by unclear visions of a brighter future.

After helping Paolo pay off his debts to Bebo, he is still unwilling to join Libertad - this is despite Talia’s insistence that they use their music (and their guns!) to bring down the Castillo’s which have tortured them both. Paolo’s resistance is based on a simple fact: He does not believe that Yara will ever be accepting to trans people, regardless of who is in charge. Paolo never comes around to fully trusting Libertad; it is only his devotion to Talia which keeps him involved through to the end. It is Talia’s belief that with the power of their music and through revolution that people like Talia and Paolo may have a future on Yara, and Paolo resigns himself to have faith in her.

Ultimately, Paolo and Talia understand about power the same thing that Ali does in “One Night in Miami”. Power is about being allowed to be who you are. It is the closest Far Cry 6 will ever come to a real reason to fight, or optimism that things can change for the better.

Some have written about Far Cry 6’s lack of a revolutionary purpose as a frustrating mistake, but I do not believe that this is the case. Far Cry is a series about revolutions, shifts of power driven by enigmatic, larger than life leaders who seek to radically rebel. Far Cry 5’s spin on this was counter-revolutionary: the protagonist’s aim is to put down a dangerous and deadly cult whose religious leader has accurately prophesied the coming nuclear war, in favor of the status quo which will cause it. Far Cry 4’s examination was about the method’s of revolution, and if meaningful steps can be taken to be compassionate and humanitarian amidst the violence necessary to overthrow an oppressive force.

Here in 6 however, we see a different kind of anxiety being expressed. Namely: What is the point, of all of this? What good can ever come out of violence? And what kind of “good people” could ever commit such violence in the first place? Far Cry 6 does not ultimately see a purpose in violent revolution, regardless of how heinous the powers that be are. It also doesn’t offer any better ideas.

#essay #video games #far cry series #far cry 6 #anarchism #leftism

2 notes · View notes

jodybensonsharp · 4 months ago

Text

Jody Benson Sharp A Pinnacle of Excellence in Real Estate

In the dynamic and often unpredictable world of real estate, certain individuals stand out not just for their expertise but for their unwavering commitment to client satisfaction and community development. Jody Benson Sharp is one such individual, a real estate agent whose career is a testament to dedication, professionalism, and a deep understanding of the market. This article delves into the journey, achievements, and unique qualities that make Jody Benson Sharp a distinguished figure in the real estate industry.

Early Beginnings and Professional Growth

Jody Benson Sharp's journey into real estate began with a strong foundation in business and a keen interest in property management. After completing her education in business administration, Jody initially worked in various sectors, gaining valuable insights into client relations, marketing, and financial planning. These experiences equipped her with the skills necessary to excel in real estate, a field where understanding client needs and market trends is paramount.

Her transition into real estate was marked by a proactive approach to learning and adaptation. Jody enrolled in advanced real estate courses and obtained multiple certifications, ensuring she was well-versed in the legal, financial, and practical aspects of property transactions. This rigorous preparation paid off, as she quickly established herself as a knowledgeable and reliable real estate agent.

Client-Centric Approach

What sets Jody apart from many of her peers is her client-centric approach. She believes that buying or selling a home is not just a transaction but a significant life event for her clients. This philosophy drives her to go above and beyond in understanding her clients' needs, preferences, and financial situations. Jody takes the time to listen, ask pertinent questions, and provide tailored advice, ensuring her clients are well-informed and confident in their decisions.

Her dedication to client satisfaction is evident in the numerous testimonials from individuals and families who have benefited from her services. Many commend her for her patience, responsiveness, and ability to negotiate favorable terms. Jody's clients often highlight her transparency and honesty, qualities that foster trust and long-term relationships.

Market Expertise and Innovative Strategies

Jody Benson Sharp's success in real estate is also attributed to her deep market expertise and innovative strategies. She keeps a close eye on market trends, economic indicators, and regulatory changes that could impact property values and buyer behavior. This knowledge enables her to provide accurate market analyses and forecasts, helping clients make informed decisions.

In addition to traditional marketing techniques, Jody leverages digital tools and social media to reach a broader audience. She utilizes virtual tours, high-quality photography, and engaging online content to showcase properties, ensuring they stand out in a competitive market. Her adept use of technology not only enhances property visibility but also streamlines the buying and selling process, making it more convenient for her clients.

Community Involvement and Philanthropy

Beyond her professional achievements, Jody is deeply committed to her community. She actively participates in local events, supports neighborhood initiatives, and collaborates with other professionals to promote sustainable development. Her involvement in community activities reflects her belief in giving back and fostering a sense of belonging among residents.

Jody is also known for her philanthropic efforts. She regularly contributes to charitable organizations and causes that align with her values, such as affordable housing, education, and environmental conservation. Her philanthropic work is an extension of her commitment to making a positive impact, both within and beyond the real estate sector.

Awards and Recognitions

Jody Benson Sharp's excellence in real estate has not gone unnoticed. She has received numerous awards and recognitions for her outstanding performance, customer service, and contributions to the industry. These accolades serve as a testament to her hard work, dedication, and the high standards she upholds in her practice.

Her peers and industry leaders often recognize Jody for her leadership and mentorship. She is frequently invited to speak at real estate conferences and seminars, where she shares her insights and experiences with aspiring agents. Jody's willingness to mentor and support others underscores her commitment to the growth and development of the real estate profession.

Future Aspirations

As she looks to the future, Jody Benson Sharp remains focused on expanding her horizons and exploring new opportunities within the real estate industry. She aims to continue providing exceptional service to her clients while embracing innovative solutions that enhance the buying and selling experience. Jody is also keen on furthering her education and staying abreast of emerging trends, ensuring she remains at the forefront of the industry.

In addition to her professional goals, Jody is dedicated to strengthening her community involvement and philanthropic endeavors. She plans to initiate and support projects that address housing affordability, promote sustainable living, and enhance the overall quality of life for residents. Jody's vision for the future is one where real estate not only meets market demands but also contributes to the well-being and prosperity of communities.

Jody Benson Sharp's journey in real estate is a remarkable story of passion, dedication, and excellence. Her client-centric approach, market expertise, and commitment to community service distinguish her as a leader in the industry. As she continues to navigate the ever-evolving real estate landscape, Jody's unwavering focus on client satisfaction and positive impact ensures that she will remain a trusted and respected figure in her field. For anyone looking to buy or sell a property, Jody Benson Sharp exemplifies the qualities of a top-tier real estate agent—knowledgeable, trustworthy, and genuinely invested in the success and happiness of her clients.

#jody benson sharp

0 notes

betterbemeta · 6 years ago

Text

I am not sure if I like ‘more recent’ incarnations of Princess Zelda as much as the ones that came out a few console gens ago-- not for nostalgia reasons, but there feels to be this weird... returning to ‘form’ of the truly retro games that had almost no space for any kind of story, wherein Princess Zelda was more of a symbol than she was an actor that participated in the adventure. Zelda has always Gone To Sleep or Been Locked Away in her own franchise, but we’ve had Ocarina of Time Zelda, who disguised her identity for years and became a warrior to evade Ganondorf... we’ve had Tetra, who was living her own life on the high seas as a pirate before a king told her she was a Princess and had to stay in a locked basement... even Twilight Princess Zelda is seen facing down her antagonist prepared to use a sword before she conceded that surrender might be in her people’s best interests.

Then with Phantom Hourglass, Tetra was turned into a statue and removed from the action. In Spirit Tracks we had co-op with Zelda... but she had to not be in her own body, and also mice made her comically terrified. In recent games Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, Zelda has been equated with this goddess-like status that serves as a sacred idol, a symbol like her earliest incarnations. Not like, 100% passive, especially because technology, memory, and changing standards suggest that she should have maybe some more dialogue, demands, and character. But I miss princesses that did things other than travel around between holy sites and awaken their sacred powers. I especially miss implications that Hyrule is a kingdom, with a ruler who has practical responsibilities rather than just spiritual ones. Both Skyward Sword and BOTW featured a Hyrule in ruins of its former self, that was not a nation. And thus Zelda is not a princess and enfranchised by any kind of state that matters, but instead her significance must be some kind of divinity that exists without anything manmade at all.

I don’t think all female characters have to be warriors or action girls to have significance, I would certainly accept a scholar or a politician Zelda... but I do think Zelda’s recent evolution reduces her agency, is more in line with gender roles, and emphasizes one of her least pleasing roles to me: the divine idol, dehumanized because her holiness is much more important than her will to act as an individual within her world.

#legend of zelda #zelda #princess zelda #there are definitely people who will disagree with me on this #this is just my take #I always want female characters to push boundaries in our real world #after having a male persona or being a pirate or being seen actually holding a sword #zelda has gone back to a very conservative place #and her media was deeply conservative to begin with

57 notes · View notes

route22ny · 3 years ago

Photo

The split-screen reality of the Trump era became all too real for Stephen Richer recently, and in a very literal way. On May 15, the Arizona election official — a Republican — was looking at two computer screens. On one was former President Trump’s claim that a key election database had been deleted, an “unbelievable election crime.” On the other screen was that very database, quite intact.

“Wow,” Richer tweeted. “This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now.”

A couple of days later, he made his dismay even more explicit.

“What can we do here?” he asked in an interview with CNN. “This is tantamount to saying that the pencil sitting on my desk in front of me doesn’t exist.”

When Richer unseated a Democratic incumbent to become Maricopa County’s recorder in November, he thought he had won the most boring job in politics: maintaining the county’s voter files. But he had not reckoned on Trump, #StopTheSteal, and the most massive, audacious and successful propaganda campaign in modern American history — a campaign that has adapted Russian-style disinformation to U.S. politics with alarming success.

Fortunately, Richer and his local Republican colleagues have refused to be victimized. Instead, they have shown how to fight back.

Information warfare takes many forms, but it has an overarching goal: to divide, demoralize and disorient a political foe by manipulating the social and media environments. As Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet intelligence defector, explained in a chilling 1983 interview, “What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their family, their community and their country.”

One potent weapon of mass distraction is the “fire hose of falsehood,” a torrent of lies that aims not so much to persuade as to confuse and disorient. After Russian intelligence services got caught poisoning a defector and his daughter in the U.K. in 2018, the Russian government responded with a blizzard of mutually contradictory lies: Britain did it, Ukraine did it, a jealous lover did it, it was a suicide attempt and so on.

Another standard technique: conspiracy bootstrapping. First you spread a rumor. Then you demand an investigation. Failure to investigate just confirms the conspiracy, but so does an investigation with a negative finding. It’s a trap: either ignoring or debunking the conspiracy theory propagates it.

Those techniques are not new. Intelligence services and propaganda experts understand them well, and master propagandists like Josef Goebbels and Vladimir Putin have used them to powerful effect. What no one imagined was that they could be deployed by an American president and his party — and not against a foreign antagonist, but against the American public.

Pundits often say that, whatever his authoritarian tendencies, Trump is too inept and inattentive to have done much lasting damage to democracy. They are wrong: In the realm of information warfare, Trump is a genius-level innovator. It was he who figured out how to adapt Russia-style disinformation to the U.S. political environment, no mean accomplishment.

His use of the fire hose of falsehood was masterly. In his 2016 campaign, according to PolitiFact, 70% of his checkable claims were false or mostly false, a flood of untruths whose like had never been seen in a presidential campaign. He began his presidency by lying about the weather at his inauguration and also lying about the size of the crowd. By the time his presidency was over, Washington Post fact-checkers had clocked him at more than 30,000 confirmed falsehoods, with nearly half coming in his final year.

Similarly, he was a master of conspiracy bootstrapping. He retailed conspiracy theories and falsehoods on the grounds that a lot of people were saying them, although of course he was the sayer-in-chief. Truth and common decency need not apply; when a prominent cable news host criticized him, Trump peddled an absurd (and deeply cruel) lie that the host was suspected of murder.

The black arts of disinformation had the intended effect, at least from Trump’s point of view. They exacerbated the country’s divisions, commandeered the country’s attention, dominated his opponents, disoriented the media and helped him establish a cult of personality among followers who trusted no one else.

Still, he saved the worst for last. His pièce de résistance was the propaganda attack on the 2020 election. Beginning months before the election, he launched a drumbeat of unfounded attacks on mail-in voting. Pundits were puzzled. Many Republicans vote by mail, and the pandemic was especially dangerous to older voters who lean toward Trump; why discourage them from voting safely and conveniently?

But Trump was aiming for the post-election. He saw he was in electoral trouble. With the anti-mail campaign, he was organizing, priming, and testing an unprecedented propaganda network, ready for use if he lost.

And then came #StopTheSteal itself, a disinformation campaign whose likes the country had never witnessed. It mobilized the White House, Republican politicians, social media, conservative cable news and talk radio, frivolous litigation, and every other available channel to broadcast the message that the election was rigged. The Big Lie, as it was aptly named, failed to keep Trump in office, but it succeeded at its secondary goal: turning the Republican Party itself into a propaganda organ.

In April, only a fourth of Republicans believed Joe Biden was legitimately elected, and GOP politicians who insisted on truth were persona non grata.

With that as background, we can see more clearly what is going on right now in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest. In 2020, Biden carried Maricopa by more than 45,000 votes, and with it the state. The result was certified by the Republican governor, double-checked twice by the county’s election officials, and then confirmed by two independent audits.

But in classic bootstrapping fashion, Trump and state Republican leaders seized on conspiracy theories, such as that phony ballots had been smuggled in from Asia, to launch an unnecessary recount conducted by an unqualified company whose boss had promoted uncorroborated charges of election fraud. In textbook fashion, the controversial recount drove yet more public attention to the conspiracy theories, engendering yet more suspicion and spawning me-too demands for partisan “audits” across the country.

The Arizona shenanigans will not change the outcome of the 2020 election, but that is not the point. A great propaganda campaign is cyclonic and self-propelled: once unleashed, it takes on a life of its own, heedless of any underlying reality. By that yardstick, the Arizona recount is a great propaganda campaign.

Americans have never been exposed to Russian-style disinformation tactics, at least not coming from a major political party and deployed on a national scale. We are thus dangerously vulnerable to them. What can we do? There are no quick or simple answers; developing immunity requires everything from more sophisticated journalism and better-designed social media platforms to teaching media literacy, and much more.

But here is where to start: Do what Stephen Richer did. Insist loudly, unwaveringly and bravely on calling out lies, even at the cost of partisan solidarity.

Once it became clear that the #StopTheSteal campaign was escalating instead of dying out, Richer went public with a no-holds-barred denunciation of what Trump and his enablers were up to. “Just stop indulging this,” he told CNN. “Stop giving space for lies.”

At his side were all five of the Maricopa County supervisors — four of whom are Republicans. Calling the recount a sham, a con, and a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” they declared they “stand united together to defend the Constitution and the republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for truth.” They also wrote a blistering 14-page letter shredding the alt-audit in detail.

Propaganda attacks succeed when critical points of resistance collapse; they stumble when trusted voices expose lies for what they are. Individuals and small groups may not be able to shut down a propaganda campaign or neutralize all its effects, but they can strip away its facade of legitimacy and act as an anchor against runaway fabulism. That was why the Soviet Union struggled so mightily to silence Andrei Sakharov and other dissident voices, and why those voices ultimately brought down the evil empire.

And it is why Rep. Liz Cheney made a difference when she chose truthfulness over her job in the Republican congressional leadership. The day she was booted, she read her colleagues John 8:32: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” She could not end #StopTheSteal, but she could, and did, dent its credibility and embarrass Republicans whose equivocation and silence abetted the Big Lie.

In the same way, Richer and his colleagues in Arizona laid down a marker. They risked their political standing and even their personal safety (Richer has needed security protection) to expose their own party’s propaganda and shame those who spread it.

The deployment of Russian-style information warfare has allowed Trump and his authoritarian cult to usurp the Republican Party. And they are not finished. Now that they have succeeded with mass disinformation, it will be a fixture of American politics for years to come.

Countermeasures begin, though do not end, with personal integrity: standing up for facts and staying reality-based, whatever the short-term political costs. Think of it as epistemic patriotism, and pray for more of it, especially from Republicans.

***

The author, Jonathan Rauch, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author of “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.”

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-arizona-dreaming-20210522-uyd6ivuv75hd5gof2geyd5adtu-story.html

#weaponized disinformation #US politics #information warfare #trump coup #fascism in america #orwellian #jonathan rauch

36 notes · View notes

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years ago

Text

More justice, more freedom

Michael John Tallon

"I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from political news. After the Progressive Caucus successfully killed the shit-heal efforts of renegade conservative Dems to separate the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill from the Build Back Better Bill (and thereby forced actual negotiations), I figured it was safe to turn away for a hot minute. Once that happened, once it drove the two sides - the renegade conservatives, very reluctantly - to the bargaining table, the only honest commentary would be that the blender blades were in motion, and no one outside the room could possibly have any idea what's actually going on.

Now, apparently, we’re near a resolution. That means a few things are almost undeniably true. First, lots of important work will be jettisoned from the final bill, and that will rightly enrage many, many Progressives, some of whom will argue that we must “stand our ground” and tank the whole package. The second thing that will be equally true is that that inclination, while understandable, must be resisted. No matter how unpleasant and imperfect a package, my sense is that we’re gonna have to swallow hard against the reflex to retch and swallow. That is because, even if Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin are total assholes, they aren’t a proximate existential threat to our future or our freedom. That’s the other guys – the real-life fascists of Capitol Hill. Moreover, given the genuinely screwed-up media market we live under, any failure to pass the Biden Agenda would NOT engender the beginning of welling support for the Progressive cause. Rather, it would be trumpeted endlessly and on all channels as a “Disaster for the Democrats” It would be a nuclear torpedo in our side come the midterms.

To sweeten that deeply unpleasant reality, I’d only offer the observation that EVERY Progressive effort in the history of history has resolved with an admonition to our warriors in the field that “the work must go on.” Emma Goldman never got up in front of a crowd and said, “That’s it, guys! We won!” There was never a fireside chat from FDR suggesting to Democrats the time was upon them to rest. Dr. King never gave a speech in which he said, “the moral arc of the universe is now sufficiently bent," and he never, ever would. The very nature of our political movement is to be righteously dissatisfied with the state of the world. We work for “progress,” and “progress” is an action, not a definable place. So, when it comes to these twin bills, we've simply got to take what the pols negotiated and then head back into the endless battle for a better world.No matter how watered down the reconciliation bill might be, my sense is that we're going to have to support it. Then we turn to the next fight – one that will involve figuring out how to “Make Manchin Meaningless” in 2022 by electing more Democrats to the upper house so that we might finally kill the filibuster. Then, after that, we'll turn to 2024 and our efforts to eject Senator Sinema from her seat so fast that she'll look like a few frames from a Roadrunner cartoon. All that can be done, but not just yet.

For years now, I’ve not understood why Progressives would want it to be any other way - but that wasn't always the case. I used to get a lot angrier about stuff. It was probably my health issues back in 2015 that finally made me realize one truly freeing political truth that - literally - eased my heart, and it's this: No matter when I die, I will die politically dissatisfied.Some folks might find that to be chilling. For some folks, that realization might turn them away from the effort it takes to constantly engage this fight. But the opposite happened to me. Back when I was really sick, it dawned on me that if I was fated to die with my ethical aspirations unquenched, then I’d better find something new to fuel myself beside hope for a faraway peace. Rather, it seemed, that if I was never going to see the world I hope to build, that perhaps I'd be wiser to love the battle itself, to love the feeling of the swinging blade. Maybe that's not for everyone, but I'll tell you, the martial freedom of it really helps to keep me both joyful and sane. Maybe someday – a long, long, long, long, long time from now – some distant generation will see the first light of a Star Trekian new day wherein the battles for a better world are just a memory, but that ain’t gonna happen for a single one of us.

All of us – All. Of. Us. – will die wanting more justice, more freedom, more action on climate change, more inclusion of our marginalized brothers and sisters. So, if you feel like taking my always questionable advice, embrace the wins where you can get them and celebrate what victories you can. Then, after a quick breather to recharge your enemies, storm back into the maelstrom and swing that hopeful blade. Love to you all.

Michael John Tallon

#political friends #build back better #progressives #legislation #Michael John Tallon

5 notes · View notes

carriagelamp · 4 years ago

Photo

I read more books this month than I anticipated. I should probably wait before doing a February book round up, but I already feel like I’m struggling to decide which ones to cut from my list so I’m doing it this weekend instead of next. If I read much next week I’ll bump ‘em up into March’s round up

Asterix and the Missing Scroll / Chieftain’s Daughter

I got the last two “new” Asterix books out of the library so I could officially say I had read them all. Over all my opinion is… they’re fine! None of these would ever become one of my favourites, but they’re all fine stories. The art is good, it is completely in-line with the original, and the stories are… fine. I liked The Missing Scroll quite a bit more than The Chieftain’s Daughter but I never find a ~hurr hurr teenagers~ plotline that interesting, whereas I do enjoy seeing Romans get chased down by unicorns so that’s probably not surprising. There’s some spark I can’t put my finger on that the new Asterix books just seem to be missing though… a bit of humour or cleverness or something. Still, they’re fine reads if you’ve been hungry for more Asterix and I’m glad I read them. (Though the library gave me the American translation of The Chieftain’s Daughter, something I didn’t realize until I started reading and realized that this is wrong??? I’ve been reading these books since I could read and I know this is wrong??? What the hell is happening??? The I realized the publisher was different and I simmered in fury the whole time I read it — WHY ARE YOU CHANGING NAMES AND WORD CHOICES IN A WELL ESTABLISHED SERIES THAT ALREADY HAS AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION YOU ANIMALS WHY ARE YOU DUMBING DOWN THE LANGUAGE AAAUGH

The Bride Was A Boy

This one was cute! The Bride Was A Boy is an autobiographical manga written by a transwoman recounting her experience with transitioning, meeting her boyfriend, and eventually getting married. It’s mostly done in a 4-panel style and is interspersed with lots of information about the LGBT community, particularly in Japan. A lot of it was stuff I was already familiar with, but I still found it adorable and a very worthwhile read. it would be a fantastic book for young queer people who are looking for more of an introduction into international queer space

Cul de Sac: Children At Play

Cul de Sac is just a weird, fun newspaper comic series about the children who live in a small neighbourhood. It fully taps into the children-as-semi-feral-chaos-agents, and there’s something hilariously nostalgic about the whole thing. Lots of times when stories try to portray children there’s always something… wrong about it, something that doesn’t mesh with true childhood, but in this comic I can see glimpses of my grimy, dirty-covered self as a preschooler running around the pages. I would definitely recommend trying them!

The Cremation of Sam McGee

I reread The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew and man, they don’t stop being buckwild. These are two really famous Canadian poems that were then illustrated by equally famous Canadian artist Ted Harrison. Harrison’s style is gorgeous and distinct and given what strangely grisly stories these poems are they fit the mood perfectly. Everything feels just a little tilted and wrong and unsettling. If you enjoy an occasional poem (especially ones that are super fun to read out loud) and haven’t read these before, I would recommend them! Or do what my teachers did, and read Sam Gee to a young child in your life and watch them be baffled and concerned and horrified.

There are strange things done / in the midnight sun / by the men who moil for gold...

The Gryphon’s Lair

The second book of the Royal Guide to Monster Slaying series written by Kelley Armstrong; I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book! It’s a very cool fantasy series because it really leans into environmental stewardship and the importance of studying animals and conservation so you can find ways to live alongside a healthy ecosystem. In this book Rowan is officially accepted as the Royal Monster Hunter, which means a whole new set of trials and burdens. She has to contend with a baby gryphon that is becoming increasingly large and dangerous, plotting family members, doubt about her abilities, a potential curse, and a daunting quest deep into the mountains in order to set things right. If you’re looking for some very gentle high fantasy, this series delivers.

Hogan’s Heroes comics

What to say here. Anyone following this blog has suffered the knowledge that I’ve been rewatching Hogan’s Heroes lately. When I found out that there was a short-lived, shitty comic series in the 60s? Of course I had to hunt them down. And so I’ve read them! And they sure were a shitty comic series from the 60s! They were, shall we say, of wildly varying quality. Some were actually really funny (like #5, it easily had the best art and best jokes imho), others were a slog, and most were fine and amusing enough to read the whole way through but not much more.

If you don’t know what Hogan’s Heroes is about: it was a 1960s sitcom that took place in a WWII POW camp, in which the Allied prisoners trapped there had a massive, complex sabotage/spy ring right underneath the camp. The whole show is about constantly outwitting the bumbling Germans while keeping up the pretense that they’re all just normal prisoners. The show is hilariously funny and I would recommend that, even if I can’t say the same for the comics unless you’re like me and are just really thirsty for more content...

Magic Misfits: The Fourth Suit (Ripley)

The final book of Neil Patrick Harris’ middle grade series, The Magic Misfits. In this fourth book, the group is fragmented and forced to meet in secret to avoid notice from the mysterious and powerful Kalagan whose cruel machinations have already turned the quiet little town on its ears, putting people’s lives in peril and destroy Leila’s fathers’ magic shop. The Misfits are going to need all their skills to finally unmask this sinister magician and break the mesmerism he seems to have placed over the entire town before it’s too late to save no only the town, but their friendship and trust.

Super charming series, and the illustrations are gorgeous.

Marsupilami

HOUBA! I watched a very bad TV adaptation of this as a kid that still managed to find a place in my heart, and so I decided to finally try reading some of the original comic! On one hand: it was exactly what I had hoped! The art is cute, the marsupilami is so dynamic and fun to see on the page (and has a way better characterization than he does in the show), and it’s really funny! Unfortunately! It is also pretty racist! Yikes! That seems to be a reoccuring downfall for some of these older Belgian comics... I also tried reading the first book of Les Tuniques Bleues and aye ye ye… I couldn’t actually get through that one. That being said, these were older volumes and frankly, North American media was also real fucking racist at that point so I’m not gonna write them off either. I really liked most of this book, and will probably try to get my hands on one of the more recent volumes of both Marsupilami and Les Tuniques Bleues to see if they get better with time. (If you’ve read either of those series and have volume recommendations hmu)

The Pagemaster

I’m a sucker for novelizations, I have no excuse beyond that. I recently rewatched The Pagemaster and decided to read the chapter book. And it was a solid little adaptation! It’s about Richard Tyler, a young boy with a head for statistics which unfortunately means he lives in constant fear of (in his opinion, statistically likely) injury or death. However that fear is put to the test when he gets caught in a horrible thunderstorm and has to shelter in a nearby library with halls and shelves that stretch beyond the imagination and with untold perils hidden among the pages of the books. Richard, with only his library card and three novels that hope to be checked out, has to venture through the different genres and horrors housed int he library if he ever wants to find the exit and get home to safety.

Pumpkinheads

A very charming little graphic novel. Cute art, and really loveable characters. Josiah and Deja work every year at a local pumpkin patch, and are best friends during those weeks. However this is their last year working there before going off to university and as the last day at the patch comes to a close they realize that they both still have regrets. Deja sets off on a mission to avoid work, eat all the interesting snacks around the patch, and get Josiah to find the girl he’s been crushing on every year and has never worked up the nerve to talk to.

After being deprived of human contact for almost a year, this book really hits you right in the heart.

The Screwfly Solution

A deeply upsetting scifi/horror short story! I read it on the recommendation of a friend and, yes, can confirm that this fucked me up a bit. I honestly don’t even know what to say about this that wouldn’t spoil it, but frankly with everything being as it is, this hit a little bit too close to reality. (That being said, it was very well written, like this is a very good story on a literary level and it does exactly what it sets out to accomplish.) If you feel like reading twenty pages and being really disturbed, give it a go! Otherwise go and read any number of the much happier books on this list!

The Whipping Boy

This was a book I remember reading as a lit circle book back in elementary school and really loving. After telling myself I’d reread it for years, I finally sat down with it again. If you somehow got through school without reading this one, it’s about a brat of a prince and his whipping boy — since it would be unspeakable to strike a prince, when the prince misbehaves it is Jemmy who gets whipped. Unsurprisingly, there is no love lost between the two of them, because the prince is always intentionally causing problems that Jemmy has to suffer for. Things begin to change though when the prince decides to run away and drags Jemmy along with him. On the run, being chased by highwaymen, and desperately trying to hide their identities, these boys go on a fast-paced adventure beyond the castle walls. It wasn’t as special as I remembered it being as a kid, but it’s a fine little chapter book.

36 notes · View notes

muchymozzarella · 4 years ago

Text

I just watched the Cuties / Mignonnes movie on Netflix and honestly, I loved it. It isn’t for everyone though. I also have a feeling that a lot of the controversy comes from whatever baggage you bring with you to the film.

It’s not the most comfortable movie to watch, first of all, but it’s not exactly vague about its message. In fact, it paints a fairly clear picture of what happens when you take a girl going through a difficult situation and tell her she has to pick between Religious Womanly Purity and being Sexy And Desired and force her to choose when she’s way too young to be making any sort of choice in either direction.

More of my thoughts below - spoilers for the film, and content warning for personal experience with childhood sexuality and how that plays into the film’s content and themes.

I think Americans will have a hard time taking this movie’s message as it is presented, because American media is so polarising -

it’s either you’re watching two adults pretend to be teenagers fucking all over the place or you pretend kids are 10000% non-sexual entities who will only magically become so at age 18, instead of realising that kids and teens are doing their own growing up and it’s deeply uncomfortable and awkward to observe how they try to copy overtly sexual content they get access to without fully understanding what it entails or why they shouldn’t be doing it.

But I think that international films can present something more nuanced, especially when it comes to sexuality - since America’s puritanical culture and overly sexual counterculture has fucked it up so thoroughly.

Cuties reminds me a bit of how I was as a kid. I got my period when I was 11. I got my first bra when I was 8. I started masturbating when I was 10. I started accessing porn when I was 12 - though to be fair it was all doujin and fanfic lol.

The movie itself happens as follows:

Main character Amy is 11 and Muslim Senegalese, and she’s shown to largely be bored with the religious proceedings, and is explicitly told in the beginning by an Auntie in the religious group about how women should be pure and modest. She’s close with her mother, but the relationship is fraught. Her father has taken on another wife, and Amy is feeling resentful and angry toward him, but Amy’s mom has to help host the wedding even though she’s clearly pained by his decision.

In their apartment, Amy meets Angelica, who’s part of a clique of girls who dress sexy and want to take part in a dance competition. Amy does everything she can to be accepted by the girls, and eventually starts dressing more sexually, learning how to twerk and dance, and essentially rebelling against the ideals that are bringing herself and her mom so much pain.

The movie alternates between showing Amy and Angelica and the other girls being sweet kids and having fun and actually being kids, and them trying to learn from adult dances and being obsessed with trying to date older boys, take pictures of a guy’s dick at school, pretending to be older than they are, etc. It’s generally not fun to see, but also kinda reminded me of being 11 and acting like I knew better when it came to Sex but definitely talking out of my ass.

Eventually Amy goes too far when the day of the wedding comes nearer, she gets her period, more expectation is placed on her by the Auntie, who kind of represents the tight knit religious community, and her place in the clique is put at risk. She steals from her mom, she tries to bribe her cousin with nudity, and posts a genital pic in a moment of desperation - all explicitly framed as awful and painful within the movie, in case you’re wondering. Her mother shouts at her, her friends reject her, and they even have a whole uncomfortable cleansing scene and bring in an exorcist to see what’s wrong with her - though the exorcist, who is a sensible man, tells them it’s definitely not a bad spirit and heavily implies that they should think about the psychological toll her family pressures have put on her.

She eventually gets onstage to dance, but stops halfway and starts to cry and runs away. It’s a fantastic and painful sequence, because you get them dancing with these bright glamorous lights and then when she realises exactly what she’s become and everything becomes dark and grey and the colours muted and ugly.

She comes home to everyone about to go to the wedding, crying for her mom. Her mom defends her the Auntie saying she was dressing like a whore and hugs her. The two reconcile, and her mom tells her it’s okay if she doesn’t want to go to the wedding - since obviously it’s been hurting her so much. The mom is going, since she’s already made that decision, but Amy changes out of her overly sexual dance clothes and puts on some regular ones, goes outside, and starts skipping rope with some kids - finally enjoying herself like a kid should.

That’s a fairly long description, but I want to emphasise that at no point does the movie say that “girls dancing sexy is good, actually”. It does, however, portray how these girls have glamourised overtly sexual media, and how Amy is particularly susceptible to it because of the pressures partly caused by her more conservative religious upbringing.

I’ve seen some people say that it puts Islam or Muslim religiousness in a bad light, but I didn’t really think that either. I’m Catholic, not Muslim, and I related deeply with Amy. She was bored and pressured by religion, but it never showed her mother to be bad for being religious, nor the rest of the women. The Auntie pressured her and made her feel bad, but it didn’t really feel any different from literally any other religion where modesty and purity is part of the teaching.

I also see people saying it demonises sexual liberation, but that’s not really it either. I think the main message is clear when you think about what that deep feeling of discomfort you feel seeing kids dress like adult women in sexy dance videos. Both Angelica and Amy were feeling pressured by stuff at home, which pushed them to try to be wanted and loved, and to rebel, and that’s how they went about it. With Angelica, her parents worked all day and were barely ever home, so she felt neglected. With Amy, her family pressures made her feel like she needed an escape, and she wanted to be accepted by the clique.

Kids with difficult situations are most susceptible to growing up too fast, whether that be having to parent your own siblings (which Amy does throughout the movie) or trying to copy adults without understanding the implications. The kids were trying to chat up teenage boys but some of them didn’t even know what a condom was.

It’s not a fun movie - though to be fair, it has its fun moments, ie the parts where the kids are actually enjoying themselves like kids do. The movie consistently reminds you that these are kids, in case you forget somewhere while watching, and that what they’re doing is fucked up, actually.

I certainly think the movie can be uncomfortable to watch and you don’t need to watch it if it’s beyond your viewing limits. I just think that the ridiculous culture war surrounding it is so tainted by bad faith. I watched this movie and saw parts of my own childhood, and a tragedy with a hopeful ending where a young girl is forced into situations she shouldn’t even be in because she felt like she couldn’t rely on anybody.

I think it’s an amazing film and I think you should watch it with an open mind, instead of acting like your only two settings are “enjoying child porn” and “children do not know what sex is and I will pretend that is true”. I think that if the movie is making you uncomfortable, you understand the movie.

And I think that the message of the movie is “Let kids be kids, stop trying to push them into decisions they’re too young to make, whether it be insisting on their womanly purity or making them think they have to be sexy to be liked.”

But that’s just my take on it.

#cuties #netflix cuties #mignonnes

54 notes · View notes

xanyoules · 4 years ago

Text

The Dangers of Keyboard Psychologists, or, Why You Should Defend Narcissists

The internet is a beautiful, vital, historical tool in humanity’s quest for knowledge, freedom and connection however it has given vast platforms for problematic ‘hot takes’ when it comes to philosophical and medical questions. As humans, we think we know what psychology is, and that we have an unreserved right to wield our knowledge, slapping labels onto people, cultures and moments in time.

As a soon-to-be qualified psychologist, let me tell you: you do not.

The rise of articles and the twittersphere ranting about narcissism in particular, amongst other so-called personality disorders, has been endless. It’s often women who are given these psychological disorder labels for being ‘too’. Too Black (Megan Markle), too dramatic, too intelligent, too fierce, too empowered, too no-nonsense, too confident, too full of self worth, self esteem and self love. We like to label and we like to set ourselves apart from the broken. It’s quick, simple and easy to throw around labels we do not understand in order to demonise and ‘other’ a person we’re desperate to hate.

Take narcissism. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is having its moment in the spotlight as parts of Twitter and Tumblr position themselves as ‘empaths’, a community which believes they feel things more deeply than others. Narcissists, according to our woke keyboard warriors, are the antithesis of an empath: they are devoid of feeling empathy for others and are self-centred. I don’t have to tell you how curious it is that so many online are quick to centre themselves as ‘empaths’. An empath is, apparently, ‘better’ than a narcissist but in reality this is a build up of discourse that certain online communities wish to believe. Morally speaking, no label is good or bad. Indeed, science tells us that there are studies that suggest there are people with more ‘mirror neurons’ than others and could potentially mirror emotions more easily than others. However, the internet is not always fast or keen to study the science of its buzzwords and these days the ‘empaths v narcissists’ rhetoric has come to be a battle of good and evil, rather than genuine scientific discovery.

A individual who is displaying symptoms of narcissism certainly will be challenging for those around them. Narcissism can display in different ways but common behaviours can include the person struggling with any form of criticism, being very insecure and potentially lashing out due to that insecurity and they could — but won’t always — manipulate others in order to feel better about themselves. Narcissists also have an unwavering belief in their sense of righteousness; like all personality disorders it is complex and individual for whoever is affected by it.

We have seen some movements towards inclusion within health, especially mental health. Fantastic resources and media representations such as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend with its protagonist, Rebecca Bunch, navigating her diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder has shown us that those living with a label of personality disorder are still human. Education is always the cure for ignorance and a label is just that: a label. It doesn’t reduce or define an individual’s humanity. Your alleged ‘hot takes’ on that person you wish to denigrate being a sociopath, a narcissist, psychotic, take you down a path of conservative politics and ignorance. By attempting to depict someone as lesser and weaponising a psychological term you don’t know anything about — and embarrassingly, think works as a cutting insult — says more about your need for education and understanding than the person you’re clumsily attempting to harm. Mental health activism begins within, and it means challenging ourselves when we look to use psychology to berate another.

No one is born with a personality disorder. They are made, but that doesn’t mean they are not real. We exist in societies where capitalism and mass media has divided and conquered. We give no space for error. Neurotypicals reign terror amongst those of us who do not fit into their neat little boxes. It’s time for diversification, more than ever, and to those of you out there — BPD, NPD, ASPD, SPD and many more — we, the atypical, don’t have to conform to their narrow experience of humanity. My humanity is beautiful, and flawed, and difficult, and creative, and special, and warm, and terrifying, and fascinating. Paint outside the lines. Sing, and let their bland, grey voices fizzle out. We can fly and they cannot. I’ll meet you at the treetops.

118 notes · View notes

junhaoshua · 4 years ago

Text

my ode to fandom

2020, the start of a new decade, is ending. 2021, the start of my adulthood, is beginning. I’ve always wanted to do a post about my fandom journey, and I’ve also decided to change my url starting next year: from the old faithful @moonlightmasquerade to a url for my new fandom, @junhaoshua. So before taking such a huge step, this felt like a perfect time to thank all the media that has shaped me as a person throughout my journey of youth.

This is half-chronological, half-remembered. This isn't comprehensive, because it doesn't have to be to be meaningful. It can't list every single fandom that has made its mark on me, because there are too many to count.

This is about many people’s stories, including my own. This is about love and power and growing up and changing. This is about how transformative work can transform lives.

To fandom: this is my ode to you.

To Frozen, the fandom that was my first love: thank you for being the place I discovered fanfic. Thank you for teaching me that it was okay to be myself. For teaching me that my parents could make mistakes when raising me even though they love me. For showing me that villains can be redeemed.

To MLP, the fandom of my early teens and beyond: thank you for being such a big part of my life. Fallout Equestria, making me realise the impact of war and giving me hope that people can heal from the worst, that we can make a difference in the darkness. The Immortal Game, telling me that trauma can be overcome and my fate is in my hands. Hard Reset, teaching me to persevere despite the odds. Turnabout Storm, introducing me to the franchise that would inspire my future career. Freeport Venture, guiding me as I grew into my own person. These are lessons that kept me going throughout the rough years. Thank you for teaching me to write magic systems and epic fight scenes. Thank you for giving me hope that one day, even a shy bookworm like me would find my friends.

To Wicked, the fandom of my tumultuous years: thank you for teaching me that I could be beautiful and loved no matter how I look. For opening my eyes to the cowardice of people. For helping me to understand why injustice can thrive. For telling me that sometimes you lose your best friend but you don't stop loving them. Thank you for preparing me to face all this in real life.

To Star Wars, the fandom I was “born” into: thank you for creating a world that inspires writers. For the trilogies and the beautiful fics that were born from them. For the flaws in canon that made fans want to fix them, and write wonderful stories. Double Agent Vader and the questions of agency and power and justice and the need for righteous indignation. Reylo fics and redemption and atonement and forgiveness. The sequel trilogy stories, too many to count, about finding your family and being your own person and healing from trauma.

To Marvel, the fandom that has brought me comfort for years: thank you for starting a franchise that lasted me throughout my childhood. For the stories of X-Men and being ostracised for being born different. For the ideas of Avengers Tower and the Defenders and Spider-verses and other teams, which may not have been well handled in canon, but which inspired so many stories about dangerous people coming together and being accepted for who they are. For Daredevil and making me decide that yes I’m going to be a lawyer and no my disability will not stop me.

To DC, the fandom I grew up in: thank you for the DCAU that I spent hours watching as a child. Thank you for inspiring so many amazing, creative people to write. Batfamily fics and the stories of well-meaning Dad Bruce who screws up despite his best efforts. Babs Gordon and being a total badass from her wheelchair. bricklaying and its discussion of power and class issues and trauma and identity, a story that I go back to time and time again.

To Hamilton, the fandom that inspired me: thank you for introducing me to the wonderful genre of rap and hip-hop. For helping me to realise that there are villains, there are people who make mistakes, and there are people who exploit others’ mistakes. For awakening a fire and ambition in me that I had long tried to douse to try to fit in and be more likable, and telling me it was okay to be young scrappy and hungry. And for reminding me that the people I love are important, too.

And now, to the grand prizes, to the fandoms that have been the biggest part of my life.

To Harry Potter, the fandom I first participated in: thank you for opening my mind and broadening my horizons. For helping me to move past my conservative upbringing and my prejudices (the thanks is all to the fandom, not to canon). For helping me to find my first fandom family, my best friends @reapersbarge and @a-symphony-in-vellichor. For being full of stories about healing just when I needed it. For Dramione, a ship that would lead to me publishing my very first fanfiction, inspired by the wonderful @colubrina. For Drarry and my second fic that gave me the chance to tell a story with my best friend and the other half of my brain. Without HP, without these friends, I would never have found the courage or inspiration to finally finish and publish my stories.

To Six of Crows, the fandom I grew in: thank you for being my first experience with representation in stories. For opening my eyes to the world of YA novels and so many wonderful, amazing stories. (SoC was literally one of the first YA novels I ever read and I wouldn’t have gotten into bookblr without it). For helping me learn how to work with an ensemble cast of characters that all got a chance to shine. For inspiring me to come back from my long writing hiatus and rediscover the joy of being an author.

To Taylor Swift and Marina, my two favourite solo artists: thank you for music that perfectly fits whatever I’m going through. Thank you for reputation and Electra Heart when I was hurt and angry and trying to build a shield to hide my scars. Thank you for Lover and Froot when I was trying to learn to be happy again, to conceal my hurt with a smile. Thank you for folklore and evermore and Love + Fear when I was finally ready to unbandage my scars and confront everything that I had faced and declare that it did not break me.

To Seventeen, my biggest current fandom: thank you for bringing me joy during this tough year. For always giving me something to look forward to every Monday when the days passed in a blur. For the new friends I’ve met here who welcomed me to caratblr, especially @soonhoonsol, @thekidultlife, @haosvteen, @myunqho, @xuseokgyu and @haoranghae. For reminding me what it feels like to fall deeply into a new fandom for the first time. For the amazing fics and gifs that always bless my dash (there may be another, separate post on that). For awakening my desire to write fic again after a long drought where I couldn’t think of a single thing, and giving me more plot bunnies than I know what to do with. Thank you for being a safe space that helped me to grow and heal and smile again.

To conclude this story:

Throughout my journey, I’ve seen the same threads and themes over and over again. To be my own person and not the person that others moulded me into. To be ambitious and hungry and the hero of my own story. To find my own family, to choose the people I claim as my own. To see injustice and apathy and evil and hopelessness, and to be angry and stand up against it. To believe that people can change, can atone for what they’ve done, can be redeemed. To believe in the power of hope and light against the darkness.

Fandom is a part of my life that I truly can’t imagine being without. It has been the lifebuoy when I was stuck in trauma and unable to escape. The bandage when I was broken and bleeding and despondent. The glue to put me back together when I shattered into a million sharp-edged pieces. The armor when all I wanted to do was rip out my feelings and put up stone walls around myself. The candle that guided me through the night until I was ready to step into the daylight.

For the fandoms of my past: I may have become less active, less involved, but I still return to the songs and stories that have been an integral part of my youth. I see them now with older, wiser eyes, and recognise bits and pieces of my personality that I absorbed from them. I’ve never truly left a fandom; how can you leave something when it’s part of you?

For the fandoms of my present: I want to live in the moment and enjoy my experiences for as long as I can, even if I’ll outgrow them one day. I know that even if I move on from them one day, I’ll always treasure the lessons learnt and the memories made, and they’ll have a special place in my heart no matter what.

I believe in the power of stories, of movies, of music, of fandom. I would not be who I am today without it. Every fandom I’ve been in has left an impression on who I am, made its mark on me, a golden tattoo. I can look at them and trace the way each and every one has shaped me into the person I am today.

And as I hover in the in-between of childhood and adulthood, as I stand now a kidult, I’ll embark on this new phase of life with all the lessons that fandom has taught me, and will continue to teach me for many years to come.

#my work #fandom #fanfic

16 notes · View notes

losthomunculus · 5 years ago

Text

Thoughts about Ao no Flag/Blue Flag by Kaito

It’s been a long while since I’ve just kind of rambled about an entire piece of media like this but I wanted to share my thoughts on Blue Flag! I read it all today and seeing other people’s comments on each chapter got me thinking.

I don’t really have anything to build my ethos here which isn’t really necessary anyway because this is more of me just sharing how I view the story rather than trying to convince other people there’s a “correct” way to understand it. But I’m a queer person if that helps in understanding how these thoughts came to form.

Content warning: reclamation of the word queer. Also ending spoilers.

One review I scrolled said that Ao no Flag was not a LGBTQ+ genre love story, and the queer characters were just side characters. Which I don’t think is entirely wrong, but I do think that if you are looking at Blue Flag for a high school setting queer romance, that’s not what you’re going to get.

AnF *is* a romance in that it has a focus on Taichi and Tauma’s romantic feelings, but not strictly about how they feel about each other. But I feel like it is a mistake to let the romance swallow your entire focus in this story.

To me, Taichi’s story was before any thing else, about coming of age and navigating personal relationships. Romantic and platonic. It’s so easy to get caught up in the love triangle we’re presented here (or quadrangle if you include Masumi). In the very beginning the reader is faced with the question “friend or lover” and it’s a constantly reoccurring theme in the decisions characters are forced to make.

It’s not focused on Taichi and Touma in the romantic sense. Instead we see Taichi’s buried resentment towards Touma as he slowly falls in love with Futaba as he is trying to help her get with him. I think it’s also worth mentioning that there’s a lot of foreshadowing of Taichi’s own oblivious attraction towards Touma though. I noticed a lot of readers say that the endgame where they got married made no sense but I remember the second the bus scene happened I just stopped and said “these bitches gay. good for them. good for them.” There’s also a notable amount of times Taichi is flustered by Touma or has one of those romantically coded “holy shit your beautiful” panels.

I also really enjoyed watching Futaba’s feelings develop as she still cared deeply and equally for Taichi and Touma and didn’t want to give them up. Again the theme of choices friend or lover. I really like how she chose both, or at least that’s what she wanted.

As for the ending where Futaba and Masumi got married to random guys we weren’t introduced for, it’s slightly unsatisfying but I think it makes sense. Along with how they brushed over all the years in between and how things changed.

Masumi’s character development has a lot of focus on conformity in a conservative society. Akiko’s conversation with Masumi helps in understanding that things don’t just “fall into place” when you are an adult. There are conscious choices behind finding your place in the world and choosing where you will allow your feelings to take you.

Masumi, Futaba, and Taichi’s emotions just happened to lead them down different paths. There wasn’t anything special or revolutionary about it. And I think that’s fine, and quite realistic actually. It’s not really about conforming to society’s expectations in this case, and more about following the flow of one’s emotions. Relationships shift as you grow and the results vary depending on how/if you choose to fight against the change.

Although I wish we had more insight on how Taichi eventually realized his feelings for Touma, I don’t think the ending was completely out of the blue. If you know where to look, you can see there are hints of romance from the start. My only question is what happened after his split with Futaba that allowed Taichi to realize and pursue these feelings.

So I guess I understand readers who were upset expecting a more traditional romance. But I think AnF is a quality queer romance in it’s own right. Not for the relationship between the two main men, but for the decisions and friendships of the queer leads.

so this was a fun ramble. If you want to read more about the specifics of tropes and foreshadowing im referring to, you can find them here. goodnight!

#anf #aonoflag #ao no flag #blue flag manga #thought dump

70 notes · View notes

lewis98omigod · 4 years ago

Text

Week 11: Global Social Media (South Korea)

Social Media Penetration Rate of South Korea (Shim 2020)

South Korea’s social media penetration rate has reached 87 percent, the third highest among nations around the globe as its social media penetration rate as of the first quarter this year was 80 percent higher than the global average of 49 percent. The number of social media users in Korea continues to increase, the report said. South Korea’s social media users as of March was 35.5 million, up by 15.2 percent on-year, the report quoted data collected by a local market research firm Mobile Index.

Naver (Oh&Cho 2020)

South Korea’s top internet portal Naver Corp. retained its leadership in the local social media market in December although strong competition from global social media giants Instagram and Facebook. According to local market research firm Nielsen Koreanclick on Sunday, Naver’s social network platform Band ranked as the most popular social media app with a total of 19.48 million users in Korea last month. Second most used social media app by Koreans was Instagram with 15.23 million users, followed by Facebook with 13.88 million users. The tally combined Android and Apple phone users. Besides, Naver’s Band also showed the sharpest growth in the number of new users, adding 12.6 million in just seven months.

Naver’s most controversial issue: No longer allow users to leave comments on entertainment articles (Kim 2020)

Naver will be temporarily suspending the ability for users to leave comments on articles that relate to the entertainment industry, in an attempt to lessen the malicious comments some celebrities receive. Naver made this decision as they feel like they are also partly responsible for the violation of celebrities’ personal rights, as their service allowed some users to use the comments section to attack certain celebrities. Naver pledged to put in their all-out effort to solve the problem of malicious commenters using their advanced technology and operational policies. While they continue to work on a solution, they decided to prioritize empathizing with the celebrities who are affected by the comments, and that they need to be protected. Thus, they made the decision to close the comments section on entertainment related articles until the structural overhaul of their comments section is completed. In addition, Naver is trying to combat the problems of the auto-completion function on the search bar. The search bar functions similarly to Google, where the engine will auto-suggest search terms that relate to the word being searched. In some cases, keywords that violate artists’ personal rights or contain unconfirmed rumors are suggested, due to many people searching them. In order to respect the artists, Naver decided to abolish related search terms on their platform.

The death of Goo Hara and Sulli catalyzed the abolishment of anonymity

(Sondergaard 2019)

K-pop star, singer, actress and former member of f(x), Sulli took her own life at the age of 25 in 2019 and was often the subject of hate comments over how she dressed and about being an outspoken feminist.

Sulli was also known for her feminist voice and outspokenness that was rare among female entertainers in deeply conservative South Korea. Prior to her death, she appeared in a TV show and spoke out against online backlash she received over her life.

K-pop star, singer, actress and member of Kara, Goo Hara, 28, was found dead at her home in Seoul, in 2019, which would make her the second female singer in a month to take her own life in the high-pressure industry. In May, Goo was hospitalized following a suspected suicide attempt. The star later apologized to her fans, saying she had been "in agony over a number of issues." Goo had been abused by an ex-boyfriend who, after they split, blackmailed her and threatened to post her spycam sex videos online. Prior to her death, the 28-year-old singer had issued a plea for kinder words on social media. Her death also sparked a debate on the mental health of celebrities. Goo's death sparked an online petition on the website of the South's presidential office calling for stronger punishments for cybercrimes and abusive online comments, which garnered more than 20,000 signatures in less than a day.

How Naver abolished anonymity for commenters (The Straits Times 2020)

Prior to this action, Naver's anonymous comment system had often been criticised for allowing abusive and disparaging comments. Now, Naver's new system will allow all users to access commenters' user profile pages. Profile pages will show user names in full, along with comment histories and profile pictures. The company will also impose a seven-day waiting period for comments from new users. This is to prevent people from creating multiple accounts just to post abusive comments. However, users whose accounts have undergone real-name verification can write comments immediately .Naver said it will eventually begin using artificial intelligence to filter out abusive comments and malicious users.

List of References:

Shim, WH 2020, Korea’s social media penetration rate ranks third in world, The Korea Herald, viewed 23 November 2020,

<<a href="http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200907000815">http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200907000815>

Oh, DS, Cho, JH 2020, Naver’s Band tops Korea’s social media market, Pulse News, viewed 23 November 2020,

<<a href="https://pulsenews.co.kr/view.php?year=2020&no=65394">https://pulsenews.co.kr/view.php?year=2020&no=65394>.

Kim, R 2020, Starting in March, Naver Will No Longer Allow Netizens To Leave Comments On Entertainment Articles, Koreaboo, viewed 23 November 2020,

<<a href="https://www.koreaboo.com/news/starting-in-march-naver-will-no-longer-allow-netizens-leave-comments-entertainment-articles/">https://www.koreaboo.com/news/starting-in-march-naver-will-no-longer-allow-netizens-leave-comments-entertainment-articles/>.

Sondergaard, M 2019, K-pop star Goo Hara death stokes online bullying debate in South Korea, DW, viewed 23 November 2020,

<<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/k-pop-star-goo-hara-death-stokes-online-bullying-debate-in-south-korea/a-51423395">https://www.dw.com/en/k-pop-star-goo-hara-death-stokes-online-bullying-debate-in-south-korea/a-51423395>.

The Straits Times 2020, South Korea's Naver stamps out anonymity for commenters, The Straits Times, viewed 23 November 2020,

<<a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment/south-koreas-naver-stamps-out-anonymity-for-commenters">https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment/south-koreas-naver-stamps-out-anonymity-for-commenters>.

#mda20009 #week 11 #global social media

7 notes · View notes

boundtoyouphff · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 16: Unwritten

A/N: Here is the next chapter! I hope you have enjoyed Chapter 14 and Chapter 15 that were posted yesterday! Please read those first before continuing to this one.

Oh, the magic of new beginnings.

The hope that fills you and inspires you that a fresh start is that key ingredient that you have been missing.

Opening the book to a new page, the start of an amazing adventure yet to come instills me with such joy and happiness looking into the unwritten future. It is time to start a new book in my life and close the chapter of the past. You cannot start a new book while remaining stuck in the last one. So I'm putting you away on the shelf because you are still a part of my past that has brought me to this moment. One I must not forget, but I cannot linger amongst the pages any longer.

But, when I looked one last time at the cover of the book I realized that I was not the author of this. That somehow this book of my life was not written by me, but by those who thought they knew me and those who tried to steer the plot into their own direction.

It is time to write my own book. But, this book is still unwritten. Filled with empty pages, but bounded in hope for what I will be writing in them.

It's time for me to write my own story, to be the author of my own life and the creator of my own voice.

It's time to show the world who really is Emilia Andelle.

--------------------------------

Emilia took in a deep sigh as Ella continued to style her hair for her engagements with Green Peace this afternoon. The princess was handed a briefing by her new private secretary Evie Sharpe. Emilia released a genuine smile seeing how engaged and enthusiastic Evie was about today. She was a stark difference from her previous private secretary, Mia Deacon.

From the moment she had met Evie, Emilia eagerly wanted her to be spear heading her newly developed team. Even her father was impressed by the young woman's resume and further encouraged Emilia that she would be a great fit. Throughout the interviews of Emilia's new staff, her father Frederick was present for all of them as per the Queen's request. But, he made sure to take a step back and only provide advice when Emilia asked his opinion only after she had shared her own thoughts on the candidates. He wanted this team to be purely Emilia's choice and to find people who could not only share her vision, but help her successfully create it. The Crown Prince was proud of his youngest daughter for showing the initiative to create this remarkable team, one of her own making. The ideas she presented to him were well thought out like she had been visioning this idea for a while and now she was finally making that vision come to light.

"The director, Mr. Langford, of Green Peace will greet you when you arrive and introduce you to key staff members. Then we will proceed inside and have a tour of some of the sanctuaries before opening the new wing dedicated to helping the endangered, but also extremely adorable if I may add, Fennec Foxes." Evie was beaming as she finally took a breath and sat down across from Emilia. "They told me yesterday that they have a new litter of baby foxes that are dying to meet a princess and need to be named."

Emilia tossed her head back in laughter. "Well I certainly can do that. Thank you Evie for this."

"Speaking of endangered animals..." Ella piped up into the conversation. "I have this piece of jewelry that you wanted me to order for today." Emilia's stylist held up a pair of earrings that were very delicately designed butterflies with a custom emerald green gem stone.

"Wow! These are perfect!" Emilia carefully cradled them into her hand. The princess was able to sit down with Ella and Evie to go through her personal style for attending engagements. Emilia wished to add even more of an impact through the clothes and accessories that she chose to wear to shine a light on young sand upcoming designers, local designers during her tours and showcase accessories that profits go towards a charity project or change initiative. These butterfly earrings were created by a Illyrian college student who was using the proceeds from purchases to fund her non-profit conservation project of protecting at risk butterflies and birds. It was Emilia's hope that she could shine a light on this piece and use her influence to aid this young college student that shared her passion for conservation. It was little things like this that Emilia would use to create her own identity. To show how far her reach could go beyond engagements and simply making an appearance.

Emilia suddenly became quiet as she dug out a bracelet that was sent to her by Harry. She noticed it on one of their recent video chats and asked him about it. It was a piece that represented Harry's rhino conservation project in Africa. Emilia was hesitant to ask the prince if she could have one and wear for today's engagement. Harry's smile lit up at her question and was happy to send her one. But, he did feel the need to remind her that he is known for wearing it all the time and that the press could link them together if she were to wear it.

"Ooooh, I love that bracelet. It would work so well with your outfit today Emilia! Those blues would tie in perfectly." Ella smiled happily before she got a glimpse of Emilia's uncertain expression that had formed on her lips.

"I know, I just don't know if I should wear it." The princess released a deep sigh. She stood up quickly and grabbed her phone. "I will be right back. I need to call someone." Emilia didn't feel right wearing it today without Harry's blessing for the simple fact that they could be linked, but a piece inside Emilia wanted Harry along for the start of her new journey today and by wearing the bracelet, he could be.

Evie and Ella both watched the princess find a private area to make a call. Evie slowly turned her head to look up at Ella who was displaying a happy grin as if she knew exactly who Emilia was calling. "Should I know anything Ella?" Evie stood up and faced her with an inquisitive look.

Ella shook her head. "No. Whatever do you mean?" Ella perfectly played it off and got back to her work.

"Hello?" Harry's deep voice resonated on the line immediately bringing a smile to her lips.

The princess closed her eyes and sighed. Just the sound of his voice was enough for Emilia to miss him. "Hey." She quietly responded.

"You ok?" Harry had picked up on her quiet tone. He knew that today was a big day for Emilia and her new team. He had stayed up quite late talking to his girlfriend and calming her nerves.

"Yeah I am alright. Getting ready for my engagement." She told Harry while finding a chair to make herself comfortable in.

"I am honestly so nervous. It needs to go perfectly well." The stress in Emilia's voice was evident. It was clear the amount of pressure Emilia was facing today was insurmountable. She had to prove to her grandmother what she was capable of achieving on her own merit.

"Babe..." Harry breathed out. "You are going to kill it. Just don't kill any of the endangered animals and you will be fine!"

Emilia groaned loudly at his attempt to make her laugh. "Henry..."

"Oh come on love. That was pretty funny." Harry continued to snicker on the other line being unable to hold in his laughter.

The princess could not hold in her laughter, hearing her boyfriend's infectious giggle ring out. She dissolved into a fit of giggles feeling the anxiety about her day float away. Emilia sighed deeply, silently thanking Harry for that moment of relief.

"Thank you for making me laugh." Emilia suddenly became quiet, thinking about the reason why she had originally wanted to talk to Harry. She held the bracelet he had given her in her hand, analyzing it carefully. "There was something I wanted to ask you..." she trailed off.

"What's that?" Harry encouraged her.

"You know how you sent me your Rhino bracelet that you always wear?" Emilia led on.

"Yeah, you got it?" His soft voice spoke.

"I did. But, I wanted to ask you if it would be ok if I wore it on my engagement today." The dark haired princess breathed out. "Before you say anything, I want to explain." Emilia felt the need to, as the bracelet would surely link Harry to her if the media picked up on it. "I know that the press could find out that it is something you may have given me, but it has been reported that we are merely royal friends. I want - " Emilia was hesitating to tell Harry what was growing in her mind.

"Just tell me, Emilia."

"Today is a fresh start for me. My first engagement with my new team who I chose and this is something that I have wanted for so long. A new beginning to do the things that I want to do in the way I want to do them. You were a big factor in encouraging me to do this Henry. I want you to be a part of this new start today and I know you cannot be here. So I thought I could wear the bracelet today... so I know that you are still with me in another way. You are a part of this new journey for me." Emilia took in a shaky breath after finishing her rant while she waited for her boyfriend's reply.

"Emilia, you did not have to ask me permission to wear it." Harry's deep voice sounded over the phone. "I want you to wear it today and remember that I always have your back, no matter what. I don't care if they link it to me." The prince spoke freely. "You came here for the Invictus Games and I just did a whole tour with you in Illyria."

"I just wanted to check with you first." Emilia smiled happily at her boyfriend's response. "Thank you for supporting me babe and believing in me."

"Now, go out there and kick some ass. Call me when it's all done and let me know how it goes."

The smile plastered on Emilia's lips was hard to miss. "I will." Emilia sighed heavily. "God I can't wait to see you..."

"Don't remind me that I have to wait a few extra days because someone was leaving later than planned and I have to sit through two days of engagements knowing that you are in the same damn city as me!" Harry started to moan.

"It's not my fault!" Emilia giggled. "I will try my best to distract you anyhow."

"You better. Have a safe flight tomorrow."

"Bye baby."

Emilia hung up the phone and saw the press secretary Olivia Holmes and her new head of security Hugo Blackburn walk into her apartment.

Olivia searched the room for the princess and found her off to the side. She smiled warmly and started to approach Emilia. "Are you ready to go, your highness?"

Olivia Holmes was hired as Emilia's new press secretary, a liaison between the palace communications team and the Illyrian media. She came highly recommended by one of her closest friends, Scarlet, who was a news anchor. Scarlet was even afraid to cross Olivia and with her impressive resume of working for the British Illyrian Ambassador and for the famous female empowering Illyrian Senator Louisa Banks. Olivia was a force to be reckoned with, but she was a hard sell initially until Emilia shared her vision of what she wished to achieve as she found out that she was not planning on being the same cookie cutter royals as the rest of her family.

"For the last time Olivia, please just call me Emilia." The princess smiled warmly then released a deep sigh. "I would be lying if I said that I was not nervous about today..." Emilia glanced down briefly and put on Harry's bracelet.

"I would rather you be nervous right now than over confident." Olivia smirked. "Now, I will go over the journalist who will be asking you a few questions. She has been told not to drift away from these set few or she knows the price she will pay if she does." Emilia's press secretary giggled, lightening up the mood.

Emilia was half listening to Olivia when she saw Hugo approach her RPO Tristan who was standing beside the newly hired RPO, Kane McKinney. Her eyes locked in Tristan's gaze as a proud smile grew on his lips making the princess beam in return.

The princess had endured a long internal debate while she thought of giving Tristan the position of her head of security instead of Hugo Blackburn. It was not because he did not deserve it, more so the fact that Emilia trusted him more than anyway on her team and she wanted him right beside her. She sat Tristan down and told him why he was not getting the position while she was in near tears, but Tristan understood her reasons and told the young princess that he would rather be out protecting her than having the worries of being head of her security.

Kane McKinney had actually been recommended to Emilia from Prince Harry. Kane and Harry served together in the British Forces and went through basic training together. He had recently lost his Illyrian wife to a long battle of cancer, but was not ready to return to the life of the military and had chosen to stay in Illyria after his wife's passing. Harry was able to convince him that he could use his skills as a protection officer and when Emilia told Harry of her plans to form a whole new team, Kane was the first to come to his mind. Tristan had been showing Kane the ropes of being a royal protection officer even though he had completed a rigorous training course prior to his employment.

Hugo was lecturing them when Emilia approached her security team with a kind welcoming smile.

"Hello ma'am." Kane bowed his head. 'Ohh, I mean your highness." He stumbled out of his mouth clearly putting his nerves on display. Tristan rolled his eyes with a light shake of his head.

"Good morning Kane." She giggled at his expense. "Just take a deep breath and remember to watch Tristan. Luke is with us for a few more weeks to help out until you find your feet" Emilia rubbed Kane's shoulder in a warm comforting manner. "Also, like I have said please address me as Emilia. Just don't call me by Tristan's nickname for me and I won't have to fire you." She made light of the situation and got a quick laugh from Kane.

Hugo remained standing there in silence rather stoic and serious. Mr. Blackburn was the only one on Emilia's new team that she had a few doubts about. Emilia's father Fredrick did like what he saw on paper, but the man was a bit of a drill sergeant. She wanted to give the position to Luke Balvondio, one of her present RPOs but his wife was having a child in a few weeks and planned to take some leave to which Emilia was happy to grant. Luke knew the ins and outs of the security side and would have been the perfect fit. She secretly hoped to make the change once Luke was ready to return to his duties.

"Are you ready to leave ma'am?" Hugo's deep voice pulled her from her thoughts.

"Yes, let's arrive on time today." Emilia took in a deep shaky breath and glanced around the room at her new team. A sense of excitement filled her making her lips spread into a beaming grin. She had done it and now she was about to show the world and her grandmother, The Queen, who this new Emilia was.

—————————

Tristan was quietly speaking to Kane, telling him what was about to happen as Emilia's convoy pulled up to the entrance of Green Peace Conservation.

Emilia sat quietly across from them, peering out the window to see the mass crowd lined along the metal barriers that had been waiting just to catch a glimpse of the princess. Her eyes wavered away from the crowd to see the media with cameras at the ready.

Clearly someone had felt her nerves exude from her body as she felt a soft touch on the arm. "Emilia, just remember to be yourself and that is enough." Evie's soft comforting whisper immediately dissipated all of her fears.

The princess turned her head slowly to lock in Evie's kind gaze. "Thank you Evie."

The car rolled to a stop in front of the entrance making the princess shift her gaze onto Tristan. "Ready Emilia?" His blue eyes held her gaze steady.

Emilia gave a light nod of the head signalling that she was indeed ready. Tristan jumped out of one side of the car, while Kane followed suit through the other side. Within a matter of seconds Emilia's door was opened by Tristan as a wave of screams greeted the princess.

She stepped out elegantly with a bright smile and turned back to wave to the crowd. It was the plan to do a walk about after the engagement, but Emilia felt it was best to do one now as well. These people had been waiting for her for hours and it only felt right to do so. Besides, part of her vision was to connect with the people and show the people that Emilia was merely one of them.

"Tristan?" Emilia only had to say his name to let him know what she was wanting to do. Tristan replied with a simple nod and spoke into his coms to alert the security team in the change of plans.

The princess stepped away from the entrance alerting the crowd that she was about to do a walk to greet them and they erupted in the loudest cheer that brought an enormous grin to Emilia's lips. Her light blue dress with white flowers that hung well off of her body flowed in the wind with each passing step. She tucked behind a few stray strands of her hair behind her ear while glancing quickly at the ground.

Emilia's Dress

Emilia's Hair and Makeup

She made it to the first awaiting group and took her time greeting the happy smiling crowd who were so eager to meet the princess. Emilia engaged in a conversation with a nursery school group who had come out to see the exhibition of the fennec foxes as well. They all had drawn pictures of their favourite animals for Emilia, giving them to her as a present.

"I might have to buy a new castle to put all of these pictures up!" Emilia joked and the crowd roared in laughter. "Thank you! I will see you inside." The princess was about to step away when a little girl escaped through the barrier and came running at her with her arms stretched open for a hug.

The little girl was so ecstatic that she had escaped through the confines of the barriers, but she was running so hard that she tripped and fell, scraping her knee on the concrete.

Emilia hastily went to her and knelt down to tend to the little girl who was now wailing. The blonde curly haired child clutched her knee and whimpered. Emilia brushed away the dirt and comforted the young child until the police officers let her teacher through. "It's alright sweetheart. Let's get your knee cleaned up so you can feel better."

The princess stood the young girl up and wiped away her tear stained cheeks and spoke to her quietly until she calmed down. Emilia then pulled the little one into the tight hug that she had come to receive and the whole crowd awed at the kind gesture. The child's teacher kept on apologizing, but Emilia simply brushed it off as no big deal and continued down the way to greet other members of the crowd.

She was stopped by a young woman seeming to be similar in age to the princess. The brave woman asked if she could spend a few minutes interviewing her for one of her college papers for her Journalism degree. Emilia knew she did not have time to stand there for an interview at that moment, but she told the college student to give her details to Evie and she would be happy to arrange another time to be interviewed.

Emilia felt Evie lean in and whisper in her ear that it was time for them to go for their engagement. The princess shook a few more hands and then stepped away from the crowd who was calling her back. "I will come around again after!" She hollered back and walked purposely towards a patiently waiting Mr. Langford, the director of Green Peace.

Mr. Langford politely greeted the princess in a bowed head and a firm shake of the hand. "Welcome back, your royal highness. It's a pleasure to have you visit us again."

"I am so sorry to keep you waiting, Peter. I appreciate the invite again to come and see all the work you and your amazing team are doing. Plus, I hear the Fennec Foxes are adorable and quite playful." Emilia was beaming. She felt relaxed, confident and excited to get this engagement underway.

"Emilia! Over here!"

"Give us a smile will you?"

The press behind the barriers started to holler at Emilia all eager to capture that one headliner image for the papers tomorrow. The princess put on a brave face and turned to smile at the media for only a brief second. Giving them limited time to photograph her which many photographers would surely be complaining about in the upcoming days. Olivia had briefed the media team and royal photographers that there would now be a few select members of the photographers actually allowed in the events and engagements coming forward. This change was quite the sore spot for the vulturous press pack that loved to capture every little moment of Emilia's engagements and fished for anything to use against her in the papers the next day. This idea was given to Emilia by Harry himself as he explained how the British royals conducted engagements with the press.

Olivia was hesitant to limit the amount of access to Emilia during engagements but found a way to work around this by allowing one or two photographers selected by Olivia to capture photographs of Emilia during her engagements. But, the catch was they had to share their content with any willing member of the media upon a request. The photographers had to sign an agreement before hand to ensure this would happen.

Emilia knew that there would be immediate backlash with this decision, but she wanted the engagements to be a bit more intimate. To be able to truly focus on the reason why she was there and not have a hungry pack of wolves on her back. By limiting their access to Emilia showed that she was not going to play their games anymore and that she held the power hand.

The princess continued on her way into Green Peace being introduced to some familiar faces and new staff before her official tour began. She sat in some of the teaching sessions that were being taught to local school children.

Olivia had pulled Emilia out of one of the sessions to conduct a short interview with Kelly-Anne Arbour, an Illyrian journalist. This was the part of the engagement that Emilia had tried to convince Olivia to forgo and not conduct one. She had never really been keen to do interviews as her parents had taught her from a young age to keep a healthy distance between the royal family and the media.

Emilia sat down across from Kelly-Anne and put on a smiling face, hiding the fact that she did not want to be a part of this. An innate gut feeling had settled in the princess's stomach that convinced her mind that something was not right about this situation. But, Olivia had vetted the journalist and she was to adhere to a strict line of questioning. She had to put her trust in Olivia.

"It's such a pleasure to sit here with you today, your royal highness, and be able to speak with you." The journalist welcomed here kindly.

The princess smiled with a gentle nod of reply. "Thank you for having me."

"Now, I know you are quite the busy woman here today out at Green Peace. But, I must steal a few of your minutes to ask you some questions." Kelly-Anne started out. "Now, as we have all been briefed, you have formed a new palace team as of late and today is your first engagement back with them. May I ask why you thought this change was needed? Why The Queen's previous choice of Mrs. Deacon was fired?"

Emilia took in a deep breath. None of these questions were what the journalist was supposed to ask Emilia.The princess turned her head and briefly locked eyes with a furious looking Olivia. "I appreciate your question, Kelly. But, the matter is rather simple that was outlined in the briefing you received." The princess informed her.

"Yes, but if you wish to comment about Mia Deacon?" The interviewer pushed further.

The princess tilted her head at the bravery she boasted. "I do not comment on past employees' work just like any other employer. Now shall we move on because you now only have two minutes left. As you said, I am quite the busy woman this afternoon." Emilia's sass came forth rather strong as Olivia got a glimpse of it first hand.

"Yes, let's talk about a few of your jewelry pieces." Emilia braced herself for what was about to be asked. "I noticed that one of your bracelets today is also famously worn by another royal, Prince Harry, who had recently visited Illyria on tour. Was this given to you by the prince himself? What sort of relationship would you say the prince and you have as it seems you two have been spending a lot of time together lately?"

Emilia was prepared for this and had the perfect reply. The princess glanced down at the bracelet and played with it a little before answering. "I am glad you noticed it. It was given to me by Prince Harry when he was in Illyria in an official capacity and I decided to wear it today to showcase how conservation is so important right now in the world. We are seeing animals getting added to the endangered list on a daily basis while their numbers are continuing to dwindle. It's important for everyone to play their part in protecting these magnificent creatures and give them that fighting chance at survival. As the reach me and Prince Harry have and the global platform that we are given, we have the responsibility to bring these issues into the light and broadcast the efforts of so many people that are trying to make change in the conservation world right now."

The journalist attempted to ask another question when Olivia stepped in and pulled Emilia out of the interview. "Thanks for your time Kelly-Anne, but her royal highness must continue to adhere to her tight schedule this afternoon."

Olivia fell into step beside Emilia and quietly scolded her. "Emilia... we need to talk about what you just confirmed about the British Prince Harry. This should have been run past me first."

"Not here Olivia. Clearly she was not even supposed to ask that question, this is why we don't do interviews." Emilia was furious at the journalist. "Scold her for not staying with the pre-planned questions, not me." The princess walked off being unhappy already with Olivia.

The princess stepped into the enclosure with a few members of the crowd watching her as she was guided through the endangered Fennec fox enclosure. Emilia was eager to learn more about these animals and how Green Peace was aiding them. She nearly gushed when asked if she wanted to meet and name a new litter of foxes, simply replying with a beaming smile and excited squeal to which the crowd found adorable.

She sat down on a nearby rock as a member of staff pulled out a couple of freshly born foxes who were fast asleep. Emilia had a few in her lap all snuggled together while she gently petted them. The mother then came out and rubbed up against Emilia.

"Is it ok for us to be handling them? They seem rather used to humans and the mom isn't as protective as I thought she would be." The princess questioned with slight concern. These were supposed to be wild animals after all.

"Excellent question. We are the only things that they know. Most of the foxes here will stay in a sanctuary like this until we are able to build a place more relatable to the wild and re-train them to be self sufficient." The handler informed her. "Now, we need to name them and thought it was best if our patron helped us with this batch!"

"I'd love to!" Emilia looked down adoringly at the little sleeping foxes then back up towards the crowd. An idea clicked in her mind.

"Would anyone like to help me name these little guys?!" Emilia hollered out and a few school aged children jumped at the chance to help the princess come up with names.

Emilia sat down into the backseat and released a heavy sigh. She closed her eyes and felt the door slam shut and the car pull away.

"Thank god that is over!" The princess chuckled lightly as. A wave of relief coursed through her. "Well done everyone!" Emilia glanced around at her team and thanked them for their hard work in such a successful visit.

—————

Later that evening, Emilia had called in Olivia and Evie into her apartment. She was dressed casually while finishing up packing for her trip to London for her training and Olympic trials for quite a few weeks.

Evie knocked lightly while she stood at the opened door to Emilia's private bedroom door with Olivia in behind her. "Good evening, Emilia. You wished to see us."

"Yes! Come on in!" Emilia waved them through as she placed a few more items into her suitcase. "Please sit down and make yourself comfy wherever."

The princess had picked up on Olivia's quiet demeanour when they arrived back at the palace. Emilia knew that she had to inform Evie and Olivia about her relationship with Prince Harry. But, she only wanted people to know who absolutely were required to.

Emilia sat across from them and smiled warmly. "I wanted to thank you for all of your hard work for today. You guys made everything run so smoothly and I think it was an amazing start for what's to come. So again, thank you!"

Evie was all smiles and said it was all around a team effort. Olivia was simply pleased with the results of the engagement today.

"I also called you here this evening because I wish to disclose a private matter to you that I only want your ears to know." Emilia lowered her gaze and found herself playing with the rhino bracelet on her wrist half indicating what she was about to tell them. "I am very cautious about my private life and do not wish to have many people in the know about my relationships, but I do understand that certain members of my staff need to be aware...." The princess trailed off and lifted her head to lock in Evie and Olivia's gaze while they patiently waited for her to continue.

"Prince Harry and I are in a relationship and have been since he ended his tour of Illyria last month. No one in my family is aware of this except for a few key people and it must remain this way until I deem it so. I realize that you need two need to be aware of this as key members of my staff. If any personal matters need to be addressed in this case then they must be done so in private and only with you two present." Emilia confessed solemnly. She did not want more people to find out about Harry and hers relationship at this time.

"Emilia, thank you for informing us." Olivia smiled warmly seeing how difficult it was for Emilia to openly trust them with this information, but it was vital that they were aware. "Will you be seeing him in London?" Olivia offered a kind hopeful smile.

Emilia lifted her head with a beaming smile graced on her lips. "Yes... it's been a long time since I have."

"I am sure that you miss him. I think you two are a perfect match, Emilia." Evie was gushing about this revelation. "We promise that this information is for our ears only." Evie took her leave.

"I am sorry about earlier, Emilia." Olivia began to apologize. "But, I need to know these sorts of things or else I would have advised you not to wear the bracelet today."

Emilia stood up. "No no. I need to apologize. I know you needed to know and that is why I am telling you now." She sighed deeply. "I am sorry I didn't tell you sooner about him, but I just wanted Harry to be a part of my day today. I do realize that may have been a mistake in how I achieved that. I don't always get it right Olivia, but I learn from my mistakes."

"No need to explain, Emilia. Have a safe trip tomorrow. We will be in touch."

--------

Emilia had finally landed into London after what appeared to be a long flight, but was only a few short hours. She was whisked away into an awaiting convoy with Tristan climbing into the backseat with her while Kane took control of driving the car.

The princess felt a sense of relief wash through her as she had made it to what would be her new home for the next month for her Olympic Training. She was still on a high after her successful first engagement yesterday with her new palace team and even received an adoring message from her father who watched the full coverage of it.

"Feels a bit like deja vu." Tristan commented as the memory of their last time in London came to the forefront of his mind. "Except this time we actually have a proper security team for you and I know I won't lose my job when we go back to Illyria or get my ass chewed off by the queen." He tossed his head back in laughter at Emilia's expense.

"Tristan... I can still fire you." Emilia glanced up and smiled warmly into his blue eyes.

"You could never get rid of me princess." He cocked a crooked smirk. "I think we have already established this on the fact you never could really lose me unlike my predecessors."

"You are right." Emilia shook her head. "Then I would have to stare at poor Luke all the time."

"Ya, I heard that Emilia." Luke hollered from the front.

It had been nearly an hour when Emilia looked outside the window wondering why they had not even reached the outer city limits of London yet. "Tristan, why aren't we in London?" The curious princess questioned as she looked further out deciphering that they were still indeed in the English countryside, but the setting of the sun made it quite difficult to make out where they actually were in combination with the dark tinted windows.

"We had to take a detour to avoid an accident, Emilia. Shouldn't be too much longer until we reach the city." Tristan avoided eye contact with the princess making Emilia inwardly question his response.

A few minutes later, Emilia felt the vehicle turn down a country side road hearing the gravel crunching beneath the tires. The princess glanced outside quickly to find that they were still in the middle of the English countryside, but could barely make out their surroundings through the dark tinted glass. She locked eyes with Tristan and raised her eyebrow up in suspicion as her gut held a feeling that something was indeed up.

"Tristan... you have one chance to tell me where we are or where we are going." Emilia's tone was serious, but her protection officer simply shrugged in response.

"Like I said, we took a detour and should be arriving soon." His answer was vague and nonchalant.

Not even a moment later the car rolled to a complete stop and Tristan motioned to undo his seatbelt. "Guess we are here." He finally looked at Emilia with a glint in his eyes.

"Stop!" Emilia stopped him from getting out of the car. "Where's here?!" The princess was beyond confused and wondering why Tristan was acting so strange.

"You will find out soon enough." Tristan got out of the car and rounded the vehicle to open Emilia's door.

Emilia slowly climbed out, looking at a happily smiling Tristan who closed the door behind her. The princess glanced around at the exquisite countryside manor that greeted her amongst the dimly lit sky.

"We took a detour to the countryside, Emilia. To surprise you." Tristan quietly spoke.

"Surprise me?" Emilia looked away from the manor for one second to glance at Tristan. But, when she turned her head back to the manor she saw that someone had come walking out the front door towards her.

She gasped loudly and covered her mouth with both hands at the surprise walking towards her. Emilia could not believe what rather who was before her eyes.

It was Harry casually walking towards the princess with a beaming smile.

"Harry." Emilia whispered his name as if she had to speak it to believe that she was actually seeing her boyfriend. Her heart tugged in her chest at the mere sight of him as her eyes welled up.

The princess was frozen in shock, unable to move her feet forward for a few seconds. The prince had stopped walking towards her and placed his hands casually in his jean pockets. The beaming smile that was evident on his lips, present for everyone there to see, caused her feet to finally run towards him. It had been a month since she had last seen Harry and Emilia did not want to waste one more second not being in his arms.

She took off running towards the prince. "Harry!" Emilia called his name louder being unable to hold in her excitement from seeing him.

He started to laugh at her shock while opening his arms to welcome her. Harry felt Emilia's body come crashing into him making him take a few steps back to try and steady himself from the impact. Her arms wrapped around him tightly while she buried her head into his chest and squeezed him tight.

"Hi love." He cradled the crown of her head gently and closed his eyes, relishing in the fact that Emilia was once again in his arms. The couple stood there for a few quiet moments embraced tightly with one another before Emilia broke apart and wrapped her arms around Harry's waist while peaking up at him. "I hope you didn't mind the detour." Harry chuckled while he stared into the depths of her icy blues eyes that the prince so terribly had missed.

"You are here..." Emilia slowly shook her head as the shock continued to linger in her body at the surprise of it all.

Harry's blue eyes softened while he angled his head down at his girlfriend with an adoring smile. He nodded his head lightly. "I'm here Emilia." His hand reached out and cupped her cheek tenderly before gently stroking it. He watched her eyes close and squint shut before opening them again as if she was trying to convince herself that this was not a dream.

"I have missed you so so much." Emilia became emotional and stood up on her tippy toes to snake her arm Harry's neck to pull him down towards her lips.

Harry controlled his urge and stopped a few inches away from her lips. He could feel her hot breath float across his lips as if they were calling to him. Emilia nudged her nose against Harry's, but the smile that formed on her delicious lips was the one that he had longed to see the one he often dreamt about. It was her natural happy smile that very little people were given unguarded access to.

"I have missed that smile." His deep voice weakened Emilia's knees as her other arm grasped his forearm to steady herself.

She could not wait a second longer as she crashed her lips into Harry's, connecting them with a passionate kiss that lingered. Harry immediately cupped both of her cheeks to hold her still while he continued to taste her delicate lips. The world around them ceased to exist as they found themselves locked into their own embrace while time stood still. The universe allowing them to share this moment of reuniting together.

Emilia was feeling the cloudy haze effect that her breathlessness had caused her. Her lips gently fell off of Harry's as she inhaled and breathed in his signature scent that brought a sense of comfort within her. She moaned softly causing Harry to suddenly capture her lips once again, locking them back into the passion fuelled kiss.

The princess gave up all control and succumbed to Harry's touch, loving the way he kissed her hard with such desire. Emilia felt his tongue seeking further permission to lock with her own to which she freely gave, allowing Harry to deepen their kiss further. His hand trailed down her cheek to the side of her neck feeling her heartbeat pounding through her soft skin.

Harry broke apart from their kiss and opened his eyes to find Emilia staring up at him with lust filled blue orbs greeting him. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against hers, resting it while they both attempted to regain their breath. Emilia's chest was rising and falling hard as the prince heard her jagged breath.

"I hope it was ok to surprise you like this." Harry was the first to break their comfortable silence. "I asked Tristan to keep it from you. I just couldn't wait a few more days to see you." Emilia's heartstrings tugged at his confession.

"It is the best surprise anyone has given me." Emilia giggled happily. "But, where are we?" The princess broke apart from their embrace to quickly look around.

"Highgrove House." Harry's hand dropped from her hip and blindly found her hand to hold. He turned around and gave her hand a light tug to follow him. "It's my fathers estate, but I used to spend my weekends here after school. It's quite secluded so I thought it would be best for us to spend the weekend here before you start your training."

Emilia lightly stepped beside Harry as she leaned into, grasping his forearm with her free hand. "Wait... what about your engagements?" She snapped her head up to find Harry smirking mischievously.

"They were never booked, Emilia." Harry chuckled lightly. "I lied to you so you would not suspect a thing, I'm sorry."

Emilia shook her head. "Just don't lie to me again, unless it is a surprise like this." The princess stood up on her tippy toes and placed a soft kiss to Harry's cheek.

"Come on, let me show you around." Harry squeezed her hand tightly. "I cannot wait to have 3 full days to have you all to myself."

"Hmm, whatever shall we do Henry?" Emilia could not hide her excitement even if she wanted to.

Quite frankly, she did not really care as long as if she was with Harry.

#prince harry #princeharryff #phff #prince harry fanfic #fanfic #prince harry fanfiction #chapters #chapter16 #harryandemilia #boundtoyouphff

17 notes · View notes

yoyomorse · 4 years ago

Text

Scientists said claims about China creating the coronavirus were misleading. They went viral anyway.

The spread of the unverified assertions by Chinese scholar Li-Meng Yan, widely dismissed as “flawed,” show how vulnerable scientific sites are to misuse and misunderstanding.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/12/china-covid-misinformation-li-meng-yan/

Scientists from Johns Hopkins, Columbia and other leading American universities moved with rare speed when a Chinese virologist, Li-Meng Yan, published an explosive paper in September claiming that China had created the deadly coronavirus in a research lab.

The paper, the American scientists concluded, was deeply flawed. And a new online journal from MIT Press — created specifically to vet claims related to SARS-CoV-2 — reported Yan’s claims were “at times baseless and are not supported by the data” 10 days after she posted them.

But in an age when anyone can publish anything online with a few clicks, this response was not fast enough to keep Yan’s disputed allegations from going viral, reaching an audience in the millions on social media and Fox News. It was a development, according to experts on misinformation, that underscored how systems built to advance scientific understanding can be used to spread politically charged claims dramatically at odds with scientific consensus.

Yan’s work, which was posted to the scientific research repository Zenodo without any review on Sept. 14, exploded on Twitter, YouTube and far-right websites with the help of such conservative influencers as Republican strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who repeatedly pushed it on his online show “War Room: Pandemic,” according to a report published Friday by Harvard researchers studying media manipulation. Yan expanded her claims, on Oct. 8, to blame the Chinese government explicitly for developing the coronavirus as a “bioweapon.”

Online research repositories have become key forums for revelation and debate about the pandemic. Built to advance science more nimbly, they have been at the forefront of reporting discoveries about masks, vaccines, new coronavirus variants and more. But the sites lack protections inherent to the traditional — and much slower — world of peer-reviewed scientific journals, where articles are published only after they have been critiqued by other scientists. Research shows papers posted to online sites also can be hijacked to fuel conspiracy theories.

Yan’s paper on Zenodo — despite several blistering scientific critiques and widespread news coverage of its alleged flaws — now has been viewed more than 1 million times, probably making it the most widely read research on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Harvard misinformation researchers. They concluded that online scientific sites are vulnerable to what they called “cloaked science,” efforts to give dubious work “the veneer of scientific legitimacy.”

“They’re many years behind in realizing the capacity of this platform to be abused,” said Joan Donovan, research director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which produced the report. “At this point, everything open will be exploited.”

Yan, who previously was a postdoctoral fellow at Hong Kong University but fled to the United States in April, agreed in an interview with The Washington Post that online scientific sites are vulnerable to abuse, but she rejected the argument that her story is a case study in this problem.

Rather, Yan said, she is a dissident trying to warn the world about what she says is China’s role in creating the coronavirus. She used Zenodo, with its ability to instantly publish information without restrictions, because she feared the Chinese government would obstruct publication of her work. Her academic critics, she argued, will be proven wrong.

“None of them can rebut from real, solid, scientific evidence,” Yan said. “They can only attack me.”

Zenodo acknowledged that the furor has prompted reforms, including the posting of a label Thursday above Yan’s paper saying, “Caution: Potentially Misleading Contents” after The Washington Post asked whether Zenodo would remove it. The site also prominently features links to critiques from a Georgetown University virologist and the MIT Press.

“We take misinformation really seriously, so it is something that we want to address,” said Anais Rassat, a spokeswoman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which operates Zenodo as a general purpose scientific site. “We don’t think taking down the report is the best solution. We want it to stay and indicate why experts think it’s wrong.”

But mainstream researchers who watched Yan’s claims race across the Internet far more quickly than they could counter them have been left troubled by the experience — newly convinced that the capacity for spreading misinformation goes far beyond the big-name social media sites. Any online platform without robust and potentially expensive safeguards is equally vulnerable.

“This is similar to the debate we’re having with Facebook and Twitter. To what degree are we creating an instrument that speeds disinformation, and to what extent are you contributing to that?” said Stefano M. Bertozzi, editor in chief of the MIT Press online journal “Rapid Reviews: COVID-19,” which challenged Yan’s claims.

Bertozzi added, “Most scientists have no interest in getting in a pissing match in cyberspace.”

Coronavirus fuels prominence of online science sites

Online scientific sites have been growing for more than a decade, becoming a vital part of the ecosystem for making and vetting claims across numerous academic fields, but their growth has been supercharged by the urgency of disseminating new discoveries about a deadly pandemic.

Some of the best-known of these sites, such as medRxiv and bioRxiv, have systems for rapid evaluation intended to avoid publishing work that doesn’t pass an initial sniff test of scientific credibility. They also reject papers that only review the work of others or that make such major claims that they shouldn’t be publicized before peer review can be conducted, said Richard Sever, co-founder of medRxiv and bioRxiv.

“We want to create a hurdle that’s high enough that people have to do some research,” Sever said. “What we don’t want to be is a place where there’s a whole bunch of conspiracy theories.”

Online publishing sites generally are called “preprint servers” because many researchers use them as a first step toward traditional peer review, giving the authors a way to make their work public — and available for possible news coverage — before more thorough analysis begins. Advocates of preprint servers tout their ability to create early visibility for important discoveries and also spark useful debate. They note that traditional peer-reviewed journals have their own history of occasionally publishing hoaxes and bad science.

“It’s very funny that everyone is worrying about preprints given that, collectively, journals are not doing a great job of keeping misinformation out,” Sever said.

He and other proponents, however, acknowledge risks.

1 note · View note

generalcreatortiger · 4 years ago

Text

Scientists said claims about China creating the coronavirus were misleading. They went viral anyway.

Craig Timberg

Feb. 13, 2021 at 7:48 a.m. GMT+8

“None of them can rebut from real, solid, scientific evidence,” Yan said. “They can only attack me.”

Bertozzi added, “Most scientists have no interest in getting in a pissing match in cyberspace.”

Catch up on the most important developments in the pandemic with our coronavirus newsletter. All stories in it are free to access.

Coronavirus fuels prominence of online science sites

“It’s very funny that everyone is worrying about preprints given that, collectively, journals are not doing a great job of keeping misinformation out,” Sever said.

After Wuhan mission on pandemic origins, WHO team dismisses lab leak theory

He and other proponents, however, acknowledge risks.

While scientists debate — and sometimes refute — flawed claims by one another, nonscientists also scan preprint servers for data that might appear to bolster their pet conspiracy theories.

A research team led by computer scientist Jeremy Blackburn has tracked the appearance of links to preprints from social media sites, such as 4chan, popular with conspiracy theorists. Blackburn and a graduate student, Satrio Yudhoatmojo, found more than 4,000 references on 4chan to papers on major preprint servers between 2016 and 2020, with the leading subjects being biology, infectious diseases and epidemiology. He said the uneven review process has “lent an air of credibility” to preprints that experts might quickly spot as flawed but ordinary people wouldn’t.

“That’s where the risk is,” said Blackburn, an assistant professor at Binghamton University. “Papers from the preprint servers show up in a variety of conspiracy theories … and are misinterpreted wildly because these people aren’t scientists.”

Jessica Polka, executive director of ASAPbio, a nonprofit group that pushes for more transparency and wider use of preprint servers, said they rely on something akin to crowdsourcing, in which comments from outside researchers quickly can identify flaws in work, but she acknowledged vulnerabilities based on the extent of review by server staff and advisers. A recent survey by ASAPbio found more than 50 preprint servers operating — and nearly as many review policies.

And the survey didn’t include Zenodo, which, Polka said, should not be considered a preprint server given its broader mission. Rather, she said, it’s an online repository that happens to host some preprints, as well as conference slides, raw data and other “scientific objects” that anyone with an email address can simply upload. Zenodo has none of the vetting common to major preprint servers and isn’t organized to easily surface critiques or conflicting research, she said.

“Without that kind of context, a preprint server is even more vulnerable to the spread of disinformation,” Polka said. But she added, in general, “Preprint servers do not have the resources to be arbiters of whether something is true or not.”

Yan defends her work

Yan said in her interview with The Post that Zenodo’s openness is what drove her decision to use the site. She had initially submitted her paper to bioRxiv because as a researcher whose work has appeared in Nature, the Lancet Infectious Diseases and other traditional publications, she knew that this preprint server would appear more legitimate to other scientists.

Trump pardons Steve Bannon after ugly falling out early in his presidency

Yan has a medical degree from Xiangya Medical College of Central South University and a PhD in ophthalmology from Southern Medical University — both in China — and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong, she said. That university announced she was no longer affiliated with it in July, following an initial appearance on Fox News, saying in a statement that her claim about the origin of the coronavirus “has no scientific basis but resembles hearsay.”

After she fled Hong Kong, she harbored deep suspicions about that government’s potential to block publication of her work, she said. When she checked bioRxiv 48 hours after making her submission, the site appeared to have gone offline, Yan said. Fearing the worst, she withdrew the paper and uploaded it to Zenodo.

Sever, the bioRxiv co-founder, said he could not comment on an individual submission but said that, despite occasional glitches, he was aware of no “prolonged outage” on the site during mid-September and no sign that the Chinese, or anyone else, had hacked it.

For Yan’s paper on Zenodo, she did not list an academic affiliation, as is customary for research. Instead, she listed the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation, which are New York-based nonprofit groups founded by exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a close associate of Bannon, who in 2018 was announced as chairman of the Rule of Law Society. When Bannon was arrested on fraud charges in August, he was aboard Guo’s 150-foot yacht, off the coast of Connecticut. (President Donald Trump last month pardoned Bannon, his former campaign chairman and White House chief strategist).

Chinese dissidents say they’re being harassed by a businessman with links to Steve Bannon

Yan said she listed the Rule of Law entities out of respect for what she said was their work helping dissidents in China, and that they paid for her flight from Hong Kong and provided a resettlement stipend while she largely lives off her savings. She said her work is independent, and she rejected notions that Bannon was helping her spread political claims.

“I didn’t know he was so controversial when I was in Hong Kong,” Yan told The Post.

On Sept. 15, the day after Yan’s paper appeared on Zenodo, she was a guest on Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” an appearance watched by 4.8 million broadcast viewers and 2.8 million on YouTube, and that also generated extensive engagement on Facebook and Twitter, according to the Harvard researchers. Bannon appeared on Carlson’s show that same week and discussed Yan’s claims. He also interviewed her on “War Room: Pandemic” 22 times last year, both before and after the Zenodo publication.

The political context was obvious in the midst of a hotly contested election in which Trump was attacking Democratic rival Joe Biden for supposedly being overly sympathetic to the Chinese government, dubbing him “Beijing Joe.” Republicans, including White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, pushed Yan’s paper along with the hashtag #CCPLiedPeopleDied, a reference to the Chinese Communist Party.

Archives showed the paper had more than 150,000 views on its first day on Zenodo — spectacular reach for a scientific paper, especially one that had not yet been reviewed by any independent experts.

But this surge of attention also generated backlash, including critical news reports by National Geographic and others, raising serious questions about Yan’s claims.

In the academic world, the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins issued a point-by-point response one week after Yan’s paper appeared on Zenodo, raising 39 individual issues in what it said was “objective analysis of details included in the report, as would be customary in a peer-review process.”

A few days later, the MIT Press online journal “Rapid Reviews: COVID-19” featured four scathing reviews, including one from Robert Gallo, a renowned AIDS researcher and a titan within the field of virology.

He labeled Yan’s work “misleading” and cited “questionable, spurious, and fraudulent claims.” Most points were highly technical, but Gallo also questioned her logic regarding the alleged role in creating the coronavirus for the Chinese military, which Gallo noted would be vulnerable to covid-19.

“And how would the Chinese protect themselves?” Gallo asked in his review. “Well, according to the paper, the military knew it could be stopped by remdesivir,” a drug later shown to have some benefit in treating covid-19 while not necessarily reducing the risk of death. “I would surely not want to be in the Chinese military if they were that naive.”

The idea to recruit Gallo came from Bertozzi, the journal’s editor and dean emeritus of the School of Public Health at University of California at Berkeley. Like Gallo, Bertozzi had worked extensively in AIDS research. After seeing Yan’s appearance on Fox, he was eager to use the online journal founded only months earlier to correct the scientific record.

“I felt it needed to be quickly debunked by people with scientific credibility,” Bertozzi said.

He soon thought of Gallo.

“We need somebody of your stature to say this is garbage science,” Bertozzi recalled telling him.

The reviews by Gallo and three other scientists also came with an editor’s note raising questions about the preprint process itself, saying, “While pre-print servers offer a mechanism to disseminate world-changing scientific research at unprecedented speed, they are also a forum through which misleading information can instantaneously undermine the international scientific community’s credibility, destabilize diplomatic relationships, and compromise global safety.”

But these public rebukes from some of the biggest names in virology did not deter Yan. Nor did a detailed report on Oct. 21 by CNN quoting her critics and documenting flaws.

Yan declined to be interviewed for that story, she said, because CNN did not allow her to address the issues they unearthed, point by point, on live television.

Instead, she published her own response on Nov. 21, on Zenodo, titled, “CNN Used Lies and Misinformation to Muddle the Water on the Origin of SARS-CoV-2.”

In her Post interview, Yan acknowledged — as CNN had reported — that her three co-authors on the original Sept. 14 paper were pseudonyms, used to protect what she said were other Chinese researchers whose families remain in peril back in China. Authors are typically discouraged from using false names in academic work.

Her claims suffered another blow this week, when a World Health Organization team sent to China to investigate the origins of the pandemic issued a statement saying it was “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus came from a lab.

One of Yan’s earliest vocal critics, virologist Angela Rasmussen, who was at Columbia when Yan’s paper first spread, agreed with WHO’s assessment but did not rule out the possibility — however unlikely — of laboratory origin for the coronavirus. But she said the argument lacks concrete evidence.

“There needs to be a lot less speculation and a lot more investigation,” said Rasmussen, now an affiliate at Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. “It takes a really long time to figure this stuff out... This is going to take years or even decades to solve it, if we ever do.”

Yet Yan continues to double down on her claims and to attack her critics as spreading “lies.” She still argues that the Chinese government intentionally created the coronavirus and continues to do everything it can to silence her.

Yan also offers no apologies for making common cause with Bannon and other Trump allies. As a dissident, she said, she doesn’t necessarily get her choice of supporters.

“If China is going to do this crime, who can hold them accountable?… Trump was the one who was tough” against China, Yan said, adding that her claim “is about real fact. I don’t want to mislead people.”

Even now, she is preparing another paper, nearing 30 pages, that she hopes will refute her critics and bring fresh attention to her claims about China, covid-19 and what she says is an international coverup campaign.

Yan plans to publish it in a few weeks, she said — on Zenodo.

#china covid19 covid-19

1 note · View note