#and that is a problem! but not a 1984 problem. our thoughts are not being controlled

[bananonbinary]

i keep seeing people compare AI to the machine-generated books in 1984, and i don't think it's entirely fair for 2 main reasons:

in 1984, media is controlled by the state. the books are not just written by machines, they are specifically engineered with an agenda to control the masses. current AI books may be slop, but they are not malevolent slop. at least, not any moreso than any other corporate garbage. we should be paying attention to what propaganda may be in these books, but then, that's true of normal books too.

in 1984, EVERY book is written this way, which is what makes it an effective form of control. i truly don't think we're in danger of that here. AI books ARE slop, and are never going to replace real writers as long as we have freedom of expression. they are getting churned out now because they are a novelty, and cheap to produce; they aren't really seriously competing with actual intentional books. or preventing writers from making new art, because writers LIKE making new art.

the problems in 1984 were never the specific tools, it's the system of oppression and how it uses those tools. AI books may superficially be similar to what's described here, but they just aren't part of a wider system that can have that sort of impact. they're just kinda. there. being bad books. we can survive bad books.

[stellarwhisper]

Uncovering Astrological Meanings: Following Your Life's Journey Through Stars and Symbols

The North Node is symbolic of a person's life's progress and evolution's path. It represents the knowledge and encounters that a person is bound to have and incorporate into their journey.

Your North Node's location in the second house indicates that you should cultivate a positive relationship with your money, material belongings, and self-worth as part of your growth and evolution. It suggests that the anxieties and concerns you are experiencing in these areas may have originated from experiences you had in a previous life. Developing an independent sense of self-worth is one of the most important lessons you will learn.

Scorpio frequently corresponds with the Death card in tarot, which represents metamorphosis and rebirth. But you've seen quite correctly that an eagle can also stand in for Scorpio. The World card of the tarot deck, which stands for completion and fulfillment, frequently features this artwork. It stands for the unadulterated, innate, and occasionally strong aspects of this sign. However, when Scorpio develops and matures, it becomes the magnificent and strong eagle, a symbol of transcendence, spiritual transformation, and the capacity to fly to tremendous heights.

Those who have Venus in a water sign—like Cancer, Scorpio, or Pisces—have an aura that is permeated with heightened sensitivity and emotional depth. They have a natural capacity to make people feel at ease in their company by fostering a warm and inviting atmosphere. They are able to handle social encounters with ease because of their diplomatic and sensitive character, which constantly keeps others' needs and feelings in mind. Their innate empathy allows them to comprehend the feelings and viewpoints of others, which frequently makes them great confidants and listeners. They may be hospitable, but it's important to respect their limits. People with the sign of Water Venus place a strong importance on emotional security and can get uncomfortable if they feel overpowered or invaded.

Pluto, the planet of metamorphosis and profound psychological processes, affects every generation's collective consciousness. A thorough investigation of the hidden spheres of the human mind, including the field of mental health, develops when Pluto is in Scorpio. Mostly born in the range of 1984 to 1995, the millennials make up this Pluto in Scorpio generation. It is true that this generation has been instrumental in raising awareness of mental health issues in public discourse. They have brought attention to problems like anxiety, depression, and a variety of mental and personality disorders, recognizing the significant effects these illnesses may have on both people and society at large.

People who have their Sun in Gemini frequently stand out for their innate intelligence and sharp wit. Their minds are always searching for new information and pursuing diverse interests. Gemini suns are known for their rapid and easy conceptual learning, which frequently gives them the appearance of being inherently intelligent. They have a talent for taking in information and drawing connections between different areas, which can result in a broad knowledge base in a variety of fields. Even though some Gemini suns might not have given traditional academic environments much thought, this does not imply that they are intellectually inferior. Instead, they frequently exhibit intelligence in less conventional ways. They are adept at changing with ease.

Lilith in the eleventh house is a fascinating placement. Because Lilith is located in the 11th home, which is a home of groups and organizations, it can create complicated dynamics with regard to social relationships. Lilith is a representation of our deeper, more hidden wants and impulses. People who have Lilith in the 11th House frequently find themselves in a precarious position. Even if they may have a great desire to participate in group activities and be a part of social groupings, they frequently encounter obstacles or unfavorable reactions from others. As a result, even though they are making an effort to connect, they may feel alienated or excluded.

The North Node (NN) and the Midheaven (MC) have important symbolic meaning in astrology, signifying several facets of a person's development and life path. The Midheaven, or Medium Coeli, is a symbol for our public persona, objectives, and aspirations. It represents our aspirations for ourselves in light of other people's acceptance and acknowledgment. It speaks to our goals and the kind of difference we want to make in the world, which is why it is frequently connected to our professional or vocational choice. Conversely, the North Node signifies the direction of evolution of our soul. It indicates the traits and encounters that, irrespective of social approval or other people's expectations, our soul longs to grow into and cherish during this lifetime.

Saturn's placement in the second house provides fascinating information about a person's attitude toward material stability, self-worth, and belongings. A person may have challenges or barriers in building a sense of material stability, according to the placement of Saturn in the second house. They may experience insecurities and emotions of shortage, which makes them cautious with money and resources. One way this may show up is a propensity toward thrift and financial caution. In addition, for those with this location, self-worth could emerge as a major theme. Individuals could struggle with emotions of inadequacy or unworthiness around their assets or money.

Saturn bring up some important topics and difficulties pertaining to convictions, knowledge, and philosophical endeavors when it is in the ninth house. It can be difficult for those with Saturn in the ninth house to find a philosophy or belief system that truly speaks to them. When it comes to their personal ideals, they could feel unsatisfied or doubtful, and they might start to mistrust the veracity and accuracy of various belief systems. This may result in an ongoing quest for purpose and a need to establish a strong basis for their ideas. Additionally, this placement may show itself as a propensity for inflexible or dogmatic thinking.

[ikkiokuma]

just finished mgs2 and i have nowhere else to take my thoughts so i’ll just dump them hear for my little internet vacuum:

> the AI/simulation plot twist is really interesting but at the same time doesn’t feel like it was resolved in the best way? outside of the patriots being a typical shady organization controlling literally everything, the explanation the AI colonel gives about human mind control feels at least a tiny bit more unique that your typical 1984 premise and excuse…i only have to wonder the aftermath of raiden and rose’s relationship with such a huge rift torn between them through the course of this game (which feels like it goes largely unaddressed considering raiden basically proposes to her after their reunion?) i think his character has a lot of good potential and their connection could have undergone some kind slow burn rebuild to make it more satisfying (it’s not like i didn’t root for them sometimes! tho im aware they are actually quite toxic tho)

> i’m also thinking of the people on twitter engaging in discourse about whether mgs2 is anti-AI to which i think it’s pretty clear that kojima encourages us to exercise our free will and critical thinking in this digital age…though raiden doesn’t outright say “fuck the patriots”—who are ostensibly using such a program to try and keep the masses ignorant, complacent, and dependent—in this game, his decision to pick his future for himself entirely goes against the AI colonel’s impression that everything in the simulation could decide the kind of person raiden becomes. to me mgs2 (along with being more explicitly about life in the digital age) takes the idea of free will or destiny from the first game up a notch with the question of: hey, what if it your future wasn’t just programmed for you by birth but by a simulation which you regard as the truth? it’s interesting to see this blend of themes (that the persona franchise decided to create two separate games based on, funny enough) work together in a new context

> sitting with the full weight of otacon’s backstory is kind of crushing. i know it’s not the worst thing ever but something about his tragedy feels all the more pointed when you think about how vulnerable he was…how he was basically abused and groomed and still blames himself to this day because he doesn’t know any better at all? it’s just such a heavy burden for someone so young to bear—an illicit affair and the death of your father because of your actions would mess anyone up in the head (im genuinely surprised he’s not worse than he is right now). his loneliness is so interesting because to a certain extent it’s self imposed by his own inaction (waiting to be loved instead of seeking it out for himself—some kind of self-esteem problem, maybe?) and for the first time in years solid snake manages to break down his walls and they form this beautiful mutual connection that i think holds so much more weight than any potential female relationship the games try to force him into (also with the fact that he seems into women that would only be somewhat unhealthy/toxic for him something something childhood trauma something something twisted conception of romance tragic doomed heterosexuality but he could find everything he looked for and more in the man who’s stayed beside him this whole time but i digress) otasune is so beautiful to me and i’ve been thinking more about how it really is only them against the world and burying my head in my hands i think im going to develop heartburn because of these fools and if anyone has good fic recs i would love for them to be sent my way im going to start writing essays about them again ffs. also something something otacon really is at his best self when he’s around snake—confident, in control, and a little sassy when he wants to be—which honestly makes him that more attractive … snake truly brought the best out of this nerd god bless

> pliskin is sooooooo gorgeous in this game i wish snake wore his hair down more i genuinely think i grinned like a maniac every time i saw his beautiful face on my screen 🤤🤤

> gameplay wise the game honestly doesn’t feel as bad as the first one (i was fucking struggling in the original)…fingers crossed the rest of the games will be somewhat similar difficulty to get through

now on to mgs3!! i’m so excited for snake eater yayyyyy

[beigetiger]

Phase 2 definitely has writing problems, but one thing I’ve been thinking about lately that I think was done well was the cultural differences between the sorcerers of our home world and the sorcerers in Dimension X.

Because of course they’re really different, they’ve had 300 years to grow and develop different, and have done so in very different fashions.

One of them decided that it was somehow their right to take over and enslave the mortals of their world, creating a society built upon magic and ignoring the people dying beneath them. From what we’ve seen, they live peaceful, easy lives and rarely have to work for much, the only condition being that they worship the Faceless Ones and never think a bad thought of Mevolent, which at this point is easy for nearly everyone! They live in a 1984-type world and everyone who has survived this long in it is fine with it.

On the other hand, the sorcerers from the main dimension are a MUCH different story. They are a PTSD riddled population that skulks through the shadows, avoiding the light of day where the mortals can ever find out they exist. Violence is normal, it’s an everyday thing for them. Nearly everyone is a warrior. Political beliefs vary WILDLY, perpetuating even more violence and making them constantly live in a world where they are at risk of losing everything from one moment to the next. They’ve spent so long intentionally repressing themselves and never forming any real culture that the moment one does start to form away from the eyes of mortals, it almost immediately starts bending towards fascism (something I’d also like to talk about later).

But the starkest difference, in my humble opinion, is the mindset difference that has come with their extremely different lifestyles. Sorcerers from the main dimension (I wish it had a name) have learned their whole lives to have bendable morals, bendable beliefs, bendable everything. Mortals live short lives and so they learn things fast, and sorcerers have had to constantly update who they are and how they function in order to effortlessly be able to act “normal”, which is enforced in their society and punished brutally if not followed. These sorcerers have learned to be able to strip themselves down to the very bare bones of who they are and be able to build themselves back up in order to better conform with whatever society they’re currently living in. Utterly adaptable, created to be perfectly undetectable.

Leibniz sorcerers, on the other hand, have never had to put in that work. Because of their long lives, they’re allowed to update their moral codes and their lifestyles slowly, possibly over decades or even centuries. It means that while one of “our” sorcerers is constantly taking in new information to find out how to perfect and exploit it, the Leibniz sorcerers might just deny its existence or validity in order to avoid altering themselves. After all, why would they? Unless it’s an order from Mevolent, they have no pressure to do so.

And so reading Seasons of War kiiiind of feels like watching a bunch of alley cats live among and then brutally judge pampered housecats. It’s funny to say the least but it’s also so fascinating to think about the cultural implications and how all of it might change in the future. After all, Dimension X is under very new rulership and Roarhaven now exists. There’s much potential for change.

[goldenrods]

Instead of being repressed, sex is being expressed and expressed and expressed. And it's not the sex of intimacy, mutuality, and equality, which the pro-sex people deride as "vanilla," that's being promoted and acted out. It's the supposedly kinky variety - the sex of dominance and subordination. How prevalent is this kind of sex? Consider John Briere and Neil Malamuth's 1983 study, which found that 60 percent of a sample of 350 ordinary male students indicated a likelihood of sexually coercing (read raping) a woman, and Diana Russell's 1978 study, which found that only 7.8 percent of a probability sample of 930 women had not been sexually harassed or assaulted. If you put these together, you realize that sexual dominance and subordination are a majority experience. Obviously the thought police are falling down on the job.

To be fair, not all the pro-sex people contend that male sexuality is repressed. Some believe that sexual repression is the particular plight of women, indeed, the only noteworthy problem of women. The argument goes like this: Because of our sexual repression, we must unquestionably make use of any means available to stimulate our desires - sex roles, pornography, whips and chains, swastikas, you name it. It is suggested that the more our desires and fantasies are like those of sexist men, the better. If only women can uncover our repressed sexual fantasies and give free reign to them, so it goes, then we will be liberated, too.

This apparently was the rationale behind an exercise Paula Webster conducted in a workshop at the 1982 Barnard conference on sexuality, organized by "pro-sex feminists." There she asked the women participating to write down, anonymously, their most forbidden sexual fantasies. Some of them went like this: "I want to buy a strap-on dildo"; "I want to fantasize about being a porn star"; "I want to rape a woman"; "I want to sleep with a young girl"; "I want to be fucked into insensibility every which way."

I'd like to break a real taboo at this point, and raise a few questions that the pro-sex people consistently evade. Where do these sadistic and masochistic fantasies come from? To borrow from Simone de Beauvoir, are they born or are they made? Are the really agents of our liberation? If we are aroused by them, does it automatically follow that we are empowered by them?

To begin to answer these questions, we have to look beyond the fantasies themselves to the culture in which they develop. It is not just coincidence that they imitate the violence men do to women and girls. Think about the implications for our sexuality of the following statistics: More than a third of us were sexually abused as children (Russell, 1984). For many of us, our first sexual experience was a sexual assault. Forty-four percent of us will be raped (Russell, 1984). The environment in which we learn about and experience our bodies and sexuality is a world not of sexual freedom but of sexual force. Is it any surprise that it is often force that we eroticize? Sadistic and masochistic fantasies may be part of our sexuality, but they are no more our freedom than the culture of misogyny and sexual violence that engendered them.

The inescapable fallacy of the sexual repression thesis, as applied to women by the pro-sex people, is that it looks at sexuality within a context of largely mythical sexual restrictions and outside an environment of real, ongoing male sexual exploitation and abuse. In doing so, it turns what is done to women's sexuality by external oppression into something we do to ourselves in our heads. It suggests that if only women can break through internal "taboos," we will have sexual freedom and indeed we will be free. It ignores the real political lesson of woman's sexual experience: women cannot have sexual freedom, or any other kind of freedom, until we dismantle the system of sexual oppression in which we live.

The failure to recognize and confront this system is most evident in pro-sex thinking about pleasure and danger. It is significant that the pro-sexers use the word "danger" to describe the less-than-rosy side of women's sexual experiences. Danger connotes the threat of something harmful. It does not describe the actual denigration, exploitation, violence that are done to women daily. Danger is the boogeyman in the dark. It is not the continuous insults, the leers and entreaties, the chattel status of our bodies, the real brutal fucks, the rapes, and beatings.

By making the sexual use and abuse of women into just a scary game, the pro-sex people can locate pleasure for women squarely in its midst. "Pleasure and danger" really mean "pleasure in danger"; "coming to power" means "orgasm within a system of power over and power against women." What is ignored is that the governing sexual system exists to keep women from exercising real power and experiencing authentic pleasure. Within its perimeters, there is no meaningful choice, real agency, or genuine pleasure.

Acting out the roles of dominance and submission that the system forces on us is not the same as choosing them. Experiencing arousal and orgasm in the course of acting out these roles is not defining our own sexuality. I've come to believe that a human being can learn to eroticize anything - including banging one's head against a brick wall. I think that this is pretty much what sex has been for women - except that it's often more like being banged against a brick wall. Women learn to eroticize this abuse in spite of our bodies and against our interests. The sexuality our culture offers women today through pornography is not new, not avant-garde, not revolutionary. It's the same male supremacy has always forced on us: being used as the instrument of someone else's sexual agency - the instrument of someone socially male.

When Women Defend Pornography, Dorchen Leidholdt.

[deathlygristly]

I am reading the reblogs and tags on an older post that goes around the dash occasionally. It's about reading. I'm sure you've seen it - someone talks about Divergent books and 1984 and then someone reblogs it and calls 1984 rape apologism? Which is really weird?

The spousal person ordered a print of this Kate Beaton comic many years ago and he hung it up in the hallway and he told me to go look at it whenever I said my writing was bad:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=44

The first two panels do a fairly decent job of explaining 1984. Which is just....a really simple book. It's like wow look fascism sucks! And that's it, pretty much. Like yeah, obviously you could write papers and essays and a thesis and probably do a whole body of academic work on the particulars of it, but really it's just that Orwell thought fascism sucked. Which it does, so I don't see the problem?

Anyway I am pretty sure a lot of the people on that post come from a very different society than I do, even though the education system they say they hate is the American one. Which, hey, our education is locally funded and controlled so maybe it's just that my working class southern Appalachian rural county schools were a lot better than their schools? Or is it maybe what I've suspected before, that I graduated before No Child Left Behind?

I can't recall my English teachers ever being authoritarian to the extent so many other people claim their English teachers were. Not that I can recall that much about English or school at all, really, but I think I would remember if they marched around all "No, your essay is WRONG and only MY opinion is right!!!" all the time.

But then it's true that I don't remember it that well because I just wrote essays the night before they were due or sometimes in the classes before English if it was a class later in the day, and then I got a good grade and nice comments on it and then I got on with my life. I don't think I ever invested nearly as much emotional energy and idea of my self-worth into English class as the people on that post did. Which maybe that's why they remember it so well? Certainly it's probably a large part of why they still have Big Emotions about it.

Anyway my point is that sometimes I read how people write about their own reading and I'm like oh. This is why I shouldn't care what people say about my work that much. I clearly did not write it for these people who experience the world and fiction and the written word in a way that I cannot imagine at all and that I would have never known existed as a possibility if I hadn't read their own words about it.

Like the version of the post that gets the most reblogs ends with an essay about how in the last few decades people have come to expect characters to be "relatable" and to be like them and to think and experience things the way they do? And there's all this self-identity and irrational and false beliefs about your own moral purity involved?

If you come to my work with that sort of thing in your heart you will bounce off of it, and I have finally come to understand that the bouncing off is for the best for both of us.

If you're new here and you haven't read my stuff yet, here's the pinned post with the directory on my Simblr: Story Index.

Anyway, gotta go to bed now. It's just....I don't think I ever realized just how differently people experience fiction and books and the written word from how I experience it before. Like in the tags someone said they expected 1984 to be more Hunger Games-esque? How is that person perceiving reality? I want to live inside their brain for a bit to learn.

[texancommie07]

"And everything was made for you and me

All of it was made for you and me

'Cause it just belongs to you and me

So let's take a ride and see what's mine"

Heavy Metal Valentines Day One: Confession

December 16th, 1984. Billy Had Only Been In Hawkins For About Two Months, And He Hated It Here. In Fact He Hated Everything About The Place.

Well... Almost Everything...

There Was One Thing There He Liked, Loved Even. The Problem Was How To Go About It.

Billy Didn't Know, He Wasn't The Kind Of Guy Who Caught Feelings, Well Ever Really, So He Did The First Things That Came To His Mind That Put Him At The Least Amount Of Risk Towards Getting His Shit Knocked.

He Wrote A Letter. Stupid Right? Well It Gets Even Stupider When You Know That He Didn't Even Come Up With The Letter. Nope, Just Took Some Lines That Were Commonly Used On Him, Slapped Them Together And Hoped For The Best.

Now He Just Has To Wait.

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

He Stood At The Rickety Old Table In The Woods. It Was About 9:00 p.m. And The Silence Was Creeping Him Out. You Didn't Really Get Quiet In California. He Was About To Head Home, Assuming That They Just Thought It Was A Joke, Until He Heard Footsteps.

"Hey Billy."

He Turned To Face Them. "The Hell Do You Mean 'Hey', How'd You Even Know I Was Here?" It Made No Sense. He Knew Eddie's Eyes Were Good, But It Was So Dark Out You Couldn't See A Foot Infront Of You. And He Was Facing Away!

"You Wrote The Letter, Right? The One Shoved In My Locker? I Recognized Your Handwriting."

"Oh..."

Billy Stood There, Slightly Stunned. He Didn't Know How To Move Forward, He Hadn't Really Planned This Far. He Didn't Even Expect Eddie To Show Up.

"So, Are You Gonna Tell Me What The Note Was About, Or Are You Just Trying To Have A Staring Contest With Me?" Even With How Dark It Was, Billy Could Practically See The Grin On Eddie's Face.

"Shut Up. You...I Haven't Been Here Long, But This Place Sucks. It's A Shit Hole Full Of Shit People."

"Very Astute Observation, Tiger. Anything Else You Wanna Tell Me About That Place Before We Continue The Grand Tour?"

"Shut Up! Lemme Finish Jackass." Billy Heard The Russeling Of Fabric As He Watched The Blob Of Eddie's Shadow Put It's Hands Up.

"I Hate This Place And Absolutely Nothing Good In It... Except For You... You're The Only Decent Thing About This Place. Hell, If People Saw The Way We Interacted, They Might Even Call Us Friends. But I Don't Wanna Be Friends." He Paused, Taking A Breath Before Speaking Up Again.

"I Wanna Be More Than That..I Like You More Than That. I Want You More Than That."

Billy Stopped, His Eyes Having Finally Started To Rejust After Opening Them Again(When Did He Close Them?), To Look At Eddie. They Were...Smiling?

There's No Way, But It Couldn't Be Anything Else, Billy Could See The Way Their Teeth Reflected The Moons Light.

"Well Well Well, Big Bad Billy Hargrove Is In Love With The Town Freak. Can't Say I Saw That Coming. Though, Can't Really Say I'm Upset About It. That'd Make Me A Pretty Big Hypocrite, Considering I'm Pretty Sure I Fell First."

Wait, "Fell First?"

"Oh Yeah, I Was Mildly Obsessed With You The Moment You Got Here, You Make Quite The Entrance, I Must Say. I Thought It Would Pass Like Most Feelings Like That, Aesthetic Attraction And Nothing More. But Then I Started Dealing With You, And, If I'm Being Completely Honest, I Think I Was Gone After Our Second Meeting."

Eddie's Tone Seemed Almost Sheepish, Like They Were Ashamed Of Admitting It, At Least To Billy. Billy Took The Risk.

"So, What I'm Hearing Is, You Wanna Be My Boyfriend, Maybe?" The Second The Words Left His Mouth He Cringed. God, He Was So Good With Women, How Was He Struggling This Hard?

Although, Maybe His Skills With Men Weren't As Terrible As He Thought, As Eddie Let Out A Cackle At His Response, Their Stupid Goblin Laugh Echoing Off The Trees.

"Yes Billy, I Would Be Delighted To Be Your Boyfriend."

Billy Was Actually Sunned, He Almost Couldn't Find It In Him To Speak. Almost.

"Can I Kiss You?"

"Please."

Sketch

[kermitscavern]

Watch the World Turn Green

For @thefreakandthehair's Spicy Six Summer Challenge! It's a day late but shhh no it isn't

Dialogue Prompt: "How did everything get so green so fast?" | Pairing: Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler | Rating: T | CW: None | Word Count: 4k

Robin has always hated the winter. It’s cold, it’s grey, there’s nothing to do, and she gets sad. It gets harder and harder to drag herself out of bed, her days blend into one long string of schoolworkbedschoolworkbed, and to make it worse, senioritis has been setting in hard. She usually spends every January-through-March counting down the days till spring hits. At least the groundhog saw his shadow this year, predicting an early spring. God bless Punxsutawney Phil. So come March, she keeps her eyes peeled for the budding crocuses, the first patches of green grass, and the fresh buds coming from winter-dormant trees. The allergies suck, but spring brings Ultimate Frisbee season (hey, she has to get her sports credit somehow) enough warmth to make her lips stop turning blue, and color. She loves to see the color come back.

It was only the second of February, though, and those days seemed so far away it didn’t even make sense to dream of them. There's been one person making her days a little less dreary, though.

When Robin got bored, she decided to pick a piece of eye-candy in her classes, y’know, to pass the time. They weren’t real crushes, just a bit of fun, someone to daydream about during math class.

She shared Biology, Stats, and Modern Lit with Nancy Wheeler.

So besides being convenient, she was also really cute, which helped. And even better, she was Steve’s ex— she had passed many a slow shift at Family Video watching Steve’s face turn increasingly entertaining colors as she asked if Nancy’s lips were really as soft as they looked, if he thought she was a B or C cup.

So yeah. It was fun. And Nancy was really smart, too.

It started when they had been paired up for an assignment about 1984. Nancy had never been Robin’s favorite person, she was too preppy, too clean cut, and besides, she was Steve’s ex, so she was predisposed to hate her. But ah. Haha. Oops. Sorry Steve-o, but the loins want what the loins want. (Steve had smacked her for that one, it hadn’t been serious, but it did sting a little.) Nope, it turned out Nancy was really cool and pretty and witty and just the right kind of innocent that drove Robin wild.

And even though Robin was an absolute wuss, it turned out it was much easier to invite pretty girls over when it was under the pretext of homework. They did talk about 1984 a little bit, but they got kind of distracted when Nancy started berating her for not reading that weeks chapter— Robin tried to look apologetic but she kept getting distracted by the quirk of her lips as Nancy tried to keep a straight face through “telling her off,” the gentle whack of her manicured fingers leaving tingling ghosts across her skin.

She was down bad. Oh no. Oh no no no no no. Now this, this was a problem. As long as she didn’t think she actually liked Nancy Wheeler, she was all set. But as soon as the feelings became serious, she turned into an absolute mess. She tried to hide the truth from herself. It didn’t work.

The next time she had a shift at Family Video with Steve, it took about twenty minutes before Steve was asking her what was up.

“So… How’s Nancy?” He had asked, nudging her in the side, wiggling his brows suggestively. “She was meant to come over last night, right? You get to figure out how soft her lips are for yourself?”

She shoved him back, not unkindly. “Shut up.” She grumped. “Nothing happened.”

Steve froze. “Oh.” He said. “So something did happen, just not for her.”

Robin was glaring daggers. “Shut the hell up. Now.”

The next time Nancy came over, it was just to hang out. They had started getting coffee after school together, so that was a thing that happened now. They hung out.

Something was off from the moment Nancy came in, though. She rushed them up to her room, her lips a hard line, her eyes avoiding Robin’s as she asked how her day had been.

“Nance, it was fine, how was yours?” Robin asked, freaked out enough to place a comforting hand on her shoulder without her brain spinning a thousand unpleasant tales about the consequences.

“I- So- Well- So Jonathan and I—” She started, took a deep breath, looked at Robin with tears in her eyes, and spit out, “So Jonathan and I are over. Like, done. It’s finished. We’re… done.” She gave one last pathetic sniffle and keeled over, effectively crying into Robin’s lap.

Right. So. This was happening. Robin was having trouble stopping herself from short circuiting. She was always awful at this kind of stuff— emotions, comforting people, et cetera. She had no idea how some people just had the perfect things to say, all the time.

But she tried, carefully lowering her hand to Nancy’s softsoftsoft curls, stroking them in what she hoped was a soothing way. “There there,” she stuttered out, wracking her brain for how they handled situations like this in movies. “It’ll be okay, he doesn’t deserve you. Um. Plenty of fish in the sea.”

Nancy sniffled, raising her head from her lap. “You’re pretty awful at this.” She cracked a small smile, looking unreal and yet so, so human with her red and shiny eyes. “Haven’t you ever been broken up with before?”

“Um. No.” She admitted, breaking eye contact with Nancy as she worried a lip between her teeth.

“Lucky.” Nancy chuckled, laying back in Robin’s lap.

“I mean, yes and no…” Robin said quietly, glad Nancy wasn’t able to see her face turning red as the girl in her lap grabbed her hand and gently started playing with her fingers.

“Hmm…” Nancy hummed after a moment. “So you’ve never been in a relationship?”

“Nope.” She got out, trying not to squeak, trying to fight the urge to grab Nancy’s hand and pepper it with little kisses and tell her she shouldn’t be wasting her precious tears over Jonathan, that she deserved so much better than some stupid boy.

“How about on a date?” She pressed on, and while Robin was starting to feel a little shy about her inexperience, she hoped this was at least getting Nancy’d mind off him.

“No, not even.”

A beat. “Ever kissed anyone?” She asked so gently, her eyes coming up to reach Robin’s.

Robin swallowed, blushing but unable to take her eyes away from the angel in her lap. “Uh. No.” She breathed out. Not like there was much chance to in small-town Indiana.

A couple moments of silence. Nancy brought her eyes away and looked across the room, hand almost imperceptibly squeezing Robins before she asked in the barest whisper, “Because you’ve never found another girl who wanted to?”

Robin froze, all warm and fuzzy feelings going freezing cold. She felt like she wanted to throw up, hell, she just might. “I— No—” She stuttered, “That’s not—”

Nancy froze her with a look. Voice wavering, “Robin…” she said, catching her eye and stopping her stuttering, “I… I want to.” She admitted, jaw set, on the verge of tears again, with more bravery than Robin would ever have.

Robin breathed. “Okay,” she said, trying some of Nancy’s bravery on for size. “I want to, too.” She admitted for the first time since she got way too high with Steve in the Scoops bathroom after work, for the second time in her life because she couldn’t even look in the mirror and say it without looking away.

A deep breath. “Robin,” Nancy coaxed, their confessions hanging heavy in the air, “will you… kiss me?”

Robin was terrified, mouth gone dry, brain completely short-circuited. She was in disbelief, and frozen.

Nancy squeezed her hand again, the delicate tears perched so precariously on her lashes. “Please?” She asked again, looking so fragile that she might break with the slightest touch, the smallest word said in the wrong tone.

“Okay.” She breathed, squeezing her eyes shut as she leaned down, because she was still so scared this wasn’t real. But Nancy’s lips were real when they met, and yes, they were just as soft as they looked.

And if she had any sense, she would be terrified of being a rebound, of a mistake made in a vulnerable moment, or worse yet, the butt of a practical joke. But she was too infatuated for that to cross her mind, and besides, Nancy didn’t seem like the type.

She let herself have this. She let them have this moment, in case they never got to have another one. It was soft, and gentle, and so full of care. Robin could taste her strawberry lipgloss, confirming her suspicions that that was why she could never tear her eyes away from her shiny lips.

They broke after a moment, and Robin felt her mouth going a mile a minute. “I’m so sorry, are you sure you still want to do this? It’s okay if you don’t, we can just pretend it never happened, I’m cool with that— also was that really bad? I’m sorry it probably was, I really don’t know what I’m doing, I—“

Nancy cut her off with a hand gently cupping her cheek, as she sat up properly. “Hey,” she said, gently directing Robin’s frantic eyes to meet hers. “It’s okay. I do want to do this. I want to do this with you. You’re not doing badly, just follow my lead, okay? It’s easy. Relax.” She slowly leaned in again, and Robin let herself relax a little more into the better angle. Her eyes fluttered closed as she gripped onto Nancy’s arm, the other hand coming up to her shoulder. She felt awkward, and there was definitely still some anxiety buzzing around, but she was starting to let herself enjoy the experience of kissing Nancy Wheeler.

Just as she was beginning to get into the rhythm, the last of her walls coming down, she felt a tongue prod against her lips. “Mmf!” She squeaked in surprise, pulling back.

Nancy looked up at her, concern starting to creep across her features. “I’m sorry— is this— is this okay?”

“Yeah,” Robin breathed. “Just surprised, that’s all. Um. I don’t really know what I’m doing. Especially not when it comes to um. Tongues.”

Nancy smiled at her fondly. “That’s alright, just do what I do, okay? Try to feel the rhythm. You don’t have to apologize.”

Robin smiled at her gratefully, before Nancy was gently pushing her back onto the bed, their lips reconnecting. She dutifully opened her mouth to let Nancy lick in, and should probably have been more embarrassed by the sound it elicited from her. But as it was she was so in awe of what was happening, she was hardly even aware of herself.

The introduction of tongues brought a new intensity to the game, the innocent kitten kisses turning more involved as the pair found their footing. After a couple of minutes, Nancy sat up to readjust herself, bringing a leg over Robin’s hips so she straddled the girl lying beneath her. “You’re so hot,” she told her, voice low and husky as a grin worked its way across her lips, with a glint in her eye that made Robin’s stomach turn. She felt hands sneak under her shirt, fingers tracing shapes across her stomach with feather-light touches, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

“Yeah?” Robin breathed, her chest rising and falling as she tried to hide the fact she was panting. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her, and she certainly hadn’t imagined this for her first kiss.

“Yeah.” Nancy grinned, raking a hand through her hair in a move she must have calculated to destroy Robin. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the girl on top of her, eyes tracing the curves of her waist, her chest, her neck, mesmerized by the way the curls bounced on her shoulders as she shook her hair out. Nancy caught her staring and returned her a devilish grin as she leaned down again, bracing herself with an arm beside her head.

Fuck. “So are you.” She told her, Nancy now so close their noses were nearly touching. She caught her smile before she was dipping down again, reconnecting their lips.

She felt her hips stutter as Nancy’s roaming hand found her chest, cutting off a groan as she did so. She felt Nancy’s hips roll down in response, and Robin brought a knee up to support them, slotting it between Nancy’s legs. She groaned into her mouth as she ground against it, her head dropping into the hollow of her neck as she continued to rub herself against Robin’s thigh. Robin was seeing stars just listening to her. She couldn’t believe she had Hawkin’s perfect princess making downright filthy sounds into her ear, making her hot all over.

She gasped again as she felt a nip at her neck, Nancy sucking and biting at the sensitive skin below her ear. She knew enough to know she’d have a bitch of bruise to cover the next morning. Thank god her mom had bought her some makeup for her sixteenth birthday. When Nancy sat up again, it was to rip off her shirt, Robin’s brain going blank as her hands flew to her own shirt next as she felt Nancy pulling it over her head with an urgent “offoffoff.” She felt a hand on her chest pushing her back against the pillows, Nancy looking unreal as she dipped down again, this time working her lips down her chest and along her braline. A hand flew up to Nancy’s shoulder as she felt a hand sneak behind her back to the clasp of her bra.

Nancy stopped abruptly and sat up, worry creasing her brow as she looked into Robin’s pleading eyes. Robin felt a blush creep up her neck and across her cheeks, a deep pit of embarrassment filling her stomach.

Nancy dipped her head, muttering a quiet ”Fuck,” mostly to herself. She gave Robin an apologetic smile as she rolled off her, the pair now lying side by side on the bed. Robin felt her head shift to look at her, and matched the action at Nancy’s soft, “hey,”

“I’m really sorry—” She began, but Nancy cut her off, finding her hand and giving it a soft squeeze.

“No, hey, don’t say that, I’m sorry. I took it too far, and I should’ve known better.” She watched her eyes dip, before fluttering back to meet hers.

“It’s really okay, it’s just all a bit much all at once, and I’m not saying I don’t want to, uh, go further, because I do, it’s just—” she felt herself rambling, unable to meet Nancy’s eyes because she’s pretty sure she just told her that she wanted to like, have sex with her or something. She was brought back to reality by Nancy reaching over and placing a soft kiss on her cheek.

“—a lot.” She finishes for her. “Don’t worry, I get it. We don’t have to do everything all at once.” She drifted off to a murmur at the end as she trailed a few more kisses across her jaw and down her neck, making Robin shiver. “It’s probably best to stop now anyway,” she continued, placing a final kiss to Robin’s lips before sitting up. “It’s getting late, and my mom wants me home for dinner.”

“I— Oh— Okay,” was all she was able to get out, propping herself up on her elbows as she watched Nancy tug her shirt back on. Her skin still felt like it was on fire, her brain still reeling from what just happened.

Once she’d fixed herself, she turned back to Robin, a fond smile gracing her lips as she took in what must be her sorry state. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, half asking, half promising, as she pulled Robin up with a hand, rubbing soft circles into the back with her thumb.

“Sounds good,” She told her, clearing her throat as she found her voice again. “Yeah, sounds good.” Nancy left her with another of her treasured smiles as she slipped out the door, and Robin shook her head to try to clear the fog.

There was no way that had just happened, right? There was no way she had just had her first kiss, with Nancy Wheeler of all people, with her panting in her ear, trying to take them to second? third? base. And yet, as she looked in the mirror, a hand flew up in horror to blossoming blue mark on her neck as her mom called, ”Robbie! Dinner!

~*~

The next few weeks were a strange time for Robin. She and Nancy definitely had a… thing. She was over at the Wheeler residence almost every day, usually making out. But they also talked, and did homework, and when it was late enough that Nancy started talking about her insecurities, Robin would try to tell her how amazing she was without sounding like the completely lovesick idiot she was.

Sure, it had started out as a silly crush, and then it had been fun to fool around, but now that Robin was getting to know the real Nancy, the one who huffed in her sleep, who was cranky in the morning and late at night, who liked to make her guests pancakes because it was the one recipe her mom had taught her that she was actually good at, she was starting to fall a little bit in love. But even though that was the case, she wasn’t sure she was even ready for a relationship, if she even wanted one. She rarely got to keep the good things in her life, so who’s to say Nancy wouldn’t just drop her as soon as a cute boy looked her way, who knew if Nancy would even go out with her if she asked? Wanting to kiss a girl and wanting to date one were two very different things.

So the grey days continued to drudge on, and Robin tried to pull back to stop herself from getting too attached. And Nancy was having none of it.

“Robin,” Nancy grabbed her leg. “What’s going on?” The pair were sitting on Nancy’s bed, and Robin had not-so-elegantly ended a makeout sesh because she had “homework to do,” but was really because she was having trouble keeping her hands under control.

"I told you,” she said, avoiding her gaze as she twisted out of her hand to pack her bag. “I have a lot of stuff due tomorrow, I gotta head out. Sorry.”

She froze when Nancy grabbed her shoulder, her other hand coming up to cup her face and face it towards herself. “Bullshit. Somethings been going on, you’ve been completely off lately. Is something going on? Do you want to stop? …Did I do something?"

Robin couldn’t stand the guilt in Nancy’s big blue eyes. Her stomach dropped. “No, it’s not you, god it’s not you, trust me. I’ve just been, I don’t know. I’m not sure how I feel. I’m not sure this is a good idea. Do you even want to keep doing… this?” She asked, gesturing between them wildly. “Like, what are we even doing here? Fuck!” She was breathing heavily, eyes a little wild as she unleashed all her anxieties.

“Of course I want to keep doing this,” said Nancy in a small voice that broke Robin’s heart. “But if you want to stop I get it, Rob, it’s just, I really like you.”

“You do?” Robin felt like she could only whisper, the moment between them was so fragile. “Because god I like you so much, I’m just so scared, all the time. And I’m not sure I can do this anymore, like this. I’m terrified I need more, and I’m terrified I’ll scare you away.” She wasn’t sure where this was all coming from, this bravery, and bluntness. She had a sneaking suspicion her brain had turned off and she was working on autopilot.

She watched, terrified, as Nancy chewed her lip, eyes cast down as she thought. “You mean like, date?”

“God, yes. Nancy Wheeler, will you go on a date with me?” She blurted, fed up with the turmoil in her head. She needed an answer, yes or no, so she could just move on with her life.

“Yes.” She said quietly, but as her gaze came up again a grin was spread across her face. Robin felt a smile split hers too as she leaned forward, connecting their lips in a desperate celebration.

“She said yes!” She raved, elation finishing off her adrenaline high. She felt snapped back to reality, a million thoughts and possibilities running through her head. For once, the future seemed hopeful.

~*~

Life with Nancy was good, so good. She had no idea how she made it through winters before her. Yes, the cold and grey still sucked, and she was still eager for frisbee season, but she wasn’t counting down the days anymore. She didn’t need a future to distract herself with when she was so happy every day, with Nancy. On their first date, Nancy asked her to be her girlfriend, and Robin wouldn’t stop raving to Steve for weeks. Classes still sucked, but she shared a whole three with Nancy, and she saw her at lunch and in the halls and after school. The winter was still depressing, but she had Nancy as her guiding light through the darkness. The wind was still terribly cold, but she had Nancy to bundle her in her arms, to warm her frost bitten hands between hers with a tut.

Before long, it was warm enough to plan a proper “outside date,” a picnic. Robin dug out the mini tea set from elementary school, and they got together at Nancy’s house to make tea sandwiches and slice fruit. They found a quiet spot on top of hill, an expanse of forest and buried rooftops visible beneath them, and they felt above it all. They laid out the blanket and ate their sandwiches and drank their tea and reveled in each others company, and when that was done they lay down, sides pressed together and thumbs tracing gentle circles between them.

After a while, the chit chat petered out, and Robin started to doze, lost in her thoughts. She felt a hand stroking her hair, and leaned up to grin at her girlfriend. She was caught by the scene in front of her, her eyes locked on Nancy’s. In one staggering moment, she realized she had never been happier. She took a moment to look around herself— the sky was a dazzling blue, the flowers were coming into bloom, birds were chittering in the trees, dashes of red and black flitting between branches, and although she was still cozied up in a sweater, the wind didn’t have the same bite it did during the winter months. She was taken aback by a sudden thought— ”How did everything get so green so fast?”

[princeescaluswords]

This is more a comparison thought, but with the release of the X Men ‘97 trailer there’s been an increase in the “Wolverine is the real leader, Scott (Summers) is a dolt” sort of comments. Because I saw a text post about Scott (McCall)’s leadership skills I immediately made a, admittedly simplistic, comparison.

Fandom so often attaches themselves to the loud and angry characters, often the most reactionary, and declare them the most proactive and real leaders. I see it as a common thread in fandom, and one I worth a further discussion. How often characters with ideals, who consider the ramifications of actions, who attempt a steady hand are dismissed for the characters that meet our desire for action and violence.

I don’t believe I’ve fully formed thoughts on this, but it was an immediate consideration after seeing posts.

Before I tackle this question, I want to clarify that I only read Marvel Comics from 1984 to 1995 and then again from 2007 to 2013. I did read back issues during both periods, but those are the time periods where my opinion were set, and so there might be things from outside those time frames which do not impact my analysis.

The first time I stopped reading was due to two trends that simply made me uninterested. During the 1980s, the X-Men comics had adventures but there was at least some degree of being grounded in everyday life. The 80s X-men worried about fitting in with the people around them and about having a life outside the spandex and fighting off the Brood and the Marauders, etc. When Riptide put Nightcrawler in a coma, it influenced how other characters reacted to events. By about the summer of 1995, I didn't find that anymore in X-men.

The early 90s also saw the rise of the antihero in Marvel and a greater emphasis on bombast. The Punisher became a hero. Wolverine stopped worrying about his body count. There was no slow build up in the comics to a pulse-pounding conclusion; instead, there were pulse-pounding conclusions every three months. The comics I read slowly pulled away from "people with powers" and into what I referred to as "powers with a name tag attached." It was most likely me aging out of my interests.

The second time, I picked up the comics out of nostalgia and I found that there was a new level of maturity to be found in the storytelling. Characters like Captain America and Charles Xavier were being pushed out of their roles; a new generation had to learn how to protect themselves and others. And then came "Time Runs Out." It did, but in this case it was the time running out was my interest in the comics. Marvel Comics, like Hollywood, decided to go for retreads of original characters than take a risk on something new.

Both times, nuanced visions of leadership were the first thing to go. The "best" leader became the character who ignored everything but resolving the immediate problem as quickly as possible. With that criteria, Wolverine and characters like him -- lets call them what they are, killers -- were the best choice. But just as importantly, leaders who attempted to address systemic problems in the comic's world, the things that created the immediate problem were portrayed as bootlickers too inured to suffering to even notice it (various leaders of the Avengers), anxious managers whose refusal to act decisively simply perpetuated the problems (Cyclops and Spider-man), or hide-bound egoists too infatuated with their own visions and status to want to actually solve the problem.

Yes, I'm talking about Charles Xavier.

Don't get me wrong, Deadly Genesis is rightfully praised, and the terrible errors that Xavier committed there are legitimate criticisms of the character and how he approached resolving mutant oppression. But Marvel, as it frequently does, saw a golden goose and then beat it to death. Xavier barely remained a hero, instead becoming a stand-in for every corrupted politician in the history of the world. The thoughtful recognition of Xavier's sacrifice, his nobility, and his ultimate belief in the necessity of finding common ground was obliterated for the next episode of "What Did Charlie Do Now?"

The X-men wouldn't have been what they were without Charles's vision. The present writers know that too, they just resent it. I feel that Cyclops, too, has been robbed of his principles in order to become a Wolverine with speeches. When you can't tell the difference between one of Cyclops' bubbles and one of Magneto's speech bubbles, something's gone wrong. (This is not a criticism of Magneto. I thoroughly enjoy his perspective as one among many.) As far as I can tell, there are only two types of leaders in Marvel Comics who aren't villains: manipulative old people who have lost touch with the people they're trying to protect and the Voices of Generational Violence Embodied. I'm sure that there are people who enjoy that, but I'm not one of them.

[whoreviewswho]

A Finely Tuned Response - Frontios, 1984

An analysis of Doctor Who of the early to mid 1980s is, somewhat inevitably, an examination of wasted potential and this is a particularly pertinent point to consider when embarking on a critical look at Frontios. To some extent, Frontios is business as usual for the Peter Davison era. Along with The Awakening, it stands-out for being one of only two stories in the season that is not carrying the weight of an enormous event. It is four episodes long, features a typical Doctor Who monster, slots itself effortlessly into the action-packed militaristic flavour of the Davison era and repurposes the trappings of past base-under-siege serials for good measure. This is probably why it gets such little attention from the fandom on the whole; Frontios is a story conceived to slip under the radar.

But I think that Frontios does anything but be unnoticeable. It is screaming to be noticed because I think that this story, more than any other of the Davison era, is the story of untapped potential. Frontios takes everything that we know about the Davison era, every aspect of it that was working, and offers us a glimpse into an alternate reality where everything else also works just a little bit better still. This is thanks to former script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, one of a handful of writers who could comfortably stake the claim of one of the most underrated in the series' history. Bidmead script edited the show from 1980-1981, the entirety of season eighteen, and is notable for following through with John Nathan-Turner's intention to shift the style of storytelling in Doctor Who away from the high-concept, camp adventure series of the previous regime toward more serious-minded stories that had a basis in real-world science. In Bidmead's own words, "[Doctor Who] exemplified for young viewers the power of scientific thinking to solve problems. Science stretched into fantastic future shapes, yes, but the show had a serious social purpose. It must never be silly, never be mere magic....we tried to build our stories on solid, if fancifully extended, scientific ideas." 

It is worth stating the obvious here; this philosophy returns the show to its 1963 roots of being educational as well as entertaining. The result of Bidmead and JNT's collaboration was a run of seven stories that had an entirely unique flavour for the franchise. Stories that were rich in theme and subtext, revelling in the unknown possibilities of bleeding edge theories. Take Warrior's Gate, for example. Taking place in the theoretical zero point between positive and negative space, that serial watches like a surreal, poetic and atmospheric novel that meditates on I-Ching philosophy, exploring notions of action, free-will and entropy. Warrior's Gate is a dense and thoughtful production whose characters and setting all interlink to form a greater thematic whole. A bit over twelve months later, Doctor Who was broadcasting stories like Earthshock. 

That sounds a little bit more disingenuous than perhaps it should because Earthshock is not a bad story in and of itself but it is a very different story. The tumultuous production of Warrior's Gate and the overall difficulties of Bidmead's position lead to his resignation at the end of season eighteen. The post would eventually be filled by Eric Saward whose conception of what made for a good Doctor Who story wildly contrasted with Bidmead's. Earthshock proved to be the template, the definitive statement for what his ambitions were with Doctor Who; a thrilling, action-packed adventure with a confident blend of character drama and sci-fi serial antics. To use a low-hanging and easy shorthand example, if Bidmead's Doctor Who could be compared to say a Christopher Nolan film then Saward is somewhat of a Zack Snyder.

But this brings us back to the accusation of wasted potential because I would argue that the Fifth Doctor's era is marked by inconsistency more than it is by abject failure. I find it rather interesting that both JNT/Bidmead Who and JNT/Saward Who make a concerted effort to return the programme to something resembling the original conception of the show but in polar opposite ways. In the latter case, it was a more superficial attempt with the turn back toward an ensemble cast and the attempt at tighter stitching from one serial to the next. Most episodes of the Davison era connect in some direct way to the previous one, even if that connection usually little more than a couple of lines at the top of the episode addressing something from the previous one. 

The approach that JNT and Saward were aiming for in these three years together, that of an explosive science-fiction soap-opera, is a perfectly valid take on the programme. It was even an effective one on occasion. The problems with Saward's tenure as script-editor are myriad and deserving of dissecting in a piece more dedicated to him but suffice it to say that what Frontios accomplishes is a case of a serial coming together in spite of its circumstances instead of coming out of them. When Bidmead was invited back as a freelancer for Davison’s third, and final, season, he incidentally offered a tantalising glimpse into the era that might have been if he had stuck around with the show. If nothing else, he reaffirms one thing; wildly creative and conceptual science-fiction stories can work hand-in-hand with serialised, evolving character drama.

In contrast to what one might expect, Frontios can perhaps best be described as Bidmead’s most traditional Doctor Who story. Saward invited him to contribute a pitch for a serial in season twenty-one but on the condition that he was to craft something in the mould of a traditional Doctor-Who-monster-plot. As Bidmead recalled in a 1988 interview for Doctor Who Magazine; "Eric Saward phoned me up and asked me to do ‘Frontios’. They wanted the monster element, which was a struggle because I always hated ‘Doctor Who’ monsters – partly because they tend to look cheap and mainly because they are so limited on dialogue. Dialogue is so important in a low budget show – it creates the whole effect". In so far as being a typical monster story for Doctor Who, the broad strokes of Frontios appear to offer little in the way of innovation. Our trio unexpectedly find themselves among colony of humans in the far future only to quickly discover that an unknown, alien threat is causing colonists to disappear into the planet itself. On one level, perhaps this is disappointing for the staunch season eighteen fans (god forbid those nerds ever out themselves) that Bidmead’s final effort on-screen is such traditional fare but, make no mistake, this is Bidmead all over. Where else would one find a story that revels so much in making the setting a character unto itself, or an active threat in this case. There is an almost primal irrational fear underpinning the horror of Frontios which is that of the Earth dropping from beneath you, consuming you without a trace. It is a great idea and legitimately terrifying at a conceptual level. Frontios is the last hope for humanity, the final place that they can run to and this here is the horror at the end of human existence; what comes for us all when there is nowhere left to run?

Frontios is a story about people being where they shouldn’t which is about as clued-in to the central premise of Doctor Who as one could possibly be; the entire franchise is a story of things being where they shouldn't. I love the Doctor’s initial flat refusal to explore Frontios in any way because “knowledge has its limits”. It is an interesting slice of lore, that never really gets picked up on again, that the Time Lords have a limited scope of the arc of history. Perhaps because pulling on this thread could lend too much credence to the theory that Time Lords are future human beings. After all, is there any particular reason why the Time Lords knowledge has a cut off point that coincides with the near end of humanity? It is an effective shorthand to illustrate the stakes at play here and set the scene for the audience but remains an oddly intriguing nugget of lore too. I would not be surprised if this story directly influenced Russell T Davies when he came to writing Utopia since that story also presents the Doctor as going further than ever before and having the immediate reaction of wanting to leave. In this case, I adore that as soon as the Doctor does land, he immediately launches into helping the humans despite what his rational mind has concluded. It is also a little bit weird that the Doctor’s behaviour ultimately leads to no consequences from the Time Lords. We are told repeatedly that he is forbidden to interfere here and that the time laws do not permit his actions. If Saward were a bit more on his ball, perhaps this could have been the inciting incident that puts the Doctor back on trial two seasons from now as opposed to just…well, nothing really. 

Bidmead does not write small scale stories. Even this one, which is relatively small fry in the narrative of this season, is as high stakes as actually destroying the TARDIS. Bidmead claims to have done this to give the Doctor no form of security, have him just as desperate and endangered as the humans. Everything is against the Doctor here which makes for a nice unintentional parallel to The Caves of Androzani (also penned by a former script editor) where the same can be said but he’s just a lot less lucky. What is frustrating is that the script makes really no attempt to explain exactly why or how the TARDIS is destroyed. The Gravis does not even know it is there. The Doctor does have one line about it toward the climax; "It's, er it's been spatially distributed to optimise the, er, the packing efficiency of, er, the real time envelope" which sounds dreadfully like he is making it up. Is he suggesting that the TARDIS folded in on itself in an effort to protect itself from the meteor strike? Or was the meteor strike actually supposed to have splintered it? Surely not that second thing since Tegan and Turlough found it to be largely closed off just moments after landing, I have no idea what is really going on here and have yet to find a clear answer in the text but it is a lovely way to visually illustrate the consequences of the Doctor going behind where he even feels he is permitted to travel.

If there is anything that significantly hurts Frontios then it is the production. While not necessarily cheap, the horrific cliffhanger to part three is realised about as well as it could be, this story is hampered by shoddy direction from Ron Jones and some generally poor design. A lot of the horror that ought to be here is nearly squandered by the way the thing is assembled and that is truly frustrating. There is some god awful acting attempting to ‘lift’ some rubble in episode one. How that made it to screen I will never know. In concept, the Tractators are a deeply disturbing villainous creature with their inhuman features and mental powers to ensnare any victim they choose no matter how hard they run. Their plot to chop up human beings to ensure their machinery works was so freaky that Steven Moffat likely stole it to be much scarier in 2006. Bidmead based the monsters on woodlice and, while that intention extended into the design, the Tractators are the textbook definition of a lumbering “Doctor Who monster”. Practically every moment of action they have in the entire story falls completely flat and the monsters are not even remotely scary. They just look like crap. Apparently Jones hired dancers as he imagined the Tractators to curl up like woodlice, something that Bidmead intended in the script. Visual effects designer Dave Harvard did not get this memo it seems. There is a distinct lack of menace and thrill displayed onscreen here despite what are, really, a perfectly strong set of scripts to work from. It is a real shame.

Thankfully, the production can deliver on Bidmead's well-developed supporting cast and he provides a compelling far-future colony for the TARDIS team to get entangled up with. Range is a much an endearing scientist figure to pair the Doctor up with as Plantagenet and Brazen make an irritating opposing force. It is a decidedly bleak vision of the future; a fascist, totalitarian state. In her analysis of the serial, Elizabeth Sandifer makes the suggestion that Bidmead’s more cerebral, world-building story is constantly under jeopardy by Eric Saward’s stock-standard military story, invading the scenes as an opposing force that tries to stop the story from happening. Whether Bidmead was deliberately poking at Saward's tendencies as a writer remains to be seen but it is a very fun read regardless. Bidmead has cited the 1982 Lebanon War as an influence on his scripts which, as of time of writing this article in March 2024, is an interesting situation to cite. The Lebanon War took place between June 6 1982 and June 5 1985 between the Israel Defence Forces and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The inspiration from the war can certainly be identified in what Frontios would become though it would be absurd too suggest that the story is analogous for the conflict itself. Certainly, the broad strokes of the situation informed the plot but the most significant contribution was an aesthetic one with the serial's war-torn landscape that is clearly suffering from a near constant bombardment that has slowly increased in frequency and intensity over several decades. Indeed, as Range and the Doctor state;

RANGE: Captain Revere assumed that the barrage was some sort of softening up process. Heralding an invasion, he said. DOCTOR: Hmm, someone else thinks this is their territory.

Revere is half-right. Frontios is an invasion story; the humans are the invaders. This flavour of anti-colonial storytelling is not particularly new ground for Doctor Who to tread and would certainly continue to be well-walked although the allegory becomes a little bit murky in this case with the suggestion that the Tractators are not indigenous to Frontios either. Perhaps the situation of two invading forces staking claim to a land that rightfully belongs to neither was ripped straight from the headlines but the absence of a third party makes it a rather more simplistic and less challenging situation to depict. Again, the influence is purely aesthetic. Cutting edge political satire doesn’t seem to be something Bidmead is particularly interested in anyway, regardless of his effectiveness in writing it.

So, we can conclude that the Tractators are likely not indigenous from pretty early on in the story thanks to Turlough who is awarded one of his strongest roles in any story pos-Enlightenment. Following his failed plot to murder the Doctor, the shifty and morally ambiguous nature of Turlough became an aspect of his character that was largely cast aside. Turlough was introduced as an untrustworthy and selfish survivalist whose past life before exile on Earth were primed to make him a greatly compelling member of the TARDIS team moving forward. However, instead of gradually unravelling this mystery and pushing Turlough’s relationship with his “friends” to their furthest extent, the character spent most of his stories was just separated from the Doctor for about half of the runtime to simply complain and look a bit suss from time to time. A lot of potential character work seemed to be abandoned and relegated to these four scripts and his final story, Planet of Fire. This is yet another example of Saward's limits as a script editor and really the most damning one considering part of this period's mission statement was to be a quasi soap-opera.

After laying eyes on the Tractators, we see a new side to Turlough; pure, genuine fear. Our first glimpses at his origins are finally awarded to us when a race memory is unlocked within him that sees him recoil from the action in a catatonic state. He has a primal reaction to the creatures below the surface. Being the only person with knowledge of the monsters, he gradually pulls himself together and returns to help the Doctor. While not especially interesting an arc in itself, this is a rewarding series of events to put Turlough through if you have been following his story since Mawdryn Undead since it seems that only now he has truly embraced being a force for good with the Doctor and not just a traveller in it only for himself. This is all really solid stuff and Mark Strickson does a decent enough job with it. Turlough lamenting that nobody expects anything heroic of him is a really lovely character moment and this story marks a significant turning point for the character that comes too late. This is the kind of on-going melodrama that should have been present in this era the entire time and this particular development for Turlough needed to happen at, at the latest, the end of the last season. Not two stories before his departure. For his active role as a companion to be claimed eight stories into his run (effectively after twenty-eight episodes on the show) is ludicrous. Even more frustratingly, Turlough takes a backseat again in the next story leaving Planet of Fire to race his character to the finish line and it proves once more that the potential for greatness is all there but this was too little too late.

Tegan is the most sidelined of the three which is irritating not only because this would prove to be her penultimate appearance on the show but also because it officially becomes a pattern of the third story now to give her no kind of active role in narrative. The next serial would do that too though it could be argued by design which is a weak defence in the face of a whole season awarding her next to no material. Given where her character was set to go in Resurrection of the Daleks this and the nature of her departing the TARDIS, this would have been a great time to highlight the brutality of the Doctor’s travels and drop her in the midst of some truly awful acts. Long-form story was really not Eric Saward’s strongest skill. 

And then we have the Doctor. Three stories away from his own dramatic exit and finally he feels like he has fully come into his own. This is perhaps the most frustrating realisation to grapple with in regards to Bidmead’s leaving the show; the man knows how to write the Doctor. His take on the character sees the frustratingly underdeveloped Fifth Doctor in a fully authoritative role; barking out orders and opinions to whoever he pleases and commanding presence as much as he needs to. This is a character I would have loved to see for three seasons and it pains me that he is only really found here and in Androzani. At the heart of Frontios is a very simple story that about leadership in a decidedly anti-militaristic sort of way. The humans are being driven by the military but lacking in unity as their leadership in Brazen and Plantagenet is a self, arrogant and narrow-minded leadership that dismisses their scientists and the Doctor when he arrives. As we learn about the Tractators, their leadership is flawed too as the creatures are revealed to be naturally passive without the command, being enslaved, by the Gravis. So, we have the Doctor who is driven but understanding. He listens to the facts, he makes measured judgements and he considers the breadth of his actions. The Doctor is the shining example of good leadership in this colony. It is a very simple moral but who ever said that simplicity was a bad thing?

Sandifer made the acute observation in her Warrior's Gate article that "The Doctor that Bidmead wants are the Doctors that [David] Whitaker wrote for – the small and seemingly harmless men who skulked and observed and learned to understand the system before making a single decisive move within it. Not the Doctors of the 70s – big, starring leading men who were the centre of attention and whose charisma and likability drove the entire story". Here we have found ourselves with, frankly, the biggest victim of wasted potential in Peter Davison's run which, obviously is Peter Davison. It is well-documented that part of JNT's strategy in casting Davison was to provide a stark contrast to the scene-stealing Tom Baker. The Fifth Doctor was a less commanding and intrusive presence by design which is all well and good if your target is a more Whitaker-style take on the character. The problem is simply that they missed.

To this day, the Fifth Doctor comes under fire for being a bland incarnation but that is only half of the truth. What fans criticise as blandness is what I would sooner articulate as a lack of definition. The Fifth Doctor as a character was primarily defined by the things that he was not in comparison to the previous four actors instead of the things that he actually was. This Doctor was not old, he was not commanding, he was not infallible, he was not funny, he was not flippant, he was not cruel, he was not Tom Baker – he was not a lot of things and the things that he was varied greatly from one story to the next. Perhaps this is a little unfair since there was at least an intention of who the Fifth Doctor was supposed to be, even if it was not fully realised onscreen. It is at this point that I feel compelled to clarify also that Davison was not at all the problem here. He is an excellent actor who had very strong and compelling instincts of how to play the part, some of which he and JNT agreed on. In 1981, Davison conducted an interview with Radio Times where he made an attempt to outline his vision for the role;

"I’ll be a much younger Dr. Who, and I’ll be wearing a kind of Victorian cricketing outfit to accentuate my youth. I’d like my Doctor to be heroic and resourceful. I feel that, over the years, ‘Doctor Who’ has become less vital, no longer struggling for survival, depending on instant, miraculous solutions to problems. The suspense of ‘Now how’s he going to get out of this tight  corner?’ has been missing. I want to restore that. My Doctor will be flawed. He’ll have the best intentions and he will in the end win through, but he will not always act for the best. Sometimes, he’ll even endanger his companions. But I want him to have a sort of reckless innocence."

This is not quite a description of who the Fifth Doctor is not but in terms of being a definitive statement on what he is it is still somewhat lacking. “Heroic and resourceful" are satisfactory descriptors and the suggestion that he has a “reckless innocence” seems to indicate that he is perhaps simply naive. To say that he is flawed is not particularly revealing without actually delving into what the flaws are but this is certainly a start. There is a blueprint here with which to construct a fully-realised character but the one that made it to screen oscillated wildly from seeming compelling to inoffensive to, yes, bland.

Given the revolving door of script-editors during season nineteen's production, it is perhaps not surprising that, despite having some strong stories on the whole, it was not a definitive opening statement for the Fifth Doctor. Castrovalva took the Doctor out of action for most of its runtime and then had him in the post-regenerative non-character state that left him open to hopefully be defined later on down the track. The larger part of season nineteen fails to define him particularly well with Four to Doomsday, Kinda and Black Orchid each shooting for the unassuming observer type but fail to give him any truly distinct character traits nor a particularly engaging role in the narrative. It shows a near complete misunderstanding of the Whitaker-style Doctor depicting him not as a mercurial learner but a passive observer. The Visitation and Time-Flight shift gears from this to am extent presenting something in the mould of Jon Pertwee's Doctor on paper. The former, however, leaves him still largely sidelined by its comedy supporting character and the latter makes the unfortunate misstep of being Time-Flight. 

The Fifth Doctor in season nineteen is a character whose role in the story is dictated by the narrative conventions of Doctor Who. His name is in the title, he is a heroic character therefore he will heroically save the day even if the plot could have happily rolled on much the same without his involvement at all. Black Orchid even takes this to the extreme when it, upon stumbling upon an opportunity for some drama when the Doctor comes under suspicion for murder, he gets away with it by taking the supporting cast into the TARDIS and going "See? I'm Doctor Who so I must be innocent". The only story to offer any glimmer of the characterisation and subversion that was promised is Earthshock but even that immature, emotionally unregulated character would never really come back onscreen.

Season twenty seems to bring little else to the table besides his being generally nice but a bit exasperated at times (and it is worth noting that the subpar quality of the scriptwriting in season twenty is what ensured Davison would not sign on beyond his three year contract). The Fifth Doctor's lack of authority too often came as a failing in the storytelling instead of a failing in the character. Take how he fails to command a scene with the Brigadier in Mawdryn Undead or the lack of interest anybody has in him during Warriors of the Deep. Snakedance is really the only serial that took this idea and ran when Christopher Bailey had to the good sense to present a realistic reaction to the Doctor showing up prophesying doom for all and made that escalation most of his role in the story. The problem hit its peak by the time The Five Doctors made it to screen which, of course, made an embarrassing show of what little characterisation the Fifth Doctor was awarded. Standing next to Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee would be difficult for anyone but the Fifth Doctor managed to make it seem impossible.

Part of the problem with the Doctor's lack of definition, of course, stemmed from the approach, or rather the production team's inability to scale the mountain that they had raised for themselves. Having a leading cast as big as four and small as three for all but one of his stories often left the Doctor struggling to command the narrative in any way. It became easy to lean on an archetypical idea of who 'the Doctor' is to make the stories work. This is symptomatic of the broader issue that this production team was not up to the task that they set themselves of introducing a larger cast for a soap-opera style. Darren Mooney, for the m0vie blog, articulated the issue well in his article “Doctor Who?” The Deconstructed Davison Doctor;

"[T]he Fifth Doctor’s era offered a weird funhouse mirror of the [soap-opera] genre. The companions were all given strong archetypal personalities that were designed to play off one another, but without any detail or humanity to round out those archetypes into characterisation. More than that, there was no real sense of progression or character development. None of the companions grew or evolved."

Consequently, this left the most valuable asset for character definition, his relationships to everybody else, severely under-utilised. Again, this was not Eric Saward's strength but, further to that, it was not even his interest. Saward often claimed that the aspect of Doctor Who that compelled him the most were the worlds and characters explored rather than our main ensemble. A perfectly fine stance but not a particularly good focus to take in the most serialised version of the show since it first began.

Something always worth considering when engaging in any form of art criticism is the relationship between artistic intention and audience interpretation. Obviously, the former informs the latter; an artistic work presents evidence and information that is collected and interpreted by the audience. There are a number of ways with which to use this relationship as the basis of a critique. One option is the focus primarily on intention; the artist means for the piece to accomplish X thing and I have assessed the evidence provided to form a conclusion as to why I think it is or is not successful in that endeavour. This option is only viable if that intention has been made clear in some context outside of the actual work itself. Another way to engage is to ignore intention entirely, the death of the author approach; I gathered evidence from the text and interpreted it in this way which I did or did not enjoy for X reasons. Generally speaking, I find that the most insightful and compelling criticism comes from a mixture of both approaches. I find it equally as valuable to glean the context of which the work is made and what the artist is intending to do as I do being able to allow the work to speak to me and take on a life of its own.

In the case of the character of the Doctor between 1982 and 1984, there is a lot to engage with here. As established above, the artistic intention of the Fifth Doctor was deeply confused and underdeveloped. So let us turn to an interpretive reading, the most popular one that has developed among fans over time which is that the story of the Fifth Doctor is tragedy. This reading suggests that this Doctor is a victim of a circumstance, a moral crusader and conventional hero who becomes worn down and killed by the cruel and ruthless universe around him. It is a really compelling take and there is a good amount of evidence to substantiate it. Earthshock is the earliest example where the Doctor’s role in the climax consists primarily of him failing to negotiate with the Cyber-Leader with no option left but to just murder him as he watches his young friend die in an act of heroism he inspired. Then we have Snakedance where his walking into the story doing his typical Doctor thing sees him vilified and antagonised for the larger part of the runtime. Season twenty-one is where the evidence really ramps up. Warriors of the Deep attempts a similar outcome to Earthshock with the Doctor’s lack of authority leading to him enabling a massacre. Frontios sees him literally drawn into a place he shouldn’t be despite his best intentions. Resurrection of the Daleks is such a clusterfuck that it causes Tegan to leave the Doctor altogether and then his simply being on Androzani places him squarely in the middle of events so devastating that everybody there except for Peri winds up dead.

As a reading on his era, this interpretation holds up very well. It is exactly the kind of character development that should have been the crux of Davison's time on the show and is the kind of thing suggested by the publicity and discussions of his character back in 1981. What makes it so frustrating is how much this was not really present in the artistic intent. Yes, the Fifth Doctor was fallible and one of his companions died but this was little more than an aesthetic choice for the larger part of the era. As Sandifer articulated perfectly in her Earthshock analysis;

"What we get [with Adric's death] isn’t drama. It’s the hollow shell of drama – a major character death, a silent credit sequence, a few minutes of horrified and morose main characters at the tail end of this and the start of Time-Flight, and then everybody – the audience included – moves on. It’s not one of the most dramatic sequences of the 1980s. It’s a cheap sham designed to look like drama. It’s a sequence designed to rile up controversy – the exact sort of death scene that would be created by an executive who believes that art should 'soothe, not distract'".

Earthshock was the most important story of the JNT/Saward administration and it makes it also emblematic of a number of things it fails to get right. Adric's death was wasted potential. If the overall arc of the Fifth Doctor's story is a man who has the best intentions but gets beaten down by everything around him, that needs to be in any way at the forefront of his character and his actions in the stories. Eric Saward thought it important to depict violence in a visceral and impactful way which serves the interpretation but was not a calculated move to develop an actual arc.

By the time season twenty-one came around, Davison had hit breaking point with the bland material and an actual character began to emerge. Beginning with this serial, his Doctor finally showed signs of some consistent characterisation. His Doctor had become snarkier and wittier, his occasional emotional outbursts in season nineteen filtering through as a genuine resentment for authority and pig-headedness. As Davison himself stated;

"Frontios was excellent, an extremely well-rounded script that got hold of the way I saw the part of the Doctor, and made his dialogue and actions fit in with this. I enjoyed it because there was really something there to latch onto in rehearsal and make your own. If you like, it had enough there without the actors having to try to embellish a weak storyline." 

Thus, this is why Frontios shines so brightly. With some stronger material to play as well in this story through to his final appearance, Davison gets the best chance of his era to actually act. The Doctor is no longer a passive afterthought in the narrative and the season gains a genuine momentum with escalation from one story to the next until the entire narrative structure of Doctor Who breaks down in The Caves of Androzani. Frontios marks the beginning of the Davison era finally starting to land on what really works. We have a Doctor that is genuinely compelling, a very compelling and unique companion in Turlough and a genuinely interesting story that nails the Eric Saward approach to thrilling, action-packed Doctor Who (if only really in the script than actually on-screen). Frontios is really spearheading this last leg of the Davison era and not by mistake.This is a highpoint of season twenty-one and, indeed, of all ‘80s Who. While this is probably Bidmead's weakest script technically (I'd probably watch this over Castrovalva), it demonstrates that old ideas done well still undeniably make for a story that is done really well but it is no surprise that this solid story is consistently overshadowed by the more obviously ambitious milestones of the Davison era. This is the story the Davison era needed but it is a story that just came too late to save it altogether.

A final word: I had no other place to mention this but the Doctor’s line about being a hat person is a little amusing at this point in his life since he hasn’t been seen wearing one for three stories now – he last donned it in The King’s Demons and won’t again until the story after this

[mcflymemes]

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM PROMPTS *  assorted dialogue from the 1984 film

step on it!

is it short for something?

i'll be asleep in five minutes.

where's the antidote?

trouble? what kind of trouble?

what a vivid imagination.

they're just fear and folklore.

you're gonna get killed chasing after your damn fortune and glory.

hold on to your potatoes!

very funny. very funny!

i was happy in shanghai!

i'm all right.

where's my gun? WHERE'S MY GUN?

our plane crashed.

better hurry up or you won't get to hear it.

aren't you gonna introduce us?

we're in trouble!

listen, i just met you!

i'm not so sure.

you're too proud to admit that you're crazy about me.

are you not eating?

we're all vulnerable to vicious rumor.

no! what are you doing? you fool!

this is the night i slipped right through your fingers.

he's not coming.

this is not my idea of a swell time!

i could have been your greatest adventure.

i've got something for you.

my friends were rich; we went to parties all the time in limousines!

i hate the water, and i hate being wet... and i hate YOU!

if i have offended you, i am sorry.

you will become a true believer.

we! are! going! to! die!

hey! no time for love!

wait! wait! he's mine!

i burned my fingers and i cracked a nail!

for crying out loud, there's a kid driving the car!

if you want me, you know where to find me.

to get out you must take the left tunnel.

maybe. but not today.

after all the fun we've had together?

you never told me you spoke my language.

there are no stories anymore.

the newspapers greatly exaggerated the incident.

i can't believe i'm not going.

five minutes. you'll be back over here in five minutes.

what exactly was it they say was stolen?

i'll tell you in the morning.

nothing shocks me.

there's nothing you have that i could possibly want.

ooh, what big birds!

we've got company!

no, it wasn't my hands.

anything can happen.

is he nuts?

i hate being outside!

i'm allowing you to tag along.

too much to drink?

the biggest trouble with her is the noise.

what kind of a name is that?

step where i step, and don't touch anything.

no thanks. no more adventures.

there are two dead people in here!

it's not usual for a guest to insult his host.

so why don't you give your mouth a rest?

you are in a position unsuitable to give orders.

you know what your problem is? you're too used to getting your own way.

i'm a singer! i could lose my voice!

i keep telling you, you listen to me more, you live longer.

are you trying to develop a sense of humor or am i going deaf?

maybe he likes older women.

you haven't been able to take your eyes off of me.

oh shit.

you know i did.

wake up! you're my best friend! wake up!

i can't believe this.

you know how to fly, don't you?

look, just... stand against the wall.

you have insulted my son.

give me your hat.

i think we'll camp here tonight.

i spared his life.

i'm sorry. i thought we were talking about folklore.

hang on, we're going for a ride!

it wasn't me! it's her!

hard to believe, isn't it?

where's my razor?

i'm not going to have anything nice to say about this place when i get back!

[mithliya]

idk what that anon was yapping about. i’m a zionist (which does not mean what most people think it means—all it means is that i believe jewish people deserve to live in our homeland without persecution) who hates what the israeli govt is doing right now and i don’t understand how you get from “rape is bad no matter the victim” to “brown people caused the holocaust”. like, did we forget what is considered aryan? because palestinians *arent*.

hmm i think now is perhaps not the time to be a centrist either. israel’s govt rn does not exist in a vacuum. the onset of political zionism expressed the same goals that the current israeli govt is enacting. the idea that jewish ppl from around the world all share one homeland in palestine also means that the land is not for palestinians.

read plan dalet. read the end goal of early zionists. understand that what is being opposed isn’t the mere existence of a jewish state, it’s the existence of a jewish state to the detriment of the existing native population.

also zionism today means sth different from what zionism meant 130 years ago:

here are some early zionist goals:

extensive aid for a large development plan, which would enable the evacuation of large Arab tracts of lands for our colonization, through an agreement with the [Arab] fellahin.

(Heller, Yosef. Bama’vak Lemedinah, Hamediniyut Hatzionit Bashanim 1936–1948 [The Struggle for the State: The Zionist Policy 1936-1948], Jerusalem, 1984, p. 118)

I would very much like the Arabs to go to Iraq. And I hope they will go there sometime . . . agricultural conditions in Iraq are better than in the Land of Israel because of the quality of the soil. Secondly, they will be in an Arab state and not in a Jewish state. We cannot remove them from here. Not only because we cannot, even if an exchange has been carried out between the Greeks in Asia Minor and the Turks, between Turkey and Greece. But today they would not accept this.

What we can demand today is that all Transjordan be included within the Land of Israel . . . on condition that Transjordan would either be made available for Jewish colonization or for the resettlement of those Arabs whose lands [in Palestine] we would purchase. Against this, the most conscientious person could not argue . . . For the Arabs of the Galilee, Transjordan is a province . . . this will be for the resettlement of Palestine’s Arabs. This is the land problem . . . Now the Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land . . . because this country belongs to us and not to them . . . .

(Ussishkin)

If it was permissible to move an Arab from the Galilee to Judea, why is it impossible to move an Arab from Hebron to Transjordan, which is much closer? There are vast expanses of land there and we are overcrowded. . . . Even the High Commissioner agrees to a transfer to Transjordan if we equip the peasants with land and money. If the Peel Commission and the London Government accept, we’ll remove the land problem from the agenda.

(Source: Simha Flapan, long time head of the Mapam party’s Arab department, in Zionism and the Palestinians, p. 261, citing Protocols of the Executive Meeting)

these are the words of several zionists! read ben-gvir’s extreme racism, herzl’s goals, and more and if you think what is being done today is wrong, reasonably you would think that the things that were done in pursuit of a “jewish homeland” was also wrong.

‘Our thought is that the colonisation of Palestine has to go in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel in areas outside the country.’

(Leo Motzkin)

[this-acuteneurosis]

Is it odd of me that if you asked me to like Live in Ba Sing Sae with its Dai Li and 1984 nonsense or live in the Fire Nation that id rather live in the FIrce Nation? Like id much rather have a Iroh or a Zuko as Firelord but if have to have an Ozai... Like I dunno if that said good things for the series as a whole? Course there was ALOT of places just living life in the earth kingdom Northern Water that seems perfectly fine and I guess be apart of the empire or against it is a thing. thoughts?

I don't know that I would say it's odd. The way that canon portrays the Fire Nation, most of the civilians don't seem really inconvenienced by the war. Barring The Painted Lady scenario, most people that we see are just living in lovely homes near beaches or among beautiful rolling hills. Actually, there's the whole Hama bloodbending episode too, but like, that was not the Fire Nation causing problems? At least not directly.

I think the issue in this case is a bit children's tv show simplification, and a bit the actual geography.

For the geography, remember that Ba Sing Se is actively under seige just outside the walls when we get there. Sure, the Dai Li are trying to control the narrative about the whole war, and they are isolating the refugees in a poor district and disappearing people. But like, you're getting the perspective on that from the Gaang, who actively are against the propaganda. Seems like most people in the middle and upper rings don't really live in fear. There are parties and hanging out with friends and schools and frankly the Dai Li are probably really careful about who they kidnap. And they're less likely to need to kidnap someone who's lived in Ba Sing Se their whole life. Realistically, Ba Sing Se is safest for the rich, and progressively more risky for the poor and displaced. You probably identify more with the latter than the former.

Anyway, that's not an ideal situation. Danger is literally knocking on your doorstep and you're being asked to ignore it or be literally brainwashed. That's really scary. (Also, the literal brainwashing is really horrifying, we get really anxious about losing our agency, hence why Hama was so scary.)

In contrast, yeah there is propaganda in the Fire Nation and yeah, living in Ozai's court is probably a lot of bowing and scraping and hoping he and his daughter do not notice you. And you could be a solider, and given some of the war strategy we see, that's...not great.

But ironically, living in the Fire Nation seems safer for the average citizen than the rich or noble. Physically you are very distant from the fighting. Your country is industrializing. You have fun festivals. Your basic concept of "safety" includes living with people that regularly set fire to thin air. What do you have to be scared of?

For me, stepping beyond canon into Things I Assume Because They Make Sense But Didn't Make the Kids Show Cut, I wouldn't want to be a citizen of the Fire Nation because I can almost guarantee you Ozai is drafting his soldiers, or some close equivalent. There has to be either and incentive or a mandate to make joining that army appealing, and Ozai is much more of a stick dude than a carrot one.

And you do not want to be in that army. It does not care about you. At all.

Even if you aren't drafted, taxes are probably high, either in coinage, or in labor and goods. Someone is making that armor. Those ships. We see one earth kingdom prison that's mining coal, but realistically, coal is Super Important and if you aren't fighting, you're moving supplies or shoveling coal into a machine that is killing you slowly by slagging your lungs. Armies need to be fed, and only part of your army is in the EK. There are plenty of soldiers in the homeland.

Additionally, if there are "carrots" for joining the army, they are probably prestige and power, and being safely assigned to the Fire Nation islands for your deployment. Which means soldiers that do stay are...probably not super nice. They may be lazy, they may be bullies, they may be sort of rich but not quite nobility. Not appealing.

Additionally, you're in a country that is at war with people who move rocks. You've probably lost, in the last 100 years, access to architects and sculptors and all sorts of people that could make you pretty, safe houses out of stone quickly and probably relatively cheaply. You live with people that light things on fire with their minds. Your house is now made out of wood. Pottery is probably more expensive, and even if you can use metal vessels instead for a lot of stuff, it's probably expensive because a lot of mining is still gonna be based in the Earth Kingdom, and even if your colonies are exporting, moving those goods through war zones is gonna cost you. And making those things at home is going to be difficult because War. Labor is being directed to ships and weapons. There was not a lot of time between when the FN got the blueprints for war balloons and when they had much bigger, scarier options. With bombs. Just...that's an incredible feat of labor and supply control.

You're fighting with what what probably the biggest exporter of agricultural goods. Aside from needing to feed an army, there are probably all sorts of shortages on what are now "specialty goods" that were probably pretty easy to get before Sozin's ex-boyfriend best friend broke his heart upset him and Sozin made Bad Choices. Also, that best friend was the Avatar.

We don't see a ton of evidence that there are spirits in the Fire Nation that are upset about the state of things, but we know angry spirits are possible because of our dear forest panda friend from season one.

All of this to say, I don't think it's weird that the Fire Nation looks more appealing, based on our limited perspective in canon. Honestly, someone in Ozai's court is probably working overtime to keep things that way in spite of their boss. But I think the point of the show is the whole world is at war, and honestly? No one is really "winning" in that scenario.

[ideologyfairy]

Oki @centi-pedve here's how realicide plays out in my mind, sorry this isn't like a coherent plot summary our thoughts about this are really scattered

The first thing that will tip you off to the fact this is not at all what would of actually happened is that our s/i is heavily involved with the plot so yeah. This also doesn't follow the events of centricide at all.

It would be revealed that the characters of 1984 exist in universe and Winston, Julia and O'Brien would become like secondary characters. I'm sorry for my demons. Julia and Egoism become besties btw.

The series would gain themes of like, Ideologies wanting to allow themselves to be more human and not just strict embodiments of their Ideologies. Because when they're just strict embodiments of their Ideologies, it leads to a society where they're basically just destined to have constant conflict with each other and struggle to make compromises to be friends with people who don't share their exact ideology because they ARE their Ideologies unlike humans who can have more varied thoughts.

Grej would end up taking on a more antagonistic role as someone who wants to keep the status quo of Ideologies not being allowed to have the complex feelings of humans and to not be more then their assigned ideology in order to continue the realicide despite the despair it causes (ie: communalism becoming a cultist because Darwinism kills moralism as part of the realicide) basically just for his own gain instead of the happiness of all the off compasses.

Basically the series would end not with one side completely winning or losing but with a sort of realization that "we should address the root problem of the fact that we're beings that by expected nature are opposed to each other always instead of just killing each other as a solution". Kinda a sappy ending I know, but I promise it wouldn't be a total "let's all just be friends" ending. And the story around it would feel satisfying.

Egoism would also be more than just a necromancer and also kinda become a general wizard/witch archetype I just think that'd be cool idk.

He would have some kind of confrontation with Cultcom that's like "you're so spooked by the idea of objective morality and purity and holiness that you've become a cultist you should stop that" "Repent for your egoistic sins, outsider!"

The only part of the things that we know would happen that happen in my mind is necromancer Egoism and him bringing back moralism and polnih as ghosts. Darwinism doesn't die in my mind. And also moralism isn't really responsible for turning Cultcom back to normal. I'm honestly not sure if they ever even actually turn back to normal in my mind they might just tragically die while still part of a cult.

The Senate Of Six eventually ends up actually joining the team and Ingsoc and Darwinist gain a sort of weird bond over being the only remaining members of the original team. Darwinist is Ingsoc's weird dog fr.

If you actually read all of this tysm.

[earthboundguythatlikesmother1]

Welp, with The Flash coming out and it being like swan song to the DCEU, I couldn't help but take a look back at some of the other DC movies and i was like, "why not just rank them and with my stupid opinions!"

Aight so this is the part where I explain why, originally i considered making a post of each movie like how i did it with marvel movies and shows on Twitter at some point but decided not because I'm not a poignant person with the most creative writing nor could i often keep the same attention span for it for awhile so here is the best way to review em all in a few words or less.

Will be doing it in the order they were released in.

1. Man Of Steel

7.5/10.

I actually like this movie, it's definitely has non-stop action and i can't help but think maybe I just enjoy that because I have a peanut for a brain. It definitely tries to be more grounded to see how humanity would react to Superman existing our world. I do like Henry Cavill as Superman i just wish we got more scenes of him being more warmer and more scenes of him helping and saving people. I can definitely understand why others disagree and really dislike this one.

2. Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice

3.5/10

This movie exists and is what set off panic triggers at Warner Bros. & Prettyyyyyyy much ruined the perception of Superman and Batman to a bunch of "certain" people. It crams in way too many storylines, tries to set up way too much, some miscasting, kills off superman in his like 2nd appearance, wonder woman got spoiled in the trailers and whatnot.

Ben Affleck as Batman was cool and the warehouse fight scene was cool. I'm sad that it was Dick Grayson the one who got killed.

The Ultimate Edition of this one is just a 6/10, while it does give more context and more scenes that I do like, it still has the same problems so no, it doesn't fix everything.

3. Suicide Squad

2/10

Nobody likes this movie, also nobody likes me.

I remember thinking that the comic con trailer was the coolest shit to ever exist. Then I saw the movie and remember feeling lied to and deceived.

Everything sucks, everything happens too much at the same time, characters barely feel like character at times, etc. Really deserving of that Oscar!!!!!!!

I did like Harley Quinn, Amanda Waller, and Captain Boomerang (even if he barely did anything)

4. Wonder Woman

8.5/10 Wonder Woman

Really love this movie, Wonder Woman is great, i love the characters, the chemistry, the action and her helping people.

It does stumble abit towards the end however but even then, it still felt like a great movie 👍

5. Justice League (2017)

5.5/10

This movie pretty much is the reason why the DCEU became a wild rabid animal that needed to be put down immediately.

Movie is just mediocre, humor is just "Not funny. Didn't laugh." , Action is lame, backstories are rushed, Flash is annoying, Aquaman is a dickhead for no reason, cyborg doesn't even get a backstory, they really take their time saving people, dumb Russian family subplot.

I liked the after credits scene of Superman and Flash racing. So while the movie is not extremely awful and not a bad waste of your time, it's also not a good waste of your time.

6. Aquaman

7.5/10

Really like Aquaman, love how cheesy it was, Black Manta was cool.

While i love the cheesiness in this movie, this movie does also get abit stupid at times but still a fun time where you can go off with, with a pal or smth.

7. Shazam!

8/10

I thought the movie was a fun time, nothing outrageous but nothing bad as well, just a movie i can have a good time watching.

8. Birds Of Prey

6.5/10

Cassandra Cain is not even Cassandra Cain and that still pisses me off to this day. Overall, it's definitely a Harley Quinn movie and NOT a Birds Of Prey movie. Black Mask was a cool villain. This movie felt like it was trying too hard to be like Deadpool ngl.

9. Wonder Woman 1984

4/10

It's like being asked out by someone you like so you get excited and say yes and later show up to the date all ready and stuff, only to find out it was a prank just to see if you were gullible enough to fall for it.

10. Zack Snyder's Justice League

6.5/10

Welp, i now wish the movie never got released so the people who are like #restorethesnyderverse never got the satisfaction and got to comfortable enough to become a bunch of crybabies believing they are the top of the world.

Movie is just okay, cool action, good characters for the most part but holy shit is it way too long with really unnecessary scenes. If you can't release a movie without making it 4 hours long thinking it'll make things more cohesive, well i got some news for ya pal.

Welp turns out i ran to a limit with the images so lemme make another post about it to keep sharing my thoughts on the DCEU Movies, ig this is a part 1 of 2 post.

But for now, what did you think of my thoughts? Do you agree or disagree to the point that you wanna break into my house to beat me up, kill me and burn my house to the ground.

Lmk what you think or want to hear more thoughts for me to specify.

Thanks for reading, losing your braincells along the way and have a nice day.

[kudosmyhero]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (vol. 1) #2: TMNT vs. the Mousers

Read Date: February 02, 2023 Cover Date: October 1984 ● Writer: Kevin Eastman ◦ Peter Laird ● Pencils: Kevin Eastman ◦ Peter Laird ● Inks: Kevin Eastman ◦ Peter Laird ● Letterer: Kevin Eastman ●

**HERE BE SPOILERS: Skip ahead to the fan art/podcast to avoid spoilers

Reactions As I Read: ● Baxter Stockman on tv talking about solving city's rodent problem ● ah, a MOUSER! I didn't realize they've been around since the beginning ● yikes… poor rat ● while Splinter and Leonardo are watching this on tv, Raph and Mikey are sparring

● I also didn't realize April worked in labs at the beginning. I thought she started out as a news reporter and was retconned as a lab worker. Perhaps it was the other way around ● that's a lot of mousers… ● why is Baxter admitting all of this to April? ● April's first meeting of the Turtles! ● up to page 30 so far. people got their money's worth with this comic! ● 38 pages ● last panel is illuminated nicely:

● 👏👏👏

Synopsis: The second issue introduced April O'Neil and Baxter Stockman. The book begins with the Turtles and Splinter watching the news. The reporter, Ms. Hynes, is doing a story about Dr. Baxter Stockman and his new invention: the rodent-killing robotic Mouser. Stockman, with the help of his lovely assistant April O'Neil, demonstrate the Mouser's ability to track and slay rats. Splinter cautions the Turtles that they must be very careful with this new threat in town.

Several weeks pass, and in that time many bank robberies have occurred. April is reading the paper to Dr. Stockman, which describes strange small tunnels dug into the bank's vaults. April hypothesizes that the Mousers would be capable of doing this, which the good Doctor promptly dismisses, pointing out that April had helped to program them, so she should know better. Stockman then proceeds to take Ms. O'Neil to an underground security level of the laboratory, where he shows her an army of Mousers that are being built. April demands to know how he got the funding to build hundreds of Mousers… when she concludes that her suspicions were correct: the Mousers were robbing the banks! Stockman then reveals his plan to blackmail the city. April is confused, as she notes that Stockman could have made millions legally with his invention. Dr. Stockman replies that he's not doing it for money but because it's "fun". April realizes that the Doc is quite mad and she bolts for the elevator. Stockman then programs the elevator to drop her into the sewers, and sends several mousers to kill her.

Just as she's about to be mauled, the Turtles show up and save her by destroying the robots. April faints at the sight of them! The turtles take Ms. O'Neil to their home, and when she awakes, tell her their origin. The Turtles then turn on the news to find Stockman making his demands of the City. It seems that he's had the Mousers dig tunnels underneath every corporate headquarters in New York City, and if a ransom is not paid for each building, he will have the Mousers destroy the skyscrapers' foundations, thus causing them to crash to the ground.

The Turtles and April decide that it's up to them to stop the mad Doctor, and they sneak into his building. They confront Baxter, who sets off an explosion and traps them in the basement lab. The Turtles manage to blast a whole in a wall, but unfortunately it leads to the storage room full of Mousers! The horde of bloodthirsty robots attack! Leo, Raph and Mike struggle to hold them off, but there are too many! Just as it looks like it's curtains for our heroes, Don and April manage to program the computer to shut down all power in the cellar… including the Mousers!

(https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/TMNT_vs._the_Mousers)

Fan Art: April O'Neil by Elias-Chatzoudis

Accompanying Podcast: ● Shellheads - episode 07