#and puts them and the case into a larger societal context

[icecreambeach]

another observation from A Study in Scarlet: after the case has concluded, Watson reads in a newspaper (the Echo)...

"If the case has had no other effect, it, at least, brings out in the most striking manner the efficiency of our detective police force, and will serve as a lesson to all foreigners that they will do wisely to settle their feuds at home, and not to carry them on to British soil."

RICH STATEMENT from a country who brought countless """feuds""" to any foreign soil they could reach!!! bold declarations from the colonizers i'd say!!!!!

[communistkenobi]

I think a large problem with how we got to this stage of "man is gender neutral" discourse is that a lot of queer people refuse to engage with feminism. I've been seeing it brought up a lot recently, but it's true. Someone who doesn't see a problem with referring to a trans woman as "dude" probably also doesn't believe in patriarchy to begin with. We need to start doing feminism 101 on tumblr again.

I think this is true and I also think this issue extends to the fact that white liberal queerness is the societally accepted conception of lgbtq issues broadly - the fact that pride flags litter the windowsills of small businesses and banks, that lgbtq merchandise is its own market, that western conceptions of gayness and especially transness are the internationally imposed norm (eg, we are pathological exceptions to cishetero society and should be accepted on the grounds that we are scientifically proven to be legitimate by medical and psychiatric institutions, presented with an awkward flair of “okay so we’re not saying being transgender is a mental illness, but it is caused by a mental illness” + framing of gay people as “they’re just like straight people! they can get married and have children just like you!”). Many many queer people of colour have pointed out how much this predominate western framing of lgbtq identity as a “white person thing” (partially because white queer people are just as racist as non-queer white people, also because of aforementioned western imperialism) puts them at odds with their own communities, giving people in those communities a “rational” reason to oppose lgbtq rights on the grounds of resisting western imperialism. Israel’s pinkwashing is a particularly instructive and stark example of this, positioning lgbtq freedom as being contingent on genociding and destroying Palestine - this doesn’t mean it’s okay to be homophobic obviously, but this sort of imperial imposition of queerness as part of the package of western domination creates the conditions for “rationally opposing” lgbtq rights and equality within colonized communities and ultimately causes intersecting levels of harm for lgbtq people in those communities. You can read decolonizing trans/gender 101 by b binaohan if you want more on the subject, I’ve only read the intro so far but it was very instructive (thank you @/molsno for spreading this link around! - she also has a post with a bunch of transfeminist writings if you want more of that). There's also this video by FD Signifier about Dave Chappelle's transphobia that talks about anti-Blackness in white trans/queer spaces and the intense homophobia and transphobia Black lgbtq people face as a result of this that I found insightful if you want to listen to something instead

ANYWAY, all to say - I think the larger problem is that queerness in western contexts (which tumblr is firmly situated in) is overwhelmingly white and liberal, which means that even if these spaces were to incorporate feminist frameworks in their analysis of oppression, they would be incorporated as liberal feminist frameworks, which are fundamentally transmisogynistic and racist, and fundamentally attached to the imperial project of the west (I recently read this article called Beyond the Coloniality of Gender by Alex Adamson discussing some of the problems with western feminism. they demonstrate this through a case study on western feminist objections to genital cutting in certain African countries + analysis of decolonial trans and intersex feminisms more broadly - if you click "show document" in the upper right hand corner of the page I linked it allows you to access the full article).

I’ve always struggled to articulate the exact issue we're discussing, because at a certain point a lack of knowledge is not to be blamed -the larger issue at hand is that the western political + economic apparatus has incorporated queer assimilation into its project. This does not mean that queer people in the west are safe from homophobia or transphobia (see: current transphobic hysteria across North America and UK in particular), but it does mean that white western queer people have incredible political and rhetorical leverage to dominate these conversations using white liberal analytical frameworks, which can only lead to transmisogynist and white supremacist conclusions about the nature of oppression. I think the only way out of these path-dependent "everyone is oppressed by patriarchy" conversations is a larger decolonial political and social project - part of which necessarily incorporates feminist analysis, but feminist analyses that are decolonial, marxist, and transfeminist in nature, and the only way these frameworks can be comprehensively adopted is through a larger decolonial turn

[tsugarubecker]

So, I’ve mentioned that I think ST is about refuting “boy meets girl and romance ensues”, but I think it goes deeper than that. Or, put another way, they’re not just casually making that statement: I think that’s their giant, neon-lights thesis statement of the show.  I think that the show is 1 part sci-fi, 1 part social critique. I think that Karen, Nancy, Mike, and others are being used to show what it looks like when people simply follow along with society’s ideas of what we should do, who we should like, etc. Heteronormativity, in other words. Because heteronormativity includes being straight, cis, being romantically interested in the “opposite sex”  because they do basic tropes like look pretty or have a good job, getting married, having several kids, getting a house with a picket fence, etc. All of that is the overarching societal message of heteronormativity. And Karen, Nancy, and Mike are all in danger of listening to those societal messages - instead of listening to their own hearts. Sometimes, they are actively repressing and shouting down the voices in their hearts, which have different opinions than the “normal,” socially accepted ones. (In Karen’s case, it’s less that she’s in danger, more she already signed herself up for a life she didn’t truly want. And now maybe she will find her way out. I’m not the only person gently suggesting she get a divorce...) I mean, think about just how many couples there are in this sci-fi show. Almost seems a little excessive, doesn’t it? If the show was all about the sci-fi? But it’s not all about the plot. It’s a show that is also doing a bunch of character studies. And it has an overall theme to those character studies. Taken from a larger lens, it’s a study of romance/romantic relationships and how those happen in the context of our society. Therefore by necessity the show is critiquing heteronormativity.* I think the reason S3 was all brighty brighty and fakey fakey, and why it focused on the couples and on how-to-be-straight (thanks Lucas), and why it was called “the season of love,” is because S3 was set up to show how “let’s just follow the social norms” doesn’t work very well actually.  ( @kaypeace21 has written about that specific topic before, and other related ideas. If you look for this section of her pinned post, you’ll find some of her thoughts, although she has many more: s3 meta: about  lack of communication, the critique of commercialism, and the misinterpretation of s3′s plot/characters appearing ‘shallow’ ) Another related phrase for “the social norms” or “the social script” or heteronormativity is “the relationship escalator.” See this link. Polyamorous folks (which I am, sort of) talk about this concept a lot, because polyamorous relationships often do not follow the relationship escalator. The relationship escalator is one of the messages put upon all of us - it’s something we are supposed to pursue and we aren’t really supposed to question that - so, as such, it’s a part of heteronormativity.  I believe that this show is, again: 1 part sci-fi romp, 1 part critique of heteronormativity. And I think that it is deeply difficult for audiences to see that this show is one giant critique, because only people who have critiqued these structures themselves before could possibly notice it. To anyone who has never been bothered by these structures, from what they can see, the couples in this show are just doing normal stuff. How can the majority of the audience know what’s coming (subverting a lot of things having to do with heteronormativity - including the fruition of Byler) if they have never noticed the social structures happening around them? How can they see a critique of those structures if they aren’t aware the structures exist? (Now it’s like The Matrix... anyone know if The Matrix was cited as a film reference?) This show, if you ask me, in the end is going to make a whole generation (or, uh - several generations I suppose, since lots of age groups watch this show) realize that they have a choice. A choice to either go along with heteronormative social structures, or a choice to question just-falling-into-it with people and blindly riding the relationship escalator. They have a choice - they can step back and reflect and listen to their hearts and figure out what they really want out of a relationship. And then advocate for their wants, express them to others. They can really be intentional with their choice of partner, with what kind of a relationship they truly want to have. I’m not sure why this social critique is important to The Duffers, but it seems like it is, and I think they’re really trying to put this message our there to the masses. And I’m glad that that feels important to them. I think it would be a beautiful thing if more people reflect on the dangers and harms of heteronormativity, because if we have a world with less of those oppressive assumptions and structures, more people can be “queer” in the sense of creating their own path instead of just following one that’s set out for them. And I do feel like that will bring more acceptance of others’ choices for their own relationships, whatever those choices might look like (gay, straight, queer, poly, mono, kids, no kids, community-raising kids, etc etc etc).  *sidenote there’s a bunch in this show talking about parenting as well, and subverting tropes on that. And family love... in an even larger sense I think this show is about the nature of love/the many forms love can take. (KP21 has written good stuff on these topics, as well, so check out her posts for further reading)

[uovoc]

Murderbot privacy

“SecUnit is a very private person, it doesn’t like to talk about its feelings” made me do a double take because I was like, SecUnit, who’s listening to you right now? Since when has it cared about privacy? Because while MB is a secretive fucker, it sure doesn’t extend that courtesy to others. And what I could figure out so far to explain this apparent hypocrisy is some more-or-less coherent stuff.

Summary:

MB conflates personal, private, and secret because these categories could not exist separately under the regime of surveillance and objectification inflicted upon it in the CR. This meant that the development of MB’s sense of personal identity was limited to its internal self. As a result, MB has a good instinctive grasp of the right to privacy regarding one’s emotions and internal state. However, its lack of bodily autonomy and background as a cog in the CR surveillance state have led it to regard physical privacy as a personal privilege rather than a right.

2200 words below the cut. I think about Murderbot a normal amount

Terminology

For clarity, the terms personal, private, secret, and privacy will be defined basically by their Merriam-Webster definitions. Personal will be used to mean relating to an individual’s character, conduct, motives, or private affairs. Secret is defined as kept from knowledge or view; hidden. Private will be used to mean 1) intended for or restricted to the use of particular person, group, or class. Privacy will be defined as the quality or state of being apart from company or observation; freedom from unauthorized intrusion. These are not comprehensive definitions, but for clarity’s sake they’re the ones I will use here.

The connotations that they carry in this analysis are:

Things that are secret are actively concealed. If something is secret, people are not aware of its existence. Secrets carry the implication of potential harm if divulged.

Privacy and things that are private are generally kept as such by social norms rather than active enforcement. The existence of things that are private may be known, but the details are limited to a restricted (trusted) audience. For instance, to quote Beatrice-Otter, “the contents of my underwear drawer are private, but not secret.” If you’re at someone’s house, you could technically go look in someone’s underwear drawer – it’s not like they can stop you – but out of the mutually agreed-upon respect for privacy and definition of what qualifies as private, you don’t. Things kept private tend to be done so for personal-emotional reasons rather than practical reasons.

These are limited definitions and not mutually exclusive. For instance, privacy can be enforced by gates and barriers like secrets are. These definitions aren’t meant to be comprehensive, but just to establish the meanings and connotations that I’m working with.

Privacy in the CR versus Preservation

Murderbot’s approach to privacy reflects the attitudes of the Corporation Rim. Preservation regards privacy more like a personal right and establishes it through primarily through societal norms, while the Corporation Rim treats privacy more like a personal privilege which individuals are responsible for securing and maintaining. In Preservation, freedom from observation is the default, and surveillance is the exception. To MBs annoyance, unless a space is singled out for security reasons (cargo spaces and high-traffic zones on the station), it’s generally left unsurveilled (residential areas, pedestrian corridors, most of the planet that we see in NE). Preservation also has cultural expectations of certain types of spaces being private. MB doesn’t share these expectations, as it notes in NE when it admits that its eavesdropping habit is “a little incriminating with the whole listening to private conversations in secured spaces and personal dwellings thing.” The specificity of “secured spaces and personal dwellings” makes this sound like something someone else said to MB that it’s now repeating, especially since it doesn’t agree that what others consider private conversations or private spaces are inherently off-limits to observation.

Unlike Preservation, MB sees privacy as a privilege rather than an inherent right, because it’s more used to the attitude of the CR surveillance state. In the labor installations that MB was deployed on, everything people did was observed by SecSystem at all times. If you wanted privacy, you had to pay for it, as MB notes in ES when it’s complaining about the lack of cameras in the fancy hotel that it books when it arrives. Even then, you might not get what you pay for, and MB take steps to secure PresAux’s own camera network that they later set up. In the CR, privacy is closer in meeting to secrecy, something that must be actively enforced and secured against intrusion. Corporate entities in the CR are motivated to erode personal privacy for profit in the form of datamining and workforce control. Privacy is thus a personal responsibility, since the surrounding environment is one that seeks to undermine it. This is the attitude towards privacy that MB is working with, and part of why it feels entitled to constant surveillance of its humans. In contrast, privacy in Preservation is a right maintained by the collective expectations and policies of the larger community. Station Security doesn’t exactly approve of MB setting up its own surveillance network, but nor does it do regular drone removal sweeps. MB expects privacy to be actively secured, and sees Preservation’s easily breached systems as the equivalent of leaving your valuables out on the lawn. If you don’t want to be surveilled, don’t go around being surveillable.

Surveillance exemptions

Instances where MB appears to respect the notion of privacy are sex/bodily functions, proprietary data, and feelings talks. However, out of these 3 categories, feelings are the topic where MB’s motivations align most closely with the human understanding of privacy. MB’s aversion to sex is more of an ick factor thing, since it repeatedly states that it finds human bodily functions to be disgusting. (I think touch aversion is also part of the sex-repulsed thing, but touch aversion aligns more with ick factor and also with lack of bodily autonomy, discussed below.)

Proprietary data is another topic on which MB appears to be on the same page as humans regarding “private” as being restricted to a particular group: it doesn’t tell the Mensah parents about Amena’s creepy date, and it removes the audio when it shows Indah the video of Mensah complaining about another councilmember. In both of these cases, there’s the potential for harm if the information is divulged: Amena would get scolded and possibly grounded by her parents, and Mensah’s relationships with the Council and Senior Indah would be damaged by her lack of professionalism. In a business context, proprietary data is information kept within a company because it would give your competitors an advantage, or because your competitors could use it to put you at a disadvantage – pretty much the same results, in the game of capitalism. Although both of these examples deal with personal-emotional information, the concept of proprietary data is closer to secrecy in its potential for harm and complete concealment of the information’s existence.

The third type of situation where MB appears to be on the same page as humans regarding privacy is people talking about their feelings. After Arada gets back from the Barish-Estranza negotiations, MB pointedly does not watch her and Overse make up because of the high likelihood that “they were having sex and/or a relationship discussion (either of which I would prefer to stab myself in the face than see).” Sex falls under the ick factor, but there’s a number of reasons the fandom collective braincell has pointed out for MB not wanting to watch people talk about their feelings:

MB exercising the privilege of not having to care about human feelings, as a formerly enslaved person subjected to human whims.

Secondhand embarrassment because MB would never talk about its feelings.

Related to the above, MB reflexively recoiling out of empathy because if it was in their position, it wouldn’t want someone listening in on its feelings.

Actually, now that I think of it, MB doesn’t go into great detail on why it doesn’t like watching humans talk about their feelings, unlike how it explicitly expresses its disgust for anything involving human fluids. Which is why I’ve got the suspicion that when it comes to feelings, MB does have a strong instinctive understanding of what it means for something to be private and, as a result, gets uncomfortable observing a moment that is not meant for others to see. MB has an easier time understanding how privacy applies to feelings rather than acts because unlike its body, its feelings are strongly tied to its concept of what is personal.

MB’s internal and external self

To paraphrase this one MDZS meta, MB’s body is not its own. MB’s sense of what is personal to it, or its sense of unique identity, applies more its internal self than its external self because of its former nonperson status in the CR. This informs what MB considers to be inherently private. While in the CR, its appearance and configuration were decided by the company. To be fair, humans don’t get to choose our original bodies either, but our bodies and the modifications we make to them tell a story of our personal background. The history inscribed in MB’s body, down to the logos etched on its structure, is that of a mass-produced piece of corporate equipment. MB does not have a particular attachment to its external appearance (“standard human”) because its appearance reflects the company’s choices rather than its own. (This changes after it gains the freedom to choose its own clothes and gets tabletop surgery from ART, discussed at the end.) Although MB’s configuration is what makes it a SecUnit, and being a SecUnit is an essential part of its identity, it’s not an identity that’s unique to MB.

For most of its life, MB’s actions have also been extensions of the company. Its actions have either been dictated by its clients and governor module, or it has had to pretend to be controlled by those things, which means making decisions which could conceivably have been issued with the governor module’s approval. MB is also used to selling its body, since it’s expected to literally sacrifice pieces of itself to keep its clients safe (an expectation it continues to hold). MB has been ship-of-Theseus’d to hell and back. The lack of both bodily autonomy and bodily safety due to its nonperson status in the CR means that MB considered its body to be neither private (restricted to the use of only one person) nor entirely personal (pertaining to its unique character).

As a consequence, MB doesn’t consider its external self to have the right to privacy. Although it doesn’t like being looked at, it’s reaction is to hide rather than ask people to stop. (This is also because MB isn’t used to exercising its personal preferences regarding other people’s actions, but that’s a different angle.) It doesn’t like it when Mensah walks into the security ready room, or when its humans and ART’s crew are watching it come out of involuntary shutdown on the deck, but it doesn’t tell them to stop. In general, MB doesn’t like being looked at because if it’s falling apart, it’s in a vulnerable state, and if it’s not falling apart, then being paid attention to used to carry the threat of abuse/incoming orders/being clocked as a rogue. These reasons are more about safety than privacy.

However, MB specifically doesn’t like people looking at its face are because its face shows its emotions, and its emotions are a reflection of its internal state and, by extension, its internal self. MB considers its thoughts and emotions to have the right to privacy because they are the aspects of itself that it has been able to control, and thus has been able to make personal. When Gurathin reveals its name, it grates out, “That was private.” On one level, Murderbot’s name is an honest expression of what it thinks it is and all the associated self-loathing and guilt. MB does NOT want humans to know its name because then they know how it feels about a topic truly important to it. On another level, its name reveals its self-deprecating humor, something a ruthless killing machine is not supposed to have.

Everything that MB considers personal, it has also needed to keep secret, because in the CR, it’s not supposed to be a person the first place. Conversely, the only reason it’s been able to have personal opinions and emotions is because it has been able to keep these things secret. Anything MB would have wanted to be private – restricted to a trusted audience – would have also needed to be secret because of the pervasive surveillance present in the CR, the nonperson status of constructs, and the fact that it had no trusted audience with which it could share private information.

Conclusions

MB conflates the categories of personal, private, and secret because these concepts could not exist separately under the regime of surveillance and objectification inflicted upon it in the CR. Anything in one category had to be able to fit into the others, which limited the development of MB’s sense of personal identity to its internal self. Although MB has good instinctive grasp of the right to privacy regarding one’s internal state, MB’s lack of bodily autonomy and its background as a cog in the CR surveillance state have led it to regard physical privacy as a personal privilege rather than a right.

Now that MB’s in a safer place (kidnappings by giant asshole research transports aside), it’s beginning to separate out those concepts a bit and allow things to be personal and private but not secret (its desire to be with ART, its affection towards Mensah). It’s also starting to allow things that are neither secret nor private to be personal (expressing preferences in its hairstyle, clothing, and aversion to physical touch), which can also be considered MB reclaiming its external self/body.

[a-dragons-journal]

my friend made a carrd on kin terms and wants to make sure terms are correct as they aren't that interactive with the community yet being in it for years, the url is kinform. carrd. co ( I am not sure if links work )

- and in case my tumblr messes up again I wanna stay anon

A’ight, let’s go through this!

First off, I want to say: I really appreciate the effort your friend is putting into this, including going to the effort to have other people check their work! It’s a well-organized carrd, and I appreciate that they included a lot of less well-known labels! That being said, there’s definitely quite a bit of misinformation here - which is totally understandable, the misinformation has spread unfortunately far at this point. But hey, that’s why I’m here!

Incorrect info:

- “alterhuman: a general term for anyone who identifies as non-human, whether it be 'kin or 'link” (on Terms) “Alterhuman” is a much broader term than that - “Having an identity that is alternative to the common societal idea of 'human'; a person who identifies as such.” It covers anyone who has an alternative experience to humanity, or who experiences humanity in an alternative way from “normal”. It’s intentionally an extremely vague and broad term - it covers ‘kin, ‘links, ‘heartedness/kith/synpaths, plurality, daemonism, furry lifestylers, real vampires, endels, probably voidpunk, etc.

(There’s a whole conversation to be had here about how the alterhuman community was supposed to get away from centralizing the otherkin narrative but somehow ended up with that being a huge problem anyway, with it often feeling like it’s about nonhuman identity even though it’s not - but that’s a pretty long conversation, so we won’t go there xD)

- “astral limbs: the sensation of a body part that is not there in real life ; not to be confused with phantom limbs which is used by amputees” (on Terms) Astral limbs =/= supernumerary phantom limbs =/= phantom limb syndrome. What you’re defining is supernumerary phantom limbs, not astral limbs/shifts - astral limbs/shifts are where your astral body changes to match that of your kintype, which a) doesn’t always coincide with phantom shifts, and b) requires belief in astral bodies/the astral plane in the first place, which many ‘kin don’t hold.

Supernumerary phantom limbs is the sensation of having a body part that is not and never has been physically present, as opposed to phantom limb syndrome which is referring to limbs that have been amputated. It’s not “appropriating” language from amputees or anything like that like some people have tried to claim - supernumerary phantom limbs is a medical term. Astral limbs isn’t an accurate, adequate, or necessary replacement.

- copingkin: identifying with or as anything under fictionkin or otherkin for comfort and/or coping ; also referred to as comfortkin ~ also see copinglink (from Kin) I would strongly suggest removing this; it’s not an accepted term and pretty much never has been as far as I’m aware. You’re either copinglink, someone who chose their identity for coping purposes, or otherkin who happens to have a psychological explanation, if your identity came about as an unconscious/involuntary coping mechanism.

- fictionkin: identifying with or as a fictional character or race. (from Kin) Remove “with or”; it’s identify-as. If you don’t identify as them, you’re not ‘kin. Identifying strongly with, but not as, is ‘heartedness, not ‘kin. I would also suggest swapping “race” for “species,” if that’s what you meant, since that’s a pretty loaded term out of context.

- otherkin: identifying with or as non-animal/non-human and mythical creatures ; some have their own label such as songkin. (from Kin) Remove “with or”; it’s identify-as, as above^.

- kin is often involuntarily & spiritual, if you consider yourself kin but don't do these, see hearted or synpath (from Kin) ‘Kin is involuntary, full stop, but it’s not necessarily spiritual. Nor is the distinction between ‘kin and ‘heartedness/synpaths the voluntary/involuntary aspect; it’s that ‘kin is identify-as and ‘heartedness/synpath isn’t.

- aeslink relating to anything for aesthetic reasons ~ "i am angel & palace aeslink" copinglink strongly relating with a fictional character for comfort and/or coping. (from Other) ‘Links are voluntarily choosing to cultivate an identity as something else - character, species, or otherwise. It’s still identify-as, not “relating to,” it’s just voluntary where otherkinity is involuntary. It’s not any less serious or any less identify-as. 'Linking or otherlinking is defined as “voluntarily choosing to identify as nonhuman/a fictional character or species”.

- synpaths: strongly relating to a fictional character or race that you see a lot of yourself in, but not as strong as kin. (from Other) Remove “not as strong as ‘kin”; ‘kin isn’t “relating to” something in the first place, it’s identifying as that thing. I would also suggest swapping “race” for “species,” if that’s what you meant, since that’s a pretty loaded term out of context.

- therian: identifying with or as an animal or other living thing. (from Other) Remove “with or”; it’s identify-as, as with fictionkin and otherkin.

Suggested edits:

Things that aren’t necessarily wrong, but which I would suggest edits to anyway for clarity/accuracy.

- awakening: the moment one realizes they identify as a kintype/theriantype (from Terms) I would posit that an awakening isn’t necessarily a single moment in time; much more often it’s an extended process that can take weeks, months, or even years. There’s some overlap between “awakening” and “questioning” that way, imo.

- They also said “theriantype” multiple times where it should be “theriotype,” but that’s more of a typo thing than a content error.

- otherkin: identifying with or as non-animal/non-human and mythical creatures ; some have their own label such as songkin. (from Kin) Songkin is probably not a great example if this is intended for outsiders who are new to the terminology, since conceptkin is kind of hard to explain to begin with, but that’s my personal opinion.

- Cladotherian, therian, theriomythic, and phytanthrope should all be on the ‘Kin page, as they all technically fall under ‘kin.

-  identity/ID, kinnie & kinning won't be added as they are terms created by the more newer kin community and aren't recognized/accepted terms for older kin, though some older kin may be okay with these terms. (from Terms) Personally, I don’t like calling them “the newer kin community” - the “kin for fun” people aren’t ‘kin, they’re misusing our language, that’s the entire point. “The “kin-for-fun” community” or just “terms being warped as part of misinformation” would probably be more accurate.

- Synpath can probably be included on the ‘hearted page, since synpath, kith, and otherhearted are basically all synonymous.

Suggested additions:

- A resources list may be worthwhile! Things like personal websites and perhaps a few trustworthy blogs/posts could be worth adding to that list (I have a kin resources tag here that may be useful to them if they want to do that!) This gives people a place to go if they want to learn more.

- The term otherlinker is probably a good one to add, given that copinglinker and a specific type of ‘link (aeslink) are both present but the larger umbrella term presently isn’t.

Out of curiosity:

not edits at all, I’m just curious, ha

- kintrope: a trait found in most of ones kintypes. (from Terms) I’m really curious where they found this term, it’s not one I’ve heard before!

I think that’s about all I can find - like I said, I really appreciate the effort being put into this carrd! There’s a lot of good terms on here, just some definition fixes that need to be made - it’s well-organized and very aesthetically pleasing, which is more than I can honestly say for a lot of carrds xD

Hopefully that’s all clear enough to be helpful - I’m more than happy to chat further about this or provide clearer definitions/suggested resources, if your friend wants! :3

[flickeringart]

Basic personality natal chart reading (example)

This is a short analysis based on personal planetary placements by sign and aspect in your natal chart. It’s by no means a complete analysis of your chart; it’s a summary of the personal planets and how they express themselves through you. Planets represent autonomous principals of the unconscious. They exist independently of your will since they are your will. They are not you, but they are you in all the ways that you are yourself. If you can detach enough from them, you’ll see them more clearly. This short reading can hopefully provide some aid in self-analysis, an aid in self-observation.

Sun in Aquarius

The overall goal of your life is to develop your ethical, cerebral and visionary abilities. The faith in progression and future possibilities for yourself and others should be what carries you through, what you’re here to express, articulate and radiate. There’s potential for great understanding of human beings and an acceptance of all the facets that are part of the human experiences. The reason for your inclusive stance is your proclivity to see yourself as one of many, like a person jut like everybody else. However, this is not to imply that you trivialize the importance of people’s uniqueness – you have the ability to treasure yourself and others for being unique. The collective human family lies close to your heart. Other people probably feel comfortable with you, knowing that you’ll be able to understand their point of view – or at least attempt to, because you learn about yourself through others. You would have the inclination to think of yourself as part of a movement because you put an emphasis the common goal and the common cause – even if it’s secretly done for purely self-centered reasons. You’re self-investment is intellectual, which is why it’s not presented or perceived as purely selfish. What you go through as an individual is thought of in the context of a larger structural blueprint – it’s viewed in terms of a collective experience. You would tend to bring your individual desires and inclinations to the mental realm, to advocate for their legitimacy in terms of a societal presence. More than likely you accept and respect other people because you would want to the same thing in return. What you want for yourself you advocate for in social contexts. There’s openness to your identity, but you tend to be quite fixed once you’ve made up your mind – certain things are fundamentally inarguable to you. People will likely appreciate you for this, but they might find that you’re too fixed in your values as to make appropriate assessments of situations that involve personal emotion. Sometimes, you can take equality and respect to the point where it could turn toxic. Your strong idealistic identity might not be able to accept the raw reality as anything that has value – it might not fit into the image of rightness that you have established as a vision for yourself. People will love you for your strong intellectual investment in common goals – it will make others feel seen and supported. On the other hand it could make others feel like it’s purely about the progression of thought and not about them as individual beings, that it’s purely about the mental abstraction of their problems or dilemmas.

You’re conscious identity is quite tied up with your idea of redemption. You’d find that you put faith in yourself to embody the sublime and transcendent. You’re likely to be an incurable romantic with your goal of life being nothing less than the most rose-colored movie ideal. There’s something sacred about the frailty of life and you would be quite invested in the dream of perfection where everyone is sharing in mutual bliss. Beware of your tendency to fall into the roll of the victim, the savior or the martyr. Your lean towards unconditional empathy for yourself and others might not do you any favors in this world where self-preservation is so important. Empathy is a great, but if it’s not paired with healthy boundaries it’s draining and depleting. You might be reflective of other people and prone to absorb a lot of their emotional content – having resistance to embody concrete boundaries of self in terms of preference, opinion and stance. However, the tension of not being able to declare your self-centered needs and letting others set the tone might not work out – you’ll find yourself switching to being incredibly stubborn and demanding, surprising others with a strong and willful emotional temperament, unwilling to compromise. You have a tendency to end up in dynamics with others where you’re playing the reasonable and passive role in certain situations, while dealing with emotionally dramatic, moody and selfish people on the “outside”. The outside in this case is just you disowning and projecting your own emotionally dominant nature.

You are a quite bold, expansive and enthusiastic and explorative person – out to have fun and enjoy variety. However, this side of your would could also be projected, making others seem very exuberant and energetic in your presence while you have a hard time accommodating for these traits without loosing hold of yourself. You would have to adjust yourself in order to let lose and be carefree. Last but not least I would say that you’re identity has a great capacity for perseverance if you tap into it, a perceptive ability that enables you to see beyond the surface level of experience. Exploring the depths of existence, the murkier and darker parts would excite and stimulate you.

Moon in Leo

You’re feelings want to be on display. You need attention to thrive whether you’re conscious of it or not. You tend to take remarks and comments from others personally – there’s little detachment from outside opinions. You’re default setting is to approve of yourself and display your emotions proudly. Uncompromising approval of yourself not only makes you very stubborn, it also establishes a sense of authority. “My emotions should be catered to” could be an inner attitude – there’s likely something demanding  about your presence. Feelings of inferiority and incompetence hits particularly hard, which might cause you to puff up even more, hold your head even higher and turn snarky. You’re likely to hold on to feeling states for long periods until you feel that they have been “recognized “ and “validated” enough. When your needs are met you can be extremely loving – especially with the people that you consider to be part of your close circle. When you’re safe and comfortable you radiate confidence. In fact, that is what you do most of the time, even during your weaker moments. You have the great advantage of being able to own your feelings, to make them part of your life’s journey, to treat them like jewels – precious and personal even if they occasionally turn dark. You are playing the starring role in your life, there’s no question about it. There’s a sense of integrity and self-respect that is characteristic of your emotional nature. You would feel like you deserve the best and would be deeply upset if life disappoints. The mundane doesn’t satisfy you on an emotional level, you crave more than just carrying out the necessary routines of life and having a comfortable living situation. Life must have some drama to it in one way or another – you have to live in honor of love. That means that your daily activities and living situation must be imbued with the meaning of love. Everything you do is done in an attitude of granting yourself the very best of the experience. You’re emotional nature motivates you to act and accomplish things. Asserting your needs comes naturally and you generally stick to your set path because you are sure of what you feel should happen. You have great force and conviction backing your feeling nature. There’s a proclivity to want to dominate and manipulate others to cater to your needs, to be dependent on pleasing and satisfying to you. There’s an intensity and perseverance to your emotional nature, you are sure of your ability to cope in difficult situations without breaking apart emotionally. However, you might need to carefully adjust the way you communicate your needs, there’s an inconsistency in how well you are able to understand yourself mentally – and how well you communicate your feelings with others. Some insight and careful adjustment in how you think about yourself might be needed as to establish more a more accurate mental representation of your needs. The same goes for your idea of happiness – it might not completely rhyme with what you actually need to be fulfilled. Consider these things carefully. On another note, there might be a tendency to detach from emotions, to crave change and novelty, which might backfire quite badly. When you get too intensely caught in feeling things you would be inclined to want to change environment, move about and uproot. This might take a toll on your security needs and make you unpredictable in relationships. People might fear that you’ll get up and leave when things get too personal. You could even have this experience with others relative to your own emotions – people usually can’t handle the personal nature of your emotional expression and want to bolt or intellectualize the experience.

Mercury in Capricorn

Your way of communicating and interacting is deliberate and concentrated. You might not be excessively chatty or scattered; you choose your words because you are aware of their importance. There’s something very smooth and polite in your way of interacting, it’s predictable which would make others feel secure. You wouldn’t say things that could get you into trouble or cause disruption unnecessarily. That being said, you might come off as overly self-conscious in your exchange with unfamiliar people. It might make communication strained and awkward because everything is so calculated and thought through. Truth is, mental interaction with the environment takes focus for you, it’s not a matter of play -it’s something that has to be worked on. Your mental faculties are a bit slow, but this doesn’t mean that you lack of intelligence. It takes longer time for you to process things than some people but when you have, you’re completely sure of your knowledge and ability. Everything you do on a mental level is acquired rather than given. Speed and effectiveness in receiving and responding to things might develop over time. The challenge is to have patience in you learning process and in your communication with others. You want things to be done right which is quite admirable and responsible, however it might cause restriction of creativity and expression. You might have difficulty trusting yourself to understand things and to interpret things the right way. There’s likely a lot of second-guessing going on, causing you to work harder on establishing the reality of your conceptualizations. You would prefer to converse with people in contexts that you are familiar with, where you’re sure of the pattern of communication. People who are too quick, creative and individualistic in their way of interacting might make you uncomfortable. You would definitely stick to crowds where there’s not too much ambiguity present, where it’s possible to talk things over in concrete terms. You would dislike having to “think for yourself” or “just say what comes to mind”. There’s no spontaneity to you way of interacting, you’re always calculating the appropriate response. On another note, you’re intellect is positively stimulated by art and beauty. You might benefit from communicating artistically, through any medium or venue that appeals – it could be through clothing, through interior decorating or anything that concerns style and taste. You have a mind that thrives in refined and aesthetically pleasing spaces.  You seek to consume and react to beauty intellectually. You would find yourself mentally preoccupied with perfecting yourself and your environment – it would keep your mind pleasantly busy. However, there might not be a genuine exchange and adaptability in your interactions – you could frequently end up provoking anger and frustration in people. You could have a hard time finding common ground with others and they with you. There’s a lot a frustration present in interaction and learning – you don’t want to take things in, you want to assert and proclaim your knowledge. You’ll learn what you want; the rest is dumped along the wayside. There’s great energy to be stirred through learning and interacting– you will feel anger and frustration creep up or it will creep up in others in your environment. It’s likely that you’ll find that your emotions need to be adjusted to allow yourself to think clearly – you might have a hard time interacting when moods take over which threaten to drown out any communicative exchange. You can become unreachable to others, full of emotions and anger. Adjustment is required.

Venus in Pisces

You have a very ethereal aesthetic that is imbued with emotional undertones. You are drawn to the seemingly transcendent, symbols of the eternal and bittersweet. You have an attraction for that which lies in the background rather than in the foreground. People in the background fascinate you, catches your attention, draws you in. I’m not referring to the kind of people who have a loud presence, I’m referring to the one’s who have a soft energy, the ones who are seemingly non-existing, living in their own dream. Your preferences lie in the direction of passivity, of blending and merging. Being an emotional sponge is appealing to you, remaining open and undifferentiated. You might be good at intuitively assessing people, of appealing to their heart and drawing out their compassion and sensitivity. It’s likely that you have a sentimental streak and are able to sympathize with just about anyone in a social setting. In terms of style and taste you prefer softer colors since you wouldn’t want to stand out too much. However, you would want to draw attention to yourself through displaying receptivity. You’re social trump card is to be able to display genuine innocence which effectively lets you off the hook in most situations. You wouldn’t think there to be a need for you to be loved for your individuality, you would instead prefer someone to love you because they decided to not care about particularities. You would want someone who would love you no matter what, someone who could be one with you completely and not interact with you as a separate entity. Since your emotional needs, as already discussed, are very much centered around getting attention for your uniqueness and strong sense of self, it might take some adjustment to accommodate for your emotions and your preferences in terms of taste as to not cancel one or the other out. You might find that you like things that are mystic, withering or dissolving somehow, whether it’s a person, a book, a piece of clothing or something else that catches your eye. You’re not looking for the ordinary; if anything, you’re looking for the transcendent in the ordinary. Your mind lends itself well to experiencing the beauty you crave. You’re drawn to people’s minds and their way of thinking – the intellect seduces you. There’s a potential skill with words that would prove rewarding if activated and used. Reading, writing or speaking could prove stimulating and exciting. There’s great pleasure to be had from these activities. On a more serious note, you might find yourself attracted to intensity and it could scare you. There’s potential for attracting quite emotionally consuming relationships that have friction to them. You might not be able to admit that you crave the feeling of living on the edge of destruction a little bit and project the role of the “culprit” onto another person, making them play out primitive possessive tendencies while you reject them but secretly love them for it. In general you might find that you’re unable to love any other way than through great passion – or be loved by another in any other way. Your desires are similar to that of an animal, you have to get what you want or else you will suffer terribly. This all-consuming primitive love experience is what you crave, but it is commonly viewed as compulsive, inappropriate and too raw to risk acting out. In any case it’s wise to be conscious of it – and do with it as you please.

Mars in Taurus

You’re quite serene in stable carrying out activities. There’s a calmness and certainty to your way of taking on the world. There’s great stamina but likely difficulty of starting up smaller tasks – you thrive on long term planning – it’s through a steady and sure input of energy that you see your projects, visions and tasks to completion. The daily grind is what you’re the best at, keeping on track and not stopping for anything without having too much investment placed on the goal. Movement and routine itself is what you’re good at – putting one foot in front of the other will surely get you to where you need to go. You’re probably more of a doer rather than a thinker when it comes to getting your way. There’s a simplicity to this way of being which makes a lot of things easier – working out, cooking food or anything that doesn’t require too much thought is sometimes better done without too much technicalities and methods in the way. However, it’s easy to see how this could be to one’s disadvantage. To get the result one wants, there’s more planning and more facets to the process than just putting in the minutes or hours. It’s not always about the fact that one is doing something, it’s how it’s done that makes all the difference. You would tend to be very settled in activity, a bit too comfortable in your set tracks that you might miss the short cut to your goal. But you wouldn’t really mind because you’re made for the long distance run... or walk. You would tend to be persistent and be able to stick to set plans and work tasks. You have the ability to concentrate on something and get it done, although it might take a while. Time might not be a big issue for you; you are patient and willing to stick things out. In a nutshell, you’re at your best when you can make use of your stubborn will and consistent drive. You don’t get fired up easily, but if you’re poked one too many times you can flare up and stay in a flushed state for a while. Or, you turn quiet and “angsty” in your blocked state. You’re likely not fond of the discomfort and disharmony of anger and would much prefer to get out of it. Physical activity might really help to get the discordant energy out of your system. Something simple that doesn’t require too much thought would be perfect. Chances are that you are the most challenged in a fast paced environment with a lot going on at the same time. You require a set routine, a fixed working schedule because you thrive when you’re settled in your ways. Having to constantly adapt, change, reevaluate and rearrange in your daily activities doesn’t sit well with you. You’re motivated by constancy, security, comfort and predictability. These are your strengths and assets. You have great self-control and sense of responsibility as well as an ability to sometimes honor your restless spark that breaks patterns and protocol. It’s not done in a disruptive way; it indicates an ability to implement new insight. You can let your emotions guide you and let them stem from affect and instinct. This is easier for you than letting your intellect dictate your actions – it usually gets in the way and causes frustration to build. You might get frustrated trying to further your will through communication – somehow the method of interacting doesn’t work well with the method of assertion. You’d be easily irritated with other people, ending up in arguments when you can’t get your will to across through communication. When you talk and engage socially, there might be a real issue to get things across in a way that doesn’t conflict with your personal way of doing things. You have a frustrated power behind your words, a force to channel into your writing or speaking.

(Chart calculated at astrotheme.com)

[paradife-loft]

why the nie sect leaders’ inevitable death by qi deviation isn’t (just) about the sabers

(now at AO3!)

So, okay, this is a meta I’ve been working on/wanting to write/dropping hints to various people about now for quite a while! I think it’s significant thematically to some of the main questions MDZS/CQL asks, about cycles of justice and vengeance, the tension between personal agency and aspects of a situation outside one’s control, and good intentions often not being enough on their own, particularly to forestall problems resulting from imperfect or fatally flawed means to an end.

As a fantasy story, I think one of the strengths of MDZS/CQL is how it uses magic to reflect aspects of its thematic questions in certain cases as literal external forces, events that exist in a format outside just a character’s internal journey. The metaphors and proper social and personal orders these characters live by, have very real physical consequences in the world that result from the existence and manipulation of magical/spiritual energies.

And to my view, the part of this that I want to make the case for here, is how this relates to the Nie sect’s cultivation practises, and why I think the clan’s history of leaders succumbing to instability and qi deviation is a more complicated interplay of a few different factors, rather than just an externally-imposed illness whose source is purely their saber spirits.

* * *

Like, okay. The characters and narrative do, in fact, spend a lot of time discussing the Nie sect leaders’ early violent deaths in the context of their sabers’ spirits becoming angry and aggressive and affecting their mental and spiritual stability. So it makes sense to focus on those actual items as the essential reason behind why they qi deviate and end up dying the way they do. But there was something… logically unsatisfying to me about the idea that just the number of edges on your bladed weapon would make such a difference that sword spirits (also generally used for killing! because they’re also deadly weapons!) are apparently morally neutral but sabers, on the other hand, just Cannot Stop with the killing once they’ve gotten a taste of it.

But if you take an experimental step away from the idea that sabers must somehow be Inherently Different from swords in their response to violence - what possible explanations are left? Or, asked a different way - what makes the Nie sect’s ideological cultivation focus distinct from other sects’? The Lan focus on regulation and self-restraint as the path to goodness; the Jiang focus on self-knowledge and following what you know as right even against difficult odds; the Jin seem to emphasise value in beauty and unique rarity… and what the Nie seem to place the most value on, is dispensation of justice and abhorring evil, even to an extent that refuses attempts at compromise.

The only problem is, the justice that they (and plenty of others) seem to focus on most often, is justice for capital crimes - paying with a life for a life - and no matter how righteous and justified the motives, what this still ends up with is a spiritual path that spends a comparatively awful lot of time on seeking others’ deaths. And we see, throughout the story, more than one thematic hint that this is maybe not the best method for moving toward harmony or immortality.

Lan Qiren’s impromptu quiz of Wei Wuxian when the latter is fucking off in class. His example problem specifies the resentful spirit was an executioner in life (societally-sanctioned to kill others for heinous crimes), and Wei Wuxian notes that one who’s killed so many is a very likely sort to become a resentful corpse; meanwhile his many victims also remain tethered to cycles of vengeance and anger, able to be easily stirred up into a force of resentful energy that would target him if their corpses were disturbed.

The dialogue between Wei Wuxian and Fang Mengchen in the Burial Mounds after the attempted siege turns into the major sects being saved from a trap. It’s all very fine and good to hold a grudge, to see a lack of justice for a harm that can’t ever be undone or repaired when the one who caused it gets to be alive and well (or even not!), but as Wei Wuxian says - what are you going to do about it? It’s so easy for there to always be a wrong that needs righting (in a real or alleged guilty party’s blood). But will it get you anywhere? Can a person, can a society, mete out justice or vengeance once and have that wipe the slate clean, or will the wound reopen again and demand yet more suffering? Where does it end?

The discussion about the Nie’s ancestral saber halls with Huisang, where Wei Wuxian notes that the method of suppressing the saber spirits edges rather close to demonic cultivation. In literal terms, that question seems to be directed at the actual use of evil individuals’ transforming corpses to contain the sabers’ power. But I think the entire conversation, and Huisang’s need to swear them to secrecy and enlistment as backup if other clans find out and get angry, contains a certain amount of thematic subtext reflecting not just on the saber tomb itself, but the Nie clan’s cultivation as a whole. These are significant and revered family heirlooms, not easily or justly discarded, but maintaining them isn’t without cost, and the spiritual fallout rests on the edge of a knife, needing the perpetual presence of an evil to fight to remain in balance: the saber tomb is both the literal and metaphorical end result of the clan leaders’ cultivation path.

“But why,” you may ask, “if the principles underlying the Nie sect’s whole culture have an edge that’s sharper and more harmful to the user’s qi than other cultivation philosophies of the rest of the sword-using sects, do we only see “death by qi deviation” as an issue for the sect leaders, and not more widespread among a larger portion of the disciples?”

And that’s where the “(just)” part of the title of this post comes in, because that aspect is where the difference comes down to the sabers - or, specifically, the named sabers that have spirits of their own. The spiritual sabers aren’t bloodthirsty and excited to haunt and/or kill people right out of the gate, but rather, as Huisang explains, they become restless after spending their wielder’s lifetime destroying evil. A cultivator and their spiritual tools develop a relationship over time, as their cultivation is practised and refined - they bond, they recognise one another, and crucially, they seem to be able to share a kind of spiritual feedback loop, with the energies and intentions of one connecting to and ideally bolstering the strength of the other. The Nie clan in general seems marked by particularly strong relationships between individual cultivator and weapon, considering the sabers’ refusal to allow a clan leader’s descendants to inherent them, and both the circumstances of Mingjue’s father’s death and his own trauma reaction to that death.

So in this case, the illness and eventual qi deviations the Nie clan leaders suffer, the way the saber spirits come to weigh on their minds and emotions, make sense to me as a confluence of the particularly close bond and almost spiritual symbiosis between wielder and weapon, and the particular subject of emphasis that the clan leader lives by in how they train with and use that weapon. Focusing on justice as killing, as violent destruction of evil (the last resort one should aspire to after other solutions have failed, per Lan Qiren’s lesson), may not be the most spiritually healthy in any circumstance, but it’s only when you have half a lifetime’s worth of a mental feedback loop between you and this external, semi-sentient part of yourself that’s reinforcing the spiritual toll of that path, that you actually end up with a resulting qi deviation and death.

* * *

So, anyway, I do want to be clear having put forth this argument, that my point here is not to condemn the Nies, nor for that matter blame the sect leaders for their own deaths - that’s very much not in line with how the text itself displays flaws and virtues as two sides of the same coin (at times divided only by the context around them), and shows how destructive consequences can result from the best of intentions. For that matter, each major sect has unquestionably valuable basic principles at its heart, and just like microcosms of any culture, society, or group, displays instances of those principles being distorted, misaimed, or taken to extremes in ways that cause disharmony and pain to those in their path.

I think the way it plays out for the Nie clan just interests me in particular because of the way their uniqueness in cultivation method plays such known havoc with its members’ bodies and minds, and the way it straddles the divide between upright and demonic cultivation. MDZS asks, I think, more questions than it offers definitive answers to, and a significant one of those is, even if vengeance, even if death-as-justice is righteous, where do you balance all the harm done to others (up to and including) the justice-seeker in deciding whether to continue down that path of action?

And if it’s the Nie sect’s spiritual focus in combination with the spirits of their sabers that wear down a slow stream of damage to their qi, rather than simply the external threat of the sabers alone - that seems congruent, to me, with the suggestions offered elsewhere in the story.

[swordoforion]

Orion Digest №31 - The Importance of a State

The question has been asked before - do we need a state, and for that matter, organized society? Humans lived nomadic existences as hunters long before we settled down and formed civilization, and in the eyes of some, the events that resulted are evidence we should abandon modern systems of gathering, all the way from the first civilizations to the long-lasting negative effects of the Industrial Revolution. However, while it is undeniable that the world today is in disarray and disaster, it does not mean we should abandon everything we have learned, and declare organized society a lost cause. We have become closer as a species than ever before, and now, as we near the height of our knowledge, we are becoming well equipped to deal with the problems we have created.

First, let us specify exactly what a state is, and the argument against it. Any citizen, as an individual, has certain needs for survival, and beyond that, for mental health and self-actualization. The world is filled with resources, and people can work to turn those resources into usable forms that we can use to fulfill our survival needs, but the time cost usually means that we have to put our mental health and attainment on hold. The more effective the resource development process is, the less input we need from the average individual, and thus the more time they can spend fulfilling their higher needs.

The system by which resource development is made more effective is economy, which in some forms of societal organization, is separate from the state, but within an ESF system, is incorporated into the state's natural functions. Within economy, instead of everyone working through the complete process to fulfill their needs, they take on a specific task, and receive the same reward, which when divided among a larger population, can be used to decrease the amount of input required from each individual.

To ensure that economy functions as it needs to, and to provide guidelines for the resultant organization of individuals, government, or the state, is formed. ESF government is made up of the people, and thus assumes ownership of the resources, for equal distribution out to the people in exchange for input. It also sets rules to prevent offenses by citizens against others, maintaining order and stability. Within this framework, an individual can live safely and provide minimal input to have their needs fulfilled, and will have time to focus on the task of self-actualization, so long as they remain within the rules of the state.

Many argue against the existence of a state, viewing the requirement to pay taxes, remain within set rules, and provide input to an economy as forceful and coercive. Logically, if they wanted to, they could go and live without owing to anyone, simply providing for themselves and self-governing. Popular among leftist theory is the idea of a 'stateless, classless' society, in which people live freely and self-govern, but peacefully cooperate on matters of public importance, and only use violence in self-defense of their own freedom. Government would cease to exist, with only economy remaining, as people would simply act respectful without legal coercion.

Much of the grounds for this theory comes from rampant corruption in government throughout history - discrimination and greed make their way into the public sector, and those in power use it for their own personal gain. Without government, people are unable to seek power. Admittedly, there are numerous advantages to this approach, as many as there are potential dangers in the foundation of government. However, the same could be said for a stateless society - the absence of a vehicle to seek power and spread discrimination does not mean the abolition of those ideas and drives.

A state of anarchy relies on constant cooperation without legal incentive, as well as allowing the people enough strength to fend off would be attackers and conquerors. In this kind of community, the responsibility of public facilities, such as infrastructure and health care, requires continuous volunteer work from the members of a community. This makes sense, as it benefits most of the community to pitch in. Just the same, everyone would have to agree to keep the peace and not take more than what they need, while having tools for self defense should the need arise.

Both of these conditions, however, rely on the assumption that those members of society who seek greater power and advantage over others are few enough in number to not directly impact society. Throughout history, we have seen that people can be swayed by just a handful of individuals, and result in sweeping them into power. Even in a state of anarchy, a new state could easily rise, since it does not matter the ability of a single individual to fight in self defense - it just requires a majority. With no incentive to follow set rules, the greedy could take power once again, this time on their own terms. The true test of any stateless society is whether the values of peace and harmony are yet universal, because if people are not willing to cooperate, you could fall once more into ruin.

It is in this manner that a state holds superiority, as although it uses forceful coercion to enforce the rules, those rules and the order of society becomes more concrete and stable, and over time, a moral society can instill those standards upon its citizens and future generations. If anarchy were possible, it would be after a period of moral state rule, in which the population is conditioned to the ideas of cooperation and harmony required to maintain a stateless society. Of course, the state itself needs to be moral, which means that careful safeguards need to be put in place to prevent the rise of an elite class or the presence of discrimination within political power. In other words, if we ever want to live without a government, we need one that is democratic and fair to teach us how to do so.

In our current context, the environmental collapse and unequal wealth distribution of Earth also pose problems not solvable without a larger and more coercive body of law, as it will require actions not in our immediate self interest (namely, getting rid of wealth and putting ourselves at economic disadvantage for the sake of others and long term growth). Even current governments cannot put forth the necessary effort out of fear of risk - it will take a state created from the outset for that express goal with more jurisdiction to accomplish it. Even taking into consideration the concerns of those who wish for a stateless society, we can't live a simple life if the planet is destroyed, but we can save the planet first and then get down to the business of the state later.

Beyond the climate crisis, though, a world federal government gives us an increased level of connection and coordination across the world, should another crisis arise, or in case aid should be needed by any area of the world. With a much bigger population and worldview, the genie is out of the bottle on simplistic societies, and with a simple touch of a button, we can talk with people all over the world, which has more benefits than downsides. We can understand each other better, see places across the globe, and with global democracy, do our part to make the entire world a better place.

Should we develop to a point where we have staved off global crisis and maintain communication and coordination, a stateless society could be possible, but the continuation of a democratically malleable state would prevent the collapse of society should a dictator ever rise too powerful for the common populace to defeat. In either case, there are set rules that are agreed to, whether by law or by social convention, but only a state has the power to effectively enforce them, and even if we never have to, it's good to be prepared for the risk.

The only true detriment to a state is the ability of the government to become corrupt, as it is far more dangerous when the state itself is an enemy, compared to a simple warlord arising amidst a stateless society. This is why the creation of such a government must be done with careful consideration to future interpretation of the law and democratic structure - today, we deal with corrupt governments sometimes caused by looser legislation and little vigilance to prevent the powerful from bending the rules to bring about oppression. A world federal constitution must be thorough in its description of the law, and democracy must be kept in mind at every stage of the process.

- DKTC FL

[lastsonlost]

In a world where masculinity is confined to very specific actions, mannerisms and personality traits, friendship among males is complex. While male friendships may appear simple and single-faceted on a surface level in many cases, the minefield that is masculinity and all the expectations attached to it can make friendships difficult to navigate, resulting in their simple outward appearance.

As such, many male friendships manifest in much the same way. That is, minimal displays of platonic affection and physical contact, conversation being limited to what is deemed traditionally masculine (and therefore acceptable), and avoidance of ‘too much’ emotional display. This is the traditional archetype of the straight male friendship, at least in the cultural context of the west. There is, however, a rarer form of male friendship that seemingly contradicts this archetype- the ‘bromance’.

Bromances are characteristically the opposite of what one would expect of a male friendship. They appear to involve increased physical contact and displays of emotion, with an emphasis being on platonic love (hence the term ‘bromance’). Even more paradoxically, these forms of friendship are often if not exclusively intentional and intended for public display. Despite the shame associated with these facets of friendship and their perceived incompatibility with masculinity, the most intimate aspects of bromances tend to be deliberate and on full view.

Because of this, many people view bromances favourably. Those whose values are progressive and are used to challenging societal norms surrounding masculinity hold bromances in high regard and even celebrate them. It is particularly women who support such friendships, possibly due to the refreshing nature of men allowing themselves to be seen as happy, caring and loving creatures. While breaking barriers of what society views as masculine is a positive thing, there is a problematic if not toxic aspect to bromance culture that sometimes arises, and it affects the LGBTQ+ community, particularly gay men.

The combination of society’s limitations on masculinity and the performative aspects of bromances result in questionable activity on the part of those who participate in them. In particular, allusion to homosexuality or at least homoeroticism is a theme that seems to occur in many such friendships. This aspect is purely for the consumption of those ‘viewing’ the bromance- in the case of everyday people it’s for the people in their immediate personal spheres, whether in person or on social media. For celebrities, it manifests as subtext in whatever media they are featured in. In most cases, the intention is not to be progressive or to break barriers.

The motivations behind such friendships vary. For some, these displays are designed for women, while for others the intention is to be funny for other straight men. In the majority of cases, the latter is how witnesses to bromances perceive these homoerotic themes, and it plays into a societal discourse that still sees homosexuality as an abnormality and something to gawk at. Overplayed, easy stereotypes of queerness are often played up and exaggerated in bromances. As a result, women admire the progressiveness and bravery behind the friendship, while straight men spectate and laugh, and gay men are subtly ridiculed in the process.

This sort of thing is by no means a new theme that queer people are dealing with. Aspects of queer culture are often seen as degenerate or depraved until they are appropriated by non-queer people and become fashionable or desirable. In this case, displays of affection and emotion which are seen as inappropriate or immoral when performed by gay men are taken and repurposed by two straight male friends who are able to capitalise socially by performing them. It is also no coincidence that the men who are involved in bromances are often those who are the most stereotypically masculine in appearance and personality, and thus they are able to perform acts associated with queerness in a way that doesn’t arouse suspicion of actual queerness. In this way, straight men are able to capitalise on aspects of queer culture while perpetuating barriers faced by queer people and thus limiting their progression in society.

All of this speaks to society’s strict gender roles which limit masculinity to a nearly impossible standard and holding that standard in high regard, while designating certain aspects of personality such as showing emotion and affection to femininity and therefore queerness. If masculinity was not confined to such standards there would be no need for the performative queerness seen in bromance friendships to be used as a veil for a genuine platonic connection. Essentially, straight men wouldn’t have to ‘act gay’ to make their friendship acceptable.

In the majority of cases, it can be assumed that the intention behind this performative queerness is not to harm the queer community. However, it is important for straight men to reflect on why ‘acting gay’ is so funny to them and why it tends to attract admiration from women. This is what makes finding a solution to this issue even more difficult. While the queer community and feminists are comfortable with discussing gender roles in society, straight men are often the most reluctant to contribute to this discourse. Dialogue surrounding gender expression puts straight men in a precarious position, because while their perception of masculinity is so limited and restricted, adhering to this narrow form of acceptable masculinity provides a level of protection from possible scrutiny or ridicule. It is a double-edged sword of masculinity being beneficial in terms of social hierarchy while not allowing room for introspection or questioning.

Even if they are aware or willing to question this behaviour, it is unlikely to have any effect. On a small scale, this sees the continuation of performative queerness in bromances. On a larger scale, this perpetuates the marginalisation of queerness and femininity while promoting ‘acceptable’ masculinity. Straight men deserve love and meaningful friendship as much as anyone else, and should be free to allow these things to manifest naturally. Toxic masculinity is harmful for everyone, including those who adhere the most strictly to it.

Or my friendship is not your FANFIC !

[truviewtv]

IPTV Streaming Service

The best answer to that question could be to say that IPTV is an initialism that stands for Internet Protocol Television. However, merely breaking down what every letter of IPTV stands for doesn't fairly explain what IPTV is, what it enables you to do, or why it's a invaluable asset in the world of online media streaming – particularly in these attempting instances. IPTV, it seems, perhaps the best factor to happen to the 2020 Corona-virus quarantine that you've got by no means even heard about .. till now.

Basically, IPTV works by offering users with a network on which they will stream live content. So, instead of merely utilizing your individual internet connection with the intention to access streaming content, as is the case with OTT (Over The Top) streaming content suppliers or different free or premium TV streaming websites, IPTV reroutes your laptop into an exterior network, which may be viewed by multiple computer systems concurrently.

In different phrases, as a substitute of, say, throwing on a present on Netflix or Hulu and struggling to watch on the identical time with a buddy in another location, IPTV plugs you each in, remotely, to the live stream, leading to a way more seamless and streamlined live TV experience. This is clearly very totally different from traditional cable tv, which is usually a solitary expertise. IPTV can provide inter connectivity not like another kind of streaming service on the market.

With extraordinarily low latency streaming of live video content, IPTV is just not solely an answer for the informal TV viewer that wishes the quickest and highest decision streaming of live TV, however it is also steadily used as a business or broadcast resolution. In a business context, IPTV can be used for the quickest and most reliable live video chatting, bringing you as close to the workplace as you may be without ever actually having to step foot out your door. Bars and restaurants, too, have used IPTV as a extra reliable option to entry live sporting occasions. The advantages of using IPTV are quite a few, especially in the course of the present pandemic that we're all trying to quarantine ourselves out of.

All around the world, en masse, people have taken to either voluntarily quarantining themselves or being mandated to take action, as within the case of Italy, by their governments. We all need to do our half to assist put an finish to the COVID-19 pandemic, and, so, we've needed to put lots of the societal conveniences that we've taken as a right prior to now on pause for the foreseeable future. Therefore, IPTV might have by no means been more of a handy solution – each for persevering with to make sure that our work will get carried out and not using a productivity halt, in addition to having the ability to socialize whereas persevering with to apply the security precaution of social distancing.

With IPTV, by making use of a a lot larger and extra capable internet network than most of us occur to have readily available, companies can proceed to run easily and with out lag and people can proceed to just about hang with friends, watching their favorite live TV shows collectively, in excellent synchronicity, as if they're actually within the room collectively. IPTV has never been extra related than it's at this time. So, if you're contemplating signing up for an IPTV streaming website, you might be on the best path for a really prudent and handy solution to many issues unique to the modern moment.

What kind of content can I watch on IPTV streaming websites?

Well, that can differ a little bit bit relying on which IPTV streaming service you go together with. But, generally talking, I like to think of IPTV as an internet-based cable provider of types, only an IPTV service is exponentially vast and extra powerful than any traditional cable provider available on the market. The only IPTV streaming websites, to provide you an concept of what I imply, can supply as much as 10,000 TV channels from almost 100 countries around the world. Some of the smaller-scale IPTV websites, alternatively, nonetheless have hundreds of channels – many greater than you'll be provided by a conventional cable supplier.

So, there may be yet one more profit to discovering a great IPTV service: you'll not be restricted to TV networks which might be inside your area or locality. Sure, you'll doubtless be capable of get these as effectively, but the world of cable TV is just about border less with the very best IPTV websites. So, whenever you ask what sort of content may be watched on an IPTV streaming website, it would get you nearer to the reality to ask, instead, ‘what kind of content can I not watch on an IPTV streaming site?’

And the reply to that query, after all, depends on the IPTV stream in question. Basically, IPTV offers cable TV over the web. But some even supply VOD (Video on Demand) streaming as effectively, which solely furthers the capabilities of and strengthens the trigger for locating your self an IPTV subscription.

There are some drawbacks, nonetheless, and so they principally pertain to the VOD side. Not each IPTV service presents VOD. Only a number of of the very best IPTV streaming websites do. So, don't go into the world of IPTV anticipating it to be something in any respect like your experiences with Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video. What you are getting, instead, is sort of limitless entry to a globalized cable TV service that may be accessed over the web – no cords required.

My monthly subscription bills are starting to add up … Do I've to pay for IPTV?

Unfortunately, IPTV is just not a free service. Which is comprehensible, proper? I imply, take into consideration the variety of channels and the quantity of worldwide TV access an IPTV website will instantly give you. It is unparalleled. So, it makes complete sense, not less than in my view, that you would need to pay for such a service.

That being mentioned, in lots of circumstances, IPTV is definitely worth ditching your old cable company for, if that is likely one of the payments you will have that's beginning to add up alongside your different streaming companies like Netflix and Hulu. When you contemplate what number of channels IPTV presents, and the way dependable the live streams actually are, it turns into clear that IPTV is likely one of the only (and cost-effective) methods to entry live TV presently available on the market.

I would even consider ditching services like Hulu TV or YouTube TV for an IPTV streaming website. Again, it’s a matter of each amount and high quality. YouTube TV presents entry to one thing like 70 networks for $49.99 a month. One of the very best IPTV websites that I do know of (which we'll talk about in additional depth in a while) offers over 10,000 networks from 70+ different countries. Never miss out on a live occasion or program ever once more.

Is IPTV safe to use?

This query has two implications, I believe. Firstly, is IPTV protected in terms of viruses and knowledge considerations; secondly, is IPTV protected from a authorized standpoint? Well, let’s tackle the virus and data security concern first. As lengthy as you select a good IPTV service (i.e. one from my prolonged record of critiques), you should have nothing to worry about when it comes to contracting viruses (digital or organic if you're staying indoors and watching your IPTV). I might by no means knowingly hyperlink to a malicious web site. That being mentioned, a VPN and good antivirus software program are at all times highly beneficial for anybody who plans on doing something online.

When it involves authorized security, I can't converse to all jurisdictions on this planet, however I do know for a fact that in most free countries, it's not illegal to make use of an IPTV service. Where the authorized grey space comes into impact, nonetheless, is in terms of what the individuals who broadcast content over an IPTV service select to make accessible. In different phrases, if an IPTV service provider doesn't have the rights to a live occasion however they live to stream it over their network anyway, which places them in authorized limbo. You, because the person, nonetheless, are protected to stream as many IPTV packages as you want with no worries.

What is the best IPTV provider on the market?

Well, it is a difficult query. Everybody has their preferences, after all. Personally, if you need the most important bang in your buck I might go together with Smart IPTV (that's the IPTV I discussed earlier with over 10,000 networks). That being mentioned, lots of people actually appear to love Best Buy IPTV (no relation). If you need a greater concept of which IPTV is finest for you, learn via my reviews and weigh your options!

[ektaraval]

leading and managing organisational resources

Overview

The use of a wiki page is essential in developing a portfolio for academic learning and understanding, thus, discussions regarding the same have been covered (youtu.be, 2020). In an attempt to understand "business ethics" and its working philosophy, the goals and fundamentals of the company are very important. Ethics were primarily understood as the simple distinction between “right and wrong”. However, in corporate context, an individual’s code of conduct and actions are guided by their personal mores and surrounding environment. Earlier notions of business were understood as “making profit” only (thehrdirector.com, 2020). This broadly fell into the concept of Friedman doctrine. However, these views were challenged, as society requires businesses to provide goods and services as well as businesses seek to make profit for themselves as well. The domain of "business ethics" also covers its utility for the society by being responsible for its benefit and welfare. This is broadly understood as Corporate Social Responsibility, where an “ethical business” is required to be a responsible societal citizen as well. Here, the triple bottom line focus lies on “people, planet and profit” (thehrdirector.com, 2020).

The role of stakeholders is quite vital for the businesses to maintain their operations and activities in an ethical way. It is a common expectation among businesses and stakeholders alike that violations of ethical grounds and laws are counterproductive for it. "Business ethics" is observed between the organisation and its suppliers, employees, customer base, partners and the shareholders (gartner.com, 2020). It is also associated with governance in organisations and business decision-making. Ethics in business are understood via normative and descriptive means; the latter being used for scientific research and academic depth. Schwartz (2017) stated that descriptive means helps to understand the discrepancy between what ought to happen and what actually happens. Influence of "business ethics" underlies that maintaining appropriate policies is crucial at macro, corporate and individual levels for aiming desired performance.

Functional areas

A business is associated with a number of areas that help in operating itself and managing its activities. These make up the factors that operate within the organisation as well as outside of it. Thus, the functional areas in a business sector encompass “human resource management (HRM)”, finance, marketing, sales, and relationships with other organisations.

In the finance sector, “material wealth” is a prime measure of wins and gains. The neoliberal thought for this growing finance benefits and maintaining ethics refer to growth in the economy by means of providing an increasing number of “services and goods” to people. Similarly, the sector of HRM holds personnel recruitment, their performance management/monitoring, appraisals, workplace safety and the like. The HRM team manages the employees and the unethical or illegal actions within the organisation or those done by the employees/employers themselves (Schwartz, 2017). “Business ethics” focuses on right and wrong within the organisation and this is where the unethically and illegality could be included. An unethical business action is morally incorrect; however, an illegal action is breaking the organisational or the legal regulations. The law binding entities of a nation or the organisation itself focus on the aspects that make an action illegal as well as the moral or ethical connotations of acceptable behaviours. The "business ethics" involved in HRM also comprise of the organisation’s whistle-blowers and the holders of “intellectual property rights”. These are considered as ethical obligations of “organisation’s employees for their employers”. In the context of international companies, trade obligations, international laws, immigration or globalisation operate too. This addresses the "business ethics" in a much more complex way, as it has the liability to be watchful towards the operations in its international zones. Companies use the theories X and Y for their management strategy that helps them to maintain the ethical focus and gain success as well.

Sales and marketing are other important functional areas of a “business ethics” that informs the marketers about values and principles for their actions. Here, the ethical connotations of consequence, deontology and virtue ethics are at play. The marketing mix principles is also a guide that helps businesses to make ethical decisions about a product’s price, marketing and consumer focus (mckinsey.com, 2020). An organisation could be understood as using marketing and sales ethics if they focus on price skimming, for example. In the “business ethics” context, its relationship with other organisations reflects the relationship of suppliers and buyers. Collaboration with other organisations, joint ventures and forming alliances are examples of inter-organisational relationships as well (mckinsey.com, 2020). In this case, there is a risk of unethical partnership as well. The theoretical basis of agency theory and the transactional cost theory are well suited for organisations to have effective relationships and note their opportunistic tendencies. Schwartz (2017) ascertained that the researches on these kinds of behaviours have put forward intentional deceit, shirking and financial double standards as primary risks to look out for by collaborating organisations. This is important to mention that such organisational chaos can become a big issue for the stakeholders. Thus, legal and judicial implications might follow too. Thus, organisations could employ informal or formal means to target these risks and alleviate their grave after-effects. For example, the use of binding contracts and establishing relational or business norms between groups in business collaborations could prove to be extremely useful in managing and maintaining business ethics.

Impact on Decision Making

Ethics are those guiding frameworks that direct the everyday decision-making of businesses. Organisations need to persevere in tough times and be flexible as well as strong in aligning themselves according to the applicable external changes. Here, the Trevino’s Ethical Decision Model would be productive to understand the nuances of decision-making in relation to business ethics (beds.hosted.panopto.com, 2020). The model highlights certain factors namely, the situational moderators, organisational culture, individual moderators and the cognition. These factors are noted when guiding oneself through the ethical dilemmas. Thus, these lead to a decision being made and its subsequent ethical or unethical nature. The ego strength, work characteristics, stage of moral development and job context operate together and determine the final decision and output.  

Decision making during Covid 19

In the face of COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential that relations between the government and the organisations are beneficial and extends their support for the larger good of the business and society as well. In the light of decision-making, some social contexts are important too. “Emotion, community and ethics” make up the prime social elements that need to be incorporated in business decision-making so that the outcomes are ethical (gartner.com, 2020). Businesses also make decisions that could be different according to different situations. Thus, the COVID-19 crisis implores businesses to highlight crisis factors like “safety, continuity and resilience” in their decision-making process. Thus, the “core competencies” of businesses are put to maximum use for the generation of consistent value and revenue. Schwartz (2017) had highlighted the fact that executives in a business would need to change their long-standing methods and means for adapting to their external situations. This would aid them in innovation, manage cyber risks, and open up options for cash flow and profit (mckinsey.com, 2020). Another factor “traditional business value”, calls for the reduction is risks, consideration of costs and revenue generation. Revenue generation is important to keep the organisation viable and be a valuable part of fulfilling societal responsibilities. The organisational mission becomes important if its existence becomes doubtful. It could switch to making similar products in the field and use its primary raw materials. For example, a perfume making company could invest in making sanitizers as well because of the common primary ingredient: alcohol (mckinsey.com, 2020). The combination of these traditional value-based aspects and the non-traditional aspects like social and crisis elements are important for decision-making too.

There are certain questions posed in the front of the board directors and executives of companies. These sheds light on the issue of globalisation and unavailability of materials, focus on marginalising the skills, restrains to change or modify business models adequately and “resilience in supply chains” (thehrdirector.com, 2020). These greater concerns highlight the influence of tougher situations on business and its ethics. This affects employees, the organisational flow of information and the suitable relationships too. In aligning the organisation to modern needs, the realistic factors, of which the organisation is capable, needs to be put forward too. This would create a sense of hope for future growth by being rational and adaptive.

Thus, influence of decision-making on business ethics and the related content have been discussed here with a focus on its functional areas, an overview; further reading suggestions are given too.

Notes

1. Schwartz, M.S., 2017. Business ethics: An ethical decision-making approach. United States: John Wiley & Sons.

2. beds.hosted.panopto.com (2020), Leading and managing organizational resources, Available at: https://beds.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f9176e36-d906-4648-9296-80d1aefc20d6&start=undefined[Accessed on: 04/10/2020]

3. Gartner.com (2020), A Framework for Executive Decision Making During COVID-19, Available at: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/a-framework-for-executive-decision-making-during-covid-19/ [Accessed on: 04/10/2020]

4. Mckinsey.com (2020), Coronavirus: 15 emerging themes for boards and executive teams, Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/coronavirus-15-emerging-themes-for-boards-and-executive-teams [Accessed on: 04/10/2020]

thehrdirector.com (2020), The new role for hr followingthecovid-19pandemic, Available at: https://www.thehrdirector.com/features/cultural-change/the-new-role-for-hr-following-the-covid-19-pandemic/ [Accessed on: 04/10/2020]

5. Youtu.be (2020), An example of an excellent ePortfolio, Available at: https://youtu.be/3_FmRH6Lj5c [Accessed on: 04/10/2020]

[elvishmusings]

Violent protest

It seems like a distant memory now, but it was less than two months ago that protests and riots were occurring throughout the country to protest police brutality against Black people in the wake of George Floyd’. It’s easy to see the situation as muddy or conflicted; while most people agree, at least somewhat, with the premise of the Black Lives Matter movement, how far is too far? Murder – especially murder sanctioned by the  government and carried out according to race – is, obviously, wrong. And protesting is an incredibly powerful tool to help those of us without a large platform to make our voices heard. Rioting, however, has been largely condemned by the people who support peaceful protest. It raises the question: Can violent protest be a legitimate and justifiable method of advocating for social change?

Many chose to address this issue by saying it doesn’t really matter; when you’re talking about a system that murders people on the basis of their skin color, property destruction pales in comparison. Still, this isn’t really a discussion of the question but a rejection of it, and only allows it to be put aside until the next time . Instead, I want to try to analyze the factors that cause these issues and the ways that a violent response addresses them.

First, it is important to establish what rioting accomplishes. In general, rioting can be viewed as a violent form of protest, with most riots involving physical resistance against law enforcement, as well as looting or other forms of unorganized activity. The surest consequence of violent protest is that it attracts attention, although it’s usually negative. It can also be viewed as a protest against state control of free speech (violating orders by law enforcement to disband), and, in many contexts, more generally against law enforcement. Looting against large businesses also carries an anti-capitalist message, which is fitting as any large company is guaranteed to uphold the capitalist, discriminatory systems that make systemic racism (and, secondarily, other forms of inequality) a fundamental part of life. Although some looters are opportunistic with the goal of stealing without supporting a particular cause, it’s important to note that their actions do not, by definition, reflect the motivations of the majority, which I would generally summarize as anti-establishment, anti-government control, and anti-capitalist (at least in a sense of opposing some capitalistic control of human rights). 

Now, the question has become: Is violence a reasonable and justified response to oppressive systems of government and commerce? In this case, I think the first  step is to examine the violent nature of capitalist government oppression. 

Violence, when used in this context, can be taken to mean, “control of choice or autonomy by physical means.” For example, laws contain an element of violence in the sense that they are, ultimately, based in physical enforcement by the police, military, or other government forces (i.e. arrest or detainment). Even if a prior non-violent warning is issued, ignoring it will eventually result in physical violence against the person in violation of the law. Capitalism operates in tandem with this form of violence, with money being a primary way to avoid being the target of violence. This is particularly clear when looking at homelessness, which is the usually-criminalized result of not having enough money — not to mention the wealthy elites who get away with much larger crimes with no legal consequences, thanks to their immense political and social power and perceived role as vital to society.  In other words, capitalism provides a system of focusing governmental violence on the working class in order to protect wealthy elites and the capitalist structures that keep them in power. 

Having established the violence that is used by the government as part of the capitalist system, the original question gains new context. Rather than protestors acting in senseless violence, they are replicating the same conditions of reckless violence that Black people endure on a daily basis. Seen under this lens, violent protests begin to look more rational. By looting large businesses, the protesters force themselves to be listened to (Notably, small businesses are not the criminals here, since they also lack the influence that causes these societal problems and are often victims of large corporations themselves). Violence against the police serves a similar purpose, especially when those same police are engaging in dangerous and barbaric crowd-control methods on mostly peaceful protestors. As a result, I would argue that violence, in these cases, can be a powerful tool for forcing society to pay attention to people who are usually ignored, and can hardly be viewed as the brutal, senseless violence that most news shows.

The other major argument against protests of this nature is public image. Many people claim violence is counterproductive because it ultimately discredits the movement’s message and believe it will give it a bad image. While there may be some truth in this argument, I would argue that anyone who is willing to ignore a system that intentionally criminalizes and kills Black people because someone broke into their favorite Starbucks is probably shortsighted at best, and flat-out racist at worst. It also ignores the failure of peaceful protesting to capture the attention needed to create systematic change. I think the best way to address this issue is not to stop participating in what has shown itself to be an effective means of protest, but to show why it can be the most effective option, as well as limiting violence to law enforcement (or other direct antagonizers of the protestors) and stealing to large corporations rather than extending it to civilians and small businesses, which are not the main vehicles of violence in our society. I also want to explicitly condemn the opportunistic looters whose primary motivation was not a commitment to racial justice but a desire to steal things, which contributes to viewing the movement as a self-serving attack.

Taking this into consideration, I think violence can be an appropriate response to police brutality, which is responsible for over a thousand deaths each year and kills Black men at three times the rate of white men. Peaceful protest and legislative action has failed to create meaningful change, as evidenced by steady rates of police violence and abysmally low conviction rates of officers. Although these are huge issues that won’t be quickly addressed, police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement has become a movement that attracted major attention, and efforts to defund the police have gone from a fringe issue to a serious suggestion in some cities. While these measures are still hugely inadequate to truly end police brutality, they do represent a shift from what was possible two months ago. In other words, these protests — many of which were violent — worked. 

Overall, I think that the extreme violence of the government and the effectiveness of violent protest creates a strong case for its use, at least in some cases. While violence is a tool that must always be used with caution, in cases as clear and horrific as the killing of George Floyd and the hundreds of other Black people killed each year by the police, the failure of peaceful protests to create change means that more drastic action must be taken. And, to anybody who sees riots as unjustified, chaotic violence, remember that they are often the only option available to groups of people who have been systematically denied human rights. This is the context behind that Martin Luther King Jr. quote that has been going around: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” That is exactly what we’re seeing now — and to not listen is ignoring their struggles to be treated like human beings. 

[script-a-world]

My story is going to place in prehistoric times and I cannot find any information on the existence or status of plus sized people that I believe is neutral and not fat-shaming. Most sources say there weren't any, since better diet and a lot more exercise, but I doubt that, to be honest. Should I just say screw it and add plus sized characters anyway or would you suggest finding scientific sources first?

Mod Miri Note: Hi folks, there’s a lot of talk in this post about body size which I can be triggering for some readers, and with tumblr’s tag system being pretty unreliable, I just wanted to put up a quick warning in case that would be an issue for any of our followers who may want to skip this post. 

Feral: Yes. If you want to include plus sized characters, include plus sized characters. First of all, waist size is not actually a great indicator of physical fitness level. Second of all, at some point in prehistory humans evolved and when we did that, we evolved to store fat; this was likely for a reason. And third of all, no one is going to care if you do or do not find "scientific proof". The truth is, people have been people for as long as there have been people.

Tex: I would suggest to first figure out why you are defining things in the term "plus sized" - Google's Ngram Viewer finds that this wasn't in public circulation until almost 1950, which means that the vernacular would be entirely different the further back you go into the past. Wikipedia's article on "Plus-size clothing" indicates that the origins for this size group in fashion had comparatively very recent roots.

"Plus-size", "curvy", "big and tall", "stout"- these are all euphemisms to refer to a body type that is considered larger than the normal range. Human bodies are delicately-organized organic machines, and while they can tolerate a wide variety of stressors, they can only tolerate any given stressor for a certain amount of time before it damages the body - sometimes permanently, and fatally, if it's allowed to go unchecked.

The human body is built to be within a certain weight range for given heights - despite the flaws of the BMI, with its difficulty in telling apart muscle from fat (and which type of fat), it's still a good tool when used in conjunction with other diagnostic tests. To be overweight and to be obese are separated by very thin lines, and is better discussed in @ucsdhealthsciences' post "Fat but Fit: a pleasing myth or something else? ".

Given the comorbidities of being either overweight or one of the three grades of obesity, carrying more fat on your body than your body can safely tolerate is quite literally dangerous for your health. Prehistoric peoples rarely had the luxury of idleness or having someone transport them instead of walking (or even riding a horse/similar animal). Walking  in and of itself is ridiculously good for your health, to the point where exercising in the form of a gym or even manual labor can be a marginal part of one's exercise routine if someone has a choice about it.

I don't know why you doubt that a better diet and more exercise wouldn't reduce the occurrence of overweight/obese individuals - excess weight from specifically white fat has serious detrimental effects on the body and has a tendency to kill people off:

- "Study in mice suggests drug to turn fat 'brown' could help fight obesity"] from the University of Cambridge- Wikipedia- University of Virginia Health System - National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases - "The Definition and Prevalence of Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome"  by Atilla Engin  - "Prevalence of polycystic ovary syndrome in Chinese obese women of reproductive age with or without metabolic syndrome"  by Liang, Peiwen et al.- ittybittykittykisses, archived version - Stanford Health Care - PDF "Mechanisms, Pathophysiology, and Management of Obesity"  by Steven B. Heymsfield, M.D., and Thomas A. Wadden, Ph.D.- "Review of Childhood Obesity: From Epidemiology, Etiology, and Comorbidities to Clinical Assessment and Treatment"  by Seema Kumar, MD and Aaron S. Kelly, PhD- "A Proposal of the European Association for the Study of Obesity to Improve the ICD-11 Diagnostic Criteria for Obesity Based on the Three Dimensions Etiology, Degree of Adiposity and Health Risk" by J Hebebrand et al.- "Health Effects of Overweight and Obesity in 195 Countries over 25 Years"  by The GBD 2015 Obesity Collaborators - "Study of nearly 300,000 people challenges the 'obesity paradox'"  from the European Society of Cardiology

The Archaeology News Network has an article  about prehistoric obesity, and how it relates to fat storage in humans - the mutation of the uricase gene that was originally meant to help ancient humans survive famines and seasonal periods of low food. "Evolutionary history and metabolic insights of ancient mammalian uricases" by James T. Kratzer et al backs this idea up and goes into some further detail. "Archeologia dell’alimentazione umana [PDF]", or "Archaeology of nutrition" in English, by F. Gregorio and M. Sudano (abstract also provided in English) talks about how the human genotype has changed as diet and sedentary levels shifted.

Perhaps you're thinking of the Venus figurines as an example of "plus size"? But that's still not quite right - many of these figurines are meant to display what fertile women look like, especially pregnant ones (peak fertility for a great many cultures, but also a temporary state for women), and real-life steatopygian body types are mostly restricted to either parts of Africa or parts of India, often by tribe.

In China, and I believe parts of Asia with similar cultures, fat under the chin heralds many good things  - possibly because it meant you weren't starving and thus had enough food to be considered wealthy. Your mileage will vary on that, because China and many other cultures frown upon consumption unto excess for a variety of reasons.

People with more weight on them than average for their population, historically, have access to more food - which means ruling families, wealthy people - and once it was invented, (wealthy) farmers. But many cultures that were around in prehistory didn't have those kinds of societal structures, and pre-agricultural societies were inherently on the thin side because they were nomadic (which meant lots of walking), and had a diet primarily of gathered fruits/vegetables and whatever meat they could hunt down. It's usually the carbohydrates and other complex sugars in processed grains, such as breads, noodles, and bread-beers, that incite weight gain which is difficult to slough off, so it's something you need to keep in mind when worldbuilding your prehistoric societies.

If you want these kinds of body types in your worldbuilding, that's fine, but I would recommend that you don't try to view the past through the context of the present - life was very different back then, for very legitimate reasons, in ways that are neither wholly good nor wholly bad.

Saphira: Tex effectively nailed it, but I realize that you are likely writing "Plus-sized" characters into your narrative for representative purposes. You see how people under that title are treated in our current era, and you want to give them a more positive experience through your story. This is benevolently spirited, and so I understand your frustration with the situation. Being that history is not giving you a foothold for your vision, it's time to try another method.

Let's take a look at the Venus Figurines! They were made to represent women with bounty of life within them (as they were pregnant). They were also structures that represent faith. It gives us a fun, and positive, perspective on figures who are plus-sized. If we add a few degrees of separation, we get a foothold! First step: Pregnant people are plus sized. Second Step: Plus-sized means fertility and life. Third step: Anyone representing that plus-size is a bringer of fertility and life.

If Humans didn't have that plus-size due to their lifestyle and resources, then they may have idealized it. Look at how the renaissance models their women. They are plump and wealthy. Would not the people in your era feel similarly? Would they seek out, would they dream of, someone with that stature? Would they have a divine figure with those attributes? "This Venus figure represents a woman who is pregnant." "This Venus figure is not a pregnant woman, for it does not give birth to human children. Instead, it gives birth to vibrant fields, fresh water and honeybees."

If you are using divines or magic itself, you can find ways to representing plus-sizes in more creative ways. If you are working in a natural world, you can represent them with faith, or impressions of other creatures (like the bounty of a fruit, or the strength of a bear). Honestly, if we can worship skinniness through the art of Photoshop, others can worship the equally idealistic forms of the plus-size and all the wealth it represents in a pre-historic era.

Constablewrites: Another thing to remember about the Venus figurines is that recent scholarship has argued that they aren't just pregnant women, but they're self-portraits of pregnant women. That is, what was generally assumed to have been created by someone else *koff* men *koff* as an idealized depiction may have in fact been a way for women to explore and understand their own changing bodies. Perspective is critical when talking about beauty standards.

And Tex's point about the connection between economic status and beauty really needs to be underscored. You can see the point in history where a white person with a suntan went from being someone who worked outdoors (which meant they were poor and therefore undesirable) to being someone who could travel somewhere sunny and lounge around outside (which meant they were rich and therefore desirable). People are inclined to look for a mate whose children will be healthy, well cared for, and prosperous; the outward indicators of that status, whatever they might be in a given society, end up being conflated with an abstract idea of beauty.

Feral: As Tex, Saphira, and Constable pointed out "plus sized" has a wide definition (and can mean as small as an American size 10 depending on the brand), and it's important to also remember that "prehistory" has a wide definition - specifically a 3 million+ year definition. Prehistory covers everything from the first stone tools 3.3 million years ago to maybe somewhere around 5,300 years ago. Kinda. Prehistory means "before written record" and runs through the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, which all end in different places at different times.

So, what this means is that depending on which epoch your civilization falls under, there may absolutely be the necessary agriculture and division of social class that have been brought up.  Narrowing down when and where you are trying to base your worldbuilding in will help you as you develop you characters and do further research on  a variety of issues that may come up.

Another thing to consider is that you're probably not going to be describing your characters as "plus-sized" in your story (and if you did, all your readers would have different concepts about what that actually means), so the clearer your idea of what the characters' body shape (aka "where mass tends to accumulate"), the easier I think it will be for you to describe the character to your reader in a way that expresses what you specifically mean when you're thinking "plus sized." The fashion designer Justine Leconte has a great video to teach people how to recognize different body types using celebrities [Youtube]. It is geared towards fashion and what to wear based on your body type, but the knowledge is still helpful.

You might have seen this post on Tumblr with the body shapes of all the greatest athletes in the world that might also be helpful for you. But ultimately, I stand by my original point. This is a topic that no matter what you choose to do and what evidence you use to back up your choice, some of your audience is going to have a problem with it. So, just create your world and characters as you see them.

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: as previously mentioned, I’ve been on a long and involuntary sabbatical from writing until quite recently - you can read more about it here if you so desire. At the moment I’m still struggling a bit with formal essay writing, so please forgive me in advance if the rust shows during my next few articles.

 -----

A Short Review of Stamped from the Beginning:

Today’s quotation comes from “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” by author and historian Ibram X. Kendi. Released in 2016, this critically acclaimed book explores the shockingly repetitive and enduring history of racist, anti-black ideas in American culture through the representative lens of five influential thinkers who explored the topic of race in their lives and writing - Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois and Angela Davis.

First and foremost, it should be noted that Stamped from the Beginning is a staggeringly important scholarly investigation into the formation, adoption, repackaging and recycling of racist ideas in American history. The key word here being “ideas” - Kendi’s work is not a catalogue of the violence and discrimination inflicted on African Americans by racists, but rather the societal beliefs, theories and propaganda that creates this violence, and indeed drives racism as a whole in the United States. In particular, the author’s research dramatically exposes the way in which the purveyors of racist ideas have responded to societal pushback by simply re-framing prior racist ideological arguments in a new, modernized context and beginning the marketing cycle anew. There is, to my knowledge, literally no other book in history that has explored specifically the recorded patterns and effects of these ideas on American society, with this much depth, candor and attention to fine detail. On that measure alone, I’m inclined to call Stamped from the Beginning an academic triumph.

Importantly however, Kendi’s argument moves beyond proving that there’s largely nothing new about the racist ideas that shape American society today and explores the larger economic reasons behind the ongoing and purposeful propagation of bigoted, racist and anti-black ideas. Thus, in contrast to the frankly missionary approach of the liberal orthodoxy, Stamped from the Beginning successfully argues that racial economic inequity is not the result of popularly embraced racist ideas, but rather that the racist ideas themselves are created and marketed by the ruling classes to defend and justify already existing economic inequity. As anyone who has ever read my writing will no doubt already be aware, this idea puts Kendi’s theories firmly in my wheelhouse and the sheer volume of evidence the author provides to demonstrate this idea’s veracity is invaluable to anyone who writes about the economics of racism in western “democratic” societies. 

Finally I should note that despite the book’s undeniable scholastic heft, Kendi’s writing style remains incredibly accessible even to the novice reader with literally zero background in critical race theory or prior academic understanding of white supremacy - which makes it tremendous starting point for aspiring scholars. Indeed, one of my first thoughts after finishing Stamped from the Beginning is that I wished I could share it with most of the white people I know because the work so effectively exposes the often aged origins and bigoted logic behind the racist ideas that so thoroughly capture American society even to this day.

Blockbusting, NIMBYs and Trump’s 2020 Re-election Campaign:

With that out of the way, let’s turn back to our quoted passage and talk a little bit about the practice of “blockbusting” for a moment. What is blockbusting?

In a technical sense, the practice of blockbusting involved greedy real estate agents preying on the latent racism of white American homeowners to acquire property at a reduced value and then eventually selling that property to African American families with fewer housing options, at a greatly inflated value.

Typically this would take the form of convincing panicked white home owners that their property values would plummet when African American families moved into their now desegregated neighborhoods, thus encouraging them to “sell now” at a point well below the home’s market value - or risk losing everything later when the real estate agent’s prediction came true. Once even one home on the block had been “busted” this would in turn actually cause a drop (albeit, temporarily) in recorded property values and in no time at all, petrified homeowners would be falling all over themselves to take whatever the real estate agent was offering. Once enough white families had been scared into selling their homes, the realtors would begin moving in African American families at exorbitant rates and good old fashioned racism would take care of the rest - forcing the remaining white families to sell quickly or accept the promised higher crime rates and social ills purveyors of racist ideas assured them would come from desegregated living.  

Of course, the real beauty of these scam for unscrupulous realtors was that not only could they make money hand over fist by fleecing homeowners on either side of the segregation fight - but they actually managed to profit from the arrangement a third time, by selling suburban housing to the very white people who’d just pawned away their family home at a cut rate in the face of a wholly manufactured “black invasion” - as racist scams go, blockbusting most certainly “used every part of the buffalo” as it were.

At its root however, the practice of blockbusting wasn’t really about predatory real estate speculation - the immense profits registered through blockbusting (and other forms of racial housing discrimination) were simply the “reward” for engaging in the behavior. Ultimately, blockbusting was about threatening comfortable white people with alien and unfamiliar brown people and simply letting latent racism and white supremacist beliefs work their course in the marketplace. The often unspoken truth here is that blockbusting was actually more effective when used against moderate, middle class NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) liberals than overt white supremacists and avowed racists; after all, the bigoted cracker white nationalists were just as likely to refuse to sell to a realtor who dealt with black families as they were to flee. NIMBY white liberals on the other hand could consistently be relied on to “pragmatically” take the money and run to the white majority suburbs - all the while professing their support of the very same desegregated housing initiatives they were now fleeing under the guise of protecting their property investments.

This is important because while blockbusting has long since been replaced by more subtle forms of segregation in our society, the tradition of manipulating white behavior by threatening them with the mere presence of brown people, continues on unabated. Indeed, after watching Downmarket Mussolini gleefully announce his intentions to release undocumented migrants into primarily liberal “Sanctuary Cities” I found it impossible not to think back to Kendi’s book and the parallels between Trump’s behavior and the practice of blockbusting.

While the President’s objectively nativist declaration of his intent to punish his political enemies (liberals who ostensibly support migration) immediately triggered discussions about the legality of going through with such a threat, I think that conversation is largely missing the forest for the trees.

Yes, Trump’s racist bluster plays well in the cheap seats of his Pork Reich re-election rallies and the living rooms of Fox News Nation - but the truth is, Herr Donald isn’t actually talking to his own supporters when he repeats this threat against (again, primarily liberal) Sanctuary Cities. He’s threatening affluent, white NIMBY liberals with brown people and allowing latent racist ideas and white supremacist beliefs in our society to do the heavy lifting. Furthermore, this is likely to be an effective strategy because ultimately, many of the same affluent white liberals who would put on a vagina hat and protest the Trump administration on weekends, are also low-key economic segregationists on the side. It really doesn’t even matter if Trump goes through with the plan quite frankly, he’s already seeded the idea that a vote against Trump is a vote for flooding your neighborhood with hordes of swarthy migrants; from there, the targets of his threat will be encouraged to make their own, inherently racist associations between foreign brown people and increased crime, drugs, terrorism and so on - as was the case with blockbusting.

Throw in a war (or two), a supposedly booming economy, as well as Trump’s bizarre suggestions that he may interfere with or ignore election results he doesn’t like, and you can see the outlines of a focused, race-based strategy to break off moderate “Anti-Trump” conservatives and affluent white liberals from a possible Democratic Party coalition - much in the same way Nixon broke those same moderates and NIMBYs away from McGovern and the Democrats in the disastrous 1972 election. Sadly, it might even work too; if the Democratic Party nominates an out of touch, racist stiff like Joe Biden and in the process continues to suppress their own turnout, then even a marginal decrease in “mighty white” folks voting Democrat could hand Herr Donald a second term.

And that my friends, would be an unmitigated disaster of historical proportions.

- nina illingworth

[aconissa]

Hi Ana. Do you agree/ disagree with the notion that people who are poor should think twice because having many children will make them poorer and the children will suffer

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on this, but I do have a few thoughts.

Firstly, I think putting the entire onus on the parents’ ‘decision’ to have children is misleading. We can’t boil down the reason for every child’s existence to the moment when their parents sat down and said ‘let’s have a baby’, or indeed, ‘let’s have many babies’. And I don’t just mean that some children are conceived accidentally or as a result of lack of access to contraception and/or poor sex education (although those are very important factors), but rather that every family situation and dynamic is different. Believing that poorer parents make a conscious decision to have multiple children ‘in spite of’ their economic situation is a gross oversimplification of the whole process of family-building.

That all being said, I do believe parents should always think carefully about whether they have children, regardless of their financial status. Population growth is a major environmental issue, and women in particular should be free to make their own life choices without the societal pressure of procreation. Research in first world countries does now show that young people are having fewer children and having them later in life, largely due to the current economic climate making it harder to provide for children early. But while many people may make that conscious choice, it’s not necessarily fair to blame those who don’t for somehow failing their children by having ‘more than they can afford’. Society as a whole should provide for the next generation. A child’s existence is not wholly fashioned by their parents, but also by their schools, their access to healthcare, their community engagement, and so on. In an ideal world, everything would be subsidised at a high standard and families would trust that a state education would give their children all the same chances as a private education does now, or that the healthcare system would protect them and prevent any one injury or illness from financially destroying their family. 

Also, this whole issue differs so much from country to country, and even from regions within countries. My mum, for example, comes from a family of 5 children who grew up in the Philippines in the post-war era. The social and economic context of their time meant that family sizes were (and still are) affected both by the Catholic church’s attitudes to contraception and sex ed, and by the necessity of producing a large family who can then provide for their parents or act as a work force on their families’ farms/businesses (a situation which is found the world over, but particularly in rural communities). The idea that a large number of children in a poor family can only lead to the family getting poorer is not necessarily the case in the long run, as the children will eventually grow up and the number of income-earners in the family will increase. Again, this comes down to the opportunities the children receive over their lifetimes and the ways in which the state cares for their families before they reach adulthood.

That all being said, my main feeling about this debate is apprehension. If someone tells you that they think poor people having ‘too many children’ is a significant social issue, you need to think twice about their motives. You hear this kind of rhetoric coming out of the mouths of rich right-wingers all the time, and it often stems from a fear of an increasing working class who leave ‘acceptable’ people (i.e. the upper and middle classes) “drowning in a vast sea of unemployed wasters that we pay to keep” (in the words of British Tory MP Ben Bradley, from a blogpost written before he entered politics). People who say this kind of thing are usually only steps away from suggesting that poorer families should be limited to having a certain number of children, or worse that their parents should be sterilised in some way ‘for their own good’. This attitude is primarily due to class prejudice, but it can also be affected by racist fears about a proliferation of poor migrant families and a sexist need to control women’s bodies and reproduction. It comes down to the assumption that children who grow up in poor families will only grow up to be equally poor themselves, and eventually ‘drain’ money from the government through benefits schemes. This is never blamed on a system which fails its citizens, on bad government education and a lack of job opportunities, but rather on poor people who are too ‘lazy’ to work hard enough to pull themselves out of poverty. As The Guardian’s Gaby Hinsliff said: ‘The root belief is that there’s something innately wrong with poor children, rather than with a system leaving so many in poverty.’ 

It’s a complicated issue, as you can see. I do believe that everyone should think carefully before having children, but the whole discourse around poorer families being larger than rich/middle class families is full of dangerous rhetoric and scary opinions. It also varies too much across the board for one stance to be appropriate on everything, and with so many factors involved it just seems unhelpful to argue the topic in these terms. But as always, the broader issue of social and economic inequality lies at the heart of everything, and if that were being tackled more effectively then we wouldn’t be considering this at all.

[pkmnsdarkqueen]

Karen and Koga

Just a quick summary of how I see the relationship. To confirm: This is not a required dynamic if someone wants to rp Koga. This is just how I see the relationship developing and is how things are in main verse.

Keep reading tag only cause it is a few paragraphs 

1st meeting- For context I’m gonna put some light details on what’s gone on in there lives to this point.  Karen: Feels betrayed by Rocket after the Masked Man almost fatally wounds Will in a burst of anger after they made a mistake. The Masked Man was much like a parental figure to her, so she is emotionally raw. She has run away from Rocket with a still very injured Will. They are running from Rocket, and the cops all why Karen is trying desperately to keep Will alive since he is all she has left in the way of human connection. Koga: Left Rocket some time ago/wasn’t reached by Giovanni to return to his gym position after almost dying at the hands of Agatha. Thanks to Bruno he was saved, and now travels with Bruno as best pals. However with him abandoning the gym suddenly, and disappearing someone has to take charge which ends up being Janine. Part of why he disappears is regrets about being in Rocket. He also feels unfit as a father figure due to being too wrapped up in Rocket when Janine was younger, and while originally wanting her to be in Rocket one day he wants her to choose. If he’s gone then that may ease off some of the pressure to follow in his misguided footsteps. 

When he and Bruno run into Karen she’s helping an injured Will get around. Karen naturally is highly defensive and aggressive threatening them about trying anything. After a tense conversation and offers made by Koga she agrees that Koga is allowed to help try to heal Will. He does this because 1. they’re very young and Will did not look to be in good shape so they were in over their heads 2. Karen’s fight reminded him of Janine who he hadn’t seen in awhile 3. a larger group is better chances of survival and 4. karen did threaten them about being part of Rocket and he could recognize the bluff and they fact that they were deserters like he and Bruno. 

The bonding before the league  Understandably Karen DID NOT trust anyone besides her and Will at this point. Even when Koga was working on Will Karen would be right next to him, knife out, and watching every little action in case he did anything that looked like sabotage. This kept up for some time and Koga saw first hand how deeply Rocket could twist a person. He still wanted to make this work since he figured they’d be better as a group. He did minor things such as be kind to her pokemon to start to win them over, and also let her see how close he was with his pokemon. She did not budge though in her hatred and so he tried something new. About only 2 weeks on knowing each other he stayed away during one of her night watch shifts, and then just told her his life story. Every detail of it including his daughter he left, everything about what led him to Rocket, and everything after. At the end Karen was understandably confused, so he explained why he did it which was,”I want this to work out because I have this feeling that something good will come out of this partnership. You don’t trust me, even slightly. Now I don’t know the details of why, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. a start needs to be made for this to work out. I’ve now given you my entire story, you have full access to weak points in my life, and ways to possibly take me down. Again I’m not expecting you to do the same, perhaps in time you’ll let me in on your story. In any case I have given you mine so at the very least you can have the upper hand in this partnership, and feel safe. Hopefully safe enough to at least get a full night sleep because I have noticed you also staying up night after night paranoid that we’d do something. You can’t stay up so many nights in a row child it simply isn’t healthy. Anyways, that’s all I have to say, have a good night.” And this moment shook Karen because he had basically broken one of the biggest Rocket rules which was to give someone a way to hurt you. It was profound to her, and she did feel safer cause if something did happen she'd have an out. 

bonding at the time of the league By the time they got to the league there was a respect for Koga from the group. He generally lead things in the four, and was the major decision maker. Karen and Will still acted independently most of the time but they had a general agreement that he was some kind of authority figure that they’d head advice on since he had best intentions at heart usually. He also was aiding Bruno in regaining mental stability after his mind control situation, and Will after his trauma needed some mental discipline due to his psychic powers being on the fritz. There was also general training to redone the abilities in a safer more healthy method. Karen he also helped simply being a support, and pushing her to be clean of her heroine addiction. By the time they got to the league the two were doing far better already health wise. 

League  When they got to the league the amount of respect Karen had for Koga grew immensely. She wasn’t really listening to Lance seeing him as ‘another one of the uptight societally perfect people that she would never be’. Koga was the mediator between her and Lance, and also helped her transition as her life philosophies from Rocket were broken down. This is when she fully started to accept him as a part of her life now and began to see him as a father figure. She did mention him maybe going to see his daughter who was running a gym but he always refused saying he wasn’t fit to see her. Finally after sometime Karen got him a present on father’s day. She admitted to seeing him kind of as a dad at this point, and called him out for saying that they deserved second chances as people then he should deserve a second chance of being a father. He realized that he had kind of treated Karen as an adopted daughter at this and Will sort of like a son so worked up the course to return to the gym and tell Janine who he was. 

A bit later While Koga repaired his relationship with his daughter he started to question about who Karen’s father was since even she didn’t know. He also started to wonder if the story about him being terrible was true or if her mother had been lying which she was prone to do. It took some time but eventually he found where her birth father was living and approached wanting to offer him the chance to reconnect if they were a good person. It turned out Koga’s doubts in the story were correct as Karen’s dad was a wonderful person, and desperately wanted to see her. Koga arranged the meeting, not telling Karen and surprising her one day. It was an emotional, but very sweet night. 

Current day While she is close with her birth father now she still sees Koga as her main father figure, and Koga still cherishes his ‘adopted’ kids. She still confides in him, and he still mentors her while getting help on things from time to time. They have a very wholesome bond in general, and Karen has told him that if she ever does get married he gets to walk her down the isle and at the end her biological father can do the ‘handing off’ portion of the ceremony.