#and that because its so popular we get attacked and our feelings dismissed for criticizing it. youre the mean killjoy disabled person

[martyrbat]

[ID: a screenshot of tags by @hellcite that reads: #Related to this: a lot of those find the doppleganger games have been really popular lately #And it hit me that so many of the 'spooky doppelganger signs' are just. That's someone with a facial difference #That's someone with poor english. That's someone who is intellectually disabled. That's literally just a blind person #Like idk. Watching a billion videos of creators going 'ohh that's definitely the doppelganger that's so scary' #And the image in the game is like. A normal person who happens to have a lazy eye #It feels at least a little dehumanizing to have that as your example of inhuman imposters. END ID]

also while im having my afternoon bitching moment i think a lot of analog & common horror games relies on being ableist and having the 'scary disfigured person' trope that harms actual people, even if it isn't the creators intent. if youre old enough to publish actual games youre old enough to get some perspective on how you may be hurting others—especially when it comes to horror and using disabled bodies as a visual meant to horrify people.

[seriouslycromulent]

I've been holding on to this article all week, and I'm glad I finally made the time to read it. It's very enlightening, and speaks to the importance of how "Representation Matters" can be a phrase so easily co-opted by the majority (as per usual), then twisted to serve the status quo.

It's really sad because the cast clearly deserved better. I adored the show, and was happy to name it as one of my favorite binge-watch marathons of the quarantine. I hope to see everyone (especially the Dad and Kimchee) in future projects. But all in all, the final season along with this news feels even more bittersweet.

Here is the article behind the link. The bolded sections are my own emphasis.

-----

‘Kim’s Convenience’ stars decry ‘overtly racist’ storylines, lack of representation

JUNE 7, 2021 2:29 PM PT By CHRISTI CARRASSTAFF WRITER

“Kim’s Convenience” has officially closed up shop, and its stars are opening up about their frustrations with the show’s approach to Korean Canadian representation behind and in front of the camera.

After the hit CBC sitcom debuted its fifth and final season last week on Netflix, actors Simu Liu and Jean Yoon voiced their concerns regarding the series’ “overwhelmingly white” production team, “horsepoop” pay and “overtly racist” storylines, among other alleged grievances.

Based on actor and playwright Ins Choi’s stage production of the same name, “Kim’s Convenience” premiered in 2016 and centered on a Korean Canadian family operating a convenience store in Toronto. In the show, Liu — star of Marvel’s highly anticipated “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” — portrayed Yoon’s on-screen son, Jung.

“I’ve heard a lot of speculation surrounding myself — specifically, about how getting a Marvel role meant I was suddenly too ‘Hollywood’ for Canadian TV,” Liu remarked Thursday in a lengthy Facebook post reflecting on the end of the program.

“This could not be further from the truth. I love this show and everything it stood for. I saw firsthand how profoundly it impacted families and brought people together. It’s truly SO RARE for a show today to have such an impact on people, and I wanted very badly to make the schedules work.

After setting the record straight about his career trajectory, Liu expressed disappointment with the way that he and his character were treated as the series progressed.

“I WAS, however, growing increasingly frustrated with the way my character was being portrayed and, somewhat related, was also increasingly frustrated with the way I was being treated,” he said. “It was always my understanding that the lead actors were the stewards of character, and would grow to have more creative insight as the show went on.

“This was not the case on our show, which was doubly confusing because our producers were overwhelmingly white and we were a cast of Asian Canadians who had a plethora of lived experiences to draw from and offer to writers. ... there was deliberately not a lot of leeway given to us.”

Liu also sounded off on “Strays,” the forthcoming spinoff series spotlighting Jung’s work supervisor, Shannon, played by Nicole Power. The offshoot is set to premiere in September on the CBC.

“I love and am proud of Nicole, and I want the show to succeed for her... but I remain resentful of all of the circumstances that led to the one non-Asian character getting her own show,” Liu wrote. “And not that they would ever ask, but I will adamantly refuse to reprise my role in any capacity.”

In addition to creative differences, Liu accused the CBC of purposefully underpaying him and his castmates in comparison to other popular shows such as “Schitt’s Creek,” which boasted “brand-name talent” but received lower ratings than “Kim’s Convenience,” according to Liu.

“For how successful the show actually became, we were paid an absolute horsepoop rate,” he wrote. “The whole process has really opened my eyes to the relationship between those with power and those without. In the beginning, we were no-name actors who had ZERO leverage. So of course we were going to take anything we could. ...

“Basically we were locked in for the foreseeable future at a super-low rate ... But we also never banded together and demanded more — probably because we were told to be grateful to even be there, and because we were so scared to rock the boat. Maybe also because we were too busy infighting to understand that we were deliberately being pitted against each other. Meanwhile, we had to become the de facto mouthpieces for the show (our showrunners were EPICALLY reclusive), working tirelessly to promote it while never truly feeling like we had a seat at its table.”

Shortly after Liu shared his thoughts on social media, a television critic for Canada’s Globe and Mail dismissed his comments as “unfair” and “mean-spirited,” prompting Yoon to defend her costar on Twitter.

While both Liu and Yoon credited Korean Canadian artist Choi with introducing the Kim family to mainstream audiences, they also alleged that his influence over the series was eclipsed by a dearth of Korean representation behind the scenes.

“Your attack on my cast mate @SimuLiu, in the defense of my fellow Korean artist Ins Choi is neither helpful nor merited,” Yoon replied to the Globe and Mail’s rebuke of Liu’s statements. “Mr. Choi wrote the play, I was in [it]. He created the TV show, but his co-creator Mr. Kevin White was the showrunner, and clearly set the parameters.

“This is a FACT that was concealed from us as a cast. It was evident from Mr. Choi’s diminished presence on set, or in response to script questions. Between S4 and S5, this FACT became a crisis, and in S5 we were told Mr. Choi was resuming control of the show.”

The scene partners also addressed the alleged absence of diversity on the “Kim’s Convenience” writing team, which “lacked both East Asian and female representation,” as well as “a pipeline to introduce diverse talents,” according to Liu.

“Aside from Ins, there were no other Korean voices in the room,” Liu wrote. “And personally I do not think he did enough to be a champion for those voices (including ours). When he left (without so much as a goodbye note to the cast), he left no protege, no padawan learner, no Korean talent that could have replaced him.”

“As an Asian Canadian woman, a Korean-Canadian woman w more experience and knowledge of the world of my characters, the lack of Asian female, especially Korean writers in the writers room of Kims made my life VERY DIFFICULT & the experience of working on the show painful,” Yoon tweeted.

Despite trying “so hard” to make himself available as a creative resource, Liu said efforts made by him and others to improve the show from the inside were dismissed. Without adequate input from talent of Korean descent, Yoon added that the show’s authenticity suffered.

“The cast received drafts of all S5 scripts in advance of shooting BECAUSE of Covid, at which time we discovered storylines that were OVERTLY RACIST, and so extremely culturally inaccurate that the cast came together and expressed concerns collectively,” Yoon tweeted.

“My prior experience had taught me that if I just put myself out there enough, people would be naturally inclined to help,” Liu wrote. “And boy was I wrong here. I wasn’t the only one who tried. Many of us in the cast were trained screenwriters with thoughts and ideas that only grew more seasoned with time. But those doors were never opened to us in any meaningful way.”

Representatives for Choi and the CBC did not immediately respond Monday to The Times’ requests for comment.

[boycottyashahime]

Not sure if it's wise to stan Lindsay Ellis or emulate her in any way, because she's pretty accepting of ships like Beetlejuice (an adult) x Lydia (a child). It seems likely that she'd be cool with Sessrin too and would chastise anyone criticizing that ship.

She also defended Stephanie Meyer's Twilight by omitting most core criticisms of the franchise like its glorification of child grooming, racism, and misogyny. Lindsay Ellis has some good takes, but she'd definitely be on friendly terms with Sessrin shippers and others of their ilk.

I don't really feel like what she's talking about in the screenshots and this situation are all that comparable, though. First of all, in the Inuyasha series, Sesshoumaru and Rin aren't coded as a couple, especially not in classic RT style. There's not really a concrete definition to the relationship at all, which enables a lot of different interpretations, as opposed to the coding leading one to a certain conclusion.

Second of all, the Beetlejuice cartoon and the Beetlejuice movie resemble each other little more than name and character design - in the screenshots, LE talks about how she was initially a little taken aback by how different the characters' relationship was in the movie vs. the cartoon, and how the cartoon fans would ship them in the context of the show because that's how it was presented to them within the context. There's a discrepancy there not because the relationship is coded ambiguously in canon, but because fans are dealing with two totally separate and distinct codings that have little to do with one another. The movie and cartoon are so incompatible in tone and context that it's impossible to reconcile the two into a cohesive canon, so the shippers and anti shippers may as well be talking about two entirely separate things (which they are). In Inuyasha/Yashahime's case, however, the latter follows from the former, they're supposed to represent one long contiguous timeline, and so the dynamic between Sesshoumaru and Rin in Yashahime would have to be based upon that of what it was in Inuyasha, which is where antis in THIS sphere have a problem. It's one thing to have two different fandoms of two different stories entirely where one is very loosely based on the other warring with each other over details that were wholly different from one another (Beetlejuice). It's another to have a direct continuation of a series that may or may not imply some pretty iffy dynamics based on a grown man getting with a girl he has authority over when she's older (Inuyasha/Yashahime).

Third, LE characterizes the shippers of the Beetlejuice fandom as largely peaceful, mostly keeping to themselves until an anti wanders into their midst. In my experience, it's been the opposite in this fandom. I keep on the anti tag, have only posted once in the ship tag (to boost a post that had both ship and anti arguments on it), and don't go looking for fights. I've been getting quite a few shippers demanding in various ways that I shut up and refrain from stating my opinion on my own blog multiple times now. I may be wrong, but given the circumstances, I think that LE might have a less-than-favorable view of the shippers in this fandom for having a similarly militant pattern of behavior to the antis in the Beetlejuice fandom. It's not necessarily the opinion that I see her criticizing in the screenshots (she even says she understands how the content can be upsetting), but the way one invades spaces that are not theirs to insist that someone isn't allowed to have the opposite opinion.

And, at the risk of repeating myself yet again, I actually DO NOT have a problem with the existence of the SessRin ship. I have ignored it for years, and will continue to ignore it for years to come, no matter what Sunrise wants to validate in their sequel. I just have my blog to express my opinion, help commiserate with other antis, and assert that it isn't unreasonable for anyone to read Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship as platonic. So, actually, I mostly agree with LE in her dismissal of people "supporting" abuse by liking a ship. My issue is with Sunrise if they decide to put positive depictions of grooming in a show for children, but as far as the shippers in the fandom go, I really have no problem with them shipping. Theirs isn't an invalid interpretation either, given all of the surrounding material in the world promoting it. We can coexist, disagree, and still be fine. At the moment. Shippers don't seem to WANT a peaceful coexistence with me, but I think eventually they'll get bored of fighting over nothing.

As for LE's defense of Stephanie Meyer, it was specifically a defense against all the unfair, misogynistic attacks on her for writing something popular with girls and women. She didn't say there's weren't VALID criticisms of Twilight; she just said she was sorry for buying into the intense unwarranted hatred of Twilight and Stephanie Meyer for nothing more than our culture's general disdain for anything that girls like. I'd like to think she really didn't need to make the video where she listed and elaborated upon all the problematic aspects of the Twilight series, because quite frankly, that video already existed in multiple iterations long before she made her own.

Finally, I think it's important to note that I'm 32 years old and not really interested in "stanning" or "emulating" anyone at this point. A couple of anon messages stated they thought there were similarities between myself and LE, and while I am flattered because I think she has some valuable and insightful opinions on fiction, I'm far past the point of trying to be like her or thinking she's flawless. I do have some disagreements with some things she's said before; I don't have much interest in listing them out here, but suffice it to say you should have no worries whatsoever that I would blindly follow her example on every little point. Nor would I suggest anyone else do so. I just like watching her videos, think she has a cool perspective, and am flattered to be compared to someone who it looks like has been pretty successful in writing and publishing a novel, as that's kind of a goal of mine.

[marauder-exe]

AU list!

hi! These are a bunch of Au’s that i could write,and you could request! (reposting because it didnt work the first time)

General

Fake dating (My personal favourite)

Soulmates

Coffee shop

Modern Royalty

Rockstar

Running From The Police

Rebel Against The Goverment

High School

University

Law school

Delayed-Flights-And-Were-Stuck-In-The-Airport-And-Its-Like-2Am

Roommates

Road Trip

Arranged Marriage

Im-Arranged-To-Marry-Your-Brother-But-Were-In-Love

Amnesia

Tattoo-Artist-And-Coffee-Shop-Worker

Loved-Since-Childhood

Professor-Student (of age)

Met-On-Holiday

More detailed

21.You were singing/playing guitar/etc. in the park to protest the war and a policeman tried to dismiss you for 'disturbing the peace' but you argued that you were promoting peace and things got heated and next thing you know you're being arrested for assaulting an officer. You intrigue me, so I'm here to bail you out and maybe take you on a date?

22.the nice one who everybody loves with the grumpy and strict one that the students hate and the students wonder?????????how what the fuck

23.we just had a one-night stand but a massive storm hit so now we’re snowed in, hello awkward

24. i sit at the rental booth at our local ice rink and watch you teach children how to skate

25. alternatively, i watch kids teach you how to skate because you’re a terrible skater

26. i’m running late to an important interview/meeting and you accidentally spill your hot cocoa all over my outfit

27. you’re my hot ski instructor and i’m failing the bunny hill

28. i slip on some ice and you’re the stranger who catches me

29.  i gave my winter coat to a homeless person and come into your store to warm up

30. our friends rent a cabin to go skiing and we’re the only ones who stay inside

31. you’re the asshole of our group and we don’t get along, but then i find out you make soup for the local shelter

32.we’re waiting in line for the club when you complain that your roommate stole your gloves so let me warm your hands up with mine

33.my family invites you to join our holiday meal as an obvious setup and i’m so sorry

34.the power goes out in our apartment building, but i’m not prepared for this, and you come to check on me

35.i’m having a snowball fight with my friend in the park and i hit you instead

36.a storm is delaying our flight home and i’m afraid of thunder, please talk to me while we wait

37. we’re both in small claims court and i got into a huge fight with the person suing me but you stepped in to hold me back before security got there

38. i drove two hours to the closest video rental store that’s still operating and you were checking out the only copy of the movie i was after

39. i hit you with my car but luckily you’re okay, but we should still exchange information i guess

40. i was worried about buying something off of someone creepy from craigslist but oh no you’re hot

41. my friend talked me into playing a drunken game of spin the bottle even though we’re all adults and now we have to make out

42. we both decided to take a [yoga/fencing/cooking etc] class and we’re the only two assholes not taking it seriously and everyone else is giving us dirty looks but we keep grinning over at each other

43. my date just made a scene in public and got arrested and now i’m stranded in a city without a ride home

44. sharing a cab together

45. you’re trying to get me to sign a petition and i have no idea what you’re talking about

46. you’re drunk at this festival and dancing on the table and when you eventually fell i caught you

47. we both play this stupid game online and you keep beating me every single goddamn time so i called you out and you are pretty cute but can you not

48. im a bartender and you just came in here without shoes sat down and ordered a chocolate volcano and idk what the fuck that is and im scared to ask

49. we are neighbours and every night at 3:14 am you start yodeling for no fucking reason??? why???? is that you yodeling??? its been 2 months???

50.im a pizza delivery person and i just delivered a pizza to someone in the middle of a satanic ritual and they gave me their number???

51. i woke up this morning to find you sitting in my living room with a goat in a poncho??? who are you??? why is the goat wearing a poncho??? how did you get the goat in here i live on the 12th floor???

52. we work out at the same gym and you always look super legit but i know you sing hannah montana in the shower and you know i know

53. im a cashier and i saw you stuffing you pants full of potatoes and i would stop you but you already have 27 and i want to see how many you can fit

54. its 4 am and im drunk as fuck in a mcdonalds and you have been watching my trying to eat this burger for 30 minutes

55. i was playing beer pong with a coin and i accidentally threw it right into your eye at a party

56. i’m at the beach and some kids thought it was funny to bury me in the sand when i dozed off can you please dig me out

57. it’s unbearably hot and we’re both fighting over the last handheld electrical fan at the shop at the amusement park

58. hey i just met you, and this is crazy, but i get sunburned really easily so can you please help me put sunscreen on my back?

59. thunderstorm after a menacing heatwave and we’re both getting weird looks for dancing in the rain

60.i have no idea who you are but you just fainted right in front of me holy shit dude you need to drink more in this heat

61. we both chased after the leaving ice cream van like ten-year-olds and now we’re both out of breath and a bit embarrassed

62.i clearly reserved this deck chair by putting a towel on it why on earth are you lying on it who the fuck do you think you are

63. My friends bet I wouldn’t buy these three weird and questionable items and you’re my cashier.

64.Once a week I go visit the pet store just to stare at the cute kittens and puppies and you’re the nice employee who always lets me hold them and wait I think I’m going to cry hold on.

65.You’re the DJ of the University’s radio station and every time you give an opinion on a current event I have to call and argue with you because could you seriously be anymore wrong?

66.We both wait tables at the same restaurant and you’re always mad at me by the end of the night because I make more in tips

67.We have the same class and once a week you wear this graphic shirt I don’t understand and I really want to ask you about it.

68.We both work at the same craft store that literally has no customers so we have nothing to do and I’m always reading at the register but you always have to criticize my book choice what the hell?

69.I’m working the concession stand for this week’s home game and this is the fifth time you’ve come back for snacks wait are you flirting with me?

70. we’re at a bookstore and you and I seem to have similar taste in books have you read this one? How about this one?

71. you look like you need help and I’m a professional roller/ice skater but I don’t want you to feel bad about how much you suck but wow you suck

72. You ordered your food before me and they gave you a drink you didn’t want so you gave it to me

73. We’re sitting at adjacent computers in the library and I’m taking extra care not to look at your screen out of respect but what the fuck do you keep laughing at

74. as a joke I yelled out “happy birthday to someone!” in this store and you called back “thank you!” who are you

75. You heard me talking about a TV show in class the other day and now you’re passionately yelling at me about how good it is we’ve never actually spoken before

76. It’s 10:30 at night and I left my glasses at home so I can’t read any of these labels and you’re one of the only people in the grocery store and GODDAMMIT DO YOU HAVE ANY TOMATO SAUCE WITHOUT CHUNKS

77. We go to the same support group; I have social anxiety and you’re a kleptomaniac who sorta stole my heart

78. You thought you were alone at the bus stop so early in the morning so you started passionately singing Fall Out Boy but your Patrick Stump impression could use some work and I’m not really afraid to point that out

79. I’m an artist and you have a really nice face so would you mind if I drew you?

80. We’re rival up-and-coming singers and every time one of us releases a new single the other does a cover to try to make it better; we’re always trying to top each other and out-cute each other, but half our fans aggressively ship us; our agents use this to their advantage and decide we should do a duet because it’ll be popular; unfortunately now that we’re in the same studio and I’ve seen what you’re like I really wanna know what your lips feel like

81.PLEASE I REALLY CANNOT FIND MY CAT AND I KNOW IT’S THREE A.M. BUT NEIL CATRICK HARRIS AND I WOULD BOTH APPRECIATE THE HELP

82. We were both stood up for dates at the same nice restaurant so we decide to eat together and split the check but I dunno you’re pretty interesting aside from your distractingly enormous eyebrows

83. We met at a mutual friend’s cheesy masquerade party and we agree that the only good thing about this party is the masks so you can’t judge a book by its cover only now that we’ve been talking I want to see your face but I don’t know how to ask

84. You used to date my friend who absolutely hates your guts after a messy breakup and now you’re flirting with me and I really shouldn’t be so interested in you but I am

85.We pass each other every day while we’re biking on the same path so we’ve started smiling at each other and one day you’re stopped because you’re having an asthma attack so I offer you my extra water bottle and now we’re talking and now I’M the one who’s breathless

86.I lost my little sibling in IKEA and I need your help finding them

87.I'm a private detective hired to follow you, but you're endearingly boring and mostly I just like watching you and oops, I sort of find you adorable.

88. You've been sketching me for half an hour now, and just shuffled up to hand me the finished product and it's TERRIBLE but you just wanted an excuse to talk to me.

89.  I'm at an art exhibit and I just badmouthed the art, because I don't get it, okay? And it turns out you're the artist. I'm so sorry, maybe I could get you coffee and you could explain what it was supposed to be?

90. We're the only two people who turned up to an underground gig and it should be awkward, but the band is amazing and you asked me to dance and hey, there's nobody watching but us.

91.  You live in the apartment next to me. We're not supposed to have pets, but I KNOW you have a cat. I'll make you a deal, I won't tell, if you let me pet it.

92.  I punched you because I thought you were insulting my friend, but it turns out you know each other and it was an inside joke and I'm so sorry, let me drive you to the hospital?

93. We both wanted to rent a bike for an hour but the only one they have is a tandem bike

94. I’m on a terrible date and you’re my waitor please help me

95.Our dick landlord just evicted us both

96.I’m your neighbor and I can hear you fucking someone who  shares my name

97. You’re sort of famous and we vaguely know each other through bumping into each other all the time but the media thinks we’re dating

98. Your roommate cheated on me and I just threw your laptop out the window thinking it was his

99. It’s 2am on the night of my 21st birthday and we gotta fix this fucking mess by morning or else we’re fucked

100.Fuck you and your bee farm I’ve had enough

Feel free to use any of these as your own! If you wanna request you could drop an inbox saying ‘ could you do ____ AU with this character’!

[androgynousblackbox]

God, I keep getting recommended that goddamn killing stalking video. No YouTube, I actually *dont* want to watch a video essay about some dude who did fuck all research talk about why he doesn't like this comic I really enjoyed. I bet he ignores the fact that it's one of (if not, the only) popular queer media that focuses on horror. Yes, queer people and horror are very much intertwined, but this is the only piece of media where its explicitly queer by having the two main characters be queer men. Sorry, I'm just really upset by people not doing a lick of research then getting up on their high horse to preach to us about how shit something is. Ugh.

To be fair (and this is the only point I will give him because fuck that guy), he doesn’t criticize the manwha on itself. It’s a little annoying that he defines as a stritctly psychological horror and completely disregard the Boy Love portion of it’s genre, either because he doesn’t know or decided that it was irrelevant, which is a little disrespectful considering it’s a an asian genre and his western ass kept acting as if the idea of this being considered anything BUT horror was just wrong. Like, his whole shtick really REEKS of someone who hasn’t ever even read BL but still dismiss it all the same because his comprehension is limited by his own ethnocentrism. I mean, the fact that he could only mention three other works that “romanticize abuse” and they were all western was pretty fucking telling. Besides he was talking about how it was “weird” for Koogi to publish sexy/shippy art of her own characters on her social media because it’s a horror, which... I didn’t get at all to be honest. Like, what is weird about an artist doing fanart of her own work? “But why would she do that if that is meant to be psychological horror, I don’t know, I don’t get it, let’s ignore that” To be someone who brags about how knowledgeable he is, he sounded EXACTLY as your average teenage anti here on tumblr who literally discovered yesterday that shipping exist. No, the real point of that video is that he “criticizes” the fandom and how wrong fans are to see anything romantic on the manwha, enough that we would ever want to ship the main characters. The concept of whump is completely alien to him. The idea that some survivors use it as coping is not even an option (in fact we are harming survivors of abuse, the usual). The notion that some of us like the disturbing shit BECAUSE it’s disturbing never enters the picture, despite the fact that he made two whole fucking videos talking about queer people enjoying horror. The story is fine, the characters are fine, but we, the fans and especially the shippers? The one who supported Koogi from the start? The ones who spend months and even years theorizing about every single piece on each panels, analyzing colors, expressions, and kept talking about the many instances the abuse is shown and how masterful it was the way of Koogi to do it? We are reduced to nothing but teenage girls “fetishizing gay men” on Tiktok, because he is an outsider who clearly has no experience with transformative fandom AT ALL, doesn’t know what shipping is besides just really liking an already established canon couple and yet still felt the need to act as if he just knows so much better than all of us. The fact that he decided to frame us like that AND literally put himself on a position of superiority is so disgustingly misogynistic I  am appalled that no one else calling him out on it. The comments of that video are nothing but “I read the story, I liked it, but the fandom was just awful, man, nothing but uwuw shippy shit, why would anyone like that, it’s so abusive uwuw”. It really shows that as long you paint a group as teenage girls then you can always dismiss them entirely. If he had attacked the manwha itself, I could calmly refute it, but he grabbed a sample of the fandom from the worst source possible, didn’t even THINK about bringing our perspective, thoughts or feelings into the table for discussion and declared himself the owner of the right way to see this manwha, which, you know, feels pretty fucking insulting.

[thejustmaiden]

Fiction and Real Life Go Hand In Hand

This blog goes out to all those pro-Sessrin fans out there who refuse to acknowledge the very real effects fiction can have on our world and vice versa. I highly encourage other Inuyasha fans who defend/enable these shippers to read this, as well. I assure you, by no means are my intentions here to stir up trouble. Honestly, I just want some good healthy discourse for once if that’s not too much to ask. If you do decide to engage, please be mindful of that and treat others with respect and I will do the same in return. All in all, the goal of this blog is to exercise my right to speak out and be critical about content I believe to have very potentially detrimental repercussions. I ask that you not attack me or insult me simply for stating an opinion. Thank you! 

It’s like the title says, meaning fiction does matter. Where do you think we get ideas for all the stories we tell? Where do we draw inspiration from in the first place?

Real life, that's where! And yes, always with a touch of imagination! Long story short: fiction matters because real life does.

Allow me to elaborate.

Shippers of the Sesshomaru x Rin (Sessrin) pairing say it's not fair of us to throw around serious accusations or use certain deragatory terms that suggest such awful acts like child grooming or pedophilia because of the harmful implications. One of their reasonings being that some people IRL have actually lived through these traumas, so we shouldn't dare to assume they're comparable since one is just fiction and the other is not. But this isn’t about which is worse than the other, because they’re both super problematic. All we’re literally doing is making a link between grooming in real life and grooming in fiction. They mirror each other. Same issue; different mediums. We’re not undermining any one’s past experiences with grooming or the like, nor are we prioritizing fiction to diminish real life abuse. They’re both awful in numerous ways and that’s all we’re trying to say. In fact, if anything we’re attempting to demonstrate just how crucial this correlation is between them. In order to protect past victims and prevent future ones, we must remain vigiliant of the content we consume, and yes, sometimes that means we have to challenge it too. Just because it’s widely-viewed does not make it widely-accepted or well-received. It is paramount that we educate ourselves on how to be more critical of some of the harmful tropes and images that are still way too prevalent in mainstream media. Sexualizing young and pre-pubescent girls is way more normalized than some of us even realize. It’s sad but true that Sessrin is just one of many examples. I know it feels like society has failed us in a lot of ways, but it’s never too late to re-evaluate and re-learn better and more improved ways of viewing and processing information presented to us.

Our mission: Let’s not show our kids that grooming or any other form of abuse are acceptable if they may ever come to experience or encounter it themselves. Be it the real world or on screen. Deal? 

There have been a number of occasions where real life victims do speak up against the Sessrin ship and express how extremely uncomfortable it makes them feel by what it represents. The problem is that it’s becoming more evident now that many of their fans will dismiss anything purely on the basis that we pose a threat to their ship and nothing more. What it comes down to is they have no real leg to stand on and cannot possibly top any of what we have to say so instead they simply disregard it. Our inconvenient truths don't fit into their ideal *cough* OOC *cough* narrative so they just choose to be willfully ignorant. It conflicts with their fantasy, so rather than present a sound argument of their own, they flat-out reject it and offer no plausible back-up behind their reasoning besides "I don't interpret it that way." GUYS, CHILD GROOMING IS NOT UP FOR INTERPRETATION.

Just because you so desperately want your ship to come true does not mean you can up and decide to redefine a word so that it caters to your stance. Remind yourself that these are complex AND objective terms that we have no right to fiddle with to serve our own selfish purposes. This is why we can conclude that there's no debate about Sesshomaru's actions towards Rin embodying child grooming.

I apologize if any of my words are triggering by the way, so please feel free to take a break and return later if that’s more suitable for you. it's just really important that everyone in this fandom comprehends the extent in which Sessrin going canon is catastrophic. And no, I'm not exaggerating; I'm simply speaking the truth. Shippers justifying these horrible acts- yes, even in fiction- is usually due to the stubborn refusal to hear us out. No offense to anyone (just stating facts), but more times than not antis like myself feel as if we’re talking to a brick wall when we interact with Sessrin peeps. They go in circles and never expand on their perspectives. 

Just a head’s up: THIS GETS LONG. Stick with me. :p

Just look at their take on the Inukag vs. Sessrin relationships for example. This isn't a question of age gaps, this is a question of physical/emotional compatibility. Inukag are the same age mentally wise regardless of one being demon and the other not, whereas Sessrin is not and never will be, and yes, even once she's an adult. The thing is we have debunked this time and time again, because they’re not the same and therefore not comparable, but for some reason these fans won’t drop it. Nothing has changed in their argument, yet they’re persistent in bringing it up. I choose to not go into more detail, since like I said, you can find it around everywhere. I just wanted to touch upon it briefly to prove a point. Maybe it will come up again later in my blog though! 

Where was I earlier? Right, child grooming! Haven't you guys realized that what you’re doing is precisely what child groomers do to make excuses or deny any grooming took place at all? (FYI: I’m not accusing you of being child groomers yourselves.) “They reciprocated so the feelings are mutual" is a typical groomer response, but of course it varies. More often than not, victims of grooming aren't even aware they've been groomed until much later. That's how manipulative groomers are that they can legitmately convince you that maybe you're wrong in questioning their motives. Perhaps in the victim’s mind that because one huge indicator of grooming never actually took place it technically cannot constitute as grooming. They start to doubt themselves even though their intuition is telling them something’s off. They should just ignore it then since it can’t possibly be grooming if that one particular thing never happened, right? Wrong, grooming isn’t strictly this or strictly that. It's much more complicated and multi-faceted. This is why the “but Sesshomaru left Rin in the village” point upsets me greatly. HE WAS STILL INVOLVED IN HER LIFE, Y’ALL.  

On top of that, are you aware that this is the exact same kind of predatory mindset pedophiles use to describe their infatuation with children? They'll say things like, "I don't see them as an adult and a child. I see them as two people with a soul connection." Okay no joke, I wish I was lying, but that is literally a point one pro-sessrin fan on here recently used to defend this ship. It both astounds me and terrifies me that they don't see the glaring similarities they share in common with actual pedos.

Alright, I want to quickly return to what I was saying earlier about fiction's impact on real life. (Sorry, I’m a bit of a scatterbrain!)

The characters and their worlds in our stories that we dream up and bring to life are nothing short of awe-inspiring and magnificent if we so choose them to be. If it wasn't for our imaginations, stories like Inuyasha would have never come to exist. Fiction provides us an amazing outlet where we are given the opportunity to express ourselves and explore its infinite creative possibilities.

But strip away all the demons and magical components of this show we all love so dearly and what are we left with?

At the very core, Inuyasha is a story that's very reminiscent of the human experience: love, camaraderie, a sense of purpose, and much more!

So perhaps we got a full-fledged dog demon like Sesshomaru, but does that necessarily mean we can't relate to him or understand him simply because dog demons don't exist in the real world? Well, I hope that's not how you view it or else you're missing the whole point of why humans create stories to begin with. We create them to make better sense of and thus connect with the world we live in. And when you really think about it, our stories are just a celebration of life- both our struggles and our triumphs. Now I'm no philosophy professor, but I'm pretty sure they'd say I hit that nail right smack on the head. ;)

All shitty jokes aside, the whole reason I’m mentioning this specific example in the first place is because this recently came up with another Sessrin supporter. That supporter tried to defend the ship by stating that we aren't allowed to use Sesshomaru as an example to judge by since his kind don't exist in the real world.

Now if it isn't evident already, this "it's just fiction" argument is a popular go-to stance many Sessrin fans will resort to once they've run out of ideas and are metaphorically backed into a corner. The funny/sad thing is that they seem to sincerely believe this is strong enough evidence to defend their ship with, but per usual, they fail to see how hypocritical that would be. I’ll clarify soon down below. 

Seriously, since when did we decide that fantasy- or any story genre for that matter- stopped reflecting the real world we live in? I mean, we humans are the ones writing these stories. Our human influence is bound to make an impact in some capacity. In fact, we want it to!

Obviously none of us have ever met a dog demon like Sesshomaru, because how could we? Let me tell ya, this is gaslighting at its finest! This is a fictional story with fantasy elements, so of course there will be beings and creatures in their world that don't exist in our own. Does that somehow translate to the fact that nothing from the story of Inuyasha can be applied to our own personal stories or that there aren't meaningful messages to be taught and learned?

So on the flipside, if they're not screaming at us "it's just fiction" for the hundred billionth time, then they are, believe it or not, doing the reverse and comparing it to real world history. One instance of this is how they tell us we're making a big deal about something that isn't real, but go right ahead and use the history of feudal Japan to support Sesshomaru's decision to court (aka GROOM) a young girl because that's how it was done back then. And so, your point being?? It wasn't right then just because it was legal, and it's most certainly not right now. This is how all of their arguments go by the way, where you'll constantly witness a cherry-picking approach. It's agonizing to endure contradiction after contradiction in their arguments filled with nothing but holes in their logic.

I'd just like to add that if we're overreacting to this fictional ship like they love to say we are then technically so are they. They tell us things like "grow up" or "nobody is telling you to keep watching," yet fail to realize they're reacting just as fervently as we are but just on the opposing side of the same damn argument. I find it interesting how they're as invested in this show but pretend they aren't then STILL have the audacity to say it's only us who care this much!? So thank you Sessrin shippers for further proving our point that fiction is more than capable of affecting reality and the people- YES, US- who reside in it.

It's insane that people act like pedophiles and other creeps don't enjoy entertainment too like the rest of us. Believe it or not, they look just like you and me most of the time. Yes, that means they can easily pass as a “regular guy” if they so wished to. My question to you is how do you think pedophiles will take it when they discover others- underage fans more specifically- who dig the same kinda media they get off to? Maybe not in the exact same way, mind you, but there's a thin line between them when you really think about it. I mean, what other explanation is there for why literal pedos on the internet have been known to sneak into pro-sessrin group chats here on Tumblr before? (Thankfully, they were later kicked.) I know that for a fact! It's almost as if the universe is trying to tell them something they refuse to listen to elsewhere. Hhmmm I wonder what that may be. 

I imagine it’s possibly one of the hardest things to admit out loud and to themselves, but I can almost guarantee you that most of these Sessrin shippers who are victims of CSA and who still see no issue with Sessrin must be living with some sort of unresolved trauma caused by the very abuse they claimed to have undergone. It's been proven that victims who do not seek or properly receive the help and treatment they need in order to address and live with a traumatic experience such as this are more likely to perpetuate that very same abuse themselves in some way, shape or form. What if in this case fiction is enough for them, but who's to say it won’t eventually manifest itself in other more dire and far-reaching ways? It's not like we haven't seen this vicious cycle before, and I can promise you that Sessrin won't be the last. LET'S STOP NORMALIZING & GLORIFYING THE ROMANTIZATION & SEXUALIZATION OF CHILDREN. Fictional example: Usagi Drop. Need I say more? Real world example: Woody Allen. Again, need I say more?

Bottom line is that Sessrin shippers don't want us to think too critically about this ship of theirs, because if we dig too deep then they're forced to face the very troubling implications this pairing really stands for. Of course they'll never admit to them, because instead they rather double down and grasp at the same old straws as long as it means their precious ship is protected at all costs. Screw everyone else if that's what it takes, because they'll threaten to burn down legit buildings in real life if that ensures Sessrin goes canon! (True story, this happened on Twitter.) They’ll taunt and bully anyone who disagrees. Even if all you literally say is that you don’t like the ship, they’ll gang up on you. Tell them about your past experience with being groomed? They’ll laugh in your face. I wish I was kidding, but I assure you I am not.  And they say we're ridiculous and taking this way too seriously? Yeah...

The typical behavior of a Sessrin shipper demonstrates an overly aggressive front since they're usually on defense mode anyway. They only want to ship their sick ship in peace in other words. But just because neo-nazis have a right to spew their bigoted ideology, doesn't mean we don't got the right to punch them! Freedom of speech doesn't equate to freedom from consequences. And Sessrin shippers wonder why they got so many haters. Just sayin'.

Their presence on other platforms like Twitter and Reddit are some examples of how delusional and unstable some Sessrin fans are capable of becoming. Even recently, an anon here on Tumblr sent Richard Ian Cox (English VA for Inuyasha) a totally uncalled for ask telling him that "sessrin is love and there's nothing he can do about it." (That's not verbatim, but if you're interested I'll link you to it.) It appears they discovered that he didn't like Sessrin based on how he had been replying to asks, and just for that reason alone they thought they had the right to harass him. For simply stating his opinion, y'all. They didn't even have the decency to show their face either. Talk about immature and cowardly! 

Just yesterday (or was it the day before?) a fanatic Sessrin user on Tumblr- who’s also been known for hateful remarks on Twitter but those tweets have of course been deleted since then- went out of their way to not only lurk in a group chat they don’t belong to on here but to then proceed to harass a few of us in there. They had the guts to take screenshots from that group chat, tag us in posts on their page regarding what they read in there, and without our knowledge or permission went ahead and actually blogged them?? I mean, who calls out people behind their backs while they're just minding their own business?? It worries me how unhinged and out of touch with reality some Sessriners are. Not all of them, but a whole lot of them. 

It seems all they are doing is looking for trouble, as they just can't stand how much we hate this ship. So it's more than okay if they love on their ship but it's not okay if we don't and we should just keep our mouths shut. But since when do Sessrin fans have authority over our opinions? Even if they were officially canon, nothing is ever gonna change our opinion. Now when they actually do decide to participate in discourse with antis, you'll see them fishing for excuses to bow out. How they normally go about this is by fabricating a way to blame us antis for their exiting a conversation as if we're being the irrational ones here.

There’s no denying that some antis can also be overly blunt or aggressive (nobody is saying we’re perfect here), but speaking for myself, I know I would never make such nasty comments about other fans and their personal lives. And honestly? It would make me feel like shit talking bad about someone I don't actually know. Nah, I won't stoop to that level or give haters that satisfaction. I may not attack them as people, but that doesn't mean I can't attack some of their messed up ideas that threaten to distort how we should or shouldn’t perceive certain dangerous situations and events. Seeing as how for me this is more than just a matter of opinion- it's a moral responsibility and even an obligation.

I know it's difficult to remain civil when things get heated and people start taking things personally- yet more proof that fiction impacts our lives- but that's the only way any of us will ever have constructive discussions about serious topics like this. Unfortunately, Sessrin shippers, from what I can tell, are incapable of engaging in real discourse for the most part. They may be vocal but that doesn't mean they can pack a punch. I’d really love to be proven wrong someday.

Okay, moving on! If they're not involved in some big-time gaslighting then they're using their infamous strawman argument approach.

Sessrin fans’ sole purpose isn't really to defend their ship, per se, but rather to deflect and antagonize. They like to mislead in order to shift the focus/blame onto their opponent or something else that's not related so that they can stray from the main point. 

Take the drama CD for example. It's officially NOT considered canon, right? But that hasn't stopped many fans from referencing it anyway so let’s too consider it for a moment. The point is that they use its "existence" whenever convenient then deny it or downplay it whenever it’s not. So on one hand, it's plain as day that they celebrate it as proof of a romantic future for Sessrin. But then later once we point out to them that Sesshomaru is essentially confessing to Rin that he will wait for her until she's of age, they'll brush it off and quickly add that they didn't interpret the scene that way and leave it at that. I mean how else would you interpret it? And if it's not a proposal of sorts then why exactly are you bouncing off the walls about it to begin with?? If that's all it means is nothing then why are we even talking about this?! You see what I mean here??! And somehow we're the crazy ones? 

Let me to be frank with you. If you haven’t listened to it already, this proposal he offered her sounded like a declaration of love in a multitude of ways, which is wildly inappropriate since Rin was only 12 at the time. Signifying that Sesshomaru was/is indeed grooming her. Well, that is if you choose to recognize the drama CD. Nevertheless, whether you do or not, I personally hate that this non-canon satire is even associated with the Inuyasha name to begin with. Ugh. 

Intentional or not, Sesshomaru made a deliberate decision in that moment to tell a little girl- and not just any little girl mind you but a girl he's taken in under his care for a good year- that he would wait for her if she so chooses once she's old enough. 

The issue is that it isn’t only age of consent we’re concerned about regarding this pairing. What Sessriners fail to see is that this grown male authority- her vassal, her guardian, her adoptive father, or whatever you wanna refer to him as- is basically making a move on this girl he had in his company for quite some time. There's no sugarcoating that. Us antis call it how it is, and I'm sure as fucking day other people who don't watch the show would most certainly agree that the Sesshomaru/Rin bond is filial. Set aside those rose-tinted glasses of yours, and going by everything we’ve been delivered in the manga and parts of the anime (and NOT the drama cd), there are literally no hints that indicate a blossoming romance between this adult male demon and this small human girl he’s taken under his wing. You can imagine them all you want if it pleases you, but that doesn’t mean they’re there. Adult!Rin is a figment of your imagination, nothing more. The idolization of this pairing is pretty disturbing seeing as all we have to go off of in canon is Child!Rin. There have only ever been sweet and innocent moments passed between the two, which is why I’m positive that an unbiased viewer or an outsider would state their dynamic resembled something akin to a father-daugther relationship. I would bet a shit ton of money on that, believe you me!

Rin's inhibitions are low because children are naturally naive and don't know any better. Remember, she adores and trust this man with all her heart, so why would she think any of this so-called grooming is not normal behavior. (I only say “so-called grooming” because I don’t think Sesshomaru bringing her gifts in the village has to be a romantic thing.) Or how would she ever be able to understand that she’s being taken advantage of if she has no previous experience with it? Maybe if she was present for that time Inuyasha and the gang scolded Miroku when they had learned that years previous he had supposedly proposed to this young girl in the village they were visiting, then Rin would. And he didn’t even assist in helping raise her but look at how they reacted! How is this any different than Sesshomaru hooking up with Rin later? It’s actually worse in Sessrin's case. Do you honestly believe that Inuyasha and the others would take kindly to this?

It's not uncommon and considered harmless for young children to have crushes on adults, after all, but the adults in these scenarios should never resort to using and abusing the position of power they held or continue to hold over this child for any reason whatsoever.

What I'm trying to get across here is that no matter how you spin it, Sessrin can NEVER be deemed a morally acceptable pairing. Like ship what you want, we're not saying you can't ship Sessrin. What we're saying is this:

STOP referring to their bond as "pure" and not expect backlash for your grossly inaccurate statements. Just admit it's toxic, because it's extremely harmful to many viewers- and not just victims- to pretend and suggest otherwise.

Please remind yourself of the very real canon fact that Rin traveled with Sesshomaru and they established a bond all while she was just a girl. Oh, and he saved her life too many times to count, not to mention brought her back from the dead TWICE. This is why I don't care much for your counter argument "that dynamics can change over time," because although that's true, like with everything in life there must be standards we adhere to. Exceptions to rules, if you will. Our own basic morals demand it.

For instance, it’s normal that some childhood friends begin to like each other as more than friends years down the road. Nothing wrong with that, because that's a natural and healthy occurrence. Now you cannot apply this to an adult and a child for obvious reasons, but what you also cannot do is apply this to an adult who met and knew another adult while they were still just a child. Why? Well, because it'd be like betraying and perverting that former child's view of you. They were never your equal because your established dynamic resembles that of one an adult posesses with a child even once they've grown up. Think about it this way: it's in the same bracket of family members or family friends who've watched you grow up and mature into an adult. Then later just because they're all grown up, does that mean that those children "are not off bounds" - that's quoting a Sessrin shipper by the way- to these certain family members and family friends? 

If you're still struggling to grasp this, I urge you to take a moment (or all the time you need!) to really put yourself in that child's shoes and self-reflect. Would you truly be alright with a family friend you haven't seen in years (but sorely missed because they used to occasionally babysit you) just someday coming back into your life and then very inappropriately flirting with you or even making sexual advances on you? (Sorry for the run-on!) Or even worse, can you picture this happening to one of your own children??! Seriously, ask yourself that and sit with that for a while and really take it all in. It’s not fun, I know, but if that’s what it takes to help you finally understand then please try and practice more ways to utilize your self-awareness in the future. It’s for everyone’s benefit, not only yours, I promise! You'll also find it makes it tremendously easier to empathize with others.

I got news for those fans who don’t view Sesshomaru as a father figure to Rin. The title we give him doesn’t hold as much weight as a lot of us are making it out to be. Let’s try to be neutral here and stick to the hard facts, shall we?

*Sesshomaru is an adult male authority whose protection Rin is under*

*It’s safe to assume that Rin has grown attached to him and maybe even looks up to him*

*They care about each other and the other's well-being*

*He has has played a crucial part in her supervision and care for a significant period of time (yes, even if it’s just passing a message along to Jaken)*

Not so random anecdote: In an Inuyasha episode I recently revisited, Sesshomaru had just rescued Rin from Kohaku who had been possessed by Naraku and was ordered to kill Rin. Anyway, at the end of their scene you can hear Jaken ask out loud, “what should we do for dinner, Lord Sesshomaru?” And that’s about the most domestic thing I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth. They’re such a family dammit and nothing will ever change that!! <3

This is precisely why I could never in a million years view those past students of mine in a romantic light. I don't care how many years have passed, it's just not possible for me. Just the idea of pursuing a romantic and/or sexual relationship absolutely repels me.

Speaking as a former teacher, you don't need to be a parental figure who's around all the time in order to have great love and affection for a child. I would've done absolutely anything in my power to protect them even though they weren't my own. Then again, I did consider them my children in a way even if wasn't in a familial sense. Does that make my love for them any less unique? No, it's just different but not inferior. When you stop to think about, it really doesn't take as long as you may think to establish rapport with a person, particularly children. Connecting with a child is almost instant (but of course some are more receptive than others), and once you do make that special connection one can only make with a child, a strong and overwhelming need to guide and protect them kicks in almost automatically. The unconditional love an adult feels for a child is powerful and constant, and nothing should ever change that. As much as some of you really want to believe otherwise, that feeling doesn’t just go away because they turned 18. In your eyes, they’ll always be that kid.

I get it, sometimes when we escape into these fictional worlds of ours, it's difficult not to project our own wishes and desires onto certain characters. I don't blame fans for picturing themselves with Sesshomaru- I know I did haha- but never once did I self-insert myself as Rin. I know she's one of the biggest catalysts for his character growth- if not THE biggest- but how and why does that need to turn romantic? There are other antis who I have spoken with on this. They informed me that they used to live vicariously through Rin and ship them together, as well. As they got older, they later learned how weird and twisted this ship actually was. That's what's supposed to happen, y'all, you're supposed to grow out of that fixation. 

Now take your mind out of the Inuyasha universe for a second and hypothetically (or not hypothetically if you have kids) answer me this: if and/or when you ever have a child, would you genuinely be comfortable with the idea of them dating and eventually marrying their father’s best friend who was also there to witness them grow up? Be honest please. 

I highly doubt you would want that- or at least I hope not. You see, that's another MAJOR point I've made a few times already and yet you Sessrin shippers continue to avoid the question. It's pretty obvious it hasn't been rhetorical either. Ignorance is bliss?

Finally, I’d like to address one more point. It seems there is a HUGE misconception and I'd like to clear it up real quick. That is Sessrin shippers misinterpret one of the issues we have with this ship. They chalk up our complaints of Sessrin being canon (which is a LIE, nothing has been confirmed yet) to us just being salty because that somehow means our ships aren't or won’t be. I assure you, readers, other antis and I will attest that this ain't about dumb shipping wars, this is so much bigger than that!!!

I noticed recently that some Sessrin fans have even begun calling us Karens lolol like if anybody is a Karen it's them! This ain't about some mere difference in taste, this is very likely to have LONG-LASTING NEGATIVE EFFECTS. Sessrin going canon is a very harmful message to send viewers and children/teens especially. So if anything, it’s these shippers who are being the entitled ones here thinking that the fact we don’t support their ship is the worst thing in the world. NO, THE REAL PROBLEM IS CHILD GROOMING. GET OVER YOURSELF.

Out of nowhere, some of them even started assuming all us antis were white, which in their books is also equivalent to Karens or even white supremacists somehow?? Those aren't one in the same, but it's easy to make it appear that way when the US is currently tackling major systems of oppression and racial injustice. Because to them, all antis must be from over here. (Yes, I'm American. But no, I'm not white.) How else can anyone explain not shipping Sessrin, right?! Somehow they have it in their heads that ALL of Japan and surrounding places are super approving of this ship, and that everyone else isn’t because of their upbringing and “Western way of thinking.”  

To give you an idea of what I mean, look back at what I talked about earlier with their incessant mention of Sessrin vs. Inukag. Because THIS is another popular example of how these shippers present their side and then ignore all the facts. Many fans have already proven how fucked up and inaccurate it is to label whole countries and cultures. It’s like they simply think mentioning it makes it count even though we’ve discredited their points over and over. Nah, you got to back it up with good reasons that support your side of the argument. That’s How To Have An Argument: 101. So at the end of the day, all they're actually achieving in doing is making dumb and entirely unrelated accusations based on nothing just to lead to deductions that are equally unfounded. Nothing at all is accomplished but more gaslighting and hurling of insults on their part = a complete waste of time for antis = an excuse for them to peace out early from the conversation & that’s what they wanted all along

We’ve reached the end (finally! sorry for all the rambling!), and I hope those of you who stayed till the end or read enough can take something positive out of this. As many Inuyasha fans are aware, there will be a livestream with the VAs for Sesshomaru and Rin coming out within the next few hours. We don’t have all the details yet, and afterwards we probably still won’t. I’m not just talking about Sessrin here but about the sequel in general. Whatever happens, please just remember to be kind to one another. If you don’t think you’re capable of doing that, then it’s best you vent and fume elsewhere. Easier said than done, I know, but just try. Throughout this blog, I admit there were moments where I got frustrated and took some jabs at Sessrin shippers. Please believe me when I say that I do not and would not ever wish any of you ill will. 

Inuyasha was such a huge part of my childhood, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m anxious as hell that Sunrise will ruin one of the best things I loved about this show. So pardon me if my reactions are too visceral for your liking. haha Also, like the movies and the drama cd, this sequel is not in fact canon. Therefore, for those of you who disagree or who still plan to enjoy this new series, respect the fact that some of us fans will definitely “cancel” it if we feel that’s what we have to do to come to terms with it and move on. Fans have that right, after all. Why should we get on board with something if it’s so uncharacteristic of and unrecognizable from the original source material? If all this is some sort of cash grab of Sunrise’s doing, then count me out. I truly hope that this sequel turn outs being a lot more promising than a lot of us are expecting. I’m begging you, Sunrise, I wanna believe you’re better than this. Please and thank you!   

By the way, if you’re interested, feel free to check out my two other blogs on this same subject. Click here and here. The last two screenshots do not come from something I’ve written myself. If you’d like to read more from where those came from, let me know and I’d be more than happy to send you the links. Okay, bye for now. Peace out and stay safe, everyone! 

[kob131]

So the OP of that post just deleted their blog.

Before they claim I tried to harass them- 

I’mma gonna post the response I made to them and link to the original reblog to showcase I did NOTHING to make them reblog.

https://kob131.tumblr.com/post/626185371460468736/modernmythmansion-you-know-what-really-bugs-me

Well good thing I’m not one of the ones who do that.

Too bad you openly say ‘I am speaking for the RWDE Tag which is composed as individuals’ so what you specifically do doesn’t matter.

When I’m expressing my negative feelings and opinions I don’t expect them to listen, I am simply reaching out to those who are just as unhappy, that’s what the RWDE tag is for. Despite what you see on the vile slums of social networks, there are plenty of people who express their thoughts and feelings just to reach out to others and work out there problems

Actually the RWDE tag is for criticisms according to several members of the RWDE tag.

Or is about venting and nothing else? Lot of people love to claim that as well.

You want to proclaim a group is X? Make sure said group doesn’t give conflicting info.

Well not my shit pal. And the ones who I am speaking for are not either.

Too bad they disagree with you. Wanna try saying that to Soku or Dudeblade?

If that’s what they’re gonna say, then say it. Just do it in a way that accepts the reality that they probably won’t listen, and instead use that criticism as well what you liked about the show and create something new.

Can’t, get called egotistical and demanded to be booted if you do.

Same tag did that shit.

Good, because I don’t. In fact you and your ilk love to accuse us of doing that because your definition of threatening and demanding is so broad, and don’t act like you don’t do that, you do that.

“Hey don’t say stuff I don’t do! We can’t be held accountable as a group!”

“Fuck you, your people did this and I’ll hold you accountable as a group!”

Nice double standards you have there.

Tell me, how does one DO expresses their subjective criticism that acknowledges that its subjective and not fact? Please, I would LOVE to hear how its done.

“In my opinion”.

There.

Oh ok, so it’s only okay when your kin do it.

A. Actively attacked RWBY fans.

And B. I call the individuals idiots for the reasons given in my posts.

Your assuming that I have a beef with Jaune, or that other dissenters do have a beef with Jaune as this rabid mob does we are in league with each other. You tend to assume what you want to prove in order to prove something else.  

‘They’re acting in a way I disagree with, they’re not True Scotsmen!’

You never clarified your group and you don’t make any exceptions on who you do consider ‘your side’. Considering the general way you referred to everything- You implied a general side.

Listen to me carefully

And. Who. I. Speak. For. Do. Not. Do. That.

Not me, not Psyga315, not rwde-rwby, not ironpines, not eight-of-penticles, not Adel Aka on Youtube, not us.

And yet I know at least two of those guys (Psyga315 and Eight-Of-Penticles) openly supported that shit. And Adel Aka CAUSED some of this.

Still ain’t buying it,

Well in my experience, RWDE hasn’t done that, and from my experience, there are just as many Stans of RWBY who have acted just as venomous as rabid shippers and those who side with RT seem silent about it. So it looks like we got dirt on both of us don’t we?

Considering I openly act as an individual and actively attack RWBY fans-

Nope, not really.

Also considering your personal experience means nothing outside an individual context-

You willing gave it up.

You could accept the fact that RWDE isn’t a hive mind and I won’t assume all RWBY fans are a hive-mind either.

But of course you sort seem to broaden the definition of “Threatening and Attacking the creators” to any form of dissent.

Too bad you don’t.

But you seem to have a VERY hard time to consider anyone’s experiences outside your own, don’t you?

I have actively disregarded my own experiences for objective fact- That means nothing to me.

If there is an alternate tag besides RWDE I can use so I don’t get lumped in with this mob could you tell me? Because I will happily do it.

claiming you’re speaking as an individual and then using plural pronouns and terms

Not what I said and you know it. Don’t use plural terms and pronouns and saying you speak for a group you do not define.

In fact, if labeling yourself automatically makes you something, could I label myself as a professional fantasy novelist? Because I would love to magically become one by just labeling myself as one.

Too bad that’s not how that label works.

Dude, I’ve seen you been actively hoping against a gay ship in RWBY in the past, and when RWBY shifted gears from Black Sun to Bumbleby, you threw monkey boy right under the buss and sided with the Bumblebee Fans because you need to defend RT so badly.

https://kob131.tumblr.com/post/625914212492951552/im-not-a-homophobe-proceeds-to-pretend-bumblebee

https://kob131.tumblr.com/post/625893206660464640/httpsroosterteethcomgpost5f0047a9-557b-42c0

What was that about assumptions again?

P.S. One of my followers hated me because they were a Bumbleby fan and I am THAT hated in their circles.

If that’s not sycophancy, I don’t know what it

You misspelled ‘consistency’.

In what way am I? Please quote me and dissect it, because just say-so isn’t gonna cut it.

Dude, I’ve seen you been actively hoping against a gay ship in RWBY in the past, and when RWBY shifted gears from Black Sun to Bumbleby, you threw monkey boy right under the buss and sided with the Bumblebee Fans because you need to defend RT so badly.

Make broad generalizations, never bring up evidence, never be specific as to make research hard, bring up a past event to sell to your audience-

How many SJWs have done this again?

Edit: Also deleting their blog and likely running away.

Because you decided RWDE was in league with the mob instead of discern them, you put all those in RWDE as bad, and those not in that tag as good and demand others to play by your rules.

That’s called and In-Group-Out-Group bias, or Us vs Them

https://kob131.tumblr.com/post/626161036319473664/i-just-saw-a-thread-of-tweets-praising

You know, it shouldn’t be hard to make RWBY look worse than FMA. But like every example before hand, a RWBY critic manages to fuck up so badly they make RWBY look better afterwards. Which is I recommend they stop making comparisons- RWBY fans don’t need more bullshit to spread around with the critics shitting themselves and giving them ideas.

Yeah you make a real good example of that.

Also, you make this distinction between ‘RWDE’ and ‘the mob’ ... when the shit I have been listing have been said IN THE RWDE TAG. By popular members too.

Mary Mother of Jesus Christ, how many times I gotta tell you, the internet is a shitty place, we can call this shit out until the cows come home, they aren’t gonna stop.

The world is also a shitty place- That doesn’t mean we give up when people are being shitty. No excuse.

And you people are no different, Allow me to quote a YouTube commenter on Adel Aka’s video Monty’s Vision is irrelevant

“These people are trying to dismiss criticism my claiming they have the moral high ground. Most people won’t insult the work of a dead man and those that do will get shat on by the others who hold Monty as infallibly sacred. Its called a “Threat Narrative”. It works by reducing the: agency, willingness to harm and invulnerability of your side and do the reverse for the opposition. Watch as everyone rushes in to attack your opponent as if they are stomping on a puppy.”

Except that I don’t chew you people out through the moral high ground-

Almost always through factual fuck ups and hypocrisy.

Because they are using the SAME mythology of alienation, groupthink, and authoritarian bullying as they do, even though they hate to hear that. At best, they have command over composure and language, but it’s often used in a smarmy or condescending matter.

Sounds a lot like the RWDE tag (alienating the creators from positive feedback, attack anything that isn’t negative against RWBY and make it so the creators cannot do anything they don’t approve of).

I am speaking for the RWDE tag which is composed as individuals, because I am certain I am not the only one who feels this way, but of course you use the RWDE tag to ghettoize and marginalize us in your con-jobs to discredit us.

Group. Noun. “ a number of people or things that are located close together or are considered or classed together. “ Your talk of the RWDE tag falls under group.

But it’s not just feeling you use but numerous other things like assumed methods.

I don’t need to do any of that- Almost every single post of mine is structured around factual faults beyond any assumption of innocence or straight up hypocrisy, You do it to yourselves, like saying you speak for a specific group of people then a general group like the RWDE tag,

The people I have mentioned before and identified themselves with this tag have CALLED OUT that behavior

And yet you say you speak for the RWDE tag, a far BIGGER group than those people.

But you decide to affiliate us with them anyway because you want to discourage others from listening to us.

You say as the point of my reblog was to call out your inconsistency, nothing about your credibility with you making it about that. Especially since my posts usually tackle you guys on an INDIVIDUAL LEVEL.

Your not our boss, your not our father, your not the police. Quit acting like you are.

First Amendment pal

[whitehotharlots]

It’s impossible to square the circle of #BelieveWomen

Let’s think back a month ago, to what turned out to be a pivotal moment in the 2020 campaign: Elizabeth Warren’s bizarre claim that Bernie told her a woman could not win the presidency.

The dishonesty of the attack on Sanders was so manifest that the takes barely need to be re-enunciated: her campaign was stalling so she lied about Sanders, hoping to re-focus media attention on herself while riding the most cynical aspects of MeToo into a poll bounce. Bernie faced an accusation, and since the only properly woke response to an accusation is immediate and uncritical acceptance, he was going to be dinged no matter what happened afterward. (Only, hilariously, he was not dinged. It was actually Liz whose campaign was ruined by the stunt. And this signals, I hope to god, an end to this bullshit). 

This is all very basic. Good writers have already covered it. You don’t need me to rehash it any further.

I would like to talk, however, about how this highlights larger and more fundamental problems within the #BelieveWomen/#MeToo cinematic universe--problems that must be confronted if the people who seriously believe in the goals of these movements wish to accomplish anything other than securing book deals for a handful of shitty writers. My framing device here will be a concept introduced by Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, in their 20-year-old critique of identity politics. This has to do with the split between hard “identity,” a fixed and firm conceptualization of identity that carries immense rhetorical weight but does not hold up to theoretical scrutiny, and soft “identity,” which views identities as protean and constructed--a more theoretically sound concept that has very little purchase in everyday discourse.

To start with an aside: it’s important to note that the malignant strains of identity politics presently infesting liberalism have been around for decades. It’s just that they didn’t have much utility until the Obama years--when it became clear that the promises of Hope and Change really just meant more means testing, more austerity, mass deportation, the wanton destruction of the planet, and an acceleration of our Forever Wars. The Democratic Party had to shift gears. In response to a crushing defeat in the 2010 midterms, their media apparatus decided to aggressively pursue identitarianism. This came with two benefits: 1) It allowed them to differentiate themselves from Republicans and motivate supporters while still sharing 98% of the GOP’s policy positions (this is where we get the logic about it being, like, so important for kids to see Black Panther); and 2) it provided an easy means of discrediting any material politics (“if we broke up the banks tomorrow, would that create more trans CEOs?”). Very little has changed within cultural studies-based understandings of identity over the last 20 years, as will be demonstrated from our review of Brubaker and Cooper’s piece. 

Brubaker and Cooper posit that

 “Identity,” is both a category of practice and a category of analysis. As a category of practice, it is used by ‘lay’ actors in some (not all!) everyday settings to make sense of themselves, of their activities, of what they share with, and how they differ from, others. It is also used by political entrepreneurs to persuade people to understand themselves, their interests, and their predicaments in a certain way, to persuade certain people that they are (for certain purposes) ‘identical’ with one another and at the same time different from others, and to organize and justify collective action along certain lines. (4-5)

As a category of practice, identity is morally neutral--its goodness or badness depends upon what ends its evocation is utilized toward. The trouble is when this category of practice is spun into a foundation of analysis, at which point the conception of identity becomes reified, made to appear as sort of an inatlertable given.  “We should,” the authors note “avoid unintentionally reproducing or reinforcing such reification by uncritically adopting categories of practice as categories of analysis” (5). 

Now, you may be fine with the notion that identity markers are un-transcendable, that they serve as the primary or perhaps even exclusive determining factor of a person’s being, worth, or moral stature. That’s what’s called an essentialist point of view. There’s trouble, though, because essentialism is (at least nominally) rejected within most bodies of academic thought. The more prevailing frame is called constructivism, which posits (correctly, I feel) that there’s nothing magical or inevitable about identity groupings, that they are instead social constructs and can therefore eventually be transcended even if their present-day effects are very real. This, the authors note, points to the fundamental contradiction of how identity is actually understood:

We often find an uneasy amalgam of constructivist language and essentialist argumentation. This is not a matter of intellectual sloppiness. Rather, it reflects the dual orientation of many academic identitarians as both analysts and protagonists of identity politics. It reflects the tension between the constructivist language that is required by academic correctness and the foundationalist or essentialist message that is required if appeals to ‘identity’ are to be effective in practice. (6)

Basically, “identity” has been formulated in such a way that it can be utilized in a essentialist sense even while its purveyors issue rote denials of its essentialism--like how someone can shamelessly use the #VoteLikeBlackWomen tag while claiming to not regard black women as ideologically monolithic. Or, more generally, by asserting that social problems can only be addressed by listening to Oppressed Group X or Y, (which is done most commonly as a response to left-materialist suggestions for change), as if all members of those groups would understand each issue identically and would suggest the same response. This is a dishonest and incoherent approach to politics, but it prevails because of its utility--that is, because it poses no real threat to existing power structures.

Here we find a rhetorical move that is foundational to contemporary identity politics: leaning on popular but theoretically indefensible understandings of terms and slogans while claiming that we actually understand these terms and slogans in obscure ways that are unpopular and rhetorically weak. Simply put: this is a lie. 

Brubaker and Cooper go on to explain that “weak or soft conceptions of identity are routinely packaged with standard qualifiers indicating that identity is multiple, unstable, in flux, contingent, fragmented, constructed, negotiated, and so on. These qualifiers have become so familiar--indeed obligatory--in recent years that one reads (and writes) them virtually automatically. They risk becoming mere place-holders, gestures signaling a stance rather than words conveying a meaning” (11). And the parallels here to Intersectionality are manifest--like how class is perfunctorily nodded toward but never substantially engaged with, or how what is purported as a means of understanding a multitude of identity positions is, in practice, a victimhood hierarchy that’s used to determine the (in)validity of people’s actions and observations. As long as we keep allowing people to hide within this double-conceptualization, we will continue promulgating an understanding of social problems that contradicts itself so fully that it cannot lead to any actionable analysis. 

This is fairly obvious now, in 2020, with identitarians having taken control over our liberal institutions and failing miserably at enacting any but the most superficial of changes. But in 2000, Brubaker and Cooper pointed out the simple fact that “weak conceptions of identity may be too weak to do useful theoretical work. In their concern to cleanse the term of its theoretically disreputable ‘hard’ connotations, in their insistence that identities are multiple, malleable, fluid, and so on, soft identitarians leave us with a term so infinitely elastic as to be incapable of performing serious analytical work” (11). And so they wondered, naturally, ““What is gained, analytically, by labeling any experience and public representation of any tie, role, network, etc. as an identity” (12)?

I find the answer pretty simple: leaning on an intellectually dishonest understanding of identity allows writers to cosplay as radicals without giving up any comfort, status, or power. Liberal leadership (by which I mean, those with power in academic and media spaces, as well as the center-right mainstream of the contemporary Democratic party) embraces this charade, as they realize it poses no threat of disruption or upheaval. Conservatives (Republicans, and more generally those in power in business and finance sectors, as well as the military), however, despise this, and are ideologically unaware enough that they regard it as an actual threat, and react to it with physical and fiscal violence (mass shootings are domestic terrorism are conspicuous examples, but selective austerity is much more commonplace and causes more harm on the whole). But now, most terrifyingly, a whole generation of young humanists have found themselves inculcated into this belief system but utterly unable to interrogate its foundational contradiction. They don’t realize it’s a grift. 

This is why the left-leaning criticisms of Warren’s’ campaign stunt fell so flat, even when they were being issued by writers with whom I usually agree. Warren was accused of cynically misappropriating the #BelieveWomen mantra. Writers explained that, actually, everyone knows that we shouldn’t seriously believe every claim by every woman, that the hashtag is instead meant to encourage people to simply be more empathetic and less dismissive to women who claim to have suffered abuse. This is the same fundamentally dishonest contradiction we find in the split between hard and soft identities. The hashtag isn’t #BeSomewhatLessIncredulous. It’s #BelieveWomen. It a blunt mantra, a demand so intense and absolute that no one could possibly take it literally--that it sometimes comes packaged with some post-facto qualifiers does not change this; it just makes its purveyors seem dishonest.

Warren’s stunt failed because most people could see through it. We recognize self-contradiction as easily as we recognize cynicism and hypocrisy, and unless someone has an awful lot of charm we tend to react negatively to all of those traits. A movement founded on such a flimsy edifice is never going to attract outsiders and is never going to achieve anything of value. It’ll elevate a small number of people and make everyone else even less likely to engage with social justice going forward. 

[dysphoric-affect]

The End Of The Console Wars And The Dawn Of Unity

          Earlier this year, I watched in awe during the Video Game Awards as leaders from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo took the stage at the same time and delivered a joint address to those attending and watching at home. The platitudes were what you would expect and not in themselves groundbreaking - about what a great time it is to be a gamer and how exciting the future is right now - though not unwelcome and undoubtedly true. What was more meaningful in my mind is who the presenters were, what they represented individually and what their cooperating together - considering their background - to make that address symbolically represented: that the age of console wars is coming to an end and something else, something better for gamers and for the industry, is taking its place.

          The awe I felt stems from the fact that this is a far cry from the state of the industry not so long ago, when E3 press conferences, especially those of Microsoft and Sony, were not entirely dissimilar to war rooms. References to each other at that time were avoided at all cost, as if avoiding saying a vulgar word, with the competition only being invoked to point out how inferior what they offered was to the vastly superior console they had to offer. Hostility toward the competition was not only rife on their part, but felt encouraged to be had on the part of consumers loyal to their brand. And we took the bait.

          I’m embarrassed now to admit that I fell for this trap myself. I was an Xbox loyalist primarily, though because I grew up with Nintendo originally I had a soft spot for them as well. This made Sony the source of my own derision. With the original price tag on the PS3 and the eventually redacted “boomerang” controller design that console was initially slated to have, there was no shortage of fodder I felt given by Sony at the time to condemn their console. The trick is, criticism of those aspects of the console did have some objective validity, but there’s a fine line between making well-founded criticism based on rational thinking and deliberation from essentially accidentally supporting a valid negative position, but based purely from irrational, emotion-based brand loyalty which would have demanded I see what Sony offered as inferior regardless of the specific facts surrounding it.

          I feel especially embarrassed to have felt that way, because in life I have traditionally prided myself on being a rational thinker, but in that case, given my passion for the games industry I was easily led away from it. Thankfully that was as far as such sentiment ever got with me, but the capability was always there for that to spill over into applying such irrationality and emotion-based decision making in other areas of consideration about institutions in society. This was the great unspoken, and perhaps unidentified, insidious nature of what was going on at that time in the games industry: irrational hostility was being fostered, and once that’s been justified in one area of our life, it’s not difficult for such thinking to be applied and justified in other areas of our life, which in the longer term stands to have damaging repercussions for the society we impact. It wasn’t until I matured into an adult as well as gained a personal interest in philosophy that I became able to look back and realize the significance of the implications this toxic atmosphere stood to have.

          Real change in the industry in relation to these attitudes only truly started to occur however once those in the industry matured and changed their approach, as was probably always destined to be the case. As the negative culture in the past was brought out by those within the game industry in the first place, for better or worse it means the responsibility in turn had to fall on them to undue that kind of thinking and replace it with new, more positive vision. Thankfully, the effort to do so now seems to be in full motion.

          The advent of this finally began to occur with the advent of the concept of cross-play. We have taken if for granted for a long time that while we may be part of a fan base for game or series much larger than the player count of just those experiencing it on the same console we own, we can’t share in enjoyment of it with that larger community. Imagine, it was presented to us, those arbitrary barriers were now gone. Each fan could play with every single other fan of something they love, with community surrounding a game or series being built more within the actual games rather than without. It’s an extremely seductive concept, the seduction not due to any particular way the idea is presented, but simply intrinsic to the nature of the idea itself.

          Making the prospect all the more tantalizing was it being pointed out that it wasn’t a goal that needed to be worked for...the opportunity is already here. The backend networking for multiplayer or co-op between different hardware presents its challenges and necessary effort, but is entirely doable. Developers can make it happen and want to. Gamers, in one of the few cases of near universal agreement they’ve had, want it to happen, too. It remains only for those behind the different console brands to want to. The deciding factor preventing us from having a more connected and happier gaming community is no technical challenge: it is a simple act of will.

          Unfortunately, immediate consensus wasn’t to be, as Sony showed initial reluctance to the idea. The reasoning presented only served to exacerbate the general frustration at not making universal cross-play a reality: Sony was concerned about maintaining the integrity of the online experience of their brand. This explanation rang hollow to most, however. Microsoft has long been lauded for having the most solid and consistent online experience, though Sony has certainly improved dramatically in relation to their own, so the idea that connection to their service would be a liability rather than at least a non-concern and at most an asset even came across as fundamentally nonsensical.

          This being an issue was also compounded by a series of well-publicized hacks of the PlayStation Network that have occurred in the past; while Xbox Live has seen its on issues, the number and severity of the attacks in Playstation’s case create greater alarm. With this being the case, it would seem if anyone had cause to be concerned about connecting themselves to another, it would be on the part of Microsoft and Nintendo toward Sony, not the other way around. For it to be the other way around in spite of this felt like petty standoffishness stemming from the old days of the console wars rather than having any basis in reality or the interests of gamers...including PlayStation fans.

          That is one final point that rested against Sony’s philosophy of resistance, perhaps the strongest and arguably the only point that mattered: Sony’s own fans supported the change. It stands to reason there’s an impetus to make fans of the brand satisfied, so when the majority themselves are calling for that change, is it not worth considering its merits seriously rather than dismissing it out of hand? Add in the incident of the temporary cross-play enabling for Destiny, and the intensity of seeing that feature become a new norm in the industry became all the stronger.

          While Sony was making their decision, we saw the beginning of a broader change toward cross-play support anyway. Fortnite, Minecraft and Rocket League presented three of the more noteworthy examples of the cross-play concept manifesting as a reality, given the runaway popularity of those titles, but numerous other examples sprang up as well. Minecraft’s case was a particularly interesting one in that it saw the achievement of a different milestone, with Nintendo and Microsoft co-backing the production of an ad about their two consoles being able to work together. I’m not ashamed to admit watching that ad made me a bit emotional. I don’t even play Minecraft myself, but what it represented - about the gaming community coming together more - is really powerful to my mind and extremely encouraging as a gamer who always wants to see the industry get better not just in what it makes for us to play, but in the ideals it represents and promotes.

          Flash forward a bit, and we have the VGA’s mentioned at the start and a welcome change of tune from Sony, symbolically represented in the VGA presentation but more literally represented in a number of stories about them getting on board with the idea and even being in direct talks with Microsoft in relation to future ventures. Meanwhile, Microsoft has expressed an interest in expanding access to games that have traditionally been an Xbox experience beyond that console itself. They have candidly expressed their interest in making all future games of theirs available for PC simultaneously, which is certainly well within the realm of theoretical possibility given Microsoft’s ownership of the Windows OS most computers run on. And yet...even this isn’t the limit of where they’ve expressed interest in having their titles reach. Just recently, they’ve elaborated on this philosophy of expansion by emphasizing there is a more vested interest in people playing their games than in playing on the Xbox console specifically. For example, that interest goes so far as that they’ve expressed interest in bringing Halo: The Master Chief Collection to PlayStation.

          This is, in many ways, the best example of this industry-wide change in philosophy I’ve been discussing. I’ll admit, in the spirit of full disclosure, to being a long-time and avid Halo fan, but when I make that statement it isn’t about complimenting that franchise or Microsoft. What I am directing attention to is the fact that Halo, which has always been Microsoft’s flagship franchise for Xbox and closely associated with its success, is something they are willing to pass access to to players on their competitors’ console. This idea was so beyond inconceivable during that period not long ago I alluded to, that if you had presented the idea as a serious possibility, you’d have been considered an idiot, or insane. But now, it’s an idea that’s had interest expressed by Microsoft at the executive level.

          Those players on PlayStation are the key factor of note here, though. It isn’t about Microsoft and Sony becoming best friends, though they seem to be getting along better all the time, which is sure to be a boon for gamers in the future in as yet unknown ways. It is about simply letting players play the games they want. Gaming, like so many pastimes, can be an expensive one, and locking gamers out of access to numerous quality experiences deserving of being explored by all because they can’t reasonably justify - or literally can’t afford - the price tag of another console needed to access those experiences is a shame, and antithetical to the spirit of connectedness and community the gaming culture, at its best, strives to be about.

          Destroying these arbitrary and artificial barriers and instead working collaboratively on ways to bring the global gaming community ever closer together, as a family, is the rightful course toward which the industry should be directing itself. And, who knows...maybe in the process of fostering this spirit of inclusion, the game industry can get some of that positive spirit to rub off on those who play games and get them in turn to be more inclusive of others in the world outside of the games. And the world beyond gaming isn’t so different from the world of gaming in that one respect: both are much richer for getting others in on our fun. 

          So keep it up, video game industry. We all came to play after all, so let’s ALL play. Cheers.

[junkobears]

Here Lies Dreaded V3 Discourse

So I have seemed to cause a huge kerfuffle in the hardcore Ouma conspiracy theorists standom, and a banal (if condescending, but seeing the response to it honestly justifies it more than anything now. “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it”, you better believe I can take it and will now PROPERLY dish it out right back at you) comment about one of Tsumugi’s anime references has led to someone launching a hilariously personal attack at me for Daring To Disagree With A Theory That Was Posted On A Public Website. Someone who I wasn’t even initially responding too, at that. And has now blocked me before even allowing me to respond and clarify my original comments. Don’t want to deal with the consequences of being a repugnant, rude person I guess? Shock and surprise for Tumblr.

The link to the post is here, but I’ve taken the liberty to screenshot it just in case it gets deleted later, in hope that maybe there’ll be some reflection on this person’s part that this really is not an acceptable way to respond to people who have a dissenting opinion? Anyways, I will be responding to the personal attack post and that will be the last time I interact with this group, because clearly it’s not worth it to actually have a discussion about our respective ending theories. I ain’t got time beyond this for tedious insecure fucks these days.

Anyways, my response is under the cut to save my poor followers’ dashes. Sorry to drag drama onto my blog but I can’t really let this slide. I’m also tagging @jacks-plays-drv3 just because I assume the twin comes with the other with these two, and I want my response to have been seen.

Screenshot In This Link - This post is long enough without the image taking up more space, haha.

Let’s start with this mess, shall we? And I will go into painstaking detail.

Paragraph 1: So this already starts off with a whole lot of needless aggression and projection. So I’m not even going to attempt to be nice back. But: maybe I haven’t proven anything because I literally had not typed up a response to clarify my original comments @ Jacks yet before the rabid attack dog was unleashed? Like, there was literally no attempt from you to have a discussion that was a genuine offer from me, I was not out to get you actually. I also honestly just laughed at being called shallow, JUST LIKE THAT HORRIBLE CHARACTER TSUMUGI SHIROGANE right off the bat as well. That’s a compliment really, honey. Weirdly I don’t share the same opinions as you do. Tsumugi is my fave and unlike you I actually think about and HAVE analyzed/discussed her character in detail previously, which I would’ve been happy to share had you not immediately went into Blind Raging Idiot Mode. Guess we can’t have it all, huh?

As for needing proof that she makes the Flashback Lights... nevermind the CG that literally shows her making them during Chapter 6, but do you have proof that Monokuma is the person who makes the Lights instead of just placing them for the students? I doubt it, somehow. Cuz a lot of your theories don’t actually have any concrete proof. Quelle surprise. Probably why anyone not immediately on board with your headcanon gets you so goddamn angry, huh? Cuz it’s completely baseless and you know it at heart.

As for the Ouma comments, actually I have read the assorted creator comments regarding his character even if you like to believe I’m a slobbering moron who turned my brain off as soon as I finished V3, so yes I already know that his name was chosen to sound mastermind-like. Maybe this was to emphasize and make his fake mastermind reveal appear more legit on first read? JUST A THOUGHT, SWEETIE. You know the entire fucking point of Chapter 5? You’re so slavishly devoted to your theory that you actually are incapable of reading the basic fucking text from the actual game, but again. Not a surprise. Considering what I’ve read from your blog (really, who are you again? I only knew Jacks’ blog from before all this, so you taking such a personal offense at my comments is honestly hilarious but baffling at the same time. It ain’t all about you, babe.)

As for the lab door, here’s an simpler explanation (Occam’s Razor, look it up): The star sign constellation pattern was there as a hint for the player to connect Ouma’s messages from his dorm room to the vault in Amami’s lab once its opened and you can see the star signs in there. Or perhaps it was designed like that by TDR to make the students make that connection as well in the original script and think that Ouma was the mastermind cuz of the connection to Amami’s lab? Literally, there are a lot of possibilities, cuz it’s a NOTHING DETAIL THAT DOESN’T ACTUALLY MATTER IN THE BIG PICTURE. Considering Kodaka’s track record with writing these games I don’t actually believe it’s anything major, personally. He doesn’t really strike me as the type to hide this completely separate story underneath the actual story we got, and with such vague nothing “”””””””””””clues””””””””””””. You and Jacks do yourselves (well you already do cuz you love to jack yourselves off with how CLEVER AND BETTER you are than the rest of us plebs), sure, in believing otherwise (You have way too much faith in him as a writer. Or you’re desperately trying to pretend V3 wasn’t poorly written cuz you don’t like the Ch. 6 twist) but also realize that its nothing more than extrapolation on your part that it actually means anything beyond the.... SHALLOW (horror scream) connection given in-game.

And really, who the fuck cares if it doesn’t match the title of ‘Supreme Leader’? It’s already a ridiculous talent as it stands already. The entire point of his character is that everything about him, his motives and his talent is contradictory and weird. That’s why I like him, actually. He isn’t an abused martyr who never lies like you goons believe and he also isn’t the evil monstrous chessmaster some of the fandom thinks. It’s Complex Motives™ .

Anyways moving on. Pointing out an anime reference =/= DISREGARDING PEOPLE’S ANALYSIS. Pointing out that most of the plot leads up to and supports the fiction twist =/= uncritically agreeing with everything Tsumugi says. Actually, after examining the game’s story for myself I came to the conclusion that all the clues in it really only support her version of the story, really. There are a few things I think she lied about, but it is not CONCLUSIVELY proven she lied in my opinion and so I don’t really give a fucking toss until new canon comes out and reveals more of the V3 story. Oumatwin don’t real, gurl. If there was actually anything in-game beyond one obvious joke line in the NON-CANON!!!!!!! bonus mode supporting that he existed, maybe I’d respect your theory more. Even though you don’t deserve respect after your little tantrum. 

Paragraph 2: Jesus I already am investing way too much time into this response at people who don’t actually deserve it, oh well. But laughing hard at the attempt to try and act as if you weren’t being a snobby asshole with your comments. Again, HUGE AMOUNTS OF PROJECTION at me about things I literally have never done and said. I have never interacted with you or Jacks prior to my initial comment. No fucking clue why you brought up the SaiOuma shit, cuz I don’t even LIKE Saihara as a character and don’t like that fujobait ship in the slightest? But I guess it’s easier to assume that all your critics are the exact same fucking person with the same opinions, so you can feel more persecuted, huh? You literally did not even wait for me to respond or check my blog that would’ve easily disproven these dumb-as-fuck assumptions. And get off the fucking high horse (pun completely intended), you lot are not the only people in this fandom who are capable of critical thought. How completely self-obsessed can you be? 

For someone who claims to have a lot of critical thinking skills compared to this nasty fandom, you really are terrible at parsing other people’s words. You fucking know when I said “group of anime fans” that I was referring to Team Danganronpa, the organization literally mentioned in game as running the game. The group Tsumugi is part of. She literally has a company badge FFS. THEY ARE ANIME FANS. THEY ALL STARTED KILLING GAMES CUZ THEY ALL LOVE THIS SHITTY SERIES. I can’t believe this had to be explained. And the rest of this paragraph word salad is the most pedantic argument. It’s really not hard to believe an organization in this series would have access to all this tech. And yes, it’s a popular TV show in-universe, of course it’ll have funding. And the whole damn point of the ending is that the V3 world is consuming fiction the wrong way by having real-life killing games, missing the entire point of the DR series and fiction in general? What’s your actual point?

Paragraph 3: Again more assumptions, I wasn’t ‘crying’ about being called gullible. I was just pointing it out as part of your extremely unnecessary smug dismissal of my post. That you really haven’t disproved at all, btw. Honestly the childish response you both had to me just makes me laugh out of pity more than anything. And if I was really upset I wouldn’t have offered to have a discussion with you or even continued to reply after Jacks initial (vague) post about what I said. So don’t put words in my mouth. And yes my analysis was not completed in my initial comments. It’s Tumblr fucking replies, I can’t fit the entire fucking dissertation of Tsumugi opinions in there for you to jeer at in there. Again, I offered to share my opinions and got this as a response, so lol. You are your own worst enemy when it comes to trying to get people to take you and your theories seriously. 

Paragraph 4: Especially since you immediately jump to PULLING THINGS OUT OF YOUR ASS (seriously, fucking snorted at this part. I want this whole diatribe on my fucking gravestone. It’s by far the most hilariously petty thing ever said about me on this site.) instead of letting me explain my position. If you just want to be in the creepy cult Oumatwin echo chamber you should’ve just said and blocked me ASAP instead of word salading vague bullshit justifications for why actually people who disagree with you are just stupid crybabies who can never hope to understand your genius. Again, my initial comments didn’t whine about not being taken seriously at all, I was pointing out the hypocrisy/rudeness is all. And again, get off the high horse about critical thinking. I have thought about Tsumugi’s character and how she relates to the over-arching plot and how truthful it is, and the overall ‘mystery’ of V3 (spoiler: there is none. it was all solved by chapter 6). I have thought about this game. In fact I dedicate too much time to critical analysis of this series that doesn’t actually deserve it cuz lately I find Kodaka to be a hack writer. Your assumptions are flat-out wrong, dear. And AGAIN. I WOULD’VE. SHARED AND DISCUSSED IN MORE DETAIL HAD I BEEN GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY. But rude fucks gonna vomit shit out of their mouth cuz they have literally no self-control and have meltdowns at the slightest difference of opinion, I guess. 

Your extreme hatred for Tsumugi as a character truly shines through. Clearly no thought has been put into her from your end, even though you and Jacks rage about people not taking Ouma seriously as a character. Double standards as always with fujos. Nothing I’m not used too, she is incredibly unpopular in this fandom. And everyone is entitled to their own opinions. So I’m not even mad at that. I have never said otherwise. Even you and Jacks are valid in having your own theories and thoughts. The ending of V3 is designed entirely so everyone can analyze the game for themselves and draw their own conclusions about the story and themes. That’s the whole point. Even though I personally dislike that as a writing decision on Kodaka’s part because I would prefer the story to be conclusively ended and the epilogue is a giant turd that misses the entire point of Chapter 6 and enables shit (anal pun intended, dumbass) like this to start spreading as “Analysis”. But hey, to each their own.

However I will not be interacting with either of you again after this post though, even though I was willing to discuss beforehand, because you both have shown yourselves to be incredibly vile with the way you approach other people in this fandom, and especially those who don’t share your conspiracy theory. Despite the absolutely ironic comments I’ve seen from Oumanous in their later, also terrible posts about how you need to understand your opponent before engaging, which they literally failed entirely to do before engaging the firing squad at me and other commentators who responded. So much for the sanctity of discussion, huh? Enjoy your circlejerk. Everyone else who follows me in this fandom though? Please consider blocking these two if you are also a sane human being who is capable of polite discussion/disagreements. They are not worth your time otherwise. They were really not worth my time writing this post, but I felt I had to say something.

In conclusion: Out with the both of you.

[moonlitgleek]

luvlydoll reblogged your post “luvlydoll reblogged your post and added: War is ugly...” and said:  

For you to say no other men were treated bad that refused to surrender. Argella didn’t burn alive in her castle like Harren the black. She was slaughtered along with her whole house like Mern Gardner. She didn’t lose her title as queen like Sharra Arryn. She didn’t like her father on the battle field.

I did not say that "no other men were treated bad that refused to surrender” I said that no one suffered Argella’s fate which makes it an inexplicable anomaly that, besides not needing to happen to advance the narrative in the first place, stands as a clear example of casual gendered violence in the text, something that GRRM utilizes a lot. The narrative goes out of its way to indicate Stormlander loyalty only to promptly contradict it by introducing a careless and needless assault that does not serve the narrative and that stands as an appalling punishment to defiance (because apparently the most natural response to a woman’s defiance, even in politics, is sexual violence? Punishing defiance or controlling a woman by attacking her sexuality is a something that permeates even our current time, and that is glaring in the text as well. See Tywin’s stripping of his father’s mistress and forcing her to walk through Lannisport. See Kevan arranging the Walk of Shame for Cersei and the High Sparrow approving it to break her power. See Tysha). That this deviation happened in defiance of previously established sentiment, solely for Orys Baratheon’s characterization so the text could frame him as kind and decent is a problem. This continues a pattern of gendered violence being used as a plot device that solely exists for a man’s story, which was the entire point of my original post that you dismissed by “war is ugly and bad things happen”. 

The stormland men witnessed what dragons could do, many men were burned, injured and died. Can you blame them for being scared as shit when Argella bared them in like Harren did before being burned alive with his family. A queen or king is supposed to protect their people not wish them all dead to retain their own dignity. Which is something Argilac and Argella continued to do.

And we’re going in circles. I don’t blame them for being scared or for not wanting an excruciating death but the point isn’t that they surrendered, it’s that they broke every oath they ever took and every code of conduct by needlessly humiliating and assaulting their liege lady which is repugnant and indefensible. The point is that this did not need to happen. There was no conceivable reason for it to. 

They could have just given Argella to Orys clothed. But the only thing that mattered was how Orys decided to treat her and Argella was lucky he was so benevolent to her. He could have decided to kill her and proclaim himself king or could have proclaimed one of her bannerman ruler like what happened with the Gardners.

Instead her life was spared, Argella’s son became king, Orys adopted the Durrandon sigil and house words, and she kept her title. If Argella was a man Orys wouldn’t have been as chivalrous to her. Since Argella was a woman someone he could produce heirs with and unite their houses he married her. If Argella was a man she would have died.

No, no, that is not the only thing that matters. This is like saying “Sansa was physically and sexually assaulted but she was not raped or murdered so what really matters is that Tyrion did not rape her. How lucky was she!!”. Not only does this ascribe more precedence to a man’s actions over a woman’s experience even in her own story (which is what I was arguing against in the first place. Why should Orys’ actions matter than what Argella went through?), but it dismisses her abuse for not being bad enough because “well, it could have been worse.” There is not a fixed standard of suffering that someone should reach before their suffering matter. The end result does not have to be horrific for the pain and violation to matter. Argella suffered a horrific experience that matters. She does not have to suffer more to ping our suffering meter for it to count. 

But the irony is that, if anything, you’re just proving the point of my original post. I’ve criticized how the way the text handled this plot robbed Argella of her voice while simultaneously shifting the narration focus to Orys which makes Argella’s dreadful experience about him. You dismiss my criticism but in the same breath tell me that her suffering did not matter and what did matter is Orys’ actions. I guess I rest my case.

Now, to the whole business of Orys proclaiming himself king.... Um, Orys was fighting in Aegon’s name to enact his vision of a united realm, and Aegon’s realm had no place but for one king: Aegon. So, no, Orys couldn’t have decided to proclaim himself king. And no, no bannerman was declared the new ruler because Orys took the stormlands himself. The Stormlands belonged to Orys from that moment. Argella was demoted, not just from queen to lady but from queen in her own right to lady consort. Orys was the ruler of the Stormlands, not Argella. Her power was derived from him. She did not retain her title. She did not retain her position as ruler. Her castle and lands no longer belonged to House Durrandon.

Marrying Argella and adopting her words and sigil wasn’t a favor from Orys. That was a political act. Establishing continuity in a ruling line is a smart idea, especially for an outsider like Orys. Unlike the Tullys and the Tyrells who were natives of their new domains, Orys Baratheon was a foreigner with no link to the Stormlands and no shared history or common experience with his new vassals which ran a significant risk of dissent and a troubled rule since people tend to resist foreign rule. Associating himself with the previous ruling dynasty so obviously by adopting the sigil and words of the previous rulers, and taking Argella as his wife eases the transition of power from House Durrandon to House Baratheon, frames House Baratheon as a continuance of House Durrandon, and ensures that any Durrandon loyalists would be mollified by the blood, if not the name, of the Durrandons surviving and ruling Storm’s End. That was keen politics, not a favor to Argella.

Your moral outrage is conpelling when Many women in Asoiaf weren’t so lucky after rebellion or losing a battle.

Rhaenys fell in battle she was tortured to death by the Ullers her body wasn’t even sent back to Aegon.

Ellyn Tarback rebelled against the Lannisters was killed boulder from a trebuchet collapsed the keep of Tarbeck Hall upon her and her son Tion the Red. Tywin then had the castle put to the torch and her house was extinguished.

Ramsay captured the Hornwood keep and forced Lady Donella Hornwood to marry him. He raped her, forced her to sign a document proclaiming him Lord of the Hornwood, then locked her in a tower without food, to starve to death after eating some of her fingers.

Except what happened to Rhaenys Targaryen was not gendered. Ellyn Tarbeck’s death, while motivated by Tywin’s misogyny and had a lot of fucked up sexual issues behind it, was not inherently gendered in nature as well. That’s the divide that I do not think you get. I’m not disputing that atrocities happen in wars or that women suffer awful fates, I’m questioning how Martin uses sexual violence repeatedly in his narrative as a window dressing or a plot device that isn’t even about the women suffering from it, but about the men around her. Argella is but one example - Elia Martell, Tysha, Joanna Lannister, Rhaella Targaryen, and many others, fall under the same umbrella. I’m questioning why, in a report that does not assign war crimes like sacks and pillaging and rapes to the conquest, we have that random misogynistic act that does not fall in line with Martin’s own telling of the events because, again, Yandel notes the loyalty of the Stormlanders, and there is no logical reason for Argella’s own men to go that extra mile in surrendering the castle. Having the reasoning for this be “this is how things happened back then” is neither an explanation nor an excuse. That’s lazy uninspired writing and blind acceptance and employment of a very problematic element. 

Your statement also uses the suffering of other women as a measuring stick to decide what constitutes as a morally repugnant action, as if there is a certain standard of suffering that a woman should go through for her suffering to merit condemnation. It does little but derail the conversation for your rebuttal of me saying “this is not okay” to be, essentially, “look at these other women who suffered more”. I am perfectly capable of feeling outrage on behalf of more than one woman, you know. I’m capable of sympathizing with more than one woman. I’m also capable of recognizing that speaking for one woman does not preclude speaking for another, or imply dismissal of another. I can give you a list of the women who suffered from war in the text, and one of those who suffered outside of war (even though Martin insists on claiming historical accuracy for this when a good portion of the rapes and sexual abuse in the text do not even happen in war). I can give you a list of the women whose assault was no more than a plot device or window dressing in GRRM’s narrative (because that’s not an isolated incident.) 

But I’m talking about Argella Durrandon right now, both as a part of a larger pattern in Martin’s writing and as a standalone character. Because she deserves to be recognized and talked about just as any of the other women in the text. Because another woman’s suffering does not erase hers or makes it more palatable. Because there is a glaring gendered approach to her fate as opposed to other monarchs in the conquest. Because this means that Argella was stripped and paraded through an enemy camp (at a time when Rhaenys Targaryen mysteriously vanishes into thin air) because she was a woman, because a popular misogynistic method to break a woman is to humiliate her publicly through a sexual component. Because the way Martin frames the story makes this an undeconstructed incident of sexual violence that robs a woman of her voice in a series already rife with voiceless women who exist to suffer and give birth. Martin swiftly punishes Argella’s sole defining act in the text and reduces her to suffering and giving birth. We hear nothing from her after that.

[back-and-totheleft]

Rider on the Storm

Oliver Stone--Hollywood outlaw, cinematic high priest of the lost generation, America’s reigning Angry Young Man--has dismissed the haplessly out-of-touch: those within earshot as well as those not in sync with his favorite decade.

“Get out there! Take a chance! That’s what the ‘60s were--the cutting edge! Ride the snake! Now! Now ! Remember that? Go to the limits! Challenge authority! Challenge your parents! See for yourself! Get in touch with your senses!”

That fusillade is being delivered by arguably Hollywood’s most successful protester. Yale dropout, drug-taking, decorated Vietnam vet turned auteur , Stone has delivered take after take on the ‘60s and their children--"Salvador,” “Platoon,” “Wall Street,” “Talk Radio,” “Born on the Fourth of July"--coming at his theme every which way. Drugs! War! Money! Politics! Stone has made movies to exorcise his and his generation’s demons, annoying the industry with his excesses, filmic and personal, earning a round of grudging respect for ballyhooing a 20-year-old Zeitgeist all the way to the bank. He is even a producer these days, taking home a nice percentage of the gross. The Outsider has become Establishment. Hey, Oliver, what’s that sound, everything going round and round?

After nearly two decades in the business--writing or directing about a dozen films, earning five Oscar nominations, including two awards for Best Director--Stone has mastered the art of turning the counterculture into a mainstream, bankable product. Today he is Hollywood’s most consistent practitioner of point-of-view filmmaking, yet one who just as consistently falls on his own sword.

His films, lofty in their intent to capture the New Left values of the ‘60s, frequently come up short with undistinguished if competent craftsmanship and an in-your-face moralizing. Critics regularly fault his work. The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wondered in a review of “Platoon” whether Stone was “using filmmaking as a substitute for drugs. . . . There are too many scenes,” she went on to write, “where you think, It’s a bit much. The movie crowds you; it doesn’t give you room to have an honest emotion.” If Stone disdains such caviling as aesthetic elitism--"Critics say that; audiences don’t. I won’t ever make boring movies, ever!"--he nonetheless has his sharpshooter’s eye trained on his place in American film history. Stone still hungers for the imprimatur of artist.

“We don’t practice repression in this country, we practice triviality,” the director says, standing in a Hollywood sound stage on an early winter afternoon. “I try to make films that are bold and on the cutting edge, with ideas that are greater than me--and I try to serve those ideas.”

Now, Stone is set to unveil his latest homage to his generation--"The Doors,” the much-anticipated movie about the legendary ‘60s band, starring Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison, the band’s charismatic lead singer and lyricist. It is Stone’s first film since “Born on the Fourth of July” won him his third Oscar three years ago, and at $30 million it’s his most expensive production to date. It is also his least overtly political--something of a first for this filmmaker who is regularly accused of being anti-American--but one that is not without risks.

With few exceptions--such as “The Buddy Holly Story"--movies about the music industry are notoriously poor box office. And with “The Doors,” Stone is bringing to market a glossy tale of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll come round again in a new age of conservatism. It is a film for the ‘90s, with a controversial protagonist who practiced a particularly lethal brand of hedonistic nihilism; Morrison died of an apparent heart attack in Paris 20 years ago at the age of 27. Stone has taken a calculated risk in opening “The Doors” in today’s sexually nervous and unexpectedly jingoistic climate--the AIDS crisis and the country embroiled in its first real war since Vietnam. “I think we all feel on the edge of imminent disaster,” says Stone about his film’s upcoming release. “One always has that feeling.”

Even by the ‘60s’ break-the-mold musical standards, the Doors were considered sui generis--a home-grown Los Angeles band whose organ-rich, Eastern-sounding melodies, combined with Morrison’s vicious but poetic lyrics and undeniable stage presence, captured the growing alienation of an entire generation. From their first album--"The Doors” in 1967--to their last--"L.A. Woman” four years later--the band’s raspy mysticism and intellectual lyricism embodied the dark side of the ‘60s.

At the center of the band’s appeal was Morrison, the pouty, drug-ingesting “Lizard King” who became something of the Prince of Darkness in an era that did not lack for antiheroes--a figure extolling themes of undeniable attraction for Stone. “Look, I’m in my 40s,” the director says. “So I suppose this film is about the formation of our generation--the values we shared. People were out there, experiencing things, changing things. There were no limits, no laws. . . .”

Brian Grazer, an executive producer of “The Doors,” perceived two outlaws well-matched. “Oliver was my first choice as the director,” Grazer says. “He does what nobody else does--he takes dark, difficult subjects and turns them into hits.”

But hit making, as Stone likes to maintain, is not his goal. Rather, he single-mindedly goes after what he thinks of as the truths of his generation, wherever that search takes him: Vietnam, Wall Street, rock ‘n’ roll, even the Kennedy assassination. He describes the J.F.K. murder, the subject of his next film, which he will begin shooting this spring, as “the most covered-up crime of our era.” Although risk-taking and possibly radical in their intent, Stone’s films are increasingly mainstream, made with ever-larger budgets and more prestigious producers--Hemdale, Carolco and now, with the Kennedy film, Warner Bros. Success, for Stone, is a double-edged sword.

“Success?” asks the director, slightly startled. “That didn’t become popular as a concept until the ‘70s. Yeah, I have much more freedom to make the subjects that I want, but I don’t see myself as Darryl Zanuck. I would feel bad if I got indulgent. All good films come from people with an independent spirit, those who push. But the power of perception in the world is such that fringe ideas, when they are accepted, become mainstream--that because of their success they become a cliche.

“ ‘Platoon’ was a major innovation in our perception of what that war was. I thought ‘Born’ was a fairly radical statement; it took 10 years to make that picture--everybody passed on it. Once it was made and got eight Oscar nominations, it became a successful Hollywood movie. If it had not been successful, it would have been considered an outlaw film. Now, with the Kennedy film--why haven’t they made that already? Because people were fearful that it was uncommercial. I hope I was destined to make that picture.”

Those who know him suggest that Stone is indeed struggling to reconcile his renegade past with his current role as emerging power broker. “Oliver is conflicted about his success,” says one industry executive. “He hasn’t allowed his political sensibilities to get in the way of taking large amounts of money, and he struggles with that.”

“It isn’t about getting successful and having a career,” Stone says. “Going against success as a formula and embracing failure, like Morrison, where death becomes the last limit. . . . You mustn’t let money or power corrupt. I don’t feel in any way that I have compromised. I want to stay truthful to my era.”

STANDING HERE IN THE CAVERNOUS SOUND STAGE, Stone is putting the finishing touches on “The Doors.” While ostensibly another ‘60s film, “The Doors,” colleagues say, is actually a further cinematic echo of the director’s own persona as self-exiled prodigal son. As one actor puts it, “Although Oliver’s films seem to be about social issues, they are really about him.”

In conversation, Stone is by turns boyish, combative, thoughtful and overheated, one who seems to delight in spewing hyperbole as much in person as he does in his films. A husband and a father, he insists that his one regret is, “I didn’t sleep with all the women I could have.” A former drug user once busted in Mexico, he now calls cocaine “the biggest killer I know” but still salutes hallucinogenics as “fascinating.” A relentless advocate of the ‘60s, he disparages Woodstock as “a bunch of Boy Scouts getting together.” A most famous veteran, he is nonetheless disdained by some members of his old unit as a self-righteous blowhard with little sense of humor and a skewed perspective. (“He is very opinionated, over-generalizes the facts and bad-mouths people who have different points of view,” says Monte Newcombe, who served with Stone in Vietnam.)

As is well known, Stone made his mark as a movie maker five years ago when he turned his own life into film--"Platoon,” the 1986 Oscar-winning Vietnam War film that chronicled the director’s 1967-68 tour of duty. The movie won Best Picture and Best Director and grossed more than $160 million. Stone has made similar connections in his other less overtly biographical films. James Woods in “Salvador,” Charlie Sheen in “Wall Street,” Eric Bogosian in “Talk Radio,” Tom Cruise in “Born on the Fourth of July,” all played characters close to the director’s “male, Type-A personality,” says Bogosian. “Oliver makes movies about men under pressure.”

In “The Doors,” Stone evinces a similar fealty to Morrison, a contemporary of the director’s and a man also known for not tempering his excesses. “Jim had a thing where he went to the limits--women, drugs, alcohol, the law,” says Stone, who plays down some of Morrison’s excesses and recut parts of the film to make Kilmer’s character more likable. “His lyrics were earthy--snakes, fire, earth, death, fear, eros, sexuality. But he was also close to the French symbolist poets--Apollinaire, Rimbaud and a little Dylan Thomas. That combination--the high end and low end, black and white, vulgar and refined--I liked that contrast.”

It is a marriage of opposites that also fits Stone, who is described by those who know him as intense, passionate and smart, a prodigious director and writer whose early reputation for womanizing and drug taking never hindered an equally relentless work ethic. “He has the curiosity of a child and an incredible drive,” says Kenneth Lipper, an investment banker, author and consultant on “Wall Street.” “Oliver uses his films as an excuse to search out the facts--the truth--of a situation.”

Others who have worked for him say Stone is a masterful taskmaster who will manipulate, taunt and pressure cast and crew into sharing his commitment to the subject at hand. “He likes to do a lot of sparring to challenge you,” says actor Willem Dafoe, who starred in “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July.” Adds Bogosian: “He expects you to be a self-starter and thick-skinned when it comes to criticism. And if he senses you can’t take it, he will move away from you fast. Being on a set with him can be very punishing. But at the end of the day, everyone wants to be around him.” Kyle MacLachlan, an actor best known as FBI man Dale Cooper in television’s “Twin Peaks,” who co-stars in “The Doors,” says simply, “I miss working with Oliver.”

With so many of the director’s oft-related demons so readily on the surface, so out there, it is a challenge to sift through the rhetoric. Ask Stone what he is looking for in his self-inflicted Sturm und Drang , and he scorns the question as “so obvious. OK, the 49ers to win.” But in the next breath he turns philosophical, cribbing from Milan Kundera, the celebrated Czech novelist: “the ‘Lightness of Being.’ We’re all looking for equanimity of our souls.”

HE IS TALL, ABOUT 6 FEET AND JUST SHORT OF formidable, with an arresting collision of cultures--French-American, Jewish-Roman Catholic--etched into a face that is all but haggard from years of hard living and late hours. Bleary-eyed, dressed totally in black, Stone is sandwiching in an interview in the midst of back-to-back editing sessions for Friday’s release of “The Doors.”

Surrounded by his editing crew, he holds court in a room that seems the extension of himself as both polemical filmmaker and erstwhile Peck’s Bad Boy--everything state-of-the-art and bigger-than-life. Extra-large leather sofas, screen the size of a football field, giant neon clock ticking off the frames. The sequence being edited this day is quintessential Stone. On screen, Morrison, played by Kilmer, heaves a television set at the head of Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek: MacLachlan in flowing locks. The result--exploding glass and screamed epithets.

Stone flashes his signature gap-toothed grin. “There was a sound vacuum, and it’s making me crazy,” he says about the morning spent laying down extra decibels of breaking glass. “Sound abuse. I’m accused of that all the time,” he says. “But this is the noisiest film I’ve ever made. I have to gauge how much the audience can take after two hours and 15 minutes.” In Stone’s hands, “The Doors” is less an illustrated history of the band’s genesis or Morrison’s peculiarly tortured life than a visceral recreation of the world of ‘60s music. The approach is similar to the sensuous verisimilitude the director achieved in “Platoon,” the first Vietnam War film made by someone who had served. “I don’t want to reduce the ‘60s to a formula or say this is all-inclusive,” Stone says, “but it is about the texture of the ‘60s . . . how music was the big common denominator.”

Producer Grazer says the film is less linear and narrative than “a film made from a real rock-music point of view. Oliver has made a movie that shows that world as dangerous and erotic. It has a real feel for the period.”

Much of that feel comes from the director’s personal affinity for The Doors’ music, which he first encountered in Vietnam. He found the band “visceral and mystical,” Stone says. “The Doors were not a mainstream band like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Jim hated that whole teeny-bopper thing. There were decency rallies held against him.”

That Morrison’s grave site in Paris still has the faithful trekking to touch the headstone has only burnished the mystique of the tortured songwriter with the Kennedyesque jaw and the black leather pants that would, on occasion, not stay zipped. A well-known abuser of alcohol, drugs and women, Morrison was arrested in 1969 on obscenity charges after exposing himself during a Miami concert. “He was a pirate, a free soul, an anarchist,” Stone says. “I loved his spirit--a combination of James Dean and Brando, sexiness combined with sensitivity and rawness.”

Morrison’s persona transcended not only his performances but also his death in 1971, which Stone recalls as “like the day Kennedy died.” The revival of so-called Doorsmania, as Rolling Stone magazine referred to it, began 12 years ago when director Francis Ford Coppola used the band’s Oedipal song, “The End,” in his 1979 Vietnam film, “Apocalypse Now.” In 1981, the lurid, controversial Morrison biography, “No One Here Gets Out Alive” by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, the singer’s manager, was published. That same year, “The Doors’ Greatest Hits” was released and made it into Billboard’s Top 10. By 1981, Rolling Stone had Morrison on its cover with the headline, “He’s Hot, He’s Sexy . . . He’s Dead.”

Hollywood chased the Morrison story for nearly a decade while the Morrison estate and the surviving members of the band battled over the movie rights. Eventually, Grazer’s Imagine Productions held all the cards--a hefty $2-million development package--largely through the assistance of veteran rock producer Bill Graham, who shares production credit on the film. Grazer took the project to Stone--who had just passed on the on-again, off-again “Evita"--and Mario Kossar’s Carolco Productions, which had signed the director to a two-picture deal.

For Stone, directing “The Doors” brought several new challenges. “It was a very complicated screenplay to write,” says Stone, who shares screenwriting credit with J. Randal Johnson, who had done an earlier draft. Using his usual reporter’s approach, Stone plowed through “250 transcripts from people who had known Jim. It was like ‘Citizen Kane’ in a way--everyone had a different point of view.” Stone shot the film last spring with 30,000 extras for concert scenes in San Francisco, New York, Paris and Los Angeles, including the L. A. clubs Whisky a Go-Go and The Central, which doubled as the old London Fog.

Recreating The Doors’ sound on film proved more difficult. Kilmer, a baritone like Morrison, was cast after Stone interviewed hundreds of actors. Perhaps best known as Ice Man, Tom Cruise’s nemesis in the film “Top Gun,” Kilmer had been so eager to land the role that he recorded an entire Doors album, substituting his own vocals for Morrison’s. In a similar move, Stone decided to obtain the rights to The Doors’ master tapes minus Morrison’s lead vocals. He then spliced the original soundtracks with performances by the actors--Kilmer, MacLachlan, Kevin Dillon and Frank Whaley, who learned to play instruments for the film. The film’s final cut contains 25 Doors songs, including such classic hits as “L. A. Woman,” “Crystal Ship,” “Light My Fire” and “The End.” The music was recorded with “a little bit of Jim Morrison’s vocals--and in the concert scenes I have mixed in the actors’ voices, and I defy you to find the difference,” Stone says.

Kilmer describes Stone as “a person of vision and integrity. He has lived triumph and horrors. And I can tell you his life does not pass unexamined. Look at his body of work. It pulls from his introspection, knowledge and vast intuition.”

Indeed, ask Stone what he hopes the reception for his film will be, and he launches into another paternalistic eulogy for the ‘60s. “A lot of people will want to see this the way they wanted to see Tom Cruise in ‘Born,’ so they can be given an alternative way of looking at things,” he says. “These kids have grown up with Travolta and disco, the high-tech world of the ‘80s, and maybe they have never even seen that there is a different, an alternative, lifestyle, a world we’ve lost touch with.”

“WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE BAND OF THE ‘60s?”

Stone is asking this over lunch of Thai soup--hot as napalm--set out for him and his guest in an upstairs conference room. With Stone, that isn’t an idle question; it’s a password, a test of character, sort of like the soup he’s ordered--beyond an ordinary mortal’s standards. “Come on, it’s good for you,” he says laughing at his guest’s discomfort. “It puts hair on your chest.”

Shying away from risks is the ultimate sin with Stone, the only child of a privileged Manhattan couple, a stockbroker father and socialite mother. Stone wore a coat and tie every day to prep school, wrote weekly essays for his father--who paid him 25 cents each--and embarked on his well-documented fall from grace as soon as he was able. Says one old friend: “Oliver grew up with a lot of contradictions in his life--Jewish father, French Roman Catholic mother who was this semi-Regine-type character. Oliver led this sort of Eurotrash jet-setter’s life--even after his parents were divorced--where nothing was normal.”

“My mother was never in bed before 3 in the morning,” Stone recalls. “She used to take me to France in the summers, and she was a great fan of movies, took me out of school to go to double and triple features. She was this kind of Auntie Mame person. ‘Evita’ would have been my homage to her.”

His parents’ divorce when he was 16 years old, Stone says, “was like parting the curtains of a stage play and seeing what was really there. I found out about a whole lot of things--affairs--I had been blind to. After that, I felt I was really on my own.”

The divorce also coincided with a larger rupture--Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the de facto starting gun of the ‘60s. “I had no faith in my parents’ generation after that,” Stone says. “By 1965, I was in Vietnam"--first as a teacher and a merchant marine, later as an Army enlistee.

He briefly attended Yale University, his father’s alma mater, which he says he “hated, especially since it was before women were admitted.” Stone dropped out and headed for Vietnam.

He was wounded twice and earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in a tour of duty that was later chronicled in “Platoon.” “He was never a regular GI Joe,” recalls Crutcher Patterson, a former member of Stone’s platoon. “He was pretty green, a loner and moody, always writing things. Whenever we got a break, he would stop and write a little descriptive story about it.”

During his brief Army career, Stone abandoned the idea of being a writer--he had written a novel at 18--to become a filmmaker. “Being there was a very sensual experience, and I started thinking in visual terms,” Stone says. “In Vietnam, all your senses were awakened. You had to see better, smell better, hear better. It was very sensual, with the jungle six inches in front of your face. You couldn’t think along abstract lines--you had to become more animalistic or you wouldn’t survive.”

He bought a still camera and started taking pictures even before he left for home. Once Stone returned to New York, “I got a super-8 right away and started making home movies.” He enrolled at New York University’s film school, where he studied under director Martin Scorsese, drove a cab, married Najwa Sarkis--an official at the Moroccan mission to the United Nations--and made “short, crude 16-millimeter films that were really screwed up,” Stone says. “They were arty, kind of abstract poems with a touch of Orson Welles and the French New Wave filmmakers--Goddard, Resnais, Bunuel. I was trying to get away from a normal narrative line.”

He was also pursuing a similar line in his personal life. Arrested for marijuana possession in Mexico 10 days after his return from Vietnam, Stone became well known for using drugs, an experience that later informed his screenplay for Brian DePalma’s “Scarface.”

“I started smoking cigarettes on the plane going over to Vietnam,” says Stone. “Once I got there, the guys I liked best had been around drugs for ages, and I started doing acid and marijuana. I also got into the music. I had never heard Motown before then. Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. Jim was the acid king. It was all part of the Zeitgeist. “

It was a taste for substance abuse, topped off with an appetite for pursuing women, that Stone, newly divorced, took with him to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s as an aspiring screenwriter. He soon had a reputation notable even by Hollywood’s standards. “He always had a million women in his life,” says one female former friend. “I don’t think he missed too many.”

In Hollywood, Stone wrote “Platoon,” and although it would be more than 10 years before he would get it made, the script earned him attention as a writer of unusual force.

“I was looking for a writer for ‘Conan’ ” recalls Ed Pressman, an independent film producer who worked with Stone on “Conan the Barbarian” and several films since, including “Born.” “His agent showed me ‘Platoon,’ and I was very taken with it. His script for ‘Conan’ was a great screenplay. Like Dante’s ‘Inferno.’ ”

The success of that film led to other screenwriting assignments--"Midnight Express,” “Scarface,” “Year of the Dragon” among others--all white-hot, unsubtle stories, the type that increasingly became Stone’s signature. He won his first Oscar for “Midnight Express,” which led to his first directing opportunity--"The Hand,” a marginal thriller starring Michael Caine that failed at the box office and temporarily stalled Stone’s directing career. Eventually, he was able to make the low-budget “Salvador” through Hemdale Productions, followed by “Platoon,” a $6-million film that Orion picked up from Hemdale and that saw grosses in the hundreds of millions. After that, Stone was admitted to the big leagues--directing Michael Douglas in “Wall Street” and Tom Cruise in “Born on the Fourth of July.” The latter film, based on Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic’s life story, won Stone his second Best Director award but lost out for Best Picture to the crowd pleaser “Driving Miss Daisy"--a loss that Stone took particularly hard. “We made over $60 million with that film--an incredible success. I guess it was just not meant to be.”

Today, Stone has remarried and divides his time among homes in Santa Monica, Montecito and Colorado with his wife, Elizabeth, a former nurse, and their 6-year-old son, Sean, who plays young Morrison in “The Doors.” Stone hasn’t lost his concern for current events: “I’m praying for our soldiers, who are making the ultimate sacrifice in the Gulf War, but I don’t think Bush ever intended to negotiate. There was a military-industrial complex that pushed us into this.” Friends add that the director’s only real interest these days, in addition to making films, “is trying to set up other films.”

Have Stone’s demons finally gone AWOL? “I didn’t say I didn’t miss my old life,” he says with a half-smile. “I love the concept of suburbia, but I also love going to New York and Europe and Asia, meeting new people. My wife and I are different that way. I have a restlessness that never stops.”

Indeed, as soon as “The Doors” opens, Stone is off to Dallas to begin shooting his version of the Kennedy assassination, a film that Stone describes as “the untold story of a murder that occurred at the dawn of our adulthood. It’s a bit like ‘Hamlet.’ You know, the real king was killed, and a fake king put on the throne.” Suggest to Stone that some of Camelot’s luster has tarnished since 1963, and the director says quietly, “There has been an incredible disinformation campaign put out about him. A lot of misinformation. I am using everything I have to get this film made.”

Ask Stone if he likes where he is positioned now in the industry and he laughs. “Oh, this is the part where you’re going to quote me, right? The outlaw director.”

If Stone is cagey about self-definition these days, friends seem equally divided. Some, such as Pressman, who produced “Blue Steel” and “Reversal of Fortune” with Stone, say the director “is at the top of his game. I was always mesmerized and excited by his personality, but now he is much more comfortable with himself and a lot easier to work with.”

But another Hollywood executive suggests that “Oliver has not changed much. He really hasn’t mellowed. He is conflicted about his ‘financial’ success. But that’s how Hollywood respects you--they pay for what they respect, and his movies now make money.”

Stone does seem to be a man with his eye fixed perpetually over his shoulder, one who keeps a daily diary and who describes the art of filmmaking as giving vent to “that other person that is in you. The shadow self, the one that is always walking behind you. The real you, the deeper you.

“I’m not going to say I’m a lone soul here, wandering through my own soundtrack,” he says. “I enjoy the community of people who love movies. And I like using the power that I have to make things happen. But will I be doing this forever? Maybe I’ll be working in Eritrea or the Sudan, or maybe I’ll become a journalist for Rolling Stone.”

Stone has spent several hours over lunch, repeatedly waving off his crew, but now his impatience is tangible. “I still don’t like the answer I gave you about the ‘60s, how this film relates to this current generation. I felt stupid. I was doing a lot of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs,’ ” he says, suddenly obsessed with his image.

“I don’t want to believe in generation conflict, but it’s there. I feel distant from my own generation, out of step with the people my age who went to college. I always identified more with the Charlie Sheen generation, that younger group who came up, because it gave me new life. I was able to act out my own history through them, skip a generation and go back to it again. Believe me, that’s exciting, and I’m grateful for that chance because our tribal rituals are the same. It doesn’t have to be Jim Morrison or Vietnam; it’s about going out there and finding yourself.”

-Hilary de Vries, “RIDER ON THE STORM : With ‘The Doors,’ Director Oliver Stone Exhumes the ‘60s in All Their Lurid Excess,” Los Angeles Times, Feb 24 1991 [x]

[oneweekoneband]

Why Did It Take Me So Long To Notice That The Word Is “Fury” Not “Furry”?

Hello again. While I must admit to mild surprise at Dinosaur Jr.’s absence from the constantly growing roster of artists covered on OWOB, I should also state my attempted approach to writing about a band with no lack of wordage already available on its behalf. Though potentially futile, I will be trying to write something that benefits a cross-section of readers, from the unfamiliar but curious to the currently dismissive therefore purposely detached to the self-appointed superfan. All of this being stated, please understand that “attempted” carries one hell of an implied emphasis.

As covered in the previous post, I’m an active writer with many years in the trenches, though at least a half-decade in between my first toe-dips into this endeavor and the formative teenage moment when exposure to two Dinosaur Jr. albums (1987’s You’re Living All Over Me and 1991’s Green Mind, their second and fourth, respectively) combined to transform a fervent interest in underground music into a terminal, all-consuming obsession that almost seems to have dictated, in some way, shape or form, each lifting of a finger since. 

I’ve had a fair amount of writing published on the subject of this band, but most of it appeared during the first half of my now 18 years in this racket, barring the entries about several Dinosaur Jr. albums did make it into my second (and most recent) book, which carried the subtitle of 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981 - 1996 and a title that I absolutely hate so it shall not be revisited. On that note, attacks of full-body cringe have become as reliable as Christmas upon revisiting older writings, therefore I did not in order to guarantee no points or angles reiterated. But for what it’s worth, at some point in the early-00s, I did a long and embarrassing tribute to You’re Living All Over Me for the Perfect Sound Forever website as my first piece of writing on the band. Then once the spotlight was aimed backwards and topically in 2004-2006 for that period’s two-tiered reissue and reunion activity, I wrote a bunch of features about the Homestead and SST years (plus the early run of reunion shows) for several outlets. I interviewed both Mascis and Barlow, twice each if I remember correctly, and essentially felt like I said everything there was to possibly say about this band whose music more or less put me on a personal and professional course that continues to this day. I don’t feel like that anymore.

Two things to take into account before we move on: First, none of the subsequent entries will be this long, or at least that’s the plan. Secondly, this week will feature very little writing on the four albums of new material Dinosaur Jr. has released since the original lineup of J. Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Emmett Jefferson Murphy III (almost exclusively known as “Murph” but I find his full given name to be amusing) reunited in 2005…will be of the unflattering comparative variety. However popular it might be to jump to black-and-white, definitive conclusions, do not take this to mean I consider these albums to be bad or boring or anything of the sort. But do know that they are, despite what the rest of the world seemingly believes, inferior when placed against what I will be trying to push into your ears and lives going forward. And understand that Dinosaur Jr.’s major-label era (1991 - 1997) will be explored in a nooks-and-crannies fashion (meaning, we’re going to get into Mike Johnson’s discography), as I feel there’s a nice chunk of amazing music hidden in there that has been largely overlooked or misunderstood.

I am about as obsessed with music as I am the non-fiction ghetto in which I operate.  Therefore it might or might not behoove me to do something no one outside of this little world should waste their time with, and that would be lot of overthinking about a couple of crucial elements of artistic criticism and appreciation that appear to be under constant attack these days: context and nuance. There is no such thing as good-to-great creative nonfiction or journalism that lacks or misuses either, and the most difficult to translate of the two is, of course, context. 

These days it seems every talking head (or every record-store loiterer or live show barnacle) of similar vintage to myself should be wearing a t-shirt or rocking a bumper-sticker that says, “Ask Me What It Was Like Before The Internet!”. This is something for which I harbor a visceral and distinct distaste if not great embarrassment. Any historically-precise party line of assumed profundity is going to fail at transmitting the intended impact for two reasons. First is the obvious neutering of any meaning or relevance when beating a cultural audience over the head with something, year after year, generation after generation. The second is more problematic, as I’m not certain that being present during its heyday or for a following period of linear influence is necessitated so as to provide fundamental context needed to understand how or why a band was groundbreaking or brain-rearranging or whatnot. 

For example, Dinosaur Jr. was four albums and seven years active once its music entered my life in earnest. Still, when it comes to blanket mantras of the reality-removed like, “This Was Before The Internet!” or “We Didn’t Have Cell Phones” battle stories, usually issued as some delusional badge of struggle or evidence of authenticity, we’re talking something that means far less than is assumed to a recipient without the same experiential history. I usually cringe when I witness someone else trying to get this across to a younger generation, though I have yet to figure out myself how to do it effectively. 

Conversely, there are examples of past underground rock prescience (well beyond the legendary trio of albums released by Dinosaur Jr. between 1985 and 1988) such as Mission of Burma, Black Flag, NEU!, Brian Eno’s “Third Uncle”, The Feelies, The Embarrassment, Can, This Heat, The Fall, mid-period Sonic Youth, Husker Du’s SST years, Black Sabbath, Slayer, mid-80s Swans, and Miles Davis’ 1970 - 1975 output, to name but a few, that occurred long before I developed anything close to refined taste or the ability to let music have an impact on a deep emotional and intellectual level. Or, for that matter, the ability to breath air outside of the womb in some of those cases. 

Still, once properly blown away, I could easily wrap my head around how each example was way ahead of the curve, or scared the shit out of most listeners who came in contact with it in real time. Of course, it helps if the music in question resides in the exclusive canon reserved for that which is genuinely timeless. If it falls short of timeless it sure as hell better be a high quality, well-aged specimen of music that’s nonetheless easily identifiable as being from a certain era of yore. Much of material released by Dinosaur Jr.’s during the band’s first two phases of activity, which together span 1985 until 1997, fits into one of those two categories.

My first meaningful introduction to Dinosaur Jr. essentially played out in similar a similar fashion to formative life-altering moments spun by many writers, musicians, and fans of my generation or older. I suppose a warning should now be issued that you’re about to read yet another account of someone taping episodes of MTV’s 120 Minutes. I had a habit of setting the recording time to the shittiest quality of six hours and fitting three episodes of said show onto my parents’ VHS copies of HBO and Cinemax films like The Cotton Club and Bill Cosby’s Himself. Some time after its parent album (You’re Living All Over Me) was released, on a Christmas night when I was in my early teens, the video for “Little Fury Things” ran between a Michelle Shocked number and The Cure’s infuriatingly awful “Let’s Go To Bed” (that goes for the video and the song). At first I focused on other future life-alterers like the clip for The Fall’s “New Big Prinz” and Sonic Youth’s iconic “Teenage Riot” video, as Dinosaur Jr.’s idea of a video and that song were just too fucking dark and ominous for my young teenage mind. 

But because I had to fast forward or rewind through multiple Christmas-special live-in-the-studio tomfoolery from hosts They Might Be Giants along with crap that was somehow already “not for me” like Fishbone, Camouflage, Translator, and the not-that-bad-but-long-as-hell video for Love And Rockets’ “Dog End Of A Day Gone By”, I eventually came around to the three minutes and change that was the “Little Fury Things” video….like a moth to flame. I still have the very VHS tape I used to play and rewind repeatedly while my parents were at work during the day, blasting it through the shitty speakers of our 27” Sony Trinitron and running all over the floorplans of the three houses (well, one house and two apartments, if we’re to split hairs) I lived in during my high school years. The beginning of the video goes blank for a few seconds because I accidentally hit “record” on the remote amidst some furious bouncing all over the couches and chairs.

I seriously doubt there’s a song I’ve listened to, on my own accord, more times than this one and it still delivers a palpable, albeit much different due to time passed, charge as it plays at this very moment. The sonic dichotomy that makes this track exciting- powerful noise/distortion married to a huge, highly emotive pop hook-happens to be another dragon I chase to this day and in general has been one of the crucial elements of forward movement undertaken by post-hardcore, proto and first-gen indie-rock, punk rock, shoegaze and underground metal over the last 30 years. Because I still run into music obsessives, mostly younger, who are unaware of Dinosaur Jr.’s legacy and historical place as a paramount force of innovation, influence and well-aged listening excitement, I’ll close this entry with the aforementioned video despite it visually communicating far less than it does musically. 

Much has been written (years ago by myself and more recently in Nick Atfield’s 33 ⅓ book on the album it opens) about attempting to decipher or assign one’s own meaning and words to what is probably a bunch of lyrical nonsense. I think that’s organically symptomatic of anything that hits with this kind of power and non-cheesy melancholic punch. A personal fave, however, would have to go to the one-off “Hallelujah, the sunlight brings the red out in your eyes” line that opens the gate for an instrumental mid-section of riffs (where a guitar solo might normally be).

“Little Fury Things” official video from 1987′s You’re Living All Over Me

And here’s a couple of clips that hopefully illustrate how insanely loud and air-moving Dinosaur Jr. Mach I must have been as a live band, especially considering the average age of the members was 20 to 22.

1986 at UMass…

Germany, 1988, full set. Pretty good sound given the age/era.

[cocoaswatches]

BUT ITS JUST MAKEUP! And other inappropriate responses to cultural appropriation

"Welcome to the new war on cultural appropriation," Cathy Young wrote for The Washington Post.

"At one time, such critiques were leveled against truly offensive art — work that trafficked in demeaning caricatures, such as blackface, 19th-century minstrel shows or ethnological expositions, which literally put indigenous people on display, often in cages. But these accusations have become a common attack against any artist or artwork that incorporates ideas from another culture, no matter how thoughtfully or positively. A work can reinvent the material or even serve as a tribute, but no matter. If artists dabble outside their own cultural experiences, they’ve committed a creative sin."

What's missing from the seemingly intelligent critique is the fact that cultural appropriation involves more than just being "offensive." Like racism, sexism, and many other injustice in this world, cultural appropriation is systematic and can affect multiple facets of our everyday lives. 

As actress Amandla Stengberg put it: "Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated but is deemed as high-fashion, cool or funny when the privileged take it for themselves."

Furthermore, once a style has been appropriated and seen as "cool," the appropriators can then make $$$ and gain status by emulating said style. 

Lets take the most recent scandal, Marc Jacobs' NYFW SS'17 show, as an example. During this event, Jacobs chose to send an array of models down the runway adorned with colored faux locs made of yarn. 

The immediate response was overwhelmingly positive. Those who attended the show in person, like mogul Nina Garcia, sang his praises. However, once more people began to catch wind of his show, they did not find use of faux locs endearing or fashion forward, they found it repulsive. To make matters worse, Jacobs seemed completely oblivious to the fact that dreadlocs were a style typically worn by the black community because of the texture of their hair and its roots in Rastafarianism. 

Instead, Jacobs' hairstylist for the show told Harper's Bazaar, that the locs were inspired by "certain types cultures, like rave culture, club culture, acid house, Boy George and Marilyn." 

And to The Cut he confessed, "The interesting thing about Marc is how he takes something so street and so raw, and because of the coloration of the hair and the makeup, it becomes a total look. Something that we’ve bypassed on the street and not really looked at, or seen a million times, he makes us look at it again in a much more sophisticated and fashionable way."

This is cultural appropriation in a nutshell. The fact that the style is even viewed as "street," and then is magically "high fashion,"  when placed on a runway by Marc Jacobs, a white designer, who by the way is not "street" at all. (Just compare this to the time Zendaya wore faux locs on an award show runway and Giuliana Racnic joked that she looked like she smelled like week.)

Jacobs continued to dig himself deeper into a hole while responding to the backlash his show was receiving.

"Funny how you don't criticize women of color for straightening their hair,"

he retorted. I don't see color or race, I see people."

(I am not sure about you but I've had quite enough of the "color blind" rhetoric as a defense for any type of behavior.)

His comments spared major discussions about what cultural appropriation is and whether or not we "should" be bothered by it. The majority of the arguments for Jacobs can pretty much be summed up into the following categories:

"But it's just fashion! (insert makeup, TV, a movie, etc here) It doesn't even mean anything."

"But there are SO many other important issues to talk about! Black people are dying! Y'all are worried about the wrong things."

"But women of color (aka black women) do it too! They straighten their hair and wear blonde weave!"

"But Marc used black models in his show! It can't possibly be appropriation then!"

In my opinion, these comments do nothing more than further isolate and discriminate against the black community, whose style is being appropriated. 

To start, it's extremely dismissive to dictate what someone should or should not be worried about. This act ignores the fact that there are numerous black designers, artists, people who may have faced discrimination for their own natural hairstyles, like locs and therefore would feel some type of way, for lack of better words, when seeing something like Jacobs' SS17 show.

Furthermore, to even try to assert that black women are in any way, shape, or form appropriating by wearing straight hair is nothing short of infuriating. 

Popular beauty blogger, Jackie Aina, communicated the irony quite eloquently on her Instagram page. 

At the end of the day, people can care about whatever they want to care about. And, news flash, people can care about multiple issues at the same time. I can care about Marc Jacobs' SS17 show while still caring about the Flint Water Crisis or Black Lives Matter (both of which Jacobs has never spoken about BTW)

What grinds my gears the most is that instead of being truly apologetic and trying to understand where a certain community is coming from, many accused of cultural appropriation are quick to get defensive and continue to carry on with their offensive behavior. 

At it's core, Jacobs' blatant insensitivity adds insult to injury in a world where many black women simply cannot be as "carefree" and "fun," as the women he sent down his runway wearing locs. They cannot simply exist as their authentic selves without receiving some type of heat or backlash. As stated previously, even Zendaya, CoverGirl's latest poster woman cannot escape the demeaning critiques. Scores of black women have literally been discriminated against, turned away from job, and suspended from school...just. because. of. their. natural. hair.

If you truly want to understand cultural appropriation, it starts with having an open mind. It starts with getting out out of your own bubble and being open to learning. Because the fact of the matter is, there are so many communities across the world that have gone through years and years of suffering due to seemingly trivial things like hair, or body type, or the color of their skin (sounds crazy when you think about it, but racism is alive and well in 2016.)

How would you feel if someone took the attributes that society has discriminated and ridiculed you for and turned them into a "trend?"

Edit: Shortly after this article was published, " The 3-0 decision Thursday by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Commission against a company that refused to hire a black woman because she wouldn't cut her dreadlocks." - WSJ

Coincidence? I think not. 

[loudlytransparenttrash]

This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 5

A University of Chicago student organization was pressured into changing the topic for an upcoming debate because some considered it to be “colonialism apologia.” The debate, hosted by the elite school’s “Political Union,” was initially set to ask if “the British Empire was a force for good,” but student outcry merely over the title of the debate eventually resulted in the name-change. “What is wrong with you people?” one student wrote on the group’s Facebook page, with another questioning why “you motherfuckers needed plenty of critical messages to see that ‘was the British Empire a force for good’ is deeply problematic? How many white people are in this RSO?” The organization changed the question of the debate to whether Britain should be forced to “pay reparations to its former colonies,” and apologizing for the way it had initially framed the conversation.

A black University of Pennsylvania student recently declared that his semester at the Ivy League institution was “traumatic” because he had three white professors who refused to acknowledge their white privilege. “Last semester was honestly the worst semester I’ve had at Penn so far. And all because of one thing: the white professors I’ve had at Penn. It appears that the term ‘privilege’ does not apply to them. Nor do they care to learn what it is.” Student James Fisher wrote. "My professor wanted to protect the voices of the white students who benefit from black oppression, the oppression unfortunately continued. It even led to me mentally breaking down in the classroom. With different emotions going through my head from not only this class but from the Trump election, I did not want to step foot into another white space until I made sure that my mental health was restored. The truth is, you as a single person cannot make up for the horrific things that white people have done to us throughout human history. But that does not mean that you do not have the power to stop yourself from oppressing the students that you teach every day.

American University is blocking whites from a cafe designated as a ‘sanctuary’ for nonwhites. As reported in my earlier posts, after black student activists issued a demand list to American University, the administration caved in and agreed to obey. One of the demands was a ban on white students using a new student lounge for the rest of the spring semester. The activists said they would take over the space as their own “sanctuary” and also demanded that all nonwhite students received extensions. They also asked incoming President Sylvia Burwell, to show how she will enforce “no tolerance for anyone creating a hostile environment for students of color” and punish such people.

A shocking new video shows a Western Washington University student screaming for at least two-minutes straight after seeing a Donald Trump sign on campus. The unknown student reacted to a street preacher’s pro-Trump sign by spiraling into a bizarre frenzy, at some points even splattering paint on the ground. Whether it was an attempt at an artistic protest or not, the fact remains: the bitch is bonkers. 

The University of California, Irvine’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter once again disrupted and shut down a pro-Israel event, shouting “fuck you” at attendees. The SJP overtook a Students Supporting Israel event featuring Israeli veterans who are touring college campuses to share their firsthand experiences from on the ground. “You people are colonizers or occupiers and you should not be allowed on this fucking campus” they screamed and called Israelis “genocidal.” This is the same group that shut down a film-screening hosted by a Jewish student group on campus last year and as reported earlier, they have also been drinking cups of saltwater to show their solidarity with Palestine terrorists currently being detained in Israel. Nobody ever dares to question the vicious antisemitism inflicted by these students on campuses across the U.S and no one bats an eye when they refuse to condemn Hamas, because they are being funded by this terrorist organization who are hellbent on wiping out every last Jew. No one cares because they’re Muslim and saying anything would be Islamophobia. 

A University of Hawaii professor recently claimed that universities should “stop hiring white cis men” until “the problem goes away.” Mathematics professor Piper Harron never gets around to specifying which "problem" would be solved by culling cis white males from academia, but insists that "real solutions require women of color and trans women." Piper Harron suggests, members of the “white cis” demographic should, “as a first step,” resign from their “hiring committee, their curriculum committee, and make sure they’re replaced by a woman of color or trans person.” “Having white cis women run the world is no kind of solution either,” she declares, pointing to the fact 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump. “Stop hiring white cis men (except as needed to get/retain people who are not white cis men) until the problem goes away,” she instructs university officials, adding accusatorially that “if you think this is a bad or un-serious idea, your sexism/racism/transphobia is showing.”

Black professors congratulate graduates who heckled Ed. Secretary Betsy DeVos at commencement. Over 200 black professors have signed a “love letter” to the Bethune-Cookman University graduates who booed DeVos during her commencement speech at the school last week. As mentioned in the last post, one professor alleged DeVos is representative of “white power.” The letter reads: “The world watched you protest the speaker you never should have had. We cheered as we saw so many of you refuse to acquiesce in the face of threats. Your actions fit within a long tradition of Black people fighting back against those who attack our very lives with their anti-Black policies and anglo-normative practices.” 

At least DeVos got to talk even though she was still booed and heckled. Texas Southern University withdrew an invitation to Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas to address its graduating students. The university disinvited Cornyn because it wanted students to remember their commencement “positively for years to come,” and that couldn’t happen if a white conservative politician was their speaker. The petition to have Cornyn banned from talking cites his vote in favor of requiring photo ID in federal elections and against continuing federal funding for sanctuary cities who refuse to carry out the law against illegal immigrants. Oddly, it also cites Cornyn’s 2006 vote for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, at a time when same-sex marriage was far more popular with whites than blacks. Then-Sen. Barack Obama opposed same-sex marriage in 2006 as well, and didn’t officially change his position for another six years but hey, only white people can do bad things.

Minority students at the University of Michigan have expressed feeling intimidated by the interior wood paneling found throughout the historic Michigan Union building. Anna Wibbelman, former president of an organization that voices student concerns about university development, stated that “minority students felt marginalized by quiet, imposing masculine paneling” found throughout the 100-year-old building that is set to undergo a massive, $85.2 million renovation project.

A student group at the University of Washington held a teach-in Tuesday to promulgate the notion that America’s “food system is built on racism.” “It is a fact that today inmates, predominantly black Americans, harvest a lot of the food that we eat for less than $.50/hr,” the group explains. Let me get this straight, they want their rapists, pedophiles, wife beaters and murderers inside of prison, but once they’re there, they also want them to be paid and treated under the same conditions as law abiding citizens and if we don’t, it’s racism? 

A Bethel University student issued an apology for wearing a Chicago Blackhawks sweatshirt to class after he was told the clothing was “offensive and hurtful.” The controversy unfolded during a class called “Social Perspectives, Human Worth and Social Action,” which delves into themes of culture, power and oppression in America, according to its online description. Student Cody Albrecht, who is from Chicago, came to the class wearing his home team’s apparel, then offered to turn it inside out “after becoming aware of the unease in his classroom because of his sweatshirt.” A week after he wore the sports apparel and after a “reconciliation” with the head of the Social Work department, his teacher and the whole class, Albrecht issued a formal apology.

Black students at the University of California, Los Angeles are demanding $40 million and their own “safe spaces” on campus as compensation for racially insensitive incidents. “Black students at UCLA are consistently made the targets of racist attacks by fellow students, faculty, and administration,” the Afrikan Student Union (ASU) begins. The first item on the list calls for “a physical location on campus to house the Afrikan Student Union Projects,” which would include “meeting/gathering/safe spaces” and be staffed by a director and an office manager who would be responsible for distributing funds allocated to the ASU. In addition, the ASU ultimatum demands a $40 million “endowment” to fund “a comprehensive effort to address the underrepresentation of African-American students, faculty, and staff at our university,” adding that the endowment should also provide financial aid to “dismissed black students.” The list goes on to ask that UCLA “deliver an anti-discrimination policy that assuages discriminatory and offensive behavior,” specifically “culturally insensitive” behavior, in conjunction with implementing mandatory “Cultural Awareness training” for all incoming students, faculty and staff members, and campus police officers. Finally, the ASU is insisting that UCLA provide “guaranteed housing for black students for 4 years, including on- and off-campus housing,” arguing that securing housing is especially difficult for black students due to factors such as “low socio-economic status and difficulties remaining financially stable amidst the rising living costs in Westwood.”

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CBO: 23 million Americans would lose health care coverage under House bill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell during a Wednesday interview with Reuters in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

WASHINGTON — The House-passed health care overhaul would cause 23 million Americans to lose insurance while shaving a relatively meager $119 billion from the deficit by 2026, according to the The Congressional Budget Office.

The dismal CBO score could stir up more dissent among Senate Republicans who have spent weeks attempting to hash out their own health care deal behind closed doors.

“I don’t know how we get to 50 (votes) at the moment,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Reuters earlier Wednesday. “But that’s the goal.”

In March, the CBO found an earlier version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) would have resulted in 24 million fewer Americans having health care coverage and $150 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years compared with Obamacare.

That uninsured figure fueled a wave of outrage at town halls across the country in March and April, and having it back in the headlines again could be toxic for the delicate negotiations on the subject in the Senate. Democrats are likely to wield the CBO score as a potent political weapon against Republicans, with one GOP group already launching a $2 million ad buy coinciding with the CBO score release this week to defend vulnerable House Republicans from those attacks. Only 21 percent of Americans support the AHCA, according to one recent poll, and a CBO score showing millions losing coverage is also unlikely to boost the plan’s overall popularity.

“Theoretically, I can see it scaring off lots of people,” said Liz Mair, a Republican political operative, adding that GOP moderates as well as fiscal hawks could be spooked by the score.

Senate Republicans have been meeting three times a week to hammer out their own version of legislation designed to repeal and replace Obamacare. But the task is formidable, since McConnell needs at least 50 of the Senate’s 52 Republicans — moderates and conservatives — to agree on the politically risky plan. And so far, the Senate group has not put forward any new ideas that would result in higher coverage numbers than the AHCA.

Demonstrators at the U.S. Capitol after the House passed the AHCA. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Wednesday’s CBO score underscore the political risk senators are taking on health care, since it will be tough for lawmakers to defend a bill that could result in 23 million people losing their insurance with just $119 billion in deficit savings to show for it. Fourteen million fewer people would lose health care in 2018 if the bill becomes law.

The bill the House passed was changed at the last minute to let states seek waivers that would allow insurance companies to sell policies that don’t include some health benefits like maternity care and to charge more for people with preexisting health conditions. House leadership added $8 billion to the bill to fund high-risk pools for people with preexisting conditions, as a response to critics who said the legislation would price people with preexisting conditions out of the market. Those changes didn’t appear to change the CBO’s prediction much, however.

Mair predicted Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., would all likely object to lower predicted deficit savings in the House bill. (Lee and Cruz are part of the 13-person Senate working group tackling the health care issue.)

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks to reporters in April. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

The CBO score also could lead some Republicans to decide they want to keep more of Obamacare’s taxes in the Senate bill in order to fund higher tax credits for people who want to buy insurance, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Yahoo News before the score came out.

“I think what’s going to happen is there’s probably a dozen Republicans in the Senate who want more subsidies for people, they want to keep more of the Obamacare subsidies,” he said. “But I think they’re going to find out when the CBO scores it that there’s not much money they have to play with and that they would have to actually keep some of the Obamacare taxes.”

If Republicans go that route, they could lose Senate conservatives, like Paul, who were pushing for a full repeal of Obamacare.

Republican leadership will likely dismiss any furor over the CBO score Wednesday as irrelevant, since they are crafting their own bill that will be different from the AHCA. But lawmakers say they are likely keeping many of the key aspects of the House’s bill — including its Medicaid cuts and tax credit structure to purchase insurance on the individual market.

“When we get that score, we’ll use that as a backdrop against which to plan some of our Senate options,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. “It’s instructive because there’s some things we’ll build on that the House did.”

The Senate version of health care reform also must achieve the same deficit reduction as the House version in order for it to pass by reconciliation, a procedure that allows lawmakers to push through the bill on a bare majority without needing to attract any Democratic votes.

Meanwhile, Democrats are likely to seize upon the CBO score to remind the base that Republicans are attempting to push through a law that is unpopular in the polls and could result in millions of Americans losing health care.

“This health care bill is morally bankrupt and a disaster for children, middle class families, seniors and individuals with disabilities,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., in a statement. “And all of this – the higher costs and reduced protections for families – are done in order to finance a massive tax cut for the wealthiest.” Read more from Yahoo News:

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