#and she shouldn’t be frustrated in the first place because the problems Aren’t Even Legitimate Problems Because They Could Be Worse

[pussymasterdooku]

.

[moviemunchies]

The director of Sound of Freedom (full disclosure: I haven’t seen that movie), which became the darling of A Very Right Wing Audience, made a movie starring a saint, the message of which is that the system is terrible to immigrants in the US, and you shouldn’t treat them like trash.

I have a lot of thoughts, guys.

Cabrini tells the story of Mother Saint Frances Cabrini, an Italian religious sister who wanted to start missionary orphanages in China and wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. The Pope convinces her that she start working in the West, first–specifically in New York City, where Italian immigrants live in slums and are shunned by the populace, including the local diocese’s administration. Undaunted, Mother Cabrini charges forward to build her orphanage, whether or not she’ll get support from the city, the press, or the Church.

I kind of want to talk about the critical conversation that surrounded this movie.

Obviously, a film featuring a saint as its protagonist will get attention from Catholic outlets, and that’s where I saw most of the reviews. There was a noticeable common thread among Catholic critics that even though it’s about a canonized saint, a religious sister, and the character’s explicitly Catholic in the movie, her faith is not explored as her motivation, and it doesn’t really emphasize God working through her. We Catholics do not believe that we accomplish holy tasks based on our own power–we do it through God’s grace.

This movie, on the other hand, understandably makes it so that Mother Cabrini is the prime mover of events, though she certainly does have faith. But for Catholics, her reverence for God should be more emphasized, and her crediting and trusting in Him should be more explicit. I understand that in order to make it appeal to a wider (if still primarily Christian) audience, this was toned down, though I don’t know if it was the best idea.

My family and I also noted, while watching the film, that Frances Cabrini’s backstory is not really explored in a comprehensive way. Okay, fine, the movie’s not about that, and there’s enough to go off of. What’s a little more frustrating is that the sisters she leads in her efforts at building an orphanage are… look, I don’t know if they even have names in the film. I don’t remember much about them, other than that they’re there to back up the main character.

There are, however, not-so-legitimate criticisms I’ve seen. The Pillar talked a bit about it in one of their posts, but did not go into a full review because their writers are reporters of Catholic news (and they do very good work on that front, being unafraid of talking about scandal and asking hard questions). The opinion of the editor there was that, along with the above criticism, the antagonists were caricatures of patriarchal corruption, being essentially douchey men, which he felt was putting all the problems faced by the characters on men.

Which… yeah, because she’s running up against corrupt or uncaring systems and institutions, which at the time are all run… by men. 

Maybe this is because I recently read Burn It Down, but taking issue with this feels like missing the point of the movie. You can say all you want that the systems in place aren’t just the fault of some men in charge, but those men in charge hold a lot of responsibility. Immigrants aren’t suffering in the US because the system has to be that way, they’re because people in charge choose to make or keep it that way to benefit themselves. The movie simplifies how these systems work, yes, but that doesn’t change that depicting them as the result of prejudiced, greedy, and corrupt men is not a bad choice.

Like, imagine if someone complained that Hidden Figures uses caricatures that are too simple for the reality of what happened. Yeah, that’s true, and there are definite issues with those depictions, but is it wrong to do that in a movie? I don’t think so.

[And then at least one person in the comments of that post angrily claims this movie constitutes “militant feminism” which makes me see red. Do words even have meaning these days? I feel like every time a film with female leads has a douchey male villain, some whackjob claims that it’s a story asserting that all men are evil.]

If the figures depicted in the movie actually were generally alright people, and the film is villainizing real people unnecessarily, then yes, we have some problems. Otherwise, I’m fine with it.

I am also kind of stunned how much this movie comes out swinging on certain issues. Again, the director’s previous film was a movie that got a lot of attention from right wing media, and this is one that depicts things like racism against immigrants, police brutality, political corruption–things that I don’t think FOX News is as keen on talking about. I think audiences cared enough about it for this movie to be mildly successful, though, which shows that, thankfully, people aren’t on as strictly drawn socio-political lines as the media would have you believe.

 This is a fairly powerful narrative, guys, and it does not hold back. There are wealthy (white) New Yorkers complaining about how “brown children” are running through their streets, people denigrating others for not speaking English, and pointing out that the people oppressing immigrants today are the descendants of immigrants who themselves went through oppression when they arrived.

I like that the movie does not flinch away from that: showing that many of the problems we face today are not new, they’ve been baked into this country for over a century. The problems just wear slightly different hats–who the immigrants being oppressed are, for instance. That doesn’t mean it’s a progressive masterpiece, but I like this direction.

And I really like the title character. She is someone who absolutely does not give up, but is constantly getting frustrated by the people around her underestimating what she’s trying to do and whether she can accomplish it. She knows that she can, the problem is getting other people to see that as well.

Also, the movie’s last line. I’m very fond of it.

But like I said, this movie doesn’t really feel like it’s that interested in the lives of those who served in Mother Cabrini’s religious order, or much of her life and interests. And that’s a definite failing of the movie. Overall, though, I think it’s good, it’s strong, and I think it sticks with you. I lament a bit that it’s not more Catholic, and it could have been. I don’t think it’s necessarily as good a movie about historical figures as something like Hidden Figures, but it is very good, and I encourage people to at least check it out.

[itsclydebitches]

I get where you’re coming from, but I also don’t understand why you keep bringing up the “let the characters suck!” thing when it’s clearly not what RT intends. RWBY+=always right, everyone else=always wrong. Wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. Like, for fuck sakes they make the characters who are supposed to liked hated and who are, at very least, wrong liked. Did Clover ever piss you off? He didn’t me, even when he was making the “mistake” of not immediately trusting a teenaged girl he just met.

Throwing these three anons together!

First, it’s more about having a theory than being misinformed - “I theorize that...” is how that previous anon phrased the asks. Whether they knew about the supplementary material discussing Yang’s arm isn’t the point. The point is that, despite being told “This was planned,” we’re faced with all these discrepancies in how that plan was executed and one way to explain that is to go, “Maybe it wasn’t planned.” To be clear, I don’t mean that as an accusation, that RT is straight up lying to their audience (even though, as a company, there is something to be said for the tendency to spin everything into the best light possible). Rather, there are lots of different ways to interpret “It was planned” or even “It was planned from the start.” Using Yang’s arm as the example, what was planned? That she would lose her arm at some point during the series? That she would lose it specifically during the Fall of Beacon? That she would lose it to Adam? That is would start a multi-volume PTSD arc? I’ve mentioned elsewhere in regards to Ironwood that “It was planned” doesn’t tell us how detailed that plan was, when it would be implemented, or even when the plan was formed. They planned to have Maria and Penny arrive in the story earlier, but that obviously didn’t happen, so how many other plans have been heavily modified? And in long running series written by multiple authors over the years, it can be easy to frame an idea as a plan. Were they really writing Ironwood to eventually become a bomber back in Volume 2, or did they just have the idea that he might become a bad guy, with no solid understanding of when that would happen and how? Were they really writing Yang with the knowledge that she was heading towards this specific trauma and recovery, or was it a broader idea that might have come about in any number of ways? “It was planned” is a pretty nebulous statement on its own, even more-so in a series with a lost creator and a revolving crew of writers. For every “Pyrrha’s VA was told that she’d die” with the implication “They know what they’re doing” attached, there’s a “Ironwood’s VA had no idea his character had a semblance and had to find out through a fan” with the implication, “They don’t.” Penny is another example of this where yes, some fans think it was planned because of the Pinocchio inspiration, but that falls apart in the face of the number of characters who don’t follow their original character arcs, the fact that we already had a Blue Fairy stand-in confirm Penny’s realness (Fria), and that this flies in the face of seven seasons worth of thematic messages. So it comes down to execution. Either RWBY isn’t planned like RT says and they’re not able to write a compelling, consistent story on the fly, or it is and they’re still not able to accurately present the what they’re after on screen. 

So the critique isn’t so much about whether RT is planning or not (though that’s still a legitimate question: Do you know what you’re doing with the Relics? With Salem? How this story will end?), but the fact that their execution is severely lacking. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether Yang’s arm was planned or not because we’re still left with this issue of why what she’s learned as a result of that tragedy has been tossed out the window. None of us will ever be able to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what exactly was planned and to what extent, but focusing on that becomes an easy way to shut down the discussion. The underlying purpose behind the previous anon’s thoughts wasn’t so much to prove that Yang losing her arm wasn’t planned, it was to try and find a way to explain these writing problems: Why has she regressed? Why wasn’t Adam’s history explored? Why was the recovery arc so shaky in places? Questioning whether this was actually intentional is one way of explaining why these problems exist despite a supposed plan. Maybe the plan doesn’t exist, despite claims otherwise. Or maybe our understanding of a plan is very different from RT’s. But going, “it was planned” carries with it the implication that, because there was planning in place (taking that at face value), there’s no longer a problem. It dismisses the critique at the heart of the theory. Another fan wrote on the same post, “Yeah no this is wrong. She was supposed to lose her arm from the start” and... that’s it. That’s the conversation. Rather than engaging with these problems, “it was planned” is used as a catch-all explanation for why the writing supposedly isn’t bad. Yang’s arm was planned. Pyrrha’s death was planned. The bees are planned. The Fall was planned. Ozpin’s history was planned. This fight was planned... and because it was all planned, you have no right to criticize how that plan was executed, let alone challenge whether it was actually planned in the manner RT implies it was. 

Never mind that, if all of this was planned to a T, that just makes things worse. The assumption of planning throws all these contradictions, mistakes, backtracks, and confusing choices into a far harsher light. Considering that RWBY is perhaps not planned in the way RT would like us to believe it is results in the understanding of, “Oh, well then no wonder things are a bit of a mess. They’re figuring it out as they go, dropping, erasing, and rushing into ideas along the way.” Meanwhile, pushing the idea of a perfectly planned story results in, “Oh, so... you've known this would happen for years and still didn’t manage to lead up to it well, keep the facts straight, or follow up on the event in a satisfactory manner?” Given how many problems RWBY has atm, RT shouldn’t want the audience to think this was all planned because that invites a far more critical look at their writing choices than an author who goes, “Yeah, we didn’t know we were going with this until the season it was written, so it’s a bit rushed in places. Sorry, we’re working on that.” 

As for why I care about letting the characters suck at times, that’s because allowing for such basic characterization would go a long way towards resolving the execution issue. This insistence on making Ruby’s group morally perfect - that intention - is likewise making the authors blind to all the problems this creates. Clover is a great example. In order to make the heroes out to be perfect, Clover becomes the bad guy... despite not having done any work in the previous volume to show that. The authors apparently can’t see that discrepancy, or they simply don’t care about it. Allowing all the characters to make mistakes and grow from them would free up the other characters to be more consistent. If Ruby was allowed to be flawed then there’d be no need to make Clover one of her many (supposed) contrasts and no contrast means no retconning of his personality. These problems in the writing are interconnected. The insistence on “Team RWBY is perfect no matter what” encourages the authors to ignore when their execution is lacking - such as, say, suddenly having Yang no longer frustrated with Ruby’s leadership - and that lack of execution in turn makes it impossible to believe the “Team RWBY is perfect no matter what” claim - the story has shown me how flawed they are, so... why aren’t we acknowledging that? The fandom’s focus on, “It was planned from the beginning! They have Monty’s notes!” ignores that whether it was planned or not, there are serious problems in how these ideas are implemented, hindered by a black and white morality in a show that simultaneously wants to be gray. Part of why the execution is so lacking is because what’s been introduced in the past is inevitably tossed aside for the “Ruby is right” ending and that past writing includes what may or may not have been planned. 

[natsukitakama]

Here we are for some Jean request then ! I was thinking of modern!au headcanons where Jean and Reader have been close friends for a long time, but as years flow, they begin to develop romantic feelings for each other, each one thinking its unrequited. However at a party, they end up kissing but get interrupted before they can talk it out :c (And perhaps I should find a shorter nickname than reincarnation au!anon ahahah, Rei is fine)

Author note : Hello Rei Anon, hope you’re doing okay ! Your request is so sweet ♡ I hope I did justice to your request, this��is going the first I wrote for JeanBoy. Modern AU hit different I just love them ♡. Unfortunately I never find much Jean’s content but he is just a sweetheart I learn to love him through the anime.I hope it won't be too OOC.  Enjoy ! Let me know if you enjoy this ;) 

I do not own that gif credit to the owner 

Warning : Fluffy / Gender neutral / Frustrated ending / a little bit of angst 

Masterlist 

As long as you can remember Jean was always by your side. Your first at school when no one talked to you he was here, when you decided to go into football’s club he was here with you. You two have met the day you move on on his district your house was quite close to his. You were playing on the street while your parent was busy moving each furniture for your new house. 

He never saw you before, he tried to show off a little bit because that kid doesn’t know how to make friends without showing off. 

It works you were kinda impressed by him and you went with him quickly after. 

You never separate from each other since. Indeed both of your parents understand that you were kinda close so they did everything so you could stay together : in class, in club, no matter what you were always with him

His aura relax you, he always pretend to know everything and 99% of time it was. It was such a relief for you, knowing he would be there no matter what. When it came to him, he really enjoys having you as a friend not only did you praise him (which was huge ego boost for him) but you were also faithful. He never experienced someone being like this before, most of the times his friends were friends with other people but not you. 

You were child when you two met, so you know nothing about love so obviously both of you thought you were close friends but nothing more. 

However, when you joined junior high school you started to think that maybe you were more than friends. 

In fact, you were in second years unfortunately for the first time you weren’t in the same class as Jean. At first both of you were sad, but you took it as an opportunity to appreciate even more the time when you two would be together. Even if you make friends with other people, you still share a lot of time with Jean like during lunch or practice since your class used to work by pair. 

One of your friend teased you about how close you were with Jean, about how he always managed to go into your class to find you. How he was always showing off in front of you.  To his you just replied that he was always like that, it’s literally how you two became friends so ? 

But the more they talk to you the more you were questioning your own feeling , what if you were in fact in love with him ? You would feel right ? Since your feelings never changed for Jean it means that you aren’t in love with him ? 

On the other hand, Jean was questioning himself too. Not because some friends teased about it (he never cares he just yells at them to back off), but he started to notice some things on you. Like the way you decided to style your hair, the way you smile or cracked a laugh when you thought someone wasn’t noticed. The way you always plays with your hair when you started to getting nervous. It couldn’t help but find it cute. But it wasn’t like he was in love with you right ? 

Wrong, both of you were so wrong and you were about to find it on the worst way 

One day, Jean received some cute letter on his desk asking him to go into a special place for a talk  he was supposed to meet someone on the rooftop. Every student including you know why, he was about to got a confession from someone. 

You couldn’t help but felt your heart squeeze at this idea : Jean with a Significant other ? Jean dating someone ? You shouldn’t feel sad about this, it’s not like you two were flirting or anything. You were his friend, just his friends. Your friends noticed your behavior and already understand the real problem behind that. They tried to talk to you but you deny everything : no you weren’t in love with Jean and even if you might be that doesn’t matter cause he definitely not sees you that way anyway

Turns out Jean did have a confession that day, but he doesn’t what to do with those feelings about you. He wasn’t sure if he was in love with you or not, in addition you definetly not saw him like this not after everything you two have been through. You were more like sibling that lover. 

At least that what he thought 

So Jean started a relationship with a girl, her name was Nina. They look very good together and as much as it hurts your heart you couldn’t agree more. 

They seemed so happy together. Nina was absolutely gorgeous, she was smart good with sport, she was a cheerleader, got a tone of friends. She was everything you weren’t, you just couldn’t not understand why Jean chooses her instead of you, he was so incredible, so soft, so smart he always knows what to do and he is so funny. 

Jean is perfect she was perfect everything make sense, how could be interest on you anyway ? 

You were his buddies, hell does he even see you like this ? What if you were just a little puppy someone who just followed him in order to be close to him. 

The more you think about it the more you become distant to him, and it kills Jean seeing you like this but he doesn’t know what to do about it. Hell he doesn’t even know what makes you sad ? Since he agreed to become Nina’s boyfriend you tends to less talk to him telling him it was fort the best cause you didn’t want to cause any trouble to Jean (and it was true). 

Instead you started to learn to live without having jean by your side, but it hurts you. It hurts not having a text from him, not seeing him on the morning, not walking with him. It hurts you seeing him doing all the thing with there instead of you. It kills you to see him being happy while you weren’t, at the end maybe he never needed you but you did. 

For the first couple of months, you couldn’t sleep without crying on your pillow you missed him. You miss seeing him showing off as if he needed to prove a point, how you regret never told him he never needed to do that, telling him how much he means to you and that you would always do no matter what he would do. 

He was kinda a dork sometimes but you loved it even if when he was arrogant you find it attractive, his cockiness seduce you, his insecurities melt your heart, his smile warmth you. 

How could be that blind ? 

You always loved him, you just weren’t aware of that 

All you wish was to come see him and start again as if nothing happen, but it’s been so long since you two have talked no matter how hard you wanted this it seemed like there were nothing good to say for fixing your relationship. So you kinda let things go. 

Fortunately your friends was behind your back, they noticed how sad you were since Jean started his relationship. They already planned something to force you two have the talk you deserve 

When it came to him, he wasn’t as happy as he thought he would be with Nina. Not that she wasn’t good with him, but he couldn’t explain but his relationship with her doesn’t sound right as if he wasn’t with the right person. 

It doesn’t help that he suffered from your lack of conversation, he gets so used to have you with him all the time that he felt empty without you. Even his girlfriend who barely knows you since you didn’t talk to them, noticed that his boy suffered from your missing. As much as it bothered her, she had to admit you were a huge part of Jean’s life but she couldn’t know how much you were important to him

At this point, he went after Marco asking him some advice cause he was confused. Was he in love with you ? Or was he just sad because his friend wasn’t with him anymore ? 

« Here the thing, I used to be with them since I’m a kid you know ? They lived close to my house, we’ve become friends without I could realize it. I was a pretty bastard with them at first I was showing off like I was so much better than them and they just follow him, play with me, protect me when I was into a fight. Next thing I know I couldn’t just be far from them  

I see you were pretty close since a long time … What about now ? Did something change ? 

Yeah well, as you I’m dating Nina since 6 months now and they just stop hanging out with me claiming they will cause trouble. But they weren’t. 

How did you know that ? Maybe they felt that Nina wasn’t confortable with that 

But- 

Did you ask Nina about it ? 

Who cares about Nina this is about Y/N ! (Couple second later) I’m sorry I shouldn’t yell it’s just… I don’t know since they’re not with me I’m feeling down you know ? As if something was missing. I-I guessed I just miss them  

*chuckle* well you already have all answer why did you come ? 

I don’t know I guess I needed to know if it was right 

What ? Being in love with Y/N it sounds legitimate to me 

But what about Nina ? I can’t just bumped her 

What about this, try to talk to Y/N just to see how they felt about you and after that you would see what you’ll do with Nina. You know ? Step by step » 

Everything seemed to run its course, your friends were planning a party to celebrate your last year in junior high school while Jean was decided to talk to you and he’ll do it while everyone would be busy celebrating 

You weren’t supposed to go at the party, you didn’t wanted to go at this party. Seeing all people being happy, seeing Jean dancing with Nina was too much for your broken heart you still need to heal after all. But your friend somehow convinced you to go. 

And you did. You ask your friends to help you with your outfit while you mentally prepare yourself for what’s about to happen. 

During the whole day before the party, Jean was pretty calm and distant he knows at some point he would have to talk with Nina and he was afraid he might hurt : after all she doesn’t deserve to be hurt like that. It was as if she could read into his mind cause when they were about to go into the party she told him « Go, you need to talk with them we’ll figure out what to do next. I’m not angry with you, I should see that coming » 

So did he, he walked through the crowd looking for you. After everything, he needs to tell you how he really felt about you this time he was ready to be the little puppy. He missed you so much. The he saw you. 

You were with you friends dancing as if no one was around you, the way your body move with the sound, you were in your own word relaxing but he also noticed some things who have changed about. Did you loose some weight ? You seemed a little bit tired than before ? Did he do that to you ? He won’t forgive himself for treating you like this 

You deserve so much better and he was ready to do it 

He came closer to you, footstep by footstep, as he came closer he started to feel his heart squeeze, he has some difficulty to breath, his stomach twisted as he became more anxious. He knows it gonna be hard, he knows open-up to someone is never easy but he’ll do it. He has to do it. 

When he faced you, he forgot what he has to say so instead he took your wrist on his hand pleading you with his eyes to follow him. Not sure what to do you just look at your friend who push you to follow him. It’s been a lot of days since you two were this close and as far as you can remember he never touch you. The feeling of his firm touch on your wrist warm you and you swore you were blushing, you hoped he won’t see it because of the darkness. 

Couple of minute later, he got you on a private place kinda far from the party and you couldn’t be more thankful for that. Most of the time you were more relax on private and peaceful place but now having him and you all alone make you uncomfortable. After all you were avoiding him since he started his relationship, you weren’t sure anymore if you wanted to talk to him. 

You two stare at each other not knowing what to do or what to say, no matter how spaced the room was it was like you two couldn’t breath properly, you swore you could feel the warmth from Jean’s body and he could feel the same about you. 

Should I told them ? Was everything on both of your mind 

« Look Y/N I’m sorry for… 

Y-You don’t have to apologize for anything Jean besides I’m the one to blame I avoid you since you started to date Nina while I shouldn’t do that. B-But you know I wanted to … I mean I tried to but I didn’t if you … » 

You were so anxious that you become a whole mess, your face was nothing but read, you could even feel tears rolling from your cheeks as you felt embarrassing for not being able to speak properly. You gets hiccup as you couldn’t calm yourself. You couldn’t see jean because your sight was blurry from tears but he was looking at you with a sad expression. 

Never did he expect you to feel like this from him, no one ever did. He watched as you were confusing yourself trying to find your work for a better sentence, anyone in the room would feel pity on you but not jean instead was overwhelmed from warmth « I love them » was everything on his mind. 

Before you could even notice, his hand were on your cheeks stroking it while rubbing the tears from your eyes. In a blink of an eye, his face was an inch from you tilting yours with his hand on your cheeks, one moment later you felt it. His lips were on yours, at first it was a chaste kiss. But then, your arm find their way on Jean’s neck as you let everything out of your mind and deepen the kiss. You would everytime in the world to process what happen but for now you wanted to enjoy the kiss. His lips were soft and warmth as you imagined but he was more gentle with you, as if he was holding the most precious thing of the world. 

Unfortunately for you, you had to stop as you heard some voices. Not wanting to get caught in such private moment, you broke the kiss but neither of you stop staring at each other. 

What would happen next will depend on you. 

[watermelonselfship]

Self Ship Dialogue Prompt #2!

Requested by @abandonedhearts ! The second one is in another post!

Prompt: “I love you, but please stop whatever it is that you’re doing.”

Click. Click click. Click. Click click click.

Raymond looked up from where he was reading, cozy in a pillow pile on the corner of his bed. His first, and irrational, instinct was that he was under attack somehow, but a quick glance around proved that definitely wrong. Barney would have looked up from his spot reading at the desk, his senses more sharp than Raymond's.

Probably someone walking down the hallway, he figured, and went back to reading.

Click. Click. Click click click.

This time, as Raymond's train of thought was interrupted, he didn't look up, instead trying to see if the sound was coming closer or farther down the hallway.

Click. Click. Click.

It wasn't actually moving, Raymond realized, and furrowed his brow. Now he wasn't going to be able to get back to his book at all with this sound driving him crazy. It was going off in sporadic intervals, random rhythms, and not in a large enough frequency for him to pinpoint it right away. Most infuriatingly of all, Barney didn't seem to notice the sound at all.

That's when it, well, clicked. Barney didn't notice the sound because he was making the sound.

"Hey babe," Raymond called, sitting up a bit from his cozy pillow corner. "“I love you, but please stop whatever it is that you’re doing.”

Barney stopped mid-click and looked back at Raymond, confused. "I'm reading?" That's when Raymond noticed the pen in Barney's left hand.

"Yeah babe no, that's fine," Raymond clarified, and pointed at the pen, "You've been clicking that pen the whole time while you were doing it.

Barney looked, a little surprized at the pen in his hand. "Oh huh, my bad." He set the pen down, out of his reach, and went back to reading.

"Thanks babe, I love you!" Raymond chimed, turning back to his book.

That lasted about five minutes.

Tap. Tap tap. Tap. Tap.

Raymond paused, and listened for the sound to repeat itself, then sighed.

"Barn."

"Huh?" Barney asked, turning again.

"Do you know you're tapping?"

"Tapping?"

Raymond sat up, and crawled to the edge of the bed closest to Barney. "Yeah love you're tapping. Do you even notice?"

Barney gave a half hearted shrug. "I mean, I think I kind of did, but I didn't think I was bein' too loud. Sorry." He sounded pretty guilty, and looked a little stress. That worried Raymond, and he took his boyfriend's hand in his.

"Hey, hey what's wrong?"

"It's not that big a deal," Barney tried deflecting, but Raymond's gaze said he was going to push if he didn't elaborate. "I just uh. It feels real bad not to do something with my hands? When I'm reading. I get real stressed out, like I've got an energy stuck in me that I gotta let out. But I don't wanna bother you any, so..." He trailed off.

"So," Raymond began, "You're stimming? If that's the case babe I can help you find something that works for both of us."

Barney tipped his head slightly. "What's stimming?"

Raymond had to blink a few times to process the question. How in the absolute hell had Barney spent all his time with him, Alyx and Gordon and not figured out what stimming was.

"It's like..." Raymond began, trying to find the best words to explain it. "You know how when Alyx has two band-aids on her hands, she'll rub 'em together over and over? Or how Gordon will do that thing where he takes a string in his mouth and pulls it, then like, plucks it like a harp? Or taps his knuckles on the side of his head when frustrated? Or like, you know when I get real excited I flap my hands real fast, sometimes my whole arms?"

Barney nodded, and smiled. "Yeah, it's real cute when you do that."

Raymond stuck his tongue out bashfully for a second, then continued. "It's all types of stimming. It's a sensory-seeking thing, really common in neurodivergent people, but I think neurotypicals do it too? But if you're doing it because it sounds good, or feels nice to do, and it feels real bad if you don't, that's probably stimming."

Barney paused for a second, thinking. "Does ADHD count as neurodivergent?"

"...Yeah, absolutely Barn. Like, one of the big two that people tend to think of when they think about neurodivergency, though they're for SURE not the only ones. The other one's autism- that's me and Gordon, probably Alyx too but I don't know if she's said so or not so I don't wanna assume. I just know that me and Gordon have talked about it before, so I know for sure with him."

Barney nodded slowly, as if some pieces were clicking into place. "Have I ever told you about the time I went to college?"

Raymond also started putting together the pieces, and grinned. "Yeah, you said you suddenly couldn't manage anything going on and had to drop out your second year. Are you about to tell me you got a diagnosis."

Barney laughed, and grinned bashfully. "Yeah, I sure am! I didn't know that was part of the whole deal! They weren't very clear.... An' I never bothered doin' the research because all of it was in these. Impossible to read huge blocks of text with a bunch of technical bullshit, and it always talked about kids?"

Raymond rolled his eyes dramatically, not at Barney but the situation, and nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, a lot of texts like that are really... just inaccessible to the people who need 'em most! It's crazy frustrating, and I don't have the focus problem. God, Barney this legitimately explains so much about you right now, I love you so much."

Barney went red and chuckled softly. "It that noticeable?" He asked, a bit insecure suddenly.

"Only if you know what you're looking for," Raymond admitted. "I sort of have a special interest in mental health stuff, specifically neurodiversity, remember? And I know you real well, and it like... explains so much. I cant believe this never came up before!"

"Well," Barney admitted, rubbing the back of his neck, "I didn't think it mattered any. I was good at my job and I've managed, so why bring it up? Didn't wanna trouble anyone with it..."

Raymond shook his head. "It's not trouble babe, I promise!" he insisted. "Just like Gordon being nonspeaking isn't trouble, any symptoms you've got going aren't going to be any trouble."

Barney shrugged. "Guess I don't know what my symptoms are? It's been so long since I read anything about it, an like I said, it was really too dense for me to work through..."

Raymond nodded. "That's fine babe! Step one, for sure, you stim, and thinking about it I can think of other examples, but the clicking tonight for sure. Step two, what I'll do is see if I've got any books on ADHD, especially in adults, and I'll run through it and help you get some info." He was beaming, doing his slightly excited wiggles at the prospect of helping his boyfriend along with something that related directly to his special interest.

"I'd like that," Barney replied with a smile, then shrugged halfheartedly. "Sorry for bugging you with the stimming thing though."

Raymond shook his head again, emphatically. "No babe! It's not the fact you stim that was bugging me, it was that it was getting distracting for sensory reasons. But that just means I gotta find you like, one of those buttons that you can push but its quiet? But still gives the satisfying give. Like a remote! Or some other way to stim. You shouldn't suppress that sort of thing, yknow? It's normal, and also good for you."

Barney thought for a moment, before marking his place in his book and closing it. "Thanks, Ray," he replied with a grin. "You're so damn good to me."

Raymond stuck his tongue out again and chuckled. "You're good to me first."

"Nah, that's you. Can we cuddle a bit?"

Raymond grinned. "Absolutely, so yes."

Over the next few days, Raymond found Barney starting to cautiously stim more openly, and while he didn't directly address it, he could tell that Gordon and Alyx were excited by the prospect in turn. The group took turns showing their favorite sensory seeking behavior, and gradually Barney settled into a comfortable routine of a few core stims, even if he didn't always display them as publically as the rest.

After a while, Raymond started falling asleep to a soft click click click.

[ineffably-good]

It’s The Principality Of It

Summary: Principalities are made for fighting. Like it or not. Or, why not to invite Aziraphale to play laser tag. 

Read it on AO3!

_____________

1.

Aziraphale was an angel full of contradictions. He loved being an angel but wished he could be fully human. He believed in the core virtues but found it very hard to practice some of them, especially those involving temperance and keeping your celestial temple unsullied. He loved the Almighty completely and utterly but found many of her underlings quite tiresome.

And most interestingly, he hated violence in general and fighting in specific, but he was absolutely lethal with a sword.

It was a fact widely acknowledged in Heaven that Principalities were made for fighting. They were guardians, and not in the soft and fluffy sense of a personal guardian angel who appeared over your right shoulder and told you that perhaps you shouldn’t have that last bite of cheesecake or that maybe you should go apologize to your wife. No, Principalities were guardians in the sense of standing alone, flaming sword in hand, on a promontory in the north of Britain and single handedly fighting off the Viking fleet.  

Not that that had happened, though. Aziraphale was pretty sure that there weren’t any witnesses to that event, and he intended to disavow it to his grave.

--

Shortly after Aziraphale was created, he found himself standing in a long line in front of Heaven’s quartermaster, who was a strange little man with curly mustaches and a piercing gaze.

“Let’s see, who’s next,” the man shouted to no one in particular. He consulted his clipboard. “Ah yes, Principality Aziraphale. Principality?”

Aziraphale stepped forward and gave the quartermaster a polite smile. “That would be me, I believe.”

“New, are you?” the Quartermaster asked, crisply. “Always good to meet a Principality. Have they decided what you’ll be protecting yet?”

“I believe it has something to do with Her new special project on Earth,” Aziraphale replied modestly. “I’m not quite clear on the details yet.”

The quartermaster looked him up and down. “Well,” he said, “you’ll probably want to make a few changes to your corporation before you head down. Toughen up a little bit. You look a little soft around the edges, yet. No matter though, let’s see what they’ve issued you for basic equipment, shall we?”

Aziraphale looked down at himself while the quartermaster checked his list. Was he soft? He didn’t see any problem with his corporation; it was healthy and strong and comfortable and he rather liked it. She had made him this way, after all, and he didn’t see any need to modify the Creator’s design. He examined his hands and fingernails, looking for flaws.

A snapping noise brought him back to reality. The quartermaster was snapping his fingers under Aziraphale’s nose, trying to get his attention.

“You are a bit of a strange one, aren’t you?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “Well it’s your lucky day, because you’ve been issued a piece of rather special equipment. Genuine flaming sword.”

“Ah, well, that’s just lovely, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said, trying to look suitably impressed. He didn’t know too much about himself, being relatively new, but he could already tell he had very little interest in swords and what one did with them.

The quartermaster dug around in a cupboard for a moment and pulled out a large sword with a dramatic flourish. He handed it to Aziraphale, hilt first.

The moment his hand touched the hilt, Aziraphale felt a thrum through his body that he had never experienced before. The sword felt like a natural extension of his arm, and he found himself testing its balance and making a few sweeping movements just to get the feel of it. It felt, he found, very good.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” the quartermaster said. “Now to make it flame, you just –”

FWOMP.

“Ah, I see you already know how to do it,” the man said with a smile. “I should’ve known. You Principalities are made for war.”

Aziraphale widened his eyes and quickly extinguished the sword with a flicker of thought. He was made for what?

“Next!” called the quartermaster. Aziraphale tucked the sword away and tried to find his way back to the rather intriguing scroll room he’d found earlier in the day.

--

It was a relief, really, to give the sword away to Adam and Eve. Despite how good and true it felt in his hand, he’d never cared for the thing. Handling it made him deeply uncomfortable; something about having a weapon in his hand made him feel like his entire being was nothing more than a means to an end. It was true, what the quartermaster had told him so long ago – he was bred for fighting. What he didn’t understand, though, was why his loving creator would make a creature such as him, designed to fight and to decimate one’s enemies, and also instill in them such a deep distaste for the task. Why give him both an almost unbeatable set of fighting skills and a deep abhorrence for violence? It was… what was that word? Ineffable.

Aziraphale watched, long after the demon left, as the light of the flaming sword receded over the desert sands. Adam and Eve were making their way into the world, lit by the weapon he had never wanted. Perhaps it would be of more use to them than it ever had been to him.

It had felt like the right thing to do. He hoped he’d acted correctly.

  2.

Aziraphale managed to go many centuries without ever having to fight, but it occasionally came up. He couldn’t help but be involved in a war here, a skirmish there. Various kingdoms over the years valued prowess in battle over all else, and sometimes it was necessary to provide a demonstration of his skills to gain access to the people he needed to influence. Sometimes he had legitimate reasons to defend a people or a place he cared about, and he did it thoroughly, dispatching the job as quickly as possible and trying to cause as little harm as he could. He rarely lost a fight.

He didn’t know Crawly very well the first time they were called upon to fight each other. They’d been acquaintances and adversaries for quite some time, but only ran into each other every few centuries. This changed when they were both assigned to influence King Cyrus of the Persis empire in his attempt to overtake Babylon and India.

Being a warlike creature intent on conquering most of the known world, the king’s favorite past time was designating two of his men (or women) to fight each other for his amusement. Crawly did his best to stay out of sight during these interludes, but Aziraphale, having been seized upon immediately as someone who was perhaps not in the best trim, physically, had been squared off early against one of the king’s riders for an easy win.

The king was amused and pleased when Aziraphale unexpectedly wiped the floor with his first opponent, revealing himself to be a rather astute fighter despite his soft and fussy exterior. 

After that, the king made a habit of pairing up the angel with increasingly challenging opponents – some with fists, some with weapons, some with just traditional wrestling. Aziraphale defeated each of them without barely breaking a sweat.

—

“You need to let them land a punch or two, angel,” Crawly warned him one evening after the fight had concluded in the usual way. “Bleed a little somewhere unobtrusive. People are beginning to talk. You’re making enemies.”

Aziraphale sighed heavily. “I don’t want to bleed! I don’t want to fight at all! This is most frustrating, having to pummel people for someone else’s amusement. How am I supposed to get my job done when all he wants is to see me beat people up?”

“Well you could, I dunno, lose?” Crawly suggested.

The angel pondered this. “I suppose I could,” he said. “How badly would I have to lose? I truly don’t enjoy pain.”

Crawly felt an idea come squirming up out of the depths. 

“Angel,” he said. “What if I arrange to get myself nominated as your opponent? We’ll make sure it’s wrestling so no one has to seriously injure the other. And you can throw the match.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Oh, and just conveniently you get to win?”

Crawly rolled his eyes. “Seriously, angel, what’s going on with you? Yes, I get to win – because if it’s me, you know I’m not going to bash your head in or give you a concussion or do anything serious.”

“Just wrestling?” Aziraphale said, considering.

“Yeah. And since we both agree on the outcome, we can make it look really good so they think you went down fighting. Should get you out of the ring for a while.”

“All right, it’s worth a try,” the angel said. “How are you going to get yourself put into the arena?”

“Just leave that to me,” Crawly said.

 --

Sure enough, a few nights later, when the wine was flowing heavily and the evening was growing increasingly rowdy, Aziraphale heard the king’s voice calling out for him in the hubbub.

“Yes, my lord?” Aziraphale said, bowing deeply before him.

“You’ve defeated most of my servants, and two of my secretaries, and even my youngest son,” the king said. “So tonight, I have a new challenge for you.”

Aziraphale looked up at him, waiting. The king motioned to his side and, unsurprisingly, Crawly stepped forward. Their eyes met and they both did their best to pretend to coolly assess the other. Good, Aziraphale thought. This was all going according to plan.

“Let’s see how you do against an opponent with less brawn but more cunning,” the king said.

“Wrestling, my lord?” Aziraphale said politely, trying to hide how much he enjoyed the “less brawn” comment.

The king took a moment to answer. “I don’t think that would be a very fair encounter,” he said. “You outweigh him by nearly half.”

Crawly snorted. Aziraphale glowered at him.      

“I think we will have you fight with staffs tonight,” the king said.

Crawly frowned. He hadn’t been planning on encountering Aziraphale with a weapon in his hand. That was suicide. However, he reminded himself, this wasn’t an actual fight, just a simulated one. He could get through this. He trusted the angel.

--

It started as a fair fight. Crawly was fairly sure that only he could tell that Aziraphale was holding back; the angel made it look like he was convincingly testing Crawly’s defenses and finding chinks in his battle strategy that he could exploit. Determined to play his part, he set about making it look good by offering up a variety of jibes and insults.

That may, in retrospect, have been a miscalculation.

“C’mon, is that all you’ve got? I’d heard you know how to fight!” Crawly taunted him as they circled each other, feinting and drawing back. Aziraphale raised an eyebrow and spun his staff impressively and then settled into a highly defensive stance with his feet wider than his shoulders and his left hand holding the base of the staff in an easy grip. He smiled at Crawly in a way that was downright chilling.

Still playing at this, correct? the demon thought.

Crawly took the moment to begin what should have been a devastating downward blow with the upper end of his staff, but Aziraphale smoothly stepped towards him, missing most of the force of the blow, and swung the lower end of his staff in a smooth motion parallel to the ground, hitting Crawly in his flank.

The demon staggered back a step or two and reassessed, circling the angel widely while looking for a weakness. The angel was going to make it possible for him to win this, he knew, but he had to land a few blows first.

Aziraphale charged him and Crawly blocked him easily enough, criss-crossing their staffs expertly as he upended the intended blow and drove the angel back a step or two.

“Not so showy now, are you?” Crawly said, more to the observers than to the angel, although he did notice the angel grimacing in response. He pushed hard against the angel and their staffs disengaged as the angel dropped to one knee

Aziraphale pressed down on the ground with his staff and lumbered to his feet, clearly expecting Crawly to give him a moment to do so, but the demon decided to press his advantage, and surged ahead issuing a strong blow to the angel’s left side, knocking him backwards, and then a follow up blow to his right hip, which pushed him down to the ground.  

An excited murmur arose among the crowd. Could the undefeated champion be facing someone worthy of him?

Crawly, holding the angel down by the force of both hands on his staff, locked eyes with Aziraphale for a tense moment and noted that he had a small trickle of blood rolling down his left temple. Had he hit him in the face? He hadn’t meant to. The angel met his eyes, legitimately struggling for a moment, and when the drop of blood hit his eye Crawly saw something snap in him.

No, angel, no, remember? Crawly shouted psychically. You’re supposed to let me win. I’m doing this because you told me to.

It was no use. Crawly watched the angel’s eyes ignite from their usual soft blue to a more fiery version and he knew, without a doubt, that he was in for it. Aziraphale had lost control of his fighting response and was moving into Principality mode, and before he even had time to move, the angel had sprung to his feet with superhuman strength and was beating him back to the opposite corner with a flurry of blows that landed more rapidly than he could block. Crawly dully heard the cheer of the crowd as their favorite champion beat the crap out of his opposition, but he was too busy trying to stay alive to do anything about it. He blocked, he parried, he ducked one particularly crushing blow, and he tried to keep his footing as the Angel of the Eastern Gate bore down on him in all of his avenging glory.

What may have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes later, Crawly came to his senses laid flat on the dusty ground, Aziraphale’s staff pressed into his solar plexus with such force that a human would not have been able to withstand it without serious injury.

“And we have a winner!” shouted the king, from his seat at the edge of the ring. “Counselor Aziraphale is again victorious!”

Loud whoops and cheers erupted from all sides, and the noise -- finally, thankfully – the noise seemed to wake Aziraphale from his hypnotic-like state. Crawly, fearing for his immortal life, watched as Aziraphale blinked and shook his head, looking around in confusion, and then looked down to find his ineffable adversary, bleeding and defeated at his feet, using all of the force of his will to keep a quarterstaff from breaking his ribs and possibly piercing a lung.

“What on earth?” Aziraphale said, moving his staff aside and offering a hand to help Crawly up.

The demon batted it away. He rolled to his side and carefully made his way to his feet, before meeting Aziraphale’s eyes with an intense glare. He dropped his staff at the angel’s feet in the traditional gesture of defeat, then limped off the combat field. Aziraphale watched as he accepted a flagon of ale from one of his mates and then stalked out of sight towards his tent without ever taking so much as another glance back at the angel.

“Oh dear,” the angel fretted.

 --

Aziraphale waited until darkness had fallen and most of the camp was deeply intoxicated before he made his way to Crawly’s tent. He called out to alert the demon of his presence, and then opened the flap to enter.

Crawly was lying face down on the bundle of furs that served as his bedding. He waved a hand in recognition of the angel and then grunted something.

The angel found himself unsure of what to say. He sank down onto his knees next to Crawly and looked him over. “My dear, are you all right?” he asked.

“Fuck off, angel,” Crowley muttered. “I’m fine. Can take a beating, you know I can. Certainly have taken enough of them, over the years. Never from you before, though. Jerk.”

Aziraphale swallowed in dismay. “I’m so sorry, Crawly – I don’t know what happened, when you made me bleed I just – I just lost control of myself and went into battle mode…”

Crowley groaned and rolled onto his back, then eased himself up into a sitting position. “I noticed,” he said wryly.

“You must believe me that I didn’t intend to do this,” Aziraphale pleaded. “I meant to throw the fight like we discussed, I just found myself… physically unable to do so.”

Crawly looked at the angel. He looked a little green, as if he wanted desperately to be ill. Aziraphale, for all of his training and purpose as a Principality, as a guardian, hated to fight, hated to hurt anyone or anything. There had quite possibly never been anyone quite so at odds with their intended purpose as the angel, Crawly thought, feeling a surge of sympathy for him that almost overcame the deep amount of pissed off he was feeling.

“I know,” the demon hissed. “Back off a little, will you? I need to finish healing myself.”

“Oh, let me,” the angel said, readying to lay hands on him. “It’s the least I could do –”

“ANGEL!” the demon shouted. “You already nearly discorporated me with your staff. Are you truly going to complete the task now by showering me with angelic grace?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, falling back. “No of course not. What was I thinking?”  He scooted back several yards and let Crawly get to work.

Aziraphale let the king know the next day that he was making a vow of peace to his gods and would no longer be fighting. The king, having heard the grumblings and discontent of some of his men, wisely accepted this. However, the legends of the counselor to the king who could not be defeated in battle lived on for centuries in stories and song.

 3.

“Laser tag?” Aziraphale said doubtfully. “I really don’t think…”

“It’s what Adam wants to do for his birthday,” Pepper said firmly, a look in her eye that could cow even an angel. “And he wants you two to come. If you say no, you’ll be the ones ruining his birthday and I know you don’t want to do that.”

Aziraphale looked helplessly at Crowley, who shrugged.

And so they came to find themselves strapping on sensor vests and being taught how to shoot a distressingly realistic-looking weapon the following Saturday, along with Adam, Brian, Wensleydale, and Pepper, as well as a few other parents who had decided to join the fun.

“Angel, a word,” Crowley said, pulling him aside as they made their final adjustments.

Aziraphale followed him back into the vestibule. “What is it?”

“I just wanted to be sure that we aren’t going to have any problems today.”

The angel frowned. “What do you mean?”  

Crowley fixed him with a look. “Angel, you know how you get.”

“I most certainly do not!” The angel visibly bristled. “What are you referring to?”

“You know,” Crowley said, waving a hand. “Put you in a fight and you get all – Principalitied up. I don’t want you losing control in there because a twelve year old makes your target light up and taking out the entire place in a swath of angelic rage.”

“Oh I really don’t think…”

“Have you forgotten the quarterstaff fight?”

Aziraphale flushed. “My dear, that was over two thousand years ago.”

“Do you remember who it was that taught the Celts to paint themselves blue and scream so loudly as they ran into battle that some of their enemies dropped dead from fright?”

Aziraphale looked both a tiny bit proud of that one and a bit embarrassed. “Yes, I remember that.”

“How about that joust we no longer talk about in Henry’s court? The one where you were supposed to let the favored contender win but you just couldn’t stop yourself?”

Aziraphale looked deeply distressed. “I healed all of them! Immediately!”

“I could go on,” Crowley said. All signs to the contrary, he was not enjoying this conversation, but he needed to be sure the angel wasn’t going to hurt anyone.

“I didn’t go berserk the last time I held a sword, did I?” the angel muttered. “There have been plenty of times I’ve managed just fine.”

Crowley eyed him. “No, you didn’t,” he said. “But these are children, and it’s bad form to demolish the birthday boy at his own party. If I see you losing control, I’m taking you down.”

“Fine!” Aziraphale sighed. “Do what you must. I will be fine.”

He was secretly relieved as he followed Crowley into the arena, though. It was always good to have someone watching your back.

He cocked his weapon as they’d been shown, and surveyed the landscape, already taking in a few key strategic points. As the lights went out, he went into a tactical crouch, and instinctively headed for cover.

Oh, the humans were onto something with this one, he thought. This was going to be fun.

--

“That was WICKED, uncle Aziraphale,” Adam said, breathless, as they sat around later in the afternoon eating overly sugary cake off of paper plates. “You shot EVERYONE! You were like… like a superhero in there!”

Aziraphale blushed and fidgeted with his plate. “I suppose I got a little overenthusiastic,” he mumbled.

Wensleydale jumped in on the other side. “No way, man, you were the high shooter for the entire arena!” he shouted. “How many people were in there today?”

“Thirty five,” Crowley said dryly, from across the table. Aziraphale met his eyes and Crowley shoveled a large scoop of mostly frosting into his mouth and licked the fork clean, never dropping his gaze.

“And you hit thirty one of them,” Pepper said, grinning. “Everyone except us!”

“Yes,” Crowley said acerbically, “how did you manage it, angel?”

“Never mind him,” Adam said. “He’s just mad because you took him out first.”

Aziraphale coughed on his drink. “I truly didn’t mean to,” he said helplessly. “You surprised me, Crowley, when you popped out from behind that column and I just… got overexcited.”

Crowley continued to glare at him while shoveling cake into his mouth. “It takes three shots to knock a player out, angel,” he said. “You shot me seventeen times.”

“With a light beam,” Aziraphale pointed out. It wasn’t like it was bullets, after all.

“Lucky for you.”

“You can be on our team anytime you want, Uncle Z,” Adam said. “And you have to teach me some of your moves. I swear I saw you do a triple roll and come up shooting.”

Aziraphale took another large bite of the terrible cake and tried to block out the conversation. He was never going to hear the end of this from Crowley.

[star-anise]

T1J -  How Patience with People Makes the World Better

Summary: “People don't get "woke" overnight. Sometimes we have to be patient and help them get there.“

Transcript below:

Text on screen: Whenever you actually put together something that works, it’s always complicated. It’s always messy… it’s never what the little Twitter crowd is talking about.”  -Van Jones 

Sometimes it's hard to comprehend other people's ideas. We just can't imagine how and why some people believe the things they do. The correct view is so obvious to us and we either assume that people are just lost and will never change their mind or that we can somehow change their mind and convince them to do a complete mental 180. Both of these are possible, but neither really reflect how most people actually are people are. People are usually hesitant to flat-out admit that they were wrong but we can add nuance to someone's view by offering a different perspective. The problem is that we sometimes think people should naturally understand things in the same way that we do so, we're confused when they aren't very receptive to our ideas. If you're trying to teach your old racist grandma who grew up during Jim Crow about racial microaggressions, it's likely that she's not going to be eye to eye with you. (sarcastically:) Get it together grandma! 

It's possible that it's a lost cause, but maybe you can find an alternate route towards getting her to understand. The fact of the matter is sometimes you have to meet people where they are rather than demanding that they catch up to you. 

Hi, I'm T1J.

Speaking very generally, there are at least two types of social justice advocates on the internet. There are people who work with others to discuss effective solutions to the problems that society faces. And on the other hand there are people who don't seem to be really interested in actually solving problems, and just kind of want to express their frustration and call people out. Now in many ways that frustration is valid and justifiable, but in my opinion you shouldn't expect angry confrontation to lead to very much actual progress. But if you're just here to just sort of yell at people then carry on I guess. But this video isn't really for you. This video is for that first group: people that actually want to find solutions to both societal and personal conflicts. 

I think a lot of us have this delusion that we're gonna convince other people to just suddenly wake up, like they're gonna have a light switch flipped in their brain overnight and come to realize that we were right all along, and then they'll join us on the frontline marching for freedom. And then we have this principled stubbornness where it's like, “Well, if they can't understand that they're wrong then fuck ‘em, the people who are right will win in the end anyway, they'll just have to be on the wrong side of history.”­ And it's true that some people have no interest in being informed or expanding their perspective but it's also true that some people just haven't been engaged properly. And I believe that the world seems to slowly get more progressive over time, but I feel like proper advocacy involves doing our best to make our world a little bit better for this generation, not just future ones, and that's got to involve getting out there and touching people's hearts and minds. But everybody is on a different step in their journey towards enlightenment. Some people need just a little nudge in the right direction while others probably need to be tossed a larger bone. 

I'll toss YOU a larger bone. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

So for example a thing that you often hear is you should respect women because that woman is someone's mother or daughter or wife, etc and this is kind of obnoxious because it's like you should respect women because in addition to being wives and daughters and mothers they're also people and they don't deserve to be mistreated. Like, you shouldn't have to invoke familial relationship to a woman in order to understand why you shouldn't be shitty to them. And that is 100% true but if the goal is getting people to appreciate and respect women and an effective context in which we can convince people to do that is reminding them of their relationships with the women in their own family, I feel like you should take the small victory. Not everyone is going to gain a sophisticated insight overnight. Sometimes we have to let people use training wheels until they catch up and if we create this culture where anything less than perfection causes you to be dismissed and dragged regardless of your intentions, that just seems to be a very good way to alienate potential allies. Which, if your goal is progress is not what you want to be doing. 

A couple months ago there was a viral video on Twitter of this guy who was protesting outside of a Roy Moore rally. By the way, shoutout to my home state of Alabama for not electing that creepy douchebag. But anyway this guy was protesting Roy Moore's homophobic remarks in honor of his gay daughter who had committed suicide. In the video he implies that at one point he didn't accept his daughter's homosexuality. (Man in video:) “I was anti-gay myself. I said bad things to my daughter myself, which I regret.” The video is very moving, in my opinion, and I'm kind of even getting emotional thinking about it, and it got a very positive response. But I did see a bunch of comments talking about how shitty it is that a gay person had to die before they were recognized as legitimate, and I mean, that's a fair point, but first of all: this is a grieving father, like back up for a minute. Secondly this guy has probably lived his whole life in a homophobic environment and it took something tragic to get him to reconsider his views. It's terrible that he had to go through that but he's on the verge of a breakthrough. This is not the time to antagonize him. 

He's probably not going to be marching with rainbow flags anytime soon but he can share his story with his community and help bridge the gap. He could tell his friends to chill out when they're using homophobic slurs or making shitty jokes. He could be a friend to closeted people down at the farm in Wicksburg, Alabama. I don't know if he's gonna do any of these things; I'm just saying he's less likely to if we immediately dogpile him for not being woke enough. 

So here's my thing: I understand that a lot of this is just wacky people on social media being mean just for the sake of doing it. One of the biggest lessons that I've learned is that Twitter doesn't necessarily reflect the actual state of our society and our movement in reality. But I do think that there's a notable segment of activists both on and offline who claim to want progress and change, but seem to be more concerned with dismissing people they deemed to be not on their level than they are with actually trying to help people get there. And like I said, if that's what you want to do, I think that's unfortunate but it's not really my place to tell you not to. I just don't think it does anything. In fact, it's probably actively harmful to the movement. 

And again, some people clearly have no intention of engaging ideas in good faith or considering the possibility that they might be wrong about something, and it's actually important for us to develop the ability to identify when that's happening so we don't waste time arguing with brick walls. The willingness to open ourselves to new ideas is a step that we all have to take on our own. No one can force us to do that. But at the same time we can help people find their way to that door if we're a little more patient and take the time to meet them where they are in their path towards understanding.

Das jus me doe. What do you think? 

Thank you for watching my video. I'm currently selling these Das Just Me Doe wristbands to help me raise money to buy a new computer so that I can edit videos without my old computer almost blowing up. If you'd like to check them out head on over to the the1janitor.com/wristband and I thank you for your support.

[quarterfromcanon]

RE: Heather

Okay, fellow CEG-watching buddies, I’ve got a quick question because I’m torn on how I feel. What was your general response to the subplot with Heather being a surrogate?

So much of that period was passed over by the time jump. Then, by the start of Season 4, she’s already back at work with little to no indication she was ever pregnant within six canonical weeks (actually a little less) from the time of the baby’s birth. We really only get the very beginning of her pregnancy and some tidbits from the last month. Vella was really crushing it in every scene she was given during that time and I did get some solid laughs from that, but I’ve got so many issues and questions that I don’t feel like I’d say I’m 100% *happy* it happened. 

Some things I found myself considering during this round of viewing:

1. Where were Mr. and Mrs. Davis during all this time? I know we haven’t really heard from them or seen them since the scene following the Miss Douche competition, but it seems unlikely they would in no way be present or involved when their only child is pregnant. Even though Heather did express being glad to get away from them and have her own place, I didn’t get the sense that was supposed to mean she would henceforth cut them out of her life. Plus they are both at her wedding in Season 4, so we know there’s still some contact there.

2. Did Darryl spend a lot of time talking/singing to her belly? I read that’s encouraged with surrogacy to help the baby transition after birth. This one isn’t a concern or anything, I just feel denied a delightful viewing experience. I’m sure Heather’s running commentary and facial expressions while Darryl tried to get Hebecca familiar with the sound of his voice would’ve been PURE GOLD. (P.S. - I am similarly sad we didn’t get to see her while the baby shower guests whispered intentions into eggs. Considering how irritable she was already feeling that day, her tolerance for this activity would’ve been basically nonexistent.)

3. I have largely positive feelings toward Hector during this period, which is saying something since I have dug my heels in about that relationship every step of the way. He was mostly pretty decent about everything. 

HOWEVER 

(A) I cannot stand the “for once in your life you can’t quit” exchange. As of this scene, there have already been two significant times since we’ve known her that Heather made the choice not to quit something because it mattered to her. The first was when she wouldn’t let her failed relationship with Greg prompt her to quit the job at Home Base. That was in Season 1 Episode 14. She made that decision on her own. The second time was when she refused to let the stuffy corporate atmosphere at the training program drive her away from trying to make a difference. She stood her ground, declared what she wanted, got a new program created for her on the spot, and became a regional manager. That was in Season 3 Episode 10. I’ll grant you, she tried talking out her thoughts with a couple of different people while she grappled with this one, but nobody’s dialogue seemed like a real catalyst for her. No one said something that gave her the “light bulb” moment where the solution clicked into place. She found the answer on her own. The kicker is that both of those moments were key life events for the character, and they played an interlinked role in Heather being financially and emotionally ready to invite Hector to live with her. Yet here he sits giving her this supposedly motivational speech about not quitting. She was clearly just having a hard time dealing with the reality of her situation. Heather got freaked out and panicked for a little while, which is perfectly understandable. I can’t help feeling like they sort of realized, “Oh, Heather being his girlfriend is benefiting Hector in numerous ways, but we haven’t really seen him do anything significant to help her other than support choices she was already making.” Which, uh, yeah. That is correct. But the speech didn’t fix that. This just sounds like he’s minimizing her growth and casting aspersions on her strength of will. He’s immediately guilt-tripping her when the threat of quitting wasn’t even real. It’s no wonder this is when she starts to cry. While I get what they were trying to do here, all I do is leave this scene feeling mad.

(B) There’s a similar problem with the final doctor’s appointment scene where the majority of the friend group is in attendance. Everyone goes around introducing themselves and Hector says he’s the boyfriend who is “surprisingly cool” with this whole situation. Yet another time I feel like I’m being *told* why Hector is a good boyfriend and I should be supportive of this pairing, rather than me actually being made to believe it. I’m not arguing against the fact that he has indeed been cool. It’s just that this little meta bit which is supposed to make audience members nod and go, “Yeah, he really is” turns out to be Not A Good Look once you consider that this is supposed to be something he’s legitimately saying not just to us but to the characters in the room. It comes across as passive aggressive, like he’s fishing for brownie points and getting in a quick verbal jab regarding the fact that he was not consulted first. This instance is the same as the first in that I know how I’m feeling about everything is the opposite of the intention, but it still rubs me the wrong way.

[Quick tangent/side note: I also disagree with the oversimplification of why Valencia has started recording things on camera, but that’s a lengthy train of thought for another time.]

4. It really bothers me how much of this subplot is just flat-out not about Heather at all. The only pseudo-character development-esque element to be found here is that Heather comes to lament her capricious nature and the huge life decisions she tends to make on a dime. If that were leading somewhere, like to her acknowledging that spontaneity has its charms but shouldn’t be given the power to shape her life in such serious ways, that’d be something. But it doesn’t. This is an isolated incident of her saying, “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever decided.” When she is presented with another big decision the following season - marrying Hector - she makes that leap with similarly little introspection. Don’t get me wrong; I like that Heather isn’t phased by what others will think or the possibility that someone might say she was overhasty. It just doesn’t feel right that her call to volunteer as surrogate was almost exclusively about Darryl even though it’s her body going through all this, and then her call to marry Hector was about him obtaining insurance and then him wanting a traditional ceremony. We saw Hector receive his tux. We didn’t see Heather choose her dress. I feel a little guilty being as frustrated by these things as I am because it isn’t that Darryl and Hector shouldn’t get to have these feelings and experiences that mean so much to them -- that isn’t the problem -- I just rue the fact that Heather’s interiority is being sacrificed/left unexplored in favor of putting the focus on that.

(5) Like I briefly touched on near the top of this post, I’m really vexed by the fact that Heather appears to have simply gone back to life as she knew it right after she got home. According to the timeline we are given in dialogue at the start of Season 4, it is less than six weeks after she was in the hospital. Yet she is already back at work and appears to have returned to the way she looked prior to insemination. Even though she is not the individual raising the child, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still a lot of things happening to her body/her hormones/her mood in the wake of the birth. It was made clear that they wanted to write the little bit of her pregnancy we saw and the scenes in the delivery room as more true-to-life than we are accustomed to being shown on TV, so it feels like the aftermath ought to be treated with similar care and attention to detail. 

(6) Because we weren’t going to be spending a whole lot of screen time with Heather during pregnancy or post, and because we weren’t going to be exploring how the experience affected her mentally/emotionally outside of comedic mood swings, it just feels like it didn’t have to be her? There was no real reason we couldn’t have stuck with the surrogate who fell through right before she volunteered. From a writing standpoint, I mean. Very little would’ve changed if the unnamed surrogate had worked out, except that Heather wouldn’t really have any other way of tying into this plot (i.e. the way Paula was advice giver and two time mother, Rebecca was egg donor, and Valencia was meant to record proceedings). It ultimately feels like the main appeal of having the surrogate be Heather was to throw all the emotions at someone who usually stays on an even keel. I’m just really resistant to the idea of having her go through all this predominantly for comedic effect. 

Anyway, since I wasn’t in the online fandom yet when this episode originally aired, I don’t know if I’m late to the Heather-centric fuming party on this one. I basically just wanted to get a feel for where other people land on this narrative choice, in retrospect. So, to the kind souls who’ve read all the way to this point (for which I sincerely thank you because, good gracious, this was a lot): 

What are your thoughts?

[master-sass-blast]

Strong as Stone Part Six, First Half

Another two part-er! I’m sorry for having to chunk things out, but last week’s update was almost 10k words, post editing, and I don’t want to repeat that for this one.

Last time, we traveled with Okoye to the Jabari lands. Unfortunately, it was not for a relaxing, mildly sexy vacation with our favorite Gorilla Chief. M’Baku’s and Dewani’s grandmother --Olufemi--was dying; M’Baku called T’Challa to request that Shuri come to help Dewani through the difficult transition, and asked that Okoye come as well.

We also got to meet F’Tendi, the asshole uncle and “wasp” in the garden. He was hellbent on making things difficult, but --fortunately--Okoye, M’Baku, and Shuri were there to stop him.

To add to the two days of tragedy, T’Challa got news before leaving the Jabari lands that the UN had issued a new edict: Wakanda has fifteen days to prepare for an inspection envoy, or risks military repercussions. M’Baku and Dewani went back to Birnin Zana to help with the preparations for the worst case scenario, and Okoye started calling on her fellow warriors to help Wakanda prepare for the oncoming chaos.

Poor Okoye. She really needs a nap.

And, in Part Seven, she will have one. For now, not so much.

Rating: Back down to T for Teen! We have left the super heavy stuff behind (for now).

Warnings: Exasperation over politics, lots of stress, talk of nuclear warfare, the joys of dealing with the UN, swearing, and fluffy angst (flangst, for short).

Pairings: Okoye x M’Baku, Shuri x OC, and background T’Challa x Nakia.

This is also going up on my Ao3 account: Actual_Writing_Trashcan

@the-last-hair-bender

(FYI, let me know if you want to be tagged in my Tumblr updates.)

Without further ado, on to the story!

There will be times, regardless of how hard you try, that the current of life will pick you up from the river bed and sweep you downstream.

When that happens, you must stay calm. Keep your eyes in front of you, open and watching for obstacles that the current may try to smash you against. Sidestep the obstacles that you can, and focus on moving forward.

Keep faith, even in the chaos. Eventually, the current will slow, and you will be deposited on the riverbed once more, stronger and wiser for it.

Be careful, though, to only let the river move you, not own you.

What the river takes, it never gives back.

T minus 13 days.

Outwardly, she was placid. Her expression was smooth and even. Her breathing was calm and measured. Her posture was immaculate and appropriate for the setting. Nothing betrayed what she felt on the inside.

Which, considering that she felt like screaming and sprinting through the palace halls to burn off her stress, was probably a good thing.

Okoye sat with a practiced casualness as the Council debated how to handle the edict from the United Nations.

The weight of the demand had wiped away an old tensions and rivalries. The leaders’ faces were puckered with stress, and they spoke with tense, carefully modulated voices, but no frustrations past that leaked through the careful seal of anxiety.

It was as though the situation had surpassed the normal arguing and screaming they fell into and had deposited them into a sort of calm panic.

Personally, Okoye would’ve taken the screaming any day of the week.

“I admit, my King, the thought of nuclear warfare is... unsettling,” the leader of the Mining tribe said. “Even though Wakanda would be able to survive, the stress of the event would not be beneficial for her people or the surrounding area. If it comes to such an end, we ought to find a way to disarm the warheads before they touchdown here.”

The River tribe leader nodded. “I agree. We certainly cannot allow a group of colonizing outsiders into Wakanda, and we cannot permit devastation on the world outside our borders because they seek to punish us for acting within our rights. We must be proactive.”

“My sister is working on a way to disarm the warheads before they reach us, but I can’t guarantee that she’ll have them ready in such a short amount of time,” T’Challa said. “If push comes to shove, we’ll have to cleanse the surrounding area with our radiation filters and replant whatever is lost.”

Okoye watched as quiet displeasure rippled through the Council, then cleared her throat. “My king, would it not be possible to head off the UN through diplomatic means?”

T’Challa raised an eyebrow. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“The United Nations has no legitimate grounds to enforce a search of our weapons, even with the actions of Killmonger,” Okoye explained. “It might be possible to make an appeal to them. Once confronted with their lack of forethought and grounds for action, the motion would likely crumble.”

T’Challa quirked his mouth to the side as he mulled the idea over. “We would have to move quickly. We only have thirteen days to make a move. We’d need enough time to get the emergency meeting in order, plus time to travel.”

“Call the meeting, then” Okoye suggested. “Get the ball moving. In the meantime, Wakanda will prepare for the worst possible outcome. If the appeal falls through or can’t be made, we will be ready for whatever the outside world throws at us.”

When T’Challa hesitated, Nakia placed her hand on his. “It’s worth a shot.”

T’Challa sighed heavily, and nodded. “I’ll contact the leaders of the Security Council.”

“I’m surprised. You actually advocated for a diplomatic solution.”

Okoye smiled as she walked next to M’Baku. “I like to lead a balanced life.”

She was headed to Shuri’s lab to assess how she needed to task her women and the other tribes for the impending nuclear threat. Okoye suspected that M’Baku had tagged along to spend time with her. Normally, the Jabari Chief avoided the Princess’s lab at all costs.

Well, she wasn’t complaining at the company.

“Fair enough, but I still expected you to advocate for your spear, seeing as we need a fast solution.”

“Let’s call that Plan C,” Okoye said as they descended into the laboratory.

Shuri’s lab was a maelstrom of energy. Scientists darted back and forth, running simulations and checking equations. A holographic display of Wakanda’s external shield system hovered in the center of the lab, along with several lines of data that showed reach, strength, and the efficacy of the radiation absorption layer. Shuri was standing in front of the display, making the images whirl and shift with her hands and barking out orders to her team.

Dewani stood next to her, a stark contrast in her traditional Jabari clothes, seemingly unfazed by the chaos and tension around her.

Okoye bowed slightly as she stopped a couple feet away from Shuri. “Princess. How’s everything looking?”

“Not good,” Shuri muttered as she plugged scenario after scenario into her computers. “We might have more work to do than is possible in just under two weeks.”

“Never say die,” Dewani said as she rubbed her hand up and down Shuri’s back. “We’ll make it work.”

“There’s never saying die, and then there’s statistical improbability.”

“What do we need to do?” Okoye asked before the girls could get off track.

“Well, we need to place a set of filters in the Southern and Northern areas where the river falls outside of Wakanda. I don’t want to risk radiation entering through the water.”

Okoye frowned. “Shouldn’t the absorption layer handle all of that?”

“I’m not taking any chances. The absorption layer should be able to handle whatever the outside world could throw at us, but we should prepare the fallout shelters, just in case. They haven’t been updated in a couple of decades, though.”

Okoye nodded. “There’s five fallout shelters in each tribal city. It shouldn’t take long to upgrade them.”

“We’re also calling our War Dogs home, just in case there’s any retribution outside of what’s directly aimed at Wakanda. Some of them can’t be extracted until after the response date, so we’ll need our filters ready to clean up the fallout radius so they don’t suffer any adverse effects before they get inside our borders.” Shuri’s mouth pulled into a deep grimace. “There’s also one last problem: the Jabari.”

M’Baku raised an eyebrow. “What about us?”

“You aren’t contained by our shield system, and you don’t have any generators in your territory. I know that you disagree with our technology--”

“I think, considering the dire circumstances, we can bend our rules to allow the installation of the necessary generators. Send your people up as soon as you can.”

Dewani let out a groan. “Really? You’re capitulating that easily?”

“This is an emergency, Dewani. Hanuman will understand.”

“I know, but I had this amazing speech planned to persuade you if you hesitated! I had a three point analogy about how our uncle and the staunchest vestiges of traditionalism could go fuck themselves on a radioactive dildo! It was very poignant!”

Shuri clapped a hand over her mouth and braced herself against a nearby counter, shoulders relaxing as she shook with barely stifled laughter.

M’Baku glanced at Shuri, then shot Dewani a mildly admonishing look. “You’ll have to save it for another date.”

Dewani rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because we’ll definitely be facing another potential apocalypse in the near future.”

“Don’t jinx us,” Okoye said with mock sternness. “The universe has a way of making things happen.” She bit back a sigh as she looked up at the display, and started running things through in her head.

Installing the filters will take twenty-four hours, max. Retrofitting the fallout shelters will take about six days. Installing the generators in the Jabari lands will take three days, if we work around the clock. Settling the War Dogs will take as long as we have, and getting the filters up and running will take five days. If we start everything at the same time...

Okoye grimaced.

Because it wasn’t just preparing for round after round of radiation.

It was also prepping her women and the Border tribe foot soldiers for the tactics commonly used by the outside world and UN Peacekeepers, should it turn to a ground based assault.

It was directing the regular resource of soldiers on how to maintain order during a nuclear attack.

It was making a set of good-byes, in case things really went pear-shaped.

And, if the King manages to arrange an emergency meeting with the Security Council officials, my time to get things running will be cut in half.

Okoye straightened her shoulders and bowed to the Princess before walking out of the lab.

Nothing would be accomplished by standing and worrying about what may or may not be.

Bast, be with us.

T Minus 10 Days

Cold wind nipped at her nose, and snow stuck in small, wispy flakes to the fake fur border around her hood.

Okoye had volunteered to accompany M’Baku back to the Jabari lands to oversee the installation of the three shield generators --and the accompanying radiation absorption modules.

Shuri had still been neck deep in overseeing upgrades and testings for the filtering bots, which meant that the Princess couldn’t oversee the installation herself. Likewise, her scientists were also scrambling to make sure everything was ready for the potential nuclear fallout.

T’Challa was also unreachable, wading through the political waters with Nakia and Ramonda in a desperate attempt to arrange a meeting with the United Nations to stave off the investigation.

Which meant that Okoye was next on the list. 

She stifled a yawn with her gloved hand. At least I have a warm coat and gloves this time.

The final generator and module was almost done being installed, by Bast’s mercy. Within the hour, she would be on a ship headed back to the warmth of Birnin Zana.

M’Baku’s large hand came down on her shoulder, squeezing her through her thick coat. “How can you stand to wear one of these? You can hardly move.”

“It comes off easy if I need to fight,” Okoye said as she stifled another gaping yawn.

“Yes, and then you would freeze to death.”

Okoye rolled her eyes tiredly. “I would not freeze to death.”

M’Baku rolled the fake fur between his fingers, disdain evident on his face. “I’ll have some proper coverings made for you for your next visit up here.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“No, I don’t. I’m doing it because I want to.” M’Baku frowned down at her. “Are you alright?”

Okoye nodded as she hid another yawn behind her hand. “I’m fine.”

“You look like death warmed over.”

“How flattering.” Okoye yawned again. “I’m just tired.”

“General,” one of the workers called. “We’re done here. Everything’s integrated and ready to go.”

Okoye nodded. “Notify the Princess immediately so she can run her tests. I need to head back to the capital.”

M’Baku followed after her. “They won’t really launch their weapons at us, will they? I mean, surely, they must know that anything they could throw at us will be like a gnat swatting horse, right?”

Okoye unzipped her coat as she stepped onto the ship. “Colonizers are a fickle bunch. I wouldn’t put anything past them.” As the ship lifted off the ground, her kimoyo beads started beeping.

T’Challa’s tired face smiled up at her. “I managed to arrange a meeting between the Security Council and us. I’ll fill you in when you get back.”

“Excellent. The last generator and module are online in the Jabari lands. The whole of Wakanda is protected.”

“Good. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

Okoye bowed. “My King.”

M’Baku nudged her towards a seat. “You should rest.”

“I can take care of myself, M’Baku.”

“I don’t doubt it, but that doesn’t change the fact that you need to rest. You look like you’re about to fall asleep standing up.”

Okoye barely kept herself upright as a wave of exhaustion crashed over her.

First the festival, then Olufemi’s death, and now this?

“Forget a nap,” Okoye muttered. “What I need is a vacation.”

M’Baku wrapped his arms around her and held her against his chest. “Rest for a bit, my love. I’ll wake you up if anything exciting happens.”

Okoye wanted to retort, but she was quickly swept away by a dizzy, swirling sensation as her eyelids fluttered shut.

The last thing she remembered was her coat falling off her shoulders.

“Okoye. Wake up.”

Okoye’s eyes snapped open.

She was pressed against M’Baku’s shoulder, half-sprawled across two seats. Her jacket was draped over her legs in a pseudo-blanket.

Okoye groaned, pushed herself into a sitting position, and stretched her neck. “Where are we? What time is it?”

“We’re back at the palace. It’s mid-evening.” M’Baku brushed his thumb against her cheek.

“We should go. The King is waiting for us.” She stood and tried to force the sleep out of her brain as she descended onto the landing platform.

“General.” One of the many palace assistants scurried towards her. “The King is waiting for you in the main conference room. Is there anything I can get for you?”

“Yes,” Okoye muttered as she tried to shake the fog that was coating her mind. “Coffee, black, two shots of espresso.”

And a week’s sleep, if you can spare it.

“I’m still not sure what the point of a meeting is if these colonizers won’t even listen to us!”

Okoye watched for her seat as Shuri paced around the room, making agitated gestures with her hands and arms. How can she still have so much energy?

“I’m afraid I have to agree with the Princess,” M’Baku said from his seat next to her. “Wouldn’t our time be better spent in preparing Wakanda for war? By your own admission, the outside world isn’t fond to listening to people like us.”

T’Challa shook his head from his position at the head of the table. “Perhaps, under normal circumstances, but I think we’ve happened upon a strategy that will guarantee our victory... which brings me to a request of you, Chief M’Baku...”

M’Baku raised an eyebrow. “Careful, my King, or you’ll end up owing me a lifetime of favors.”

“I think preventing the subjection of Wakanda into war with the outside world is sufficient enough compensation for whatever one of your favors might cost.”

M’Baku shrugged. “Fair enough. What is it this time?”

T’Challa smiled. “I need to borrow your sister.”

Okoye tensed as M’Baku’s mood went from amiable to stony within seconds. Please don’t start a fight, not now.

“You want to take my sister��to the colonized world? When they have threatened to attack us?”

“T’Challa and I have come up with a really good strategy to handle the Security Council, but it takes both of us to execute it,” Dewani said. “I have to go!”

M’Baku shot his sister an unimpressed look. “You’re on a first-name basis with the King?”

Dewani shrugged. “Hey, he’s going to be my brother-in-law someday. Why over formalize things?”

Shuri let out a surprised laugh. “Brother-in-law? What, you’re planning on marrying me?”

“Hey, you’re nuts if you think I’m letting someone as amazing as you get away.”

Okoye watched M’Baku soften as the two girls traded gentle smiles.

He sighed deeply, then rubbed his temples. “Fine. But I have conditions.”

“Name them,” T’Challa said.

“One: you will have a full security team accompany you. Non-negotiable.”

T’Challa nodded. “General Okoye, along with several other members of the Dora Milaje, will be joining us.”

M’Baku relaxed slightly. “Two: I’m coming with to make sure my sister stays safe. That’s not optional, either.”

“Very well. We’ll make sure you have what you need before we leave.”

“Three.” M’Baku pointed at Dewani. “You will do exactly as General Okoye and the King tell you. No arguing, no exceptions. Am I clear?”

Dewani nodded. “Totally.”

“Four.” M’Baku pointed at T’Challa again. “If this goes well, no Council meetings for a few weeks. I’ve had enough of scrambling between my people and yours for a while.”

T’Challa sighed, then nodded reluctantly. “Provided that the world doesn’t fall apart again, I think that can be arranged.”

“The world can damn well wait. I’m tired of the heat down here.”

T’Challa expression briefly twisted into something akin to annoyance, but smoothed back out into a practiced calm. “Is there anything else?”

“No.” M’Baku stood. “And I’m going to bed. I’m exhausted.”

T’Challa opened his mouth to argue, but stopped when he caught sight of Shuri yawning. “We could all use some rest before our trip.”

Okoye watched as M’Baku left the conference room, trailed closely by Dewani and Shuri. “I’m surprised that he didn’t put up more of a fight.”

T’Challa sighed as he sank back in his chair. “I think Dewani had that marriage comment planned before she got in here.”

Okoye raised an eyebrow. “You think she didn’t mean it?”

“No, I know she meant it. I also know that she’s remarkably adept at getting her brother to act more agreeably.”

Okoye shrugged. “Given the circumstances, I’m not complaining.”

“Neither am I.” T’Challa rubbed his hands over his face. “One week. I’d just like one week without some sort of event to plan for or disaster to avoid. One week.”

You and me both, Okoye thought. Speaking of which... “My King, if I could make a request?”

T’Challa raised an eyebrow at her, then nodded.

“Once this is all sudden done, I’d like a vacation.”

T’Challa laughed tiredly. “I think we all want a vacation, Okoye. Rest assured, if we can defuse the situation, you’ll have your time off.”

Thank Bast. Okoye stood, bowed, and began the long walk back to her quarters. Once she was there, she fully intended on collapsing into her bed and sleeping until she absolutely had to be up.

She’d need all the sleep she could get. In three short days, she’d be flying to London.

Bast, help us to end all this.

[lokgifsandmusings]

Definitive Ranking of Book 1 Episodes, #9/12

9. 1x06 And The Winner Is...

It’s the probending finals! That’s it. That’s literally it.

As I go through these metas, I’m constantly rethinking my rankings since the issues seem to crystallize. For instance, though I might have enjoyed “Skeletons in the Closet” over something like “A Leaf in the Wind” due to personal taste, my “Endgame” essay made it clear that many of the structural and thematic problems of the season were tied to the last few episodes. For that reason, I kind of expected “Turning the Tide” to be next, since it’s the episode where (by my own account) the ‘wheels came off’ the narrative.

There *is* a lot to tackle there, but “And The Winner Is...” was right next to it on my first pass-through list, and I simply couldn’t think of a way in which it’s better.

The best that can be said about 1x06 is that it’s not bad. It’s really not. It hedges on “fine” territory for most of the episode. At the same time, it’s unthinkable that this is *all* that happens in a full episode. We’ve had utterly *packed* 22 minutes before, like “Enemy At The Gates”. Here, it’s basically two things:

There’s a championship match & some team prep

Amon attacks after the match

Hell this could have easily been combined into one bullet point if I had been trying.

It’s not that focused episodes are necessarily a bad thing, either. “Operation Beifong” is easily one of my favorites, and that B-plot may as well not exist. But the main issue is that the driving tension of this episode, at least until the terrorist attack, is a rivalry match that was established the episode prior. And consisted entirely of one mean remark on the part of Tahno that was also vaguely suggestive. Like, I’m sorry to hear Bolin and Mako lost to them off-screen in the past, but Tahno literally had four lines that was just sort of, “You are losers.” Was anyone super gripped by this?

This is especially an issue given that it followed the episode of probending saturation. Again, probending is a successful tool to showcase Korra’s development in teamwork (remember her extreme isolation in the South Pole), and to also show what type of Avatar she is and what her mark is: she reconciles the old tried-and-true into the modern era with her own spin on it (airbending applied to pro sports). However, that use was kind of drained after “A Leaf in the Wind.” All we’re left with is watching yet another match, and worse still, this one is presented as if we should be really hanging on to find out the outcome.

Look, Tahno seems like an asshole. We also are primed on a cultural level to root for the underdogs by default, and of course we’d rather the team with the people we know and like at this point be the victors. It’s *fine*, but forgive me for not being invested. I do think Amon’s attack at the stadium was an effective venue, though for the life of me, I fail to see why it couldn’t have come at the end of 1x05. We didn’t need Amon’s warning, and I actually think a surprise would have been even better (and made more sense; but I’ll get to that). Plus, that would solve a lot of the issue of 1x05’s pacing. We didn’t need 3 random matches just like we didn’t need continual love triangle idiocy. “Let’s be friends” could have been easily established before the final match against Tahno, and then the episode would end with chaos erupting.

I’m dangerously close to fix-it fic, and I realize that. But I just don’t see this episode justifying itself as is. What is the value of having Tarrlok, Lin, and Tenzin debate how to handle an attack that was always going to happen? I mean, I’m usually all for this kind of granular detail, but there was no incentive or reward for the audience agreeing with anyone in it. Other than that, we had Korra and the Ferrets attacking pictures of Tahno and a match where the Wolfbats cheat (which wouldn’t have been hard to establish in half the time), before the attack itself.

For an episode that was supposed to set the tone of the rest of the season, it felt very much like spinning-wheels.

Alright, now the logical issues. Tarrlok, Lin, and Tenzin know this terrorist threat is there. The whole Council is united in closing down the arena (and are unmoved by Korra, Bolin, and Mako arguing for it to stay open because...they want it to) until Lin runs in and says they need to show city-wide strength and unity against the Equalists. This is a decent point, especially because it’s still unclear what percentage of nonbenders even support this cause. There’s no real debate that ensues, however, even though these are rather relevant topics to address.

Tarrlok agrees to this as long as Lin is the one to personally ensure responsibility for everyone’s safety. Which is just...this doesn’t make sense. It’s still the Council’s decision to go through with it, and it also seems bizarre that the only thing fueling Tarrlok’s decision was personal risk. He is legitimately committed to stopping the Equalists, and there’s no reason why the presence of police would alter his calculus about keeping the arena open very much. Plus, is he elected? What is his biggest fear, here?

The weirdest part to me, though, is why *wouldn’t* Lin’s police force already be assumed as protection? In fact, shouldn’t she have been in on this conversation from the get-go, since it’s literally about security, and even just Amon threatening to attack the place would trigger a very serious response on the part of the police department?

Maybe these are nitpicks, or maybe I’m just frustrated by the fact that Amon could have easily been stopped if they just positioned metalbenders and the entrance and searched everyone. I guess in fairness the gloves were new technology, and they were just assuming otherwise unarmed chiblockers would show up. But the Equalists Korra fought in 1x03 undercuts this assumption quite significantly since they were already using gas canisters and other sorts of weaponry. Hell, Bolin and Mako even dealt with a guy who had those shocker-sticks, which I have to assume they would have mentioned to someone. Since, you know, the people keeping Republic City safe are running around in metal suits?

I think the crux of it, at least for me, is that in our current world, if you’re going to show us the “governmental response” to a threatened terrorist attack, it deserves to be handled in a way that 1) makes sense and 2) actually tries to grapple with the balance of showing resilience/unity versus safety and the risks associated with both. I’m just not sure LoK was ever really the show that should have tried to handle this, and certainly not when our protagonist is arguing one side on the basis of her wanting to participate in a sporting event.

Which again, but a surprise attack could have resolved this issue.

There’s also a more general problem here, and that’s the Equalists and their very, very undefined support. We’re supposed to assume the majority of nonbenders are *not* Equalists, or at least, that’s what 1x08 implied with the police force inflicting harm (or almost doing so) on a vulnerable population. We see that Amon’s rallies are popular and people were generally supportive of vigilante justice being doled out against corrupt gang members (again, debending can kind of be thought of as disarmament, at least before Amon’s “cleansed of impurity” quasi-genocidal speech begins), but there’s a large difference between that and willingly hiding a glove in a bucket of popcorn and attacking the police with it.

We could think that most nonbenders do want *something* done about the inequality and the way benders are able to extort (also their taxation without representation, I guess), but is *this* really the message that’s going to get people on-board:

“Good morning, citizens of Republic City. This is Amon. I hope you all enjoyed last night's pro-bending match, because it will be the last. It's time for this city to stop worshiping bending athletes as if they were heroes. I am calling on the council to shut down the bending arena and cancel the finals, or else there will be severe consequences.”

If anything, this is the kind of shit that would bring people together to say “fuck those guys.” Amon was able to spin the Wolfbat’s win into some commentary that was probably relatively resonant, but again, it’s the premeditated nature of this that seems utterly unstrategic. Had the Council shut it down...where does he make his speech about taking Gotham back from the corrupt?

Actually, speaking of Bane, remember that time he interrupted a major sporting event? And told everyone to “Take control of your city. This...this is the instrument of your liberation! ...We come here not as conquerors, but as liberators, to return control of this city to the people.” And a big part of that working was the ELEMENT OF SURPRISE? And the fact that it was well-attended because people weren’t scared shitless? And the cops were on a false trail instead of having been given a heads up about an attack?

I don’t even know what point I’m making anymore. That Amon is a failed Bane? (Who’s really more like comic!Ra’s al Ghul, according to Griffin.) That Nolan pulled off this concept better than Bryke, though 1x06 aired like two months beforehand?

Really, what it boils down to is that it bothers me when it feels like things ~just happen~ to advance the plot. Amon’s threat was seeded before this episode, and an attack makes sense and ups the stakes. But the open Equalist revolution announcement shouldn’t have to rely on the idiocy of everyone else. Also, in 1x04 it was “too early” to take Korra’s bending since she’d be a martyr. But now two episodes later, probending athletes are a suitable target? Sure they cheated, but these aren’t exactly crime bosses or even someone like Tarrlok. They’re not martyrs? They had fans. Finding out Lance Armstrong had been juicing was really upsetting, but I doubt we’d be cheering at someone breaking his legs (and his off-race behavior makes Tahno look like a cinnamon roll).

Yes, probending represents the worshipping of a privilege. But that is a full stadium, no matter how you slice it.

Really, if we had any idea of the support the Equalists enjoyed, or perhaps a deeper look at the plight of the nonbender past phonograph destruction, I think this could have landed. That’s perhaps where the creative energy needed to go in the episode immediately preceding it, rather than romance, especially since the Bolin leg of the love trapezoid was not needed in any way. (Frankly neither was Asami as a device to hook up Makorra in the first place.) But without it, it just comes across as a little bit of an ass-pull. This is especially the case when the Wolfbats’ cheating wasn’t even hinted at before their match. Wouldn’t Bolin have known this and mentioned it to Korra?

That said, there are nice things about this episode, and I think this is where this book’s definitive rankings turn a corner. Because truly, I feel bad having almost nothing nice to say about the 3 previous episodes I’ve dug into.

For one, I love anything Linzin. I’m like, “oh yeah, you wreck that home, Lin!”, but they do give me significant feels, and I think it’s fantastic how they’re scripted. There’s obvious affection there, as well as hurt, and this kind of deeply-rooted inability to communicate entirely honestly. Lin’s “Like old times?” actually makes me make disgusting noises at my computer. Especially since she immediately walks it back. Remember how they probably dated for like a decade and a half?

STAHP IT!!

I think it’s kind of funny that Lin is accidentally an abysmal chief of police in the narrative. Like I said, stopping and searching everyone would have been the way to go, unless that happened and the popcorn was somehow overlooked. Still, her confidence and old tried-and-true methods did help frame the uprising in an effective way.

That’s the other thing: even with Amon’s announcing of it, the Equalists revealing themselves was awesome. The slow-motion worked effectively, along with Korra’s hazy vision, and the way that there were Equalists hiding in plain-sight within the audience. Their ascent to the airships was a little silly as a conclusion, but otherwise Amon’s message and the reveal of the electric glove worked well. Though one odd thing was that in absence of distributing these (I guess they didn’t want them to fall into bender hands?), it felt a little salespitchy. “And you too can ensure equality for only 9 yuans!”

(x)

The rooftop fight was a wonderful conclusion, especially since the episode ended on the somber note, with a pulled out shot of the destruction. Lin is the perfect action hero, and this also showcased Korra’s prowess, without completely breaking the narrative. She threw herself into the fight without thinking much, and ended up needing rescue, though not before reminding us of her amazing physicality.

The conclusion was good, it was just the path getting there was not particularly engaging. Which interestingly is the complete opposite of Book 1 as a whole. Still, it was the halfway chapter needed, and the surprise Equalist uprising in the stadium is iconic enough to be ripped off. If only the follow-through had been there.

#12 1x12 “Endgame”

#11 1x05 “The Spirit of Competition"

#10 1x11 “Skeletons in the Closet”

1x06 photo recap found here

Book 2 ranking/essays found here

Book 4 ranking/essays found here

[wineanddinosaur]

VinePair Podcast: The Dirty Truth About ‘Clean’ Wine

Recently, Cameron Diaz launched a new wine brand called Avaline, marketed as a “clean wine.” While the term didn’t originate with Diaz or her brand, Avaline has shone a major spotlight on the phrase — and caused an uproar among wine professionals, many of whom believe that the terminology is misleading.

In fact, there’s no legal or agreed-upon meaning for the term. No governmental, trade, or private organization that certifies or verifies “clean” claims. Many wine professionals have said that brands labelling their wine as “clean” are trading on customer misinformation around wine ingredients and processes as their currency, creating a false dichotomy between “clean” and “dirty” wines. This growing trend piggybacks on the existing “clean eating” trend, which holds an equally opaque meaning. On this week’s episode of the VinePair Podcast, Adam Teeter, Erica Duecy, and Zach Geballe unpack the term, explaining why it is so often exploited, and offering advice on how to avoid being fooled by marketing gimmickry.

Listen Online

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Spotify

Or Check Out Our Conversation Here

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Connecticut, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in Seattle Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the VinePair Podcast. Guys, it’s late July, which is weird.

Z: Oh my god.

E: Very weird.

Z: How is it that time is going both incredibly slow and incredibly fast? It’s bizarre. It always feels that way a little bit, but man, this year has been so weird.

A: It has been. When I realized it was late July, last night I said to Naomi, “Oh my gosh! We’ve been in quarantine for a year.” And it’s been four months. Wow, these four months have felt super long like you said, but also, everything has felt quick. How are we already at the end of July? We just had July 4th. It’s really weird.

E: Yeah, and with two kids, it’s like “Lord of the Flies” all of the time.

A: I can only imagine.

E: It just keeps getting worse.

A: Are you on the edge of your seat wondering what’s going to happen with school in the fall?

E: Oh yeah.

A: Have they already made a decision?

E: No, they’ve made no decision. We’re not going to know for a couple of weeks. It’s crazy. At this point, the kids are just running around the yard in tatters, playing in a pond, covering themselves with mud. I don’t even know where they are right now.

A: So it really is “Lord of the Flies.”

E: It really is. They paint themselves with mud. They’re way out there these days.

Z: There’s got to be a local farm you could get a pig skull from if you really wanted.

E: That’s next.

A: So ridiculous. We’ve all gotten so used to this, and also not at all. It’s such a nuts time to begin doing anything in this world, especially in this country.

Z: I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in a country that had handled this thing reasonably well. You could actually be thinking about a normal fall.

E: Right.

Z: It’s hard to believe.

A: I had a call earlier today with some people who have a well-known spirits brand here in the U.S. but it’s also huge in Asia. I was talking to them and they discussed that in Asia, coworkers are back to normal in the office and wearing masks. But they have a different attitude where they all protect each other. Here we say, “A mask? Eh. I don’t want to smell my breath.” That’s our attitude in this country. It would be interesting to see what it’s like being in a country that handled it well.

E: We should talk to someone from New Zealand or Australia, some restaurants or wineries, to hear what it’s like on the other side.

A: Even in Italy. They’re very much back to normal. Not to say it’s totally normal, but a lot of people are taking legitimate summer vacations and eating out a lot more. A lot of the businesses are back in their offices. Everyone’s wearing masks. That’s the one thing that everyone has to do, and it’s the one thing that here, we just won’t do. That makes it frustrating. It actually is that simple. Get the cases down, and wear this thing on your face. No one likes to wear it. It’s not comfortable.

Z: I would like to interject. My two-year-old really likes to wear his mask. He wants to keep it on.

A: I could see how kids like it. It’s kind of like a costume. It’s a little bit of a superhero feeling. My niece has a cute mask with fairies on it. She loves it. I could see how it’s like playing dress-up almost. For us, it’s a little more uncomfortable, but it is what it is. You have to wear one. Just get over it. We’d all get through this a lot faster, but no one wants to do it. It really boggles the mind. Anyways, speaking of health, let’s transition into our topic for this week, which is something that’s been bubbling in the world of alcohol in general for the last few years. It’s seemed to come especially to a head in the wine world, over the last two weeks. It’s this idea of marketing beverages, let’s talk specifically about wine today, as “clean.” There are a few instances of people releasing wines, including Cameron Diaz, using the word “clean” to describe the wine. There’s a lot of uproar over that, but the wines are actually selling like crazy. People can’t keep them in stock. There’s been a large debate over what is and isn’t fair marketing practices when it comes to selling wine. What is dubious? What isn’t? What are we allowed to say? What aren’t we allowed to say? I understand that people hustled, and they used something that’s a word that people care about, like clean eating. You can’t hate on those people for it. The only thing that I had issue with was the hypocrisy coming from a lot of people that were the loudest criticizers against the word clean because they’re the people who use the word “natural.”

Z: Yeah.

A: For me, my issue was that I want to be on their side, but they aren’t admitting that they use a word that they think also means a lot, that to a lot of people means to people exactly the same thing that “clean” does. Whether they want to say that clean wine isn’t as fair as natural wine, the reality is that all you have to do is look at the essay written in The New York Times last summer in the Style section, by a writer who literally said the reason they drink the wines that are labeled “natural” is because they think they are cleaner and better for them. No one has ever tried to refute that because it also helps you sell wine. It also packs your wine bar. It also gets people to try wines they wouldn’t normally try. Everyone is using marketing terms in order to sell their products. Let’s get over both of them. Maybe I’m in the minority. Maybe we should just hate the word “clean” and not the word “natural.” I don’t know. What do you guys think?

E: Cameron Diaz last week, or maybe two weeks ago now, launched this brand called “Avaline.” If you watch the video on social media and see how this thing is marketed, it really does set up this dichotomy that her wine is clean, and all wines by definition are dirty. That is the thing that makes me most upset. It’s just a continuation. First we had Dry Farm Wines. They did this clean marketing in a clever way, but the thing is, it’s built on misinformation and the lack of consumers really understanding what’s going on. For Dry Farm Wines, they package up commercially available, organic, and biodynamic wines. They mark them up, and they sell them under the guise of sugar free. “These are sugar free wines.” “Low carb.” All this sort of stuff. But guess what? All wines, any dry wine is going to be sugar free or nearly sugar free and also very low carb. It’s that misnomer. Winc recently, with their Wonderful Wine Company, they’re marketing it as “clean wine for better living.” Their tagline is “Health conscious wine lovers, meet the low carb, low sugar, organic wine you’ve been waiting for.” The problem with this is just that it’s not accurate. It’s misleading. Over and over, we’re getting this pick-up from what was clean eating. Now it’s transitioned over to clean drinking. I just don’t think it’s accurate. If you really look into Avaline and how this wine in particular was made and packaged, it’s not that much different than really any other organic wine that is middle-of-the-road, industrial produced that’s out there right now.

Z: I think the problem starts with this simple fact that is very easily misconstrued and possibly abused by both natural and clean-wine people, and that is that there are very minimal requirements for labeling of wine. If you look at marketing material for natural wine, for clean wine, they both harp on this fact that “you don’t know what in your wine.” It could have fish bladders, it could have egg whites, it could have mega-purple. It could have all these things. And there’s some truth to that, it’s true. There is no mandate in the United States. There are 60-odd additives that can be used as part of the winemaking process that don’t have to be disclosed on the label. This idea that because there isn’t disclosure on the label, it means that every wine has these things lurking in it, is first of all silly. Second of all, for the most part, who gives a shit? Yes, I don’t like mega-purple in my wine because I want my wine to be an expression of place and what actually happened in a vineyard, not what happened in a lab to concentrate grape essence. But you know what? I’ve had some wines with mega-purple in it, and sometimes they’re all right. They’re not amazing, but let’s get over ourselves a little bit here. It comes back to this fact that they harp on this lack of labeling. There’s a lot to be said about the idea that maybe we should, as a consumer base, be advocating for more labeling in wine. Maybe you shouldn’t be able to put these things in without having to disclose it. That’s a bit of an adjacent conversation to this. The reality is, there’s this abuse of that fact. What if I packaged up a wine and said, “This wine has zero asbestos in it.” Would your question then, as a consumer who didn’t know better, be, “Well, wait. Does other wine have asbestos in it?” We’re basically talking about the same stuff, in that claiming that your wine doesn’t have something that most wine doesn’t have doesn’t set you apart except for with the majority of consumers who don’t know any better. Most people don’t know much about how wine is made because it’s complicated, and why would you bother to know unless you’re us?

A: We’re creating problems for consumers in both ways. Erica, I completely agree with you. I did not like how this was done. It’s interesting that it’s not on the label for Avaline. It was just something they said in this video, but then that’s what went viral, which was actually pretty smart on their part. In both regards, why are we scaring consumers about sulfites? What all of a sudden is that something we’re deeming as bad? That’s the same thing in terms of marketing. It’s interesting that especially in the world of spirits, you don’t have people react as negatively to marketing, which is curious. In the world of wine, we want to really believe in a lot of ways, and again this is not to say that I agree in any way with how they marketed the wines, but we want to believe that everyone is an artist. At the end of the day, if people were artists, then they would be independently wealthy, and they need to make a living. They need to sell it. Some people use celebrity spokesmen in order to sell their wines, some people use different marketing terms to sell their wines, some people just make really damn good wine that everyone gets excited about and that’s how they sell their wine. At the end of the day, everyone needs to market it somehow, somewhere. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t remember the same massive reaction when George Clooney came out and said that his tequila didn’t give you a hangover. People thought it was really smart. Casamigos did a really smart thing, and a lot of other tequila brands started emulating that positioning. No one said, “How dare George Clooney say that his tequila is more pure and doesn’t give you a hangover.” People thought he had a really good idea.

Z: I do think if he said that today, there would be a little bit more pushback on that, in part because there’s also this complicated issue of a white dude saying that his tequila is clean and others are not.

A: Totally. Don’t worry. There’s an article today on the site about that.

Z: There you go. Perfect.

A: I agree with you there. It was only four years ago. It wasn’t like it was super long ago. I do feel like there’s this weird anger that comes out only in wine in a way that’s very different from beer or spirits. Maybe I’m wrong. That’s just what I feel.

E: It’s this mindset. Especially recently in wine and spirits, we’re seeing such a huge shift in celebrities building this space. It’s this mindset of, “Rich celebrity, bestow upon us your godly wisdom. Thank goodness you decided to tackle the problem of dirty wine. It took someone with your talent to uncover the truth about wine and its disgusting practices and its disgusting winemakers. Now, we are saved. The end. Perfect soundbite.” You know? That’s the thing. Further, it’s elitist. This one in particular, Avaline, with this clean-dirty dynamic, it is so elitist. It’s saying, you can’t drink clean unless you can afford to shell out $24 for my Cameron Diaz bottle of wine. Then, if you can’t do that, you clearly don’t care about what you’re putting in your body. That’s the knock that clean eating has gotten because no one can afford to go to a farmers market and hand-source every piece of food they’re putting in their mouth. That’s this mindset that’s getting shifted over, in this particular celebrity case that really pisses me off.

A: It is all Gwen’s fault?

E: Yes.

A: Goop really started pushing this earlier than anyone else. This was a thing that happened really early on. Goop’s been a proponent of a lot of these ideas of natural fermentation versus inoculation. It’s all so complicated. I want to be really angry about this whole thing, but it’s hard for me to because I feel like there’s this whole other category of wine that’s been doing it for so long. They were some of the people that were the angriest. I can’t be as angry as I need to be about how this is annoying and the way that they marketed it. Zach, are you as conflicted as I am?

Z: No because to me, there’s a fundamental difference. Look, you all listening to this know I’ve had my issues with the natural wine crowd plenty of times. But I will say with some notable exceptions, they’ve mostly struck me as people who are pretty earnest. I find the clean wine crowd to be much more nakedly opportunistic.

A: That’s what always happens.

E: I completely agree.

Z: Here’s the thing. If I were to believe that Cameron Diaz was really passionate about wine, then you would think that says the variety, or even the place where this wine is made, because it’s not that Cameron Diaz is going to Spain and picking the grapes and making the wine. She contracted with a large winemaking consortium. There’s a great article out by Miquel Hudin about this.

A: But he doesn’t say who it is, right? No one knows who it is.

Z: He doesn’t disclose, because he chose not to. Because he felt like it might blowback on the producer, the actual people who make the wine. The point is, he was able to figure out who was making it. The wine itself might actually be pretty good. I don’t think there’s any reason to think that the wine is inherently bad.

A: He says it’s a respected producer whose wines he enjoys. So probably the wine is good.

Z: Yeah, and Xarello, which is the grape that they’re largely using, as he points out in his piece also, I think is a variety that is overdue for some recognition. It’s that exact fact that for him and for many of us, is galling about this, because had this line and this wine been positioned slightly differently — where there was a little bit of attention paid or marketing shine given to the grape, the place, the people who actually made it, not just the ones who slapped their name on it and branded it — it could possibly be inoffensive. Look at Miraval. Feel how you want to feel, but look, it’s true that Brad and Angelina Jolie being involved in it helped catapult it onto people’s radar, but it’s a legitimately good rosé. It brought some attention to a category that maybe didn’t need a lot of help, but certainly didn’t hurt for it. That’s the issue that I have with some of these clean wines. They seem almost the opposite of a lot of natural wine. They seem interested in obscuring the place of origin, the variety and whatever else of the wine because really, it’s a marketing ploy. It’s about being able to shift the source of the grapes. Often they don’t have a vintage on them, so that they can be sort of remade at any given time due to demand. For all of their complaining about lack of transparency and labelling, to me, these wines are some of the least transparent wines out there. The only thing like them are some of the mass-produced grocery-store-brand wines that also have almost no information on the label. They don’t even have a variety sometimes, or a vintage. It’s just a proprietary name. That’s really what this is, just with a different marketing gimmick.

A: But this is what happens in business, having to recognize that wine is a business. There are movements that are truly organic — ha! I used that word. There are movements that start, and people find ways to exploit those movements. I completely agree. There’s a lot of people I know who are proponents of natural wine who I respect a lot, who have had me taste wines that I think are absolutely amazing, and who I know aren’t in it because they’ve also been duped. They know the producers. They’re passionate about it. And they’re some people who won’t use the term “natural” that often. Then, there’s other people that became crazy zealots of the category without understanding wine in general. To them, all other wine was bad. This was the only good wine. That became something that they were putting out on social media and marketing. A few well-known companies then tried to exploit it. We predicted this, Zach, you and I, over a year ago, that someone would exploit this. I thought it was going to be Aldi or something. Turns out that it’s Cameron Diaz. I never knew this. One of our friends is a fashion designer. She told us, did you know that if you send a product that’s made in China to Italy and it just gets a final stitch, you can say it’s made in Italy?

E: No way.

A: There’s a lot of people that will do that. They know that a lot of American consumers care about that label. They’ve been told that “Made in Italy” matters, so some of these lower-cost fashion brands, the way they can charge and sell a little bit more is to send a suit or dress to Italy for the final stitching. It costs very little compared to what it would cost if you were buying Armani or Billy Reid or any of these really high-end fashion brands. But they get the final stitch made and it can have this label in it, which is crazy to think about. It’s the same idea, right? It’s these larger companies that realize this is what consumers want. It’s what they’re being told is a signifier of quality, so in fashion it’s a “Made in Italy” label. In wine, it’s the word “clean” or “natural.” Let’s exploit it because there’s very little regulation from stopping that. That’s what happens. When you don’t have regulation, companies will go as far as they can to exploit it and take advantage of the consumer. It’s annoying, but I’m not surprised it happened. I’m actually surprised it was Cameron Diaz. I’m surprised it was a celebrity first and not just a really big company. I’m sure there’s a really big company behind her, but again, we don’t even know. It was bound to happen.

E: It’s true. It is just going to continue. It’s going to get worse and worse unless there’s more labeling transparency and some sort of legislation around that and around the terminology of things like “natural” and “clean.” We’re going to keep heading further and further down this path.

Z: Some of this is inevitable because the reality is that marketing and industry forces are what they are. From a journalistic-media side, one thing that has to be worked on is how these categories of wine, in particular, are talked about. It’s because they have so little legal guideline, in a way, that organic and even biodynamic have government-imposed or at least sanctioning-body-imposed rules that you have to meet for labelling — and natural and clean are in the eye of the beholder at the moment. One thing that has to come out of this from the wine industry and the media side is standards about: Do we use these terms? When do we use these terms? How confident do we have to be that what someone is saying in their marketing pitch is actually true? I would personally like to say that this is where the big issue comes up. So much of what happens is, this information is conveyed to a credulous public, often laundered through respected publications. I’m not talking about VinePair here. I’m talking about some other ones that I’ve read. I’m not going to shit-talk and specific articles on this podcast. You can DM me if you want to know what I think. The reality is that a lot of these non-wine-focused publications that are more general publications use this terminology. Like you were talking about The New York Times Style piece from a year ago, they’re written by people who may not know a lot about wine. They’re sometimes pay-to-play articles. They just muddy the water so badly that I think it’s important for those of us in the media to do better in terms of when we are going to use these terms. And we can’t let the producer define if their wine is clean or natural. Unless there’s a certifying body that, at a minimum, it has to come down to a standard that’s set by an outset organization, because everyone’s going to call themselves “natural” or “clean” if it becomes a selling point. That’s what’s happening. We have to, as a media body, do better and have standards that — whether or not the winery or wine seller thinks that they’re wine should be called natural or clean — there has to be some outside standard imposed. If it’s not a certifying body, then it has to be us.

A: I agree.

E: From my perspective, I have not seen any wine or drinks publications that fell for the bait on this one. It was all People, InStyle, all of the big consumer publications who came out with this Avaline wine and said, “Cameron Diaz, the savior.” That was 100 percent across the board for anything that was not a drinks publication. There is just a huge amount of, a fundamental lack of, consumer understanding. In this case, the consumers are also the journalists. That’s what we’re dealing with here. The people who are writing these articles probably have zero experience or understanding about wine. This is just one of five articles that they’re writing in a week, and they’re just flipping through the press release. That’s the real problem here. A lot of the gatekeepers really have no idea about wine. What can we do as wine-interested people and people in the wine industry to better convey what is honest and accurate? How do we get people to understand what is a buzzword?

A: There’s a few things here. One, I can’t speak for other publications, but Erica, when you came onboard, one of the biggest things, which is pervasive in lifestyle media, we try not to take pitches from what I call “book report writers.” They basically had facts regurgitated to them from a producer on a press trip. They wrote it and then they never challenged whether or not they were being told the truth. That happens a lot, especially in lifestyle publications because you’ve been given this free thing. You went on a trip and it was fun. The winemaker was charming. They served you a beautiful dinner. They said, “I’m the first producer to ever grow organic Nebbiolo in Piemonte.” You wrote it, but it’s not true. You didn’t do the research because they said it. You took them at their word. It’s the same with a lot of the lifestyle people. You’re going to be given access to Cameron Diaz. You get to talk to her. Are you going to challenge Cameron Diaz? She’s telling you that her wine is clean! You got to interview Cameron Diaz, and it’s dope. At the end of the day, we’re humans. There’s a cool thing about talking to the star of “The Mask.” A lot of these lifestyle writers are not going to challenge a celebrity telling them something. They’re just going to write it, which is a problem. It also speaks to what’s unfortunately happening in newsrooms, which we talk about all the time. There’s less budget, because there’s less advertising for more editors over the writers to do fact-checking to make sure that this stuff is actually accurate before publishing. It’s really unfortunate. The reason we’ve taken a position, and I don’t want to say a publication position, but my personal position on natural wine is, my issue with it is that it’s not regulated. I don’t want to give it a carte blanche. I’m very open to talking to someone who says they’re a biodynamic producer and is certified that way because they do it and can prove it. That’s a different thing. I try to avoid those buzzwords, doing podcasts like this, writing articles that are critical when these things happen, and saying that this is bullshit, on both sides. This term “clean wine” is bullshit. These other terms are bullshit, too. You, as a consumer, should be aware of it because you’re the one getting duped. If you want to buy the wine because you like Cameron Diaz, and she’s showing you a really great wine from Spain that’s made from a grape you should know about, that’s awesome. You should buy that wine. But if you’re buying that wine because she told you it’s clean, you should think twice, because that should not be a factor because that’s not true.

E: Totally.

Z: Last piece here from me. As always, there’s alcohol in these wines. They can only be so healthy. It’s just the reality of it. It’s not like, in the end, there isn’t a poison in there. Now look, it’s an an awesome poison that we all really like, and we like the effect it has on us, and we like what comes along with it, but unless Cameron Diaz is going to start selling non-alcoholic wine, it’s a little rich to be saying, “This is ‘clean’.” It’s not. We might be willing to deal with the side effects and the consequences, but as far as we know, there’s no universe in which you can fairly say that about any product that has alcohol in it. That’s a safe statement to make.

A: Totally.

E: Totally. As a last takeaway, of all of these bald marketing ploys, clean wine is the worst marketing ploy that I have seen in all my years of covering wine. At least 15 years that I have been doing this, this is the thing that I wish would go away more than any other term. I see this coming down the pike, and people have seen the success of Avaline. They’ve seen the success of Dry Farm Wines, which does this, of Wonderful Wine Co., which does this. It is only picking up steam.

A: Oh yeah.

E: For consumers, if you want to pay a marked-up price for a wine, make sure it’s labeled “clean” because that’s where you’re going to be spending those marked up dollars. If you’re really concerned about how a wine is made or wanting to make sure that you have organic or biodynamic grapes, or that you’re looking for wines where the vineyard workers are treated fairly, go straight to the source. Do not go to these gatekeepers like celebrities or these wine clubs, because that is not the source of truth.

A: I love it. Erica came in hot today. I love it.

E: I had coffee.

Z: She’s been yelling at the kids. She’s ready.

A: I know! But I agree with you. There’s something to be said for, the wine world especially is very confusing. Our food ways, in general, are very confusing in this country. Be a smart consumer. And if it matters to you, be a smart consumer, call out bullshit when you see it, and ask real questions. If someone tells you this wine is clean or organic, ask to see the certification. Ask them to show you something that proves what they’re actually saying. If they can’t produce it, then realize that it’s bullshit. At the end of the day, across the board, whatever term someone is using, ask them what that means and how they define that. If they can’t show you any of those defining characteristics, then just know that you’re buying bullshit. If you still want to buy that bullshit, it’s totally fine. It’s your money. Spend it the way you want to. In everything in this world, there’s marketing speak, and marketing speak works. If you want to be a smart consumer, be able to identify marketing speak, decipher speak, and question it. That’s it!

Z: Can’t say it better than that.

E: Agreed.

A: I will chat with both of you next week for some random subject that will be determined based on whatever happens in the week before we record. Until then, we want to thank everyone for listening, as always. Drop us a review or give us a shoutout on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever else you get your podcasts. It really helps people discover the show. And, if you agree or disagree with us, always shoot us an email at podcast@vinepair.com. Erica, Zach, and I really love to know what you think. If you’re comfortable with it, we’d love to share your thoughts on the next show. Thanks so much.

E: Thank you.

Z: Sounds great.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now, for the credits. VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy and me, Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: The Dirty Truth About ‘Clean’ Wine appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/dirty-truth-about-clean-wine/

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 6 “The Lady in the Shoe”

Welcome back, everyone! The summary for this episode: Part Two was pretty excellently done (with one major exception) and Part One would be stellar if we could just separate it from its context. Which of course we can’t. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag this week.

Episode Eleven is titled “The Lady in the Shoe,” but apparently instead of a scolding and early bedtime children get to be blown up via missiles. Alrighty then. We open back on the mech battle with Ruby telling Weiss to get her butt down here, we need your help if we’re going to take down this monstrosity. Weiss briefly speaks my language.

Weiss: “You’re joking, right?”

Except it’s not a criticism about picking a fight with a Atlesian special operative in the first place, just that said special operative has some serious firepower on her side. Ruby justifies this leaderly decision with, “We’ve fought giant monsters before. This is just a tiny old lady…”

Which is precisely the problem, Ruby. You’re not fighting a giant monster here—this mech is not an objectively evil grimm rising up from the depths of the ocean that you are duty bound to fight. You are about to attack a tiny old lady—the sort of person you’re supposed to be protecting, even when they’re dicks. It still astounds me that the writers put all this dialogue into the characters’ mouths without commenting on (or even realizing) the staggering irony here. Can Ironwood please show up at the last moment and chastise them all for doing everything but what huntsmen are supposed to do?

Notice in this shot that no one has drawn their weapon yet. We know the kind of response time this group has. If there’s any danger nearby—real (grimm) or imagined (their uncle)—those weapons are raised in a heartbeat. Now here’s a massive mech bearing down on them and no one is moving to defend themselves, so some part of them must realize that this is a stupid, childish, needless fight that they are responsible for diffusing, considering that they started it in the first place. No one bothers though. They’re not outright attacking yet, but they’re not backing down either. That stubborn faith is admirable when set against monsters and Salem’s henchmen, not when it’s aimed at an authority figure you never should have made an enemy of in the first place.

However, Cordovin then reminds us of her dickishness, calling the kids “spider roaches” (ew) and promising to take them down. She wants to see how their “resolve holds out against the might of the Atlesian military,” once again encouraging the audience to accept this fight as the volume’s long-awaited resolution. Their resolve has been shaken the last few days, but fighting Cordovin has absolutely nothing to do with facing off against an immortal enemy. Having the kids hold their ground here doesn’t somehow tell us that they’ve re-discovered purpose in their good deeds and are willing to continue fighting against Salem, it just highlights how unwilling they are to admit when they’re wrong. This fight emphasizes only how immature and reckless the group is behaving right now. That doesn’t disappear just because RT tries to flimsily reframe it in another light.

Things immediately start going downhill. Done with her warning shots, Cordovin launches a missile at Maria and Weiss, though at the last second it’s blown out of the air by Ruby. This cues Cordovin into the fact that the rest of the gang is down on that cliff. She launches another shot and Weiss jumps down at the last second, getting up a barrier of stone and ice to protect them. Like so much in this fight, the save only comes at the very last second.

Oscar: “That was close…”

This should really be cueing the kids in. Cordovin isn’t playing around and this little encounter just got horrendously dangerous. The answer here is to surrender, admit that you were in the wrong for trying to steal military property, not escalate the situation by gleefully fighting back. And Ruby absolutely escalates it. A minute later—after laughing while dodging more missiles—Ruby takes a freaking headshot at Cordovin.

Look, there’s no excuse for that. Not in my book. I don’t care how likely it is that Atlas glass is strong enough to stop one of her rounds. I don’t care if Ruby assumed Cordovin would have her own aura up as an extra precaution inside the mech (if she can even manipulate aura like that. Cordovin is military, but that doesn’t automatically mean she can fight like a huntsmen. There might be a reason she got in that mech instead of fighting them herself). I don’t even care that Cordovin shot first and people are going to claim that the group is now justified to do whatever they want to her. Ruby could have been wrong. All of her assumptions about glass and aura might have come back to bite her. She looked a woman dead in the eye—not a grimm, not Cinder, not Salem herself—and shot with an intent to kill. What would everyone think of our precious protagonist if she’d murdered a Atlesian official after getting caught trying to steal their tech? Since when does the show encourage us to cheer on the group attacking an ally, no matter how much of an asshole she is as an individual?

I’ll be blunt: I don’t like this Ruby. I wanted leader!Ruby dealing with her anger at Qrow, our kind and level-headed girl growing into a mature young adult this volume. Instead we’ve gotten a smug, flippant child who is so obsessed with moving forward that she’ll eschew strategy and ethics in favor of results. She’s impatient. She’s once again overconfident in her abilities. She’s backsliding and this would be a fascinating thing to witness if the show weren’t incorrectly characterizing this as growth.

Before Ruby takes her shot though we get a bit more of that irony. Jaune points out that such a large mech will have difficulty hitting a small target, so they should spread out and give Cordovin too many things to focus on. “We just have to be smart,” a hilarious line given the context of all this. Maria is charged with keeping the airship safe, despite the fact that she had her license revoked. (Another example of them taking the legitimate, “How is this woman flying a plane?” question and reducing it to a joke.) Qrow offers to give them another bird’s eye view of the situation, despite the fact that we’ve seen no reason for this sudden change in his outlook. For 7 episodes now Qrow has been under the impression that everything he’s done as a huntsmen is useless and last week he followed that up with the worry that his semblance is at the heart of it all. Neither of these fears have been addressed. Ruby giving one incredibly broad line about how she still needs Qrow Branwen shouldn’t erase what’s been plaguing him for an entire volume… but it apparently does. Fighting is no longer a useless endeavor with Salem hanging over him. Stealing an airship is no longer a plan he’s against. His semblance is no longer something to take into account. (You’ll notice that, conveniently, his semblance doesn’t seem to have any impact on the fight. Suddenly close combat alongside allies is no longer the dangerous thing that the Tyrian fight once painted it as.) Like so many others I’m thrilled that Qrow seems to be in a better place… I just wish we’d been given a convincing reason for him to drop his bottle here and happily join a fight he’s so-far been against for three distinct reasons. Like so much in this volume, the ideas are great while the execution falters.

Truthfully though? I love the fight itself. Ruby skillfully dodging missiles or running along their back, Weiss creating a series of ice islands for them to jump off of, riding on the lancer she summoned… all of that is epic as hell. However, that’s undercut by the fact that I’m just not rooting for Team RWBY here.

Over the course of the fight they do a good amount of damage to that mech. One of the biggest blows is when Qrow and Ren manage to destroy the device generating Cordovin’s shields. They don’t disable it, they just shoot it until it breaks. The entire time I was thinking, “Wow. This is going to be a pretty penny to fix/this mech is going to be entirely useless if Argus suddenly needs it to defend themselves from some grimm.” The entire time the group—particularly Ruby—treats it all as a fun adventure that’s only serious when they want it to be (like shooting at Cordovin). Ruby’s logic is chastised because “This isn’t a game!” and when she gets into trouble Weiss demands, “What if I hadn’t caught you?” The answer is just a sunny smile, not any actual thought about what her choices just were and whether she should change them.

Ruby is meant to be chipper in the face of danger, i.e. “Bad! Landing! Strategy!” after getting knocked off a cliff by a grimm. She’s not supposed to attack other people, destroy their defenses, and laugh about it. Perhaps the most frustrating moment is when she hangs off the front of the mech, waving at Cordovin like they aren’t having a legitimate battle here. Nora’s commentary is something that I always enjoy, “And you said it wasn’t beach season” + “You get back here with my man!” is fun, especially since the latter finally acknowledges that she and Ren are a couple now. Hallelujah! But it only works because Nora’s entire brand is happy-go-lucky in the face of overwhelming odds. That never really changes. Ruby, however, is jumping between silly goof and murderous huntress within the span of a few seconds. Is the Cordovin fight supposed to be comical or something they’re taking seriously as one of our final battles? The writing can’t decide.

Of course, we do hit a point where things get bad enough that the group starts panicking again. Cordovin has enough of all this and makes a swipe at Nora, forcing Jaune to make a last second grab for her. Both of them are slammed into a rock with their auras broken. The rest of the group gets blasted right off Weiss’ lancer, but Ruby can’t quite make it to the edge of the cliff. She stops her fall with Crescent Rose and then just…hangs there?

Okay. This is what I mean when I say the writing is contrived; that things are working out in one specific way to serve the plot, regardless of logic. Why isn’t Ruby using her semblance? Is she really that exhausted already? Why not just dive into the water? We’ve seen numerous times—starting at Beacon’s initiation—that Ruby can fall from great heights provided that she use the impact of her shots to slow her descent. Why isn’t Weiss summoning something for her to drop onto? Why does Qrow reach for Ruby and then just stand there stupidly while Cordovin levels a shot at his niece?

There’s no reason why prodigy Ruby would just hang there cringing, or why all of her talented friends would just stand there dumbly, except that the plot wants Maria and Oscar to “have” to rescue her. Except they don’t have to. We haven’t set up a situation where they’re truly the last line of defense. Jaune and Nora have already been knocked out. Now you could have Cordovin cut off the rest of the group with one arm while aiming at Ruby. Show a brief shot of Ruby trying and failing to start up her semblance, slipping further down the cliff in exhaustion. Let Weiss scream at her to just drop and Qrow shout back that she never learned how to swim. Give us reasons—even if they’re flimsy—for why using the airship is suddenly the only option.

Because you know, airship. The entire point of this fight is to keep the airship intact and get to Atlas. Now it’s been shot at. We don’t see what exactly the damage is, but I’m going to roll my eyes hard if it’s conveniently minor. Have Oscar and Maria escape unscathed, but I hope the ship itself is wrecked. Let the group realize that they picked a fight and their reasons for doing so are now useless.

“This is what happens when you think you know better than those rightfully in charge,” Cordovin says and she’s right. Her being an asshole is entirely separate from the fact that she’s got her facts straight. She is in charge of the Argus base, adults do often know better than teens, and this is what happens when you think you know better than those who told you, “This is a bad idea.” RWBYJNR made their bed and now they can lie in it. Now if only the writing would actually acknowledge that...

We cut with the mech fight half over and transition to Blake and Adam. This is the part of the episode that I think was very well done, but let me preface that by saying I view this battle in the same way I view Qrow’s current characterization. Meaning, I’m glad we got there… but how did we get there? That’ll make more sense in a moment.

For now, we watch as Blake tries to get away from Adam, no doubt hoping to make her way back to Yang. All of Adam’s dialogue in these scenes is excellently done. He’s the epitome of an abuser, characterizing Blake’s growth as a flaw—“Can’t you do anything besides run?” Missing the fact that nowadays she’s only running from him—and blaming her for his actions: “I wouldn’t have to be doing this if you’d just behaved!” It’s the kind of dialogue that I’m sure will sound too familiar for many viewers. Definitely hard to watch, but that’s because it’s well crafted.  

“You’re selfish. You’re a coward,” Adam says. “You’re delusional,” Blake shoots right back.  

As the fight continues Blake ends up losing her coat, something the whole fandom was hoping for given the importance of her scar. I really enjoyed the use of editing during all this. Adam ends up breaking Gambol Shroud (symbolic and a good setup for volume 7) and manages to get Blake into the same position as when he first stabbed her. This time Blake blocks the hit and when she does we get the briefest look at Yang’s bike rushing towards them. The speed of the cut is a good choice, keeping up with the fast-paced action, letting us know Yang is almost there without drawing attention away from Adam and Blake.

However, the fight does simmer down as Adam finally removes his mask.

That brand is… disturbing. Granted, it would have been more disturbing if I’d been able to figure out what those letters (numbers?) were right from the start lol. For anyone still confused, Adam has a horrific SDC burned over one eye—a literal mark of the Schnee Dust Company. Did he work for the Schnees and receive that as a part of their slave labor? Was it enacted as punishment after one of his raids, a way of sending a message to all the other faunus? We don’t know, we might never know, but at the very least I want Weiss to see Adam before he’s either killed or makes another escape. Given everything else that’s been going on, RWBY hasn’t had time to explore the accusations Blake leveled at Weiss all the way back at Beacon, or the conversation we overhear her dad having at the party. It’s looking like Yang and Blake’s arc with Adam is finally coming to a close, but getting a look at his face could be the start of a new one for Weiss. She deserves to know the full extent of what her father has done. Not just to her as his daughter, but to an entire minority group.  

“You didn’t leave scars, you just left me alone,” Adam whines like his own trauma in any way excuses what he’s done to Blake. “How does it feel to be alone?”

We get Blake’s ear twitching towards the sound of Yang approaching, she uses her semblance to escape, and at the last second proclaims, “I’m not alone.”

THEN YANG STRAIGHT UP HITS ADAM WITH HER BIKE.

Right now I do not CARE about in-world physics, or how Yang aimed coming off that cliff, or any of that. She hit Adam with a goddamn motorcycle while doing a flip off of it. There’s no world in which that isn’t badass.

Now we know how she gets rid of bumblebee. Yang couldn’t drag it on their adventure for forever. I’m glad it became something symbolic—Yang giving up a precious momento that carried her off into her new life, doing so without a moment’s hesitation for Blake—as opposed to just something like, “Yeah I shipped it off back to Dad!”

RIP Bumblebee. You will be missed.

Here though we get to the portion of the fight that (dare I say it?) feels a little un-earned. Look, I’m thrilled that we got these girls protecting one another and standing tall in the face of their abuser, but like Qrow’s sudden mood change, these kinds of payoffs are 100% better when we see how characters got there. The last time we touched on Adam in Blake and Yang’s lives:

Both of them were still having PTSD flashbacks, to the point where they instinctually flinch away from him in terror.

Blake was under the impression that she has to protect Yang and had no idea why that might not be what she wants.

Yang got pissed at Blake’s protective instincts and refused to communicate, shutting down the conversation.

Yang was coming out of a situation (Ozpin) where her anger had reached new levels and she was once again ready to punch her way through her problems.

Now, suddenly:

Neither Yang nor Blake hesitate for an instant. Yang in particular, who had no idea what she’d find when she went after Blake, is 100% confident in facing down Adam. Her hand shakes, yes, but that doesn’t actually have an impact on the fight. PTSD isn’t that kind. If you’ve been cowering instinctually for months now upon seeing visions of someone, that doesn’t conveniently disappear when you meet the real thing.

Blake announces that she’s not protecting Yang… even though two-three days ago that was her position. What changed?

Yang doesn’t react in surprise to hearing this sudden change of heart. Why is she acting like they’ve always been on the same page about protecting one another when they explicitly haven’t been? They had this disagreement literally days ago.

Yang is perfectly calm during the whole fight. She doesn’t use her semblance, immediately listens to Blake’s info about Adam’s, never once loses her temper. I’m thrilled to see the improvement but again, where did it come from? If Yang is going to get that worked up at Ozpin, why would we expect her to be perfectly cool when facing Adam, of all people?  

As said, these are all things I wanted to see, but it feels like we skipped over a big chunk of the journey. And honestly part of that journey could have been worked into the fight itself, pretty easily. Let Yang jump off that cliff, see that it’s Adam, and immediately freeze. Blake has to block a hit to save her and comments, “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” Yang gets pissed. She doesn’t need Blake to protect her, she’s doing the protecting, and she starts the first half of the fight in a temper that Adam takes advantage of. You can have them realizing in the moment that they need to protect one another so that by the time they’re holding hands we feel like we’ve evolved to this point naturally. 

Let Yang realize halfway through the fight that this head-on approach isn’t working so that when she suddenly tells Adam to leave this feels more like growth instead of, “Wait. Yang’s just gonna let this guy walk away? Since when?” Like so much in volume 6, I’m thrilled with what we got… just not in the way that we got it.

Each fight is only half over though. Presumably Episode 12 will wrap things up and then Episode 13? That’s up in the air. At this point though I’m still really hoping for some repercussions. Give me a moment where Cinder and Neo show up, but the gang is so exhausted from needlessly fighting Cordovin that they don’t stand a chance. Let them encounter a swarm of ocean grimm drawn up by how scared the Argus population is,

but they’ve destroyed the mech specifically designed to fight them. Let the kids face some actual consequences for their actions so that they can finally realize how stupid they’re being.  

Then Ozpin can show up and save them all. I want them to learn something, not die lol.

I doubt we’ll get it though. Most likely? The airship is fine, the battles are won, we’re encouraged to cheer for our current “heroes,” and they fly off towards Atlas without consequence. Yuck. I’m preparing myself for it though. We’ll see…

Until next week!

Other Things of Note

Just for the record, that team up with Ren could have been a perfect moment to slip in Qrow’s semblance. You recklessly shoot at the dust generator creating shields for a mech? Bad luck causes it to blow up in your face, launching Ren into the water, explaining Nora’s yell about giving her back her man.  

Kinda surprised by Adam’s blue eyes. Not gonna lie. I mean, not that anyone else in this show is following real world genetics (Yang’s eyes are purple and red I MEAN), it just wasn’t what I was expecting.

“He gets to dish out damage without having to feel it? That’s just cheap.” Ah, that feels like a sentence with more than one meaning…

I brought up in a previous recap about how RWBY treats disabilities, emphasizing that they’re either ignored (Maria’s blindness isn’t a problem! She can still fly just fine!) or we reach a point where there are only upsides (Yang able to detach her arm and escape Mercury). We see another example of that here wherein Yang’s new arm is able to withstand the blow that would have otherwise torn through flesh. She’s now stronger not just because of what she’s survived, but because her arm is literally better in all respects from the one she was born with.  

[johnboothus]

VinePair Podcast: The Dirty Truth About Clean Wine

Recently, Cameron Diaz launched a new wine brand called Avaline, marketed as a “clean wine.” While the term didn’t originate with Diaz or her brand, Avaline has shone a major spotlight on the phrase — and caused an uproar among wine professionals, many of whom believe that the terminology is misleading.

In fact, there’s no legal or agreed-upon meaning for the term. No governmental, trade, or private organization that certifies or verifies “clean” claims. Many wine professionals have said that brands labelling their wine as “clean” are trading on customer misinformation around wine ingredients and processes as their currency, creating a false dichotomy between “clean” and “dirty” wines. This growing trend piggybacks on the existing “clean eating” trend, which holds an equally opaque meaning. On this week’s episode of the VinePair Podcast, Adam Teeter, Erica Duecy, and Zach Geballe unpack the term, explaining why it is so often exploited, and offering advice on how to avoid being fooled by marketing gimmickry.

Listen Online

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Spotify

Or Check Out Our Conversation Here

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Connecticut, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in Seattle Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the VinePair Podcast. Guys, it’s late July, which is weird.

Z: Oh my god.

E: Very weird.

Z: How is it that time is going both incredibly slow and incredibly fast? It’s bizarre. It always feels that way a little bit, but man, this year has been so weird.

A: It has been. When I realized it was late July, last night I said to Naomi, “Oh my gosh! We’ve been in quarantine for a year.” And it’s been four months. Wow, these four months have felt super long like you said, but also, everything has felt quick. How are we already at the end of July? We just had July 4th. It’s really weird.

E: Yeah, and with two kids, it’s like “Lord of the Flies” all of the time.

A: I can only imagine.

E: It just keeps getting worse.

A: Are you on the edge of your seat wondering what’s going to happen with school in the fall?

E: Oh yeah.

A: Have they already made a decision?

E: No, they’ve made no decision. We’re not going to know for a couple of weeks. It’s crazy. At this point, the kids are just running around the yard in tatters, playing in a pond, covering themselves with mud. I don’t even know where they are right now.

A: So it really is “Lord of the Flies.”

E: It really is. They paint themselves with mud. They’re way out there these days.

Z: There’s got to be a local farm you could get a pig skull from if you really wanted.

E: That’s next.

A: So ridiculous. We’ve all gotten so used to this, and also not at all. It’s such a nuts time to begin doing anything in this world, especially in this country.

Z: I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in a country that had handled this thing reasonably well. You could actually be thinking about a normal fall.

E: Right.

Z: It’s hard to believe.

A: I had a call earlier today with some people who have a well-known spirits brand here in the U.S. but it’s also huge in Asia. I was talking to them and they discussed that in Asia, coworkers are back to normal in the office and wearing masks. But they have a different attitude where they all protect each other. Here we say, “A mask? Eh. I don’t want to smell my breath.” That’s our attitude in this country. It would be interesting to see what it’s like being in a country that handled it well.

E: We should talk to someone from New Zealand or Australia, some restaurants or wineries, to hear what it’s like on the other side.

A: Even in Italy. They’re very much back to normal. Not to say it’s totally normal, but a lot of people are taking legitimate summer vacations and eating out a lot more. A lot of the businesses are back in their offices. Everyone’s wearing masks. That’s the one thing that everyone has to do, and it’s the one thing that here, we just won’t do. That makes it frustrating. It actually is that simple. Get the cases down, and wear this thing on your face. No one likes to wear it. It’s not comfortable.

Z: I would like to interject. My two-year-old really likes to wear his mask. He wants to keep it on.

A: I could see how kids like it. It’s kind of like a costume. It’s a little bit of a superhero feeling. My niece has a cute mask with fairies on it. She loves it. I could see how it’s like playing dress-up almost. For us, it’s a little more uncomfortable, but it is what it is. You have to wear one. Just get over it. We’d all get through this a lot faster, but no one wants to do it. It really boggles the mind. Anyways, speaking of health, let’s transition into our topic for this week, which is something that’s been bubbling in the world of alcohol in general for the last few years. It’s seemed to come especially to a head in the wine world, over the last two weeks. It’s this idea of marketing beverages, let’s talk specifically about wine today, as “clean.” There are a few instances of people releasing wines, including Cameron Diaz, using the word “clean” to describe the wine. There’s a lot of uproar over that, but the wines are actually selling like crazy. People can’t keep them in stock. There’s been a large debate over what is and isn’t fair marketing practices when it comes to selling wine. What is dubious? What isn’t? What are we allowed to say? What aren’t we allowed to say? I understand that people hustled, and they used something that’s a word that people care about, like clean eating. You can’t hate on those people for it. The only thing that I had issue with was the hypocrisy coming from a lot of people that were the loudest criticizers against the word clean because they’re the people who use the word “natural.”

Z: Yeah.

A: For me, my issue was that I want to be on their side, but they aren’t admitting that they use a word that they think also means a lot, that to a lot of people means to people exactly the same thing that “clean” does. Whether they want to say that clean wine isn’t as fair as natural wine, the reality is that all you have to do is look at the essay written in The New York Times last summer in the Style section, by a writer who literally said the reason they drink the wines that are labeled “natural” is because they think they are cleaner and better for them. No one has ever tried to refute that because it also helps you sell wine. It also packs your wine bar. It also gets people to try wines they wouldn’t normally try. Everyone is using marketing terms in order to sell their products. Let’s get over both of them. Maybe I’m in the minority. Maybe we should just hate the word “clean” and not the word “natural.” I don’t know. What do you guys think?

E: Cameron Diaz last week, or maybe two weeks ago now, launched this brand called “Avaline.” If you watch the video on social media and see how this thing is marketed, it really does set up this dichotomy that her wine is clean, and all wines by definition are dirty. That is the thing that makes me most upset. It’s just a continuation. First we had Dry Farm Wines. They did this clean marketing in a clever way, but the thing is, it’s built on misinformation and the lack of consumers really understanding what’s going on. For Dry Farm Wines, they package up commercially available, organic, and biodynamic wines. They mark them up, and they sell them under the guise of sugar free. “These are sugar free wines.” “Low carb.” All this sort of stuff. But guess what? All wines, any dry wine is going to be sugar free or nearly sugar free and also very low carb. It’s that misnomer. Winc recently, with their Wonderful Wine Company, they’re marketing it as “clean wine for better living.” Their tagline is “Health conscious wine lovers, meet the low carb, low sugar, organic wine you’ve been waiting for.” The problem with this is just that it’s not accurate. It’s misleading. Over and over, we’re getting this pick-up from what was clean eating. Now it’s transitioned over to clean drinking. I just don’t think it’s accurate. If you really look into Avaline and how this wine in particular was made and packaged, it’s not that much different than really any other organic wine that is middle-of-the-road, industrial produced that’s out there right now.

Z: I think the problem starts with this simple fact that is very easily misconstrued and possibly abused by both natural and clean-wine people, and that is that there are very minimal requirements for labeling of wine. If you look at marketing material for natural wine, for clean wine, they both harp on this fact that “you don’t know what in your wine.” It could have fish bladders, it could have egg whites, it could have mega-purple. It could have all these things. And there’s some truth to that, it’s true. There is no mandate in the United States. There are 60-odd additives that can be used as part of the winemaking process that don’t have to be disclosed on the label. This idea that because there isn’t disclosure on the label, it means that every wine has these things lurking in it, is first of all silly. Second of all, for the most part, who gives a shit? Yes, I don’t like mega-purple in my wine because I want my wine to be an expression of place and what actually happened in a vineyard, not what happened in a lab to concentrate grape essence. But you know what? I’ve had some wines with mega-purple in it, and sometimes they’re all right. They’re not amazing, but let’s get over ourselves a little bit here. It comes back to this fact that they harp on this lack of labeling. There’s a lot to be said about the idea that maybe we should, as a consumer base, be advocating for more labeling in wine. Maybe you shouldn’t be able to put these things in without having to disclose it. That’s a bit of an adjacent conversation to this. The reality is, there’s this abuse of that fact. What if I packaged up a wine and said, “This wine has zero asbestos in it.” Would your question then, as a consumer who didn’t know better, be, “Well, wait. Does other wine have asbestos in it?” We’re basically talking about the same stuff, in that claiming that your wine doesn’t have something that most wine doesn’t have doesn’t set you apart except for with the majority of consumers who don’t know any better. Most people don’t know much about how wine is made because it’s complicated, and why would you bother to know unless you’re us?

A: We’re creating problems for consumers in both ways. Erica, I completely agree with you. I did not like how this was done. It’s interesting that it’s not on the label for Avaline. It was just something they said in this video, but then that’s what went viral, which was actually pretty smart on their part. In both regards, why are we scaring consumers about sulfites? What all of a sudden is that something we’re deeming as bad? That’s the same thing in terms of marketing. It’s interesting that especially in the world of spirits, you don’t have people react as negatively to marketing, which is curious. In the world of wine, we want to really believe in a lot of ways, and again this is not to say that I agree in any way with how they marketed the wines, but we want to believe that everyone is an artist. At the end of the day, if people were artists, then they would be independently wealthy, and they need to make a living. They need to sell it. Some people use celebrity spokesmen in order to sell their wines, some people use different marketing terms to sell their wines, some people just make really damn good wine that everyone gets excited about and that’s how they sell their wine. At the end of the day, everyone needs to market it somehow, somewhere. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t remember the same massive reaction when George Clooney came out and said that his tequila didn’t give you a hangover. People thought it was really smart. Casamigos did a really smart thing, and a lot of other tequila brands started emulating that positioning. No one said, “How dare George Clooney say that his tequila is more pure and doesn’t give you a hangover.” People thought he had a really good idea.

Z: I do think if he said that today, there would be a little bit more pushback on that, in part because there’s also this complicated issue of a white dude saying that his tequila is clean and others are not.

A: Totally. Don’t worry. There’s an article today on the site about that.

Z: There you go. Perfect.

A: I agree with you there. It was only four years ago. It wasn’t like it was super long ago. I do feel like there’s this weird anger that comes out only in wine in a way that’s very different from beer or spirits. Maybe I’m wrong. That’s just what I feel.

E: It’s this mindset. Especially recently in wine and spirits, we’re seeing such a huge shift in celebrities building this space. It’s this mindset of, “Rich celebrity, bestow upon us your godly wisdom. Thank goodness you decided to tackle the problem of dirty wine. It took someone with your talent to uncover the truth about wine and its disgusting practices and its disgusting winemakers. Now, we are saved. The end. Perfect soundbite.” You know? That’s the thing. Further, it’s elitist. This one in particular, Avaline, with this clean-dirty dynamic, it is so elitist. It’s saying, you can’t drink clean unless you can afford to shell out $24 for my Cameron Diaz bottle of wine. Then, if you can’t do that, you clearly don’t care about what you’re putting in your body. That’s the knock that clean eating has gotten because no one can afford to go to a farmers market and hand-source every piece of food they’re putting in their mouth. That’s this mindset that’s getting shifted over, in this particular celebrity case that really pisses me off.

A: It is all Gwen’s fault?

E: Yes.

A: Goop really started pushing this earlier than anyone else. This was a thing that happened really early on. Goop’s been a proponent of a lot of these ideas of natural fermentation versus inoculation. It’s all so complicated. I want to be really angry about this whole thing, but it’s hard for me to because I feel like there’s this whole other category of wine that’s been doing it for so long. They were some of the people that were the angriest. I can’t be as angry as I need to be about how this is annoying and the way that they marketed it. Zach, are you as conflicted as I am?

Z: No because to me, there’s a fundamental difference. Look, you all listening to this know I’ve had my issues with the natural wine crowd plenty of times. But I will say with some notable exceptions, they’ve mostly struck me as people who are pretty earnest. I find the clean wine crowd to be much more nakedly opportunistic.

A: That’s what always happens.

E: I completely agree.

Z: Here’s the thing. If I were to believe that Cameron Diaz was really passionate about wine, then you would think that says the variety, or even the place where this wine is made, because it’s not that Cameron Diaz is going to Spain and picking the grapes and making the wine. She contracted with a large winemaking consortium. There’s a great article out by Miquel Hudin about this.

A: But he doesn’t say who it is, right? No one knows who it is.

Z: He doesn’t disclose, because he chose not to. Because he felt like it might blowback on the producer, the actual people who make the wine. The point is, he was able to figure out who was making it. The wine itself might actually be pretty good. I don’t think there’s any reason to think that the wine is inherently bad.

A: He says it’s a respected producer whose wines he enjoys. So probably the wine is good.

Z: Yeah, and Xarello, which is the grape that they’re largely using, as he points out in his piece also, I think is a variety that is overdue for some recognition. It’s that exact fact that for him and for many of us, is galling about this, because had this line and this wine been positioned slightly differently — where there was a little bit of attention paid or marketing shine given to the grape, the place, the people who actually made it, not just the ones who slapped their name on it and branded it — it could possibly be inoffensive. Look at Miraval. Feel how you want to feel, but look, it’s true that Brad and Angelina Jolie being involved in it helped catapult it onto people’s radar, but it’s a legitimately good rosé. It brought some attention to a category that maybe didn’t need a lot of help, but certainly didn’t hurt for it. That’s the issue that I have with some of these clean wines. They seem almost the opposite of a lot of natural wine. They seem interested in obscuring the place of origin, the variety and whatever else of the wine because really, it’s a marketing ploy. It’s about being able to shift the source of the grapes. Often they don’t have a vintage on them, so that they can be sort of remade at any given time due to demand. For all of their complaining about lack of transparency and labelling, to me, these wines are some of the least transparent wines out there. The only thing like them are some of the mass-produced grocery-store-brand wines that also have almost no information on the label. They don’t even have a variety sometimes, or a vintage. It’s just a proprietary name. That’s really what this is, just with a different marketing gimmick.

A: But this is what happens in business, having to recognize that wine is a business. There are movements that are truly organic — ha! I used that word. There are movements that start, and people find ways to exploit those movements. I completely agree. There’s a lot of people I know who are proponents of natural wine who I respect a lot, who have had me taste wines that I think are absolutely amazing, and who I know aren’t in it because they’ve also been duped. They know the producers. They’re passionate about it. And they’re some people who won’t use the term “natural” that often. Then, there’s other people that became crazy zealots of the category without understanding wine in general. To them, all other wine was bad. This was the only good wine. That became something that they were putting out on social media and marketing. A few well-known companies then tried to exploit it. We predicted this, Zach, you and I, over a year ago, that someone would exploit this. I thought it was going to be Aldi or something. Turns out that it’s Cameron Diaz. I never knew this. One of our friends is a fashion designer. She told us, did you know that if you send a product that’s made in China to Italy and it just gets a final stitch, you can say it’s made in Italy?

E: No way.

A: There’s a lot of people that will do that. They know that a lot of American consumers care about that label. They’ve been told that “Made in Italy” matters, so some of these lower-cost fashion brands, the way they can charge and sell a little bit more is to send a suit or dress to Italy for the final stitching. It costs very little compared to what it would cost if you were buying Armani or Billy Reid or any of these really high-end fashion brands. But they get the final stitch made and it can have this label in it, which is crazy to think about. It’s the same idea, right? It’s these larger companies that realize this is what consumers want. It’s what they’re being told is a signifier of quality, so in fashion it’s a “Made in Italy” label. In wine, it’s the word “clean” or “natural.” Let’s exploit it because there’s very little regulation from stopping that. That’s what happens. When you don’t have regulation, companies will go as far as they can to exploit it and take advantage of the consumer. It’s annoying, but I’m not surprised it happened. I’m actually surprised it was Cameron Diaz. I’m surprised it was a celebrity first and not just a really big company. I’m sure there’s a really big company behind her, but again, we don’t even know. It was bound to happen.

E: It’s true. It is just going to continue. It’s going to get worse and worse unless there’s more labeling transparency and some sort of legislation around that and around the terminology of things like “natural” and “clean.” We’re going to keep heading further and further down this path.

Z: Some of this is inevitable because the reality is that marketing and industry forces are what they are. From a journalistic-media side, one thing that has to be worked on is how these categories of wine, in particular, are talked about. It’s because they have so little legal guideline, in a way, that organic and even biodynamic have government-imposed or at least sanctioning-body-imposed rules that you have to meet for labelling — and natural and clean are in the eye of the beholder at the moment. One thing that has to come out of this from the wine industry and the media side is standards about: Do we use these terms? When do we use these terms? How confident do we have to be that what someone is saying in their marketing pitch is actually true? I would personally like to say that this is where the big issue comes up. So much of what happens is, this information is conveyed to a credulous public, often laundered through respected publications. I’m not talking about VinePair here. I’m talking about some other ones that I’ve read. I’m not going to shit-talk and specific articles on this podcast. You can DM me if you want to know what I think. The reality is that a lot of these non-wine-focused publications that are more general publications use this terminology. Like you were talking about The New York Times Style piece from a year ago, they’re written by people who may not know a lot about wine. They’re sometimes pay-to-play articles. They just muddy the water so badly that I think it’s important for those of us in the media to do better in terms of when we are going to use these terms. And we can’t let the producer define if their wine is clean or natural. Unless there’s a certifying body that, at a minimum, it has to come down to a standard that’s set by an outset organization, because everyone’s going to call themselves “natural” or “clean” if it becomes a selling point. That’s what’s happening. We have to, as a media body, do better and have standards that — whether or not the winery or wine seller thinks that they’re wine should be called natural or clean — there has to be some outside standard imposed. If it’s not a certifying body, then it has to be us.

A: I agree.

E: From my perspective, I have not seen any wine or drinks publications that fell for the bait on this one. It was all People, InStyle, all of the big consumer publications who came out with this Avaline wine and said, “Cameron Diaz, the savior.” That was 100 percent across the board for anything that was not a drinks publication. There is just a huge amount of, a fundamental lack of, consumer understanding. In this case, the consumers are also the journalists. That’s what we’re dealing with here. The people who are writing these articles probably have zero experience or understanding about wine. This is just one of five articles that they’re writing in a week, and they’re just flipping through the press release. That’s the real problem here. A lot of the gatekeepers really have no idea about wine. What can we do as wine-interested people and people in the wine industry to better convey what is honest and accurate? How do we get people to understand what is a buzzword?

A: There’s a few things here. One, I can’t speak for other publications, but Erica, when you came onboard, one of the biggest things, which is pervasive in lifestyle media, we try not to take pitches from what I call “book report writers.” They basically had facts regurgitated to them from a producer on a press trip. They wrote it and then they never challenged whether or not they were being told the truth. That happens a lot, especially in lifestyle publications because you’ve been given this free thing. You went on a trip and it was fun. The winemaker was charming. They served you a beautiful dinner. They said, “I’m the first producer to ever grow organic Nebbiolo in Piemonte.” You wrote it, but it’s not true. You didn’t do the research because they said it. You took them at their word. It’s the same with a lot of the lifestyle people. You’re going to be given access to Cameron Diaz. You get to talk to her. Are you going to challenge Cameron Diaz? She’s telling you that her wine is clean! You got to interview Cameron Diaz, and it���s dope. At the end of the day, we’re humans. There’s a cool thing about talking to the star of “The Mask.” A lot of these lifestyle writers are not going to challenge a celebrity telling them something. They’re just going to write it, which is a problem. It also speaks to what’s unfortunately happening in newsrooms, which we talk about all the time. There’s less budget, because there’s less advertising for more editors over the writers to do fact-checking to make sure that this stuff is actually accurate before publishing. It’s really unfortunate. The reason we’ve taken a position, and I don’t want to say a publication position, but my personal position on natural wine is, my issue with it is that it’s not regulated. I don’t want to give it a carte blanche. I’m very open to talking to someone who says they’re a biodynamic producer and is certified that way because they do it and can prove it. That’s a different thing. I try to avoid those buzzwords, doing podcasts like this, writing articles that are critical when these things happen, and saying that this is bullshit, on both sides. This term “clean wine” is bullshit. These other terms are bullshit, too. You, as a consumer, should be aware of it because you’re the one getting duped. If you want to buy the wine because you like Cameron Diaz, and she’s showing you a really great wine from Spain that’s made from a grape you should know about, that’s awesome. You should buy that wine. But if you’re buying that wine because she told you it’s clean, you should think twice, because that should not be a factor because that’s not true.

E: Totally.

Z: Last piece here from me. As always, there’s alcohol in these wines. They can only be so healthy. It’s just the reality of it. It’s not like, in the end, there isn’t a poison in there. Now look, it’s an an awesome poison that we all really like, and we like the effect it has on us, and we like what comes along with it, but unless Cameron Diaz is going to start selling non-alcoholic wine, it’s a little rich to be saying, “This is ‘clean’.” It’s not. We might be willing to deal with the side effects and the consequences, but as far as we know, there’s no universe in which you can fairly say that about any product that has alcohol in it. That’s a safe statement to make.

A: Totally.

E: Totally. As a last takeaway, of all of these bald marketing ploys, clean wine is the worst marketing ploy that I have seen in all my years of covering wine. At least 15 years that I have been doing this, this is the thing that I wish would go away more than any other term. I see this coming down the pike, and people have seen the success of Avaline. They’ve seen the success of Dry Farm Wines, which does this, of Wonderful Wine Co., which does this. It is only picking up steam.

A: Oh yeah.

E: For consumers, if you want to pay a marked-up price for a wine, make sure it’s labeled “clean” because that’s where you’re going to be spending those marked up dollars. If you’re really concerned about how a wine is made or wanting to make sure that you have organic or biodynamic grapes, or that you’re looking for wines where the vineyard workers are treated fairly, go straight to the source. Do not go to these gatekeepers like celebrities or these wine clubs, because that is not the source of truth.

A: I love it. Erica came in hot today. I love it.

E: I had coffee.

Z: She’s been yelling at the kids. She’s ready.

A: I know! But I agree with you. There’s something to be said for, the wine world especially is very confusing. Our food ways, in general, are very confusing in this country. Be a smart consumer. And if it matters to you, be a smart consumer, call out bullshit when you see it, and ask real questions. If someone tells you this wine is clean or organic, ask to see the certification. Ask them to show you something that proves what they’re actually saying. If they can’t produce it, then realize that it’s bullshit. At the end of the day, across the board, whatever term someone is using, ask them what that means and how they define that. If they can’t show you any of those defining characteristics, then just know that you’re buying bullshit. If you still want to buy that bullshit, it’s totally fine. It’s your money. Spend it the way you want to. In everything in this world, there’s marketing speak, and marketing speak works. If you want to be a smart consumer, be able to identify marketing speak, decipher speak, and question it. That’s it!

Z: Can’t say it better than that.

E: Agreed.

A: I will chat with both of you next week for some random subject that will be determined based on whatever happens in the week before we record. Until then, we want to thank everyone for listening, as always. Drop us a review or give us a shoutout on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever else you get your podcasts. It really helps people discover the show. And, if you agree or disagree with us, always shoot us an email at podcast@vinepair.com. Erica, Zach, and I really love to know what you think. If you’re comfortable with it, we’d love to share your thoughts on the next show. Thanks so much.

E: Thank you.

Z: Sounds great.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now, for the credits. VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy and me, Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: The Dirty Truth About ‘Clean’ Wine appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/dirty-truth-about-clean-wine/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/vinepair-podcast-the-dirty-truth-about-clean-wine

[isaiahrippinus]

VinePair Podcast: The Dirty Truth About ‘Clean’ Wine

Recently, Cameron Diaz launched a new wine brand called Avaline, marketed as a “clean wine.” While the term didn’t originate with Diaz or her brand, Avaline has shone a major spotlight on the phrase — and caused an uproar among wine professionals, many of whom believe that the terminology is misleading.

In fact, there’s no legal or agreed-upon meaning for the term. No governmental, trade, or private organization that certifies or verifies “clean” claims. Many wine professionals have said that brands labelling their wine as “clean” are trading on customer misinformation around wine ingredients and processes as their currency, creating a false dichotomy between “clean” and “dirty” wines. This growing trend piggybacks on the existing “clean eating” trend, which holds an equally opaque meaning. On this week’s episode of the VinePair Podcast, Adam Teeter, Erica Duecy, and Zach Geballe unpack the term, explaining why it is so often exploited, and offering advice on how to avoid being fooled by marketing gimmickry.

Listen Online

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Spotify

Or Check Out Our Conversation Here

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Connecticut, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in Seattle Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the VinePair Podcast. Guys, it’s late July, which is weird.

Z: Oh my god.

E: Very weird.

Z: How is it that time is going both incredibly slow and incredibly fast? It’s bizarre. It always feels that way a little bit, but man, this year has been so weird.

A: It has been. When I realized it was late July, last night I said to Naomi, “Oh my gosh! We’ve been in quarantine for a year.” And it’s been four months. Wow, these four months have felt super long like you said, but also, everything has felt quick. How are we already at the end of July? We just had July 4th. It’s really weird.

E: Yeah, and with two kids, it’s like “Lord of the Flies” all of the time.

A: I can only imagine.

E: It just keeps getting worse.

A: Are you on the edge of your seat wondering what’s going to happen with school in the fall?

E: Oh yeah.

A: Have they already made a decision?

E: No, they’ve made no decision. We’re not going to know for a couple of weeks. It’s crazy. At this point, the kids are just running around the yard in tatters, playing in a pond, covering themselves with mud. I don’t even know where they are right now.

A: So it really is “Lord of the Flies.”

E: It really is. They paint themselves with mud. They’re way out there these days.

Z: There’s got to be a local farm you could get a pig skull from if you really wanted.

E: That’s next.

A: So ridiculous. We’ve all gotten so used to this, and also not at all. It’s such a nuts time to begin doing anything in this world, especially in this country.

Z: I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in a country that had handled this thing reasonably well. You could actually be thinking about a normal fall.

E: Right.

Z: It’s hard to believe.

A: I had a call earlier today with some people who have a well-known spirits brand here in the U.S. but it’s also huge in Asia. I was talking to them and they discussed that in Asia, coworkers are back to normal in the office and wearing masks. But they have a different attitude where they all protect each other. Here we say, “A mask? Eh. I don’t want to smell my breath.” That’s our attitude in this country. It would be interesting to see what it’s like being in a country that handled it well.

E: We should talk to someone from New Zealand or Australia, some restaurants or wineries, to hear what it’s like on the other side.

A: Even in Italy. They’re very much back to normal. Not to say it’s totally normal, but a lot of people are taking legitimate summer vacations and eating out a lot more. A lot of the businesses are back in their offices. Everyone’s wearing masks. That’s the one thing that everyone has to do, and it’s the one thing that here, we just won’t do. That makes it frustrating. It actually is that simple. Get the cases down, and wear this thing on your face. No one likes to wear it. It’s not comfortable.

Z: I would like to interject. My two-year-old really likes to wear his mask. He wants to keep it on.

A: I could see how kids like it. It’s kind of like a costume. It’s a little bit of a superhero feeling. My niece has a cute mask with fairies on it. She loves it. I could see how it’s like playing dress-up almost. For us, it’s a little more uncomfortable, but it is what it is. You have to wear one. Just get over it. We’d all get through this a lot faster, but no one wants to do it. It really boggles the mind. Anyways, speaking of health, let’s transition into our topic for this week, which is something that’s been bubbling in the world of alcohol in general for the last few years. It’s seemed to come especially to a head in the wine world, over the last two weeks. It’s this idea of marketing beverages, let’s talk specifically about wine today, as “clean.” There are a few instances of people releasing wines, including Cameron Diaz, using the word “clean” to describe the wine. There’s a lot of uproar over that, but the wines are actually selling like crazy. People can’t keep them in stock. There’s been a large debate over what is and isn’t fair marketing practices when it comes to selling wine. What is dubious? What isn’t? What are we allowed to say? What aren’t we allowed to say? I understand that people hustled, and they used something that’s a word that people care about, like clean eating. You can’t hate on those people for it. The only thing that I had issue with was the hypocrisy coming from a lot of people that were the loudest criticizers against the word clean because they’re the people who use the word “natural.”

Z: Yeah.

A: For me, my issue was that I want to be on their side, but they aren’t admitting that they use a word that they think also means a lot, that to a lot of people means to people exactly the same thing that “clean” does. Whether they want to say that clean wine isn’t as fair as natural wine, the reality is that all you have to do is look at the essay written in The New York Times last summer in the Style section, by a writer who literally said the reason they drink the wines that are labeled “natural” is because they think they are cleaner and better for them. No one has ever tried to refute that because it also helps you sell wine. It also packs your wine bar. It also gets people to try wines they wouldn’t normally try. Everyone is using marketing terms in order to sell their products. Let’s get over both of them. Maybe I’m in the minority. Maybe we should just hate the word “clean” and not the word “natural.” I don’t know. What do you guys think?

E: Cameron Diaz last week, or maybe two weeks ago now, launched this brand called “Avaline.” If you watch the video on social media and see how this thing is marketed, it really does set up this dichotomy that her wine is clean, and all wines by definition are dirty. That is the thing that makes me most upset. It’s just a continuation. First we had Dry Farm Wines. They did this clean marketing in a clever way, but the thing is, it’s built on misinformation and the lack of consumers really understanding what’s going on. For Dry Farm Wines, they package up commercially available, organic, and biodynamic wines. They mark them up, and they sell them under the guise of sugar free. “These are sugar free wines.” “Low carb.” All this sort of stuff. But guess what? All wines, any dry wine is going to be sugar free or nearly sugar free and also very low carb. It’s that misnomer. Winc recently, with their Wonderful Wine Company, they’re marketing it as “clean wine for better living.” Their tagline is “Health conscious wine lovers, meet the low carb, low sugar, organic wine you’ve been waiting for.” The problem with this is just that it’s not accurate. It’s misleading. Over and over, we’re getting this pick-up from what was clean eating. Now it’s transitioned over to clean drinking. I just don’t think it’s accurate. If you really look into Avaline and how this wine in particular was made and packaged, it’s not that much different than really any other organic wine that is middle-of-the-road, industrial produced that’s out there right now.

Z: I think the problem starts with this simple fact that is very easily misconstrued and possibly abused by both natural and clean-wine people, and that is that there are very minimal requirements for labeling of wine. If you look at marketing material for natural wine, for clean wine, they both harp on this fact that “you don’t know what in your wine.” It could have fish bladders, it could have egg whites, it could have mega-purple. It could have all these things. And there’s some truth to that, it’s true. There is no mandate in the United States. There are 60-odd additives that can be used as part of the winemaking process that don’t have to be disclosed on the label. This idea that because there isn’t disclosure on the label, it means that every wine has these things lurking in it, is first of all silly. Second of all, for the most part, who gives a shit? Yes, I don’t like mega-purple in my wine because I want my wine to be an expression of place and what actually happened in a vineyard, not what happened in a lab to concentrate grape essence. But you know what? I’ve had some wines with mega-purple in it, and sometimes they’re all right. They’re not amazing, but let’s get over ourselves a little bit here. It comes back to this fact that they harp on this lack of labeling. There’s a lot to be said about the idea that maybe we should, as a consumer base, be advocating for more labeling in wine. Maybe you shouldn’t be able to put these things in without having to disclose it. That’s a bit of an adjacent conversation to this. The reality is, there’s this abuse of that fact. What if I packaged up a wine and said, “This wine has zero asbestos in it.” Would your question then, as a consumer who didn’t know better, be, “Well, wait. Does other wine have asbestos in it?” We’re basically talking about the same stuff, in that claiming that your wine doesn’t have something that most wine doesn’t have doesn’t set you apart except for with the majority of consumers who don’t know any better. Most people don’t know much about how wine is made because it’s complicated, and why would you bother to know unless you’re us?

A: We’re creating problems for consumers in both ways. Erica, I completely agree with you. I did not like how this was done. It’s interesting that it’s not on the label for Avaline. It was just something they said in this video, but then that’s what went viral, which was actually pretty smart on their part. In both regards, why are we scaring consumers about sulfites? What all of a sudden is that something we’re deeming as bad? That’s the same thing in terms of marketing. It’s interesting that especially in the world of spirits, you don’t have people react as negatively to marketing, which is curious. In the world of wine, we want to really believe in a lot of ways, and again this is not to say that I agree in any way with how they marketed the wines, but we want to believe that everyone is an artist. At the end of the day, if people were artists, then they would be independently wealthy, and they need to make a living. They need to sell it. Some people use celebrity spokesmen in order to sell their wines, some people use different marketing terms to sell their wines, some people just make really damn good wine that everyone gets excited about and that’s how they sell their wine. At the end of the day, everyone needs to market it somehow, somewhere. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t remember the same massive reaction when George Clooney came out and said that his tequila didn’t give you a hangover. People thought it was really smart. Casamigos did a really smart thing, and a lot of other tequila brands started emulating that positioning. No one said, “How dare George Clooney say that his tequila is more pure and doesn’t give you a hangover.” People thought he had a really good idea.

Z: I do think if he said that today, there would be a little bit more pushback on that, in part because there’s also this complicated issue of a white dude saying that his tequila is clean and others are not.

A: Totally. Don’t worry. There’s an article today on the site about that.

Z: There you go. Perfect.

A: I agree with you there. It was only four years ago. It wasn’t like it was super long ago. I do feel like there’s this weird anger that comes out only in wine in a way that’s very different from beer or spirits. Maybe I’m wrong. That’s just what I feel.

E: It’s this mindset. Especially recently in wine and spirits, we’re seeing such a huge shift in celebrities building this space. It’s this mindset of, “Rich celebrity, bestow upon us your godly wisdom. Thank goodness you decided to tackle the problem of dirty wine. It took someone with your talent to uncover the truth about wine and its disgusting practices and its disgusting winemakers. Now, we are saved. The end. Perfect soundbite.” You know? That’s the thing. Further, it’s elitist. This one in particular, Avaline, with this clean-dirty dynamic, it is so elitist. It’s saying, you can’t drink clean unless you can afford to shell out $24 for my Cameron Diaz bottle of wine. Then, if you can’t do that, you clearly don’t care about what you’re putting in your body. That’s the knock that clean eating has gotten because no one can afford to go to a farmers market and hand-source every piece of food they’re putting in their mouth. That’s this mindset that’s getting shifted over, in this particular celebrity case that really pisses me off.

A: It is all Gwen’s fault?

E: Yes.

A: Goop really started pushing this earlier than anyone else. This was a thing that happened really early on. Goop’s been a proponent of a lot of these ideas of natural fermentation versus inoculation. It’s all so complicated. I want to be really angry about this whole thing, but it’s hard for me to because I feel like there’s this whole other category of wine that’s been doing it for so long. They were some of the people that were the angriest. I can’t be as angry as I need to be about how this is annoying and the way that they marketed it. Zach, are you as conflicted as I am?

Z: No because to me, there’s a fundamental difference. Look, you all listening to this know I’ve had my issues with the natural wine crowd plenty of times. But I will say with some notable exceptions, they’ve mostly struck me as people who are pretty earnest. I find the clean wine crowd to be much more nakedly opportunistic.

A: That’s what always happens.

E: I completely agree.

Z: Here’s the thing. If I were to believe that Cameron Diaz was really passionate about wine, then you would think that says the variety, or even the place where this wine is made, because it’s not that Cameron Diaz is going to Spain and picking the grapes and making the wine. She contracted with a large winemaking consortium. There’s a great article out by Miquel Hudin about this.

A: But he doesn’t say who it is, right? No one knows who it is.

Z: He doesn’t disclose, because he chose not to. Because he felt like it might blowback on the producer, the actual people who make the wine. The point is, he was able to figure out who was making it. The wine itself might actually be pretty good. I don’t think there’s any reason to think that the wine is inherently bad.

A: He says it’s a respected producer whose wines he enjoys. So probably the wine is good.

Z: Yeah, and Xarello, which is the grape that they’re largely using, as he points out in his piece also, I think is a variety that is overdue for some recognition. It’s that exact fact that for him and for many of us, is galling about this, because had this line and this wine been positioned slightly differently — where there was a little bit of attention paid or marketing shine given to the grape, the place, the people who actually made it, not just the ones who slapped their name on it and branded it — it could possibly be inoffensive. Look at Miraval. Feel how you want to feel, but look, it’s true that Brad and Angelina Jolie being involved in it helped catapult it onto people’s radar, but it’s a legitimately good rosé. It brought some attention to a category that maybe didn’t need a lot of help, but certainly didn’t hurt for it. That’s the issue that I have with some of these clean wines. They seem almost the opposite of a lot of natural wine. They seem interested in obscuring the place of origin, the variety and whatever else of the wine because really, it’s a marketing ploy. It’s about being able to shift the source of the grapes. Often they don’t have a vintage on them, so that they can be sort of remade at any given time due to demand. For all of their complaining about lack of transparency and labelling, to me, these wines are some of the least transparent wines out there. The only thing like them are some of the mass-produced grocery-store-brand wines that also have almost no information on the label. They don’t even have a variety sometimes, or a vintage. It’s just a proprietary name. That’s really what this is, just with a different marketing gimmick.

A: But this is what happens in business, having to recognize that wine is a business. There are movements that are truly organic — ha! I used that word. There are movements that start, and people find ways to exploit those movements. I completely agree. There’s a lot of people I know who are proponents of natural wine who I respect a lot, who have had me taste wines that I think are absolutely amazing, and who I know aren’t in it because they’ve also been duped. They know the producers. They’re passionate about it. And they’re some people who won’t use the term “natural” that often. Then, there’s other people that became crazy zealots of the category without understanding wine in general. To them, all other wine was bad. This was the only good wine. That became something that they were putting out on social media and marketing. A few well-known companies then tried to exploit it. We predicted this, Zach, you and I, over a year ago, that someone would exploit this. I thought it was going to be Aldi or something. Turns out that it’s Cameron Diaz. I never knew this. One of our friends is a fashion designer. She told us, did you know that if you send a product that’s made in China to Italy and it just gets a final stitch, you can say it’s made in Italy?

E: No way.

A: There’s a lot of people that will do that. They know that a lot of American consumers care about that label. They’ve been told that “Made in Italy” matters, so some of these lower-cost fashion brands, the way they can charge and sell a little bit more is to send a suit or dress to Italy for the final stitching. It costs very little compared to what it would cost if you were buying Armani or Billy Reid or any of these really high-end fashion brands. But they get the final stitch made and it can have this label in it, which is crazy to think about. It’s the same idea, right? It’s these larger companies that realize this is what consumers want. It’s what they’re being told is a signifier of quality, so in fashion it’s a “Made in Italy” label. In wine, it’s the word “clean” or “natural.” Let’s exploit it because there’s very little regulation from stopping that. That’s what happens. When you don’t have regulation, companies will go as far as they can to exploit it and take advantage of the consumer. It’s annoying, but I’m not surprised it happened. I’m actually surprised it was Cameron Diaz. I’m surprised it was a celebrity first and not just a really big company. I’m sure there’s a really big company behind her, but again, we don’t even know. It was bound to happen.

E: It’s true. It is just going to continue. It’s going to get worse and worse unless there’s more labeling transparency and some sort of legislation around that and around the terminology of things like “natural” and “clean.” We’re going to keep heading further and further down this path.

Z: Some of this is inevitable because the reality is that marketing and industry forces are what they are. From a journalistic-media side, one thing that has to be worked on is how these categories of wine, in particular, are talked about. It’s because they have so little legal guideline, in a way, that organic and even biodynamic have government-imposed or at least sanctioning-body-imposed rules that you have to meet for labelling — and natural and clean are in the eye of the beholder at the moment. One thing that has to come out of this from the wine industry and the media side is standards about: Do we use these terms? When do we use these terms? How confident do we have to be that what someone is saying in their marketing pitch is actually true? I would personally like to say that this is where the big issue comes up. So much of what happens is, this information is conveyed to a credulous public, often laundered through respected publications. I’m not talking about VinePair here. I’m talking about some other ones that I’ve read. I’m not going to shit-talk and specific articles on this podcast. You can DM me if you want to know what I think. The reality is that a lot of these non-wine-focused publications that are more general publications use this terminology. Like you were talking about The New York Times Style piece from a year ago, they’re written by people who may not know a lot about wine. They’re sometimes pay-to-play articles. They just muddy the water so badly that I think it’s important for those of us in the media to do better in terms of when we are going to use these terms. And we can’t let the producer define if their wine is clean or natural. Unless there’s a certifying body that, at a minimum, it has to come down to a standard that’s set by an outset organization, because everyone’s going to call themselves “natural” or “clean” if it becomes a selling point. That’s what’s happening. We have to, as a media body, do better and have standards that — whether or not the winery or wine seller thinks that they’re wine should be called natural or clean — there has to be some outside standard imposed. If it’s not a certifying body, then it has to be us.

A: I agree.

E: From my perspective, I have not seen any wine or drinks publications that fell for the bait on this one. It was all People, InStyle, all of the big consumer publications who came out with this Avaline wine and said, “Cameron Diaz, the savior.” That was 100 percent across the board for anything that was not a drinks publication. There is just a huge amount of, a fundamental lack of, consumer understanding. In this case, the consumers are also the journalists. That’s what we’re dealing with here. The people who are writing these articles probably have zero experience or understanding about wine. This is just one of five articles that they’re writing in a week, and they’re just flipping through the press release. That’s the real problem here. A lot of the gatekeepers really have no idea about wine. What can we do as wine-interested people and people in the wine industry to better convey what is honest and accurate? How do we get people to understand what is a buzzword?

A: There’s a few things here. One, I can’t speak for other publications, but Erica, when you came onboard, one of the biggest things, which is pervasive in lifestyle media, we try not to take pitches from what I call “book report writers.” They basically had facts regurgitated to them from a producer on a press trip. They wrote it and then they never challenged whether or not they were being told the truth. That happens a lot, especially in lifestyle publications because you’ve been given this free thing. You went on a trip and it was fun. The winemaker was charming. They served you a beautiful dinner. They said, “I’m the first producer to ever grow organic Nebbiolo in Piemonte.” You wrote it, but it’s not true. You didn’t do the research because they said it. You took them at their word. It’s the same with a lot of the lifestyle people. You’re going to be given access to Cameron Diaz. You get to talk to her. Are you going to challenge Cameron Diaz? She’s telling you that her wine is clean! You got to interview Cameron Diaz, and it’s dope. At the end of the day, we’re humans. There’s a cool thing about talking to the star of “The Mask.” A lot of these lifestyle writers are not going to challenge a celebrity telling them something. They’re just going to write it, which is a problem. It also speaks to what’s unfortunately happening in newsrooms, which we talk about all the time. There’s less budget, because there’s less advertising for more editors over the writers to do fact-checking to make sure that this stuff is actually accurate before publishing. It’s really unfortunate. The reason we’ve taken a position, and I don’t want to say a publication position, but my personal position on natural wine is, my issue with it is that it’s not regulated. I don’t want to give it a carte blanche. I’m very open to talking to someone who says they’re a biodynamic producer and is certified that way because they do it and can prove it. That’s a different thing. I try to avoid those buzzwords, doing podcasts like this, writing articles that are critical when these things happen, and saying that this is bullshit, on both sides. This term “clean wine” is bullshit. These other terms are bullshit, too. You, as a consumer, should be aware of it because you’re the one getting duped. If you want to buy the wine because you like Cameron Diaz, and she’s showing you a really great wine from Spain that’s made from a grape you should know about, that’s awesome. You should buy that wine. But if you’re buying that wine because she told you it’s clean, you should think twice, because that should not be a factor because that’s not true.

E: Totally.

Z: Last piece here from me. As always, there’s alcohol in these wines. They can only be so healthy. It’s just the reality of it. It’s not like, in the end, there isn’t a poison in there. Now look, it’s an an awesome poison that we all really like, and we like the effect it has on us, and we like what comes along with it, but unless Cameron Diaz is going to start selling non-alcoholic wine, it’s a little rich to be saying, “This is ‘clean’.” It’s not. We might be willing to deal with the side effects and the consequences, but as far as we know, there’s no universe in which you can fairly say that about any product that has alcohol in it. That’s a safe statement to make.

A: Totally.

E: Totally. As a last takeaway, of all of these bald marketing ploys, clean wine is the worst marketing ploy that I have seen in all my years of covering wine. At least 15 years that I have been doing this, this is the thing that I wish would go away more than any other term. I see this coming down the pike, and people have seen the success of Avaline. They’ve seen the success of Dry Farm Wines, which does this, of Wonderful Wine Co., which does this. It is only picking up steam.

A: Oh yeah.

E: For consumers, if you want to pay a marked-up price for a wine, make sure it’s labeled “clean” because that’s where you’re going to be spending those marked up dollars. If you’re really concerned about how a wine is made or wanting to make sure that you have organic or biodynamic grapes, or that you’re looking for wines where the vineyard workers are treated fairly, go straight to the source. Do not go to these gatekeepers like celebrities or these wine clubs, because that is not the source of truth.

A: I love it. Erica came in hot today. I love it.

E: I had coffee.

Z: She’s been yelling at the kids. She’s ready.

A: I know! But I agree with you. There’s something to be said for, the wine world especially is very confusing. Our food ways, in general, are very confusing in this country. Be a smart consumer. And if it matters to you, be a smart consumer, call out bullshit when you see it, and ask real questions. If someone tells you this wine is clean or organic, ask to see the certification. Ask them to show you something that proves what they’re actually saying. If they can’t produce it, then realize that it’s bullshit. At the end of the day, across the board, whatever term someone is using, ask them what that means and how they define that. If they can’t show you any of those defining characteristics, then just know that you’re buying bullshit. If you still want to buy that bullshit, it’s totally fine. It’s your money. Spend it the way you want to. In everything in this world, there’s marketing speak, and marketing speak works. If you want to be a smart consumer, be able to identify marketing speak, decipher speak, and question it. That’s it!

Z: Can’t say it better than that.

E: Agreed.

A: I will chat with both of you next week for some random subject that will be determined based on whatever happens in the week before we record. Until then, we want to thank everyone for listening, as always. Drop us a review or give us a shoutout on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever else you get your podcasts. It really helps people discover the show. And, if you agree or disagree with us, always shoot us an email at podcast@vinepair.com. Erica, Zach, and I really love to know what you think. If you’re comfortable with it, we’d love to share your thoughts on the next show. Thanks so much.

E: Thank you.

Z: Sounds great.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now, for the credits. VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy and me, Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: The Dirty Truth About ‘Clean’ Wine appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/dirty-truth-about-clean-wine/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/624888843747901440

[ginnyzero]

Sons of Anarchy: Word of the Day, Conflicted

This isn’t necessarily a review. It’s more of, I watched this, this is on my mind. I want to get it out of my mind, so I write about it.

Sons of Anarchy is the antithesis of the types of shows I usually watch. It’s a drama centered around mostly male characters that requires a lot of time and emotional investment. It can be brutally violent and dark, but has real heartwarming, emotional and even really funny moments. A co-worker recommended it to me. He knew I liked Expendables and motorcycles. There aren’t a lot of stories about motorcycle clubs because they are so secretive. For a show to be set in a Club interested me right off the bat. I picked up the first season since I had the money to do so. Then I got sucked in due to the story about the baby, Abel. By the end Season 4, I was heavily invested in the characters and the Club. But Season 5 is where my type of storytelling and Kurt Sutter’s type of storytelling diverge like those proverbial roads in the woods. The basic contrast between character driven stories and plot driven.

Sons of Anarchy is the tragic tale of violence and sins of the fathers being repaid even unto the fourth generation of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club. Jax Teller is the son and stepson of two of the First Nine members of the Redwood Original charter and heir apparent when his stepfather steps down as President. However, Clay Morrow’s vision and Jax’s vision of the Club are completely opposite and Jax ends up making compromises that pull him deeper into the criminal warfare and away from the legitimate future he wishes the Club could have. As it spirals deeper out of control, it tears apart his family, destroys his relationships and sparks a brutal gang war in the streets of Stockton and Oakland that eventually comes home to roost in Charming and on Jax himself.

Kurt Sutter knows how to write when he focusses on his characters and shines the light on their flaws and stays away from overt symbolism and brutal nonsensical violence. When he focusses on the characters the writing is tense and tight and keeps the audience coming back for more. That was the first four seasons and the last four episodes of season 7. Seasons 5, 6 and most of season 7 were major stumbling blocks as instead of focusing on the characters, the show focused on plot elements of how they were to set up the last four episodes of season 7. They took what they felt needed to happen, the double crosses, the deaths and plugged it into a sequence that focused on the events rather than the characters. It was a drastic departure from the previous writing and it didn’t work in my opinion.

The story worked for me when the characters were trying to stand up for what was right even if they were going about it in the only way they knew how, through violence. Or, when the characters were being pulled in several different directions. Jax in Season 2 and 3 with trying to decide on whether or not to keep Abel. Juice in Season 4 was agonizing as his own heritage and rules off the club were being used against him. They were adults trying to solve adult problems. How to pay the mortgage when there weren’t enough jobs in town to get a second job? Have a baby now or get an abortion and have another one later? What is the definition of family and how do families help each other? With motorcycles and leather… and guns, and big explosions because crime. It was a lot more appealing than shows about vampires who can’t decide who to date.

Season 4 was so tense and engaging for me, that I had a hard time picking up Season 5 to continue. It was just so emotionally exhausting. Then, Seasons 5 through 7, I sat through with gritted teeth of frustration and worked on puzzles on my floor. I had to force myself to watch them. That’s how big a 180 the writing was.

I want to emphasize that I am coming at the show as a writer. Sons of Anarchy was an extremely popular show with the average viewer left wanting more. And as a writer, I can see the reasons why the viewers wanted more and were pissed that Kurt ended it at Season 7, despite Kurt having told the story he wanted to tell and ended said story where he wanted to. (As a writer, I respect him for this as I’ve done it myself.) And I can see why, in the moment of writing it season by season, why they made the choices they made with the story. When you step back away from it and look at it from a distance, these choices may have been the wrong choices. (Which is why outlines are important.)

The story is a tragedy. It was developed as a tragedy. It was pitched as a tragedy. It was pitched as Hamlet on motorcycles. And by the end of the story, J.T. is set up as God and Jax has become this Christ like figure complete with communion symbolism. And honestly, I have no problem with tragic stories. They are not my cup of tea. I know there is a place for them in the overall scheme of things. They can teach valuable messages. I’m just not sure if the message got across appropriately in Sons. (Hatred, violence and retaliation is bad. But the hatred, violence and retaliation had been glorified too so, don’t know if the message got across. Especially when it had to be blatantly stated in the last episode which is a little too late.) And I know to me, after watching the final episode (and predicting the events of the last four episodes) the entire story felt like an exercise in futility. There was no point. If there was to be some sort of hope in the tragedy, it wasn’t shown enough for me to feel it. There wasn’t even a surety that the cycle Kurt had set up with J.T. and Jax had been broken. Maybe it wasn’t enough of a tragedy. Kurt spent too much time trying to save something that shouldn’t have been saved. A true dissolution of the Club might have been more satisfying.

In Sons, we’re rooting for the criminals. The criminals have been set up to be the ‘heroes’ of the story. And in doing so, the villains, law enforcement, the traditional heroes of other shows, are shown to be venal, corrupt and at times down right socio and psychopathic. The villains mostly started off big, as in, law enforcement of the federal level. There were other villains present in the form of rival gangs or even criminal enterprises that were supposedly in league with our ‘heroes.’ But law enforcement was the largest and most common thread throughout the seasons. I think what Kurt and the writers were trying to do were start the villains as big threats on the horizon, federal agents and threats of RICO shut downs with mass arrests. Then, they tried to narrow the focus of how the Club’s activities were threatening them close to home by bringing in a local District Attorney for the County. This was supposed to make the threats feel more personal and more dangerous.

It didn’t work. Partly because as they did that, the supporting villains became more caricatures than characters. Partly because this is backwards to how these stories normally work, you start with the small threat, the close to home and personal and that brings bigger measures of crime which brings the bigger threats. And lastly, because the writing was much more intimate and character driven with the bigger threats than it was with the smaller threats, the smaller threats didn’t feel personal or intimate. This is why they audience wanted more of the story. The threats had been building and building becoming bigger and bigger and suddenly, they all collapsed. There wasn’t a threat anymore. If the Sons could handle a Federal RICO case and juggle CIA double agents, then a local DA just wasn’t going to be a problem. It wasn’t realistic. It was taking smart characters and making them stupid. It felt like two completely different stories. And as they tried to push and push the envelope of violence and shock value, it became numbing and downright boring.

Boring wasn’t helped by the same two characters making the same mistakes again and again over the entire seven seasons until they both ended up dead in the same episode. (It was long overdue and I was thoroughly sick of the two of them and their inability to pick a side, stop poking their noses in things they shouldn’t and keep their mouths shut.) That was just bad writing. In writing, characters need to grow and change and learn. Or other characters need to make the mistakes just for the sake of variety.

Motorcycle Clubs are primarily men’s worlds and the show reflected that by usually having only two female characters as protagonists at one time. There were more female villains at times than there were fully fleshed out heroes. There ended up being only three of note, Gemma, Tara and Wendy. Gemma was the matriarch, her defining role was to be the mother. She was also manipulative and a narcissist. Her pride and possessiveness both made and broke the Club.

She is contrasted with Tara, who is the Madonna figure, the angel come to redeem Jax. However, Tara’s story is one where the angel falls and becomes exactly what she hates. We watch her sacrifice her ideals and what she wants bit by bit to help Jax until she’s lost everything that is dear to her.

And Wendy, Jax’s first wife, was supposed to be the true redemption story, the story of second chances. When we meet her at first, she is a drug addict who almost kills Abel with her drug use. And then we don’t see her for several seasons until she returns, drug free and wanting to be part of Abel’s life again.

Gemma’s story, Tara’s story are strong stories. We care about them. We have an investment in what happens to them. We want Tara to succeed and redeem Jax, getting the boys out of Charming. We want Gemma to get what is coming to her, the fruits of every ill deed and choice she has sown. Their stories take place right in front of us, are played out on the screen. I couldn’t care about Wendy when she returned. I couldn’t see her as the true second chance redeeming angel. Her story hadn’t been shown to us. We saw the results, not the work. It didn’t work story wise. More bad writing.

The same could be said of Gemma’s relationship with Nero. Supposedly they loved each other, but that was a result, there wasn’t any work or effort put into their relationship other than sex. It was if they felt they needed another father figure for Jax and lumped him in with several other positions they needed for their story to work. The relationship never was shown. It just happened and we were supposed to accept that Gemma and Jax had accepted this new guy as part of their family without emotional turmoil. Jax was more worried about business than this guy trying to set himself up as a mentor to him. It didn’t feel real. (That and by the end there was no chemistry between most of the actors so the sex scenes felt forced and unnecessary outside of Tig and Venus.)

It didn’t feel like there was a concrete plan once Clay was deposed and Jax was President. Only when they were winding the story down and focusing on the personal results of two seasons worth of senseless violence did the story come alive again. And then, it was over. In order to make it feel finished, there probably would have needed another season. But by this point there was no one left to feel connected to. No one from the original cast to care about enough to continue and no actor with a big enough name to hold viewers’ attention.

I’m not even going to touch the overtly symbolic and jarring final scene. It was an insult to viewers. I should have been able to predict it, but I was holding out a smidgen of hope that they wouldn’t make Jax that stupid. My bad.

Maybe this is my bias towards character driven writing showing through. Sons stands as this very interesting example of the difference between character driven writing and plot driven writing in just one show. I find plot driven writing boring. It’s why Leverage, as fascinating as the cons were, couldn’t hold my attention and by contrast, the Librarians with the focus on the characters, does. Because Sons started out as a character driven show, is why the reversal to being plot driven in the second half frustrates me so. The characters were no longer conflicted within themselves. The conflict was all external and you need a lot more than a few explosions to make that type of story interesting or even inventive. We don’t need to turn to fiction for senseless violence. There is plenty of that in the world already.

So, like the writing, I find myself conflicted about the show. I liked the setting, the motorcycle club, to a degree the characters. I liked a good half of the writing. And then, I didn’t because characters became forgotten and there was too much mindless violence. Conflicted is the word of the day.

[kidsviral-blog]

How I Learned To Be OK With Feeling Sad

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/how-i-learned-to-be-ok-with-feeling-sad/

How I Learned To Be OK With Feeling Sad

It wasn’t easy, or cheap.

View this image ›

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

The first time I didn’t feel sad about feeling sad was on Sept. 17, 2013. I was in my therapist’s office. More specifically, I was lying on a table, faceup, in my therapist’s office. Maybe it sounds simple, but it was a trick I’d spent years practicing and trying to learn.

I do not mean that I take sadness lightly. Four and a half years ago, after a work-related immersion in sexual violence, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Subsequently, I was diagnosed with comorbid major depressive disorder. Comorbid to all that, I was diagnosed as alcoholic and suicidal. More than $20,000 worth of treatment later, I am no longer those things, but, as an evaluating psychiatrist put it in a report last year, I have “chronic,” “recurring,” “residual psychiatric symptoms” serious enough that she ruled me permanently disabled. I’ve been an emotional gal since always — “She has a lot of feelings,” my best grad-school friend would chuckle by way of explanation when I got worked up about some topic or other in front of strangers — and my emotions now are enormous. Frustration over a failed attempt to buy a sold-out rug online ends in so much yelling and foot-stomping that my neighbors complain. The intensity of a pop song lands like a blunt punch to my chest and explodes any grief nestling there; the very day I’m writing this, Nicki Minaj made me cry in my car.

Sincerely: I do not take sadness lightly. But after a lot of retraining, I do take it wholly, life-alteringly differently than I was raised to, and than almost anyone else I know. Now, sometimes when I’m not sad and I think about sadness, that thought is accompanied by this startling one: I miss it.

View this image ›

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

Pre-therapy, this is the only thing I was ever taught, implicitly and explicitly, about sadness: It is bad.

You do not want it. If you’ve got it, you should definitely try to get rid of it, fast as possible. Whatever you do, don’t subject other people to it, because they do not like that.

Sadness can be legitimately problematic, absolutely. If your sadness comes from seemingly no place or even an obvious place but keeps you from participating in life or enjoying anything and refuses to abate no matter how long you go on letting it express itself, you of course can’t keep living like that. But culturally, we aren’t allowed to be sad even for a little while. Even when it’s perfectly sensible. Even when, sometimes, we need it.

This is reflected in our entertainment. Watching Bridesmaids, I shake my head over how Melissa McCarthy slaps Kristen Wiig around and tells her to stop being sad, though she has recently lost her job, her savings, her home, and her best friend. (Miraculously, this solves Kristen Wiig’s attitude problem.) In the third episode of MasterChef Junior‘s second season, judge Joe Bastianich tells a contestant who has ruined her shepherd’s pie and possibly her dream of winning, the biggest dream she’s had up to this point in her life, “When things are as bad as they can be, you gotta pull it together. Wipe your tears.”

The contestant has been crying for mere seconds. She is 8 years old.

What does it say about our relationship to sadness that Joan Didion — who we can all agree is a pretty smart, educated, and worldly cookie — had to write an entire book about trying to learn how to grieve? This ethos was fine for me when mostly nothing bad happened and if it did, the accompanying sadness didn’t linger for too long. But post-trauma, it turned out to be a massive impediment to my recovery.

I had a lot of symptoms. They all alarmed me, but equally so the most straightforward one: sadness. Sometimes I cried from uncontrollable, overwhelming, life-swallowing sadness. And all the time, the sadness and crying itself freaked me the fuck out. I would start crying, and then immediately hate myself. Why was I crying? Why couldn’t I get this sadness to go away? What was wrong with me?

View this image ›

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

I got into therapy. I’d gone before, casually and occasionally, for support with some huge changes — a new city and new job and fresh divorce years earlier. Now, it was a therapy emergency. I considered myself decently good at self-care in general, but sure, I let it slip when I got too busy, when work was too demanding, when there were things I had to do that I knew I was getting too burned out to but did anyway. But taking care of myself was not optional anymore. As a matter of survival, I had to make as much room for it as it needed.

And so, I started intensive treatment — during which my therapist had to spend incalculable amounts of time trying to convince me that it was OK to be sad. The alarm I experienced over my sadness was another terrible feeling on top of my already terrible symptoms. The energy I spent panicking that I was sad could have been better spent on coping with the sadness. It was true that I — like many people, people with clinically depressed, never-ending, or life-threatening sadness — needed a lot more assistance than just a big philosophical hug, but if I could accept sadness, my therapist kept suggesting, I would be able to experience it (long and hard as that may go on) and then it could pass. The alternative — being sad, plus condemning yourself for being sad — only heightens the suffering. And, likely, the time it lasts.

“Sadness is a legitimate emotion,” my therapist would say. “There is an acceptance you can get to with it where it’s just a sensation, and without judgment, that sensation can be exquisite.”

“LIES,” I responded to this sometimes. Sometimes I called her a hippie. Nobody accepts sadness. Everybody knows that crying girls are silly and weak. Hysterical, and overdramatic.

But as much as I didn’t — I couldn’t! — really believe her, I still really wanted to learn how to do that.

View this image ›

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

I can’t explain, in a tight little essay, how I finally did it. It would take an entire book for me to describe how I got even most of the way there. I can sum up that it took three years to the DAY after the events that started my symptoms, and that it cost a lot of money, and time, and time off, which cost more money, and was so painful that the very memory of how painful it was sometimes makes me need to go lie down in my bed. I can point out that most people are not given the opportunity to go through this process, even if they desperately want to. Unfortunately, healing is a luxury in our society, not a right; so many who could benefit from treatment simply can’t.

And I can tell you about the moment, that September. It was sunny and in the 60s. I was in my therapist’s office in San Francisco, which had fairly bare walls, industrial carpet, and windows that let the light in. I was lying on a massage therapist’s table, because that was normal in my somatic therapy; the treatment addressed the physicality of one’s symptoms, the places and ways trauma lived in one’s body (last year, a hero of my therapist’s, the very brilliant Bessel van der Kolk, released a book about this called The Body Keeps the Score), which was often explored with eyes closed, lying down. The first umpteen number of times I got on the table and was prompted to breathe, to feel into where my tensions and disconnections were, I resisted the falling apart this awareness and reconnecting could lead to. I feared starting to cry and never stopping. I feared never being able to put myself back together, ever, sometimes metaphorically but sometimes literally writhing and kicking and screaming with my resistance to just relaxing. Feeling. To be clear: Sadness was far from my only issue. But by Sept. 17, 2013 (around which point my insurance tallied it had so far given my therapist $18,000), I was taking feeling it in much better stride.

“How do you feel?” my therapist asked.

“Sad,” I said. I was extra sad that day because I was in the middle of a no-fault eviction, and it was turning out not to be practical or affordable to stay in the Bay Area, where I’d lived for a long time. “I feel sad because we have to move.” I cried as I talked about this. I loved California. “I have to grieve a state.”

I cried harder. “It’s a bummer.”

My therapist was very calm. “That is a bummer,” she agreed in soothing tones. She told me to open my eyes and when I did, asked me what sensation I noticed. Instantly, I pictured a kid lying in a yard.

That’s me right now, I thought. A kid lying in a yard, feeling sad — but not feeling sad about feeling sad. It was what it was. It was fine. It was a peace. Me, or a kid, being just what she was: alive.

View this image ›

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

“I’m not bummed out about feeling bummed out,” I said.

The significance of this moment was clear to us both. My therapist was speechless for a second. Then she smiled — we were often smiling, because we joked through even the hardest and ugliest moments together — and said, “People pay a lot of money for that, Mac.”

“They should!”

They shouldn’t have to. I hadn’t panicked over being sad every time it had happened in my life, say over a breakup, but I had never had that level of acceptance of it, peace-spreading, unrushed, cell-deep, certainly not as an adult. And as a person with PTSD, I had completely lost any trust in my own emotions, fearing them constantly, sadness included — or perhaps especially, as it was the most persistent. Now, I was finally embracing it.

Which is how I could come to be in a position to miss it. The interestingness of it. The difference of it from other emotions. I remembered the sensations of it: the weight. The way it slowed things down and took the space of everything else up. It was exquisite, objectively but also as evidence that I could feel, that I was open and not shut down, capable of having a whole gamut of emotions rush in, and maybe overwhelm, but move through and move me. Not everyone can. Or does. I am occasionally jealous of people whose emotions come more softly, or quietly, or less often. I assume they have more time and energy, with those not being taken up by sensitivity that makes even the widely considered “good” emotions like joy feel like they’re making their heart explode. But for the most part, I’m not. Some people are born, and then they live, and then they die, one of my doctors told me once, in an effort to comfort. You, you die and are reborn sometimes 10 times in one day. Lucky.

The next time I felt sadness after I missed it, I was reminded why it was so hard to feel it all the time. Oh yeah, I remembered. It hurt. It was difficult to work. To cook, to eat, to play. To take care of others. Exquisite it may have been, but painful, and not invigorating, and quite tiring. Still I trusted that I needed it at that time, that it was expressing something necessary. I didn’t hate or judge it. I did not feel silly or weak. They say it takes a big man to cry, and I think — unfortunately, given our collective feelings about sadness — that’s true. But it takes a bigger woman still, to feel the strength of a sob, without apology or shame. With pride. I’m the biggest I’ve ever been, the way I let my emotions run, sadness included: the way it cleanses me, tears washing my face, resolving me to continue to feel with abandon.

***

Mac McClelland is the author of Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story (out this Tuesday, February 24th) and For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question. She has written for Reuters, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the New York Times Magazine, and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications, and has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Sidney Hillman Foundation, the Online News Association, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Association for Women in Communications. Her work has also been nominated for two National Magazine Awards for Feature Writing and has been anthologized in the Best American Magazine Writing 2011, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011, and Best Business Writing 2013.

To learn more about Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story, click here.

View this image ›

Flatiron Books

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/macmcclelland/not-feeling-sad-about-feeling-sad