#and then my other classmate was racist to another classmate and mocked the way she gesticulated.
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snowangeled · 1 month ago
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some people are fucking horrible btw!
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jewish-vents · 8 months ago
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I can't with this anymore uhhhhhhggggg
"AITAH for creating a private doc to keep notes on what my racist teacher said"
I have this teacher who said a lot of shit (eg. "Ashkenazi people were Europeans forcefully converted by invading Jews", "the Torah mentions Jesus and Mohammed", "Judaism started in Ethiopia because it's the oldest religion and therefore must come from where all people do", "getting angry at Houthis for attacking Israel is like getting angry at a l*nched man for struggling on the noose", etc.). No one cared that she said these things besides a boy she kept deadnaming, a girl who she used as an example talking about slave r*pe, and a kid who she humiliated in front of the class a few times.
When I reported this shit to the dean he was concerned as fuck and 100000% on my side because he's really cool. And to report the stuff, I'd been using a private google doc to keep track of what she'd said. The principal though was overly optimistic and decided instead of talking to the teacher in private, she would hold a class discussion! Yaaaaaaayyyyyyy. I was less than pleased by this, and at the discussion most people took her side. I eventually decided to share the doc with the other three kids so I could get better firsthand accounts.
But then the doc started spreading.
One of the other kids shared it with this boy who she used to mock and throw under the bus, and he shared it with his friend. Who shared it with another friend. Things went like whisper-down-the-lane until someone, I don't know WHO, got a hold of it and shared it to the whole. Fucking. Class. Including the teacher. People started claiming the doc was Islamophobic and didn't elaborate why, and saying we were only "attacking" the teacher because she was Muslim. Or that we only reported this stuff to get drama and attention. The principal herself even said that this was happening because we have varying cultures, which is BS because I have plenty of Muslim friends who have never said ANY of the shit this lady has. That is waaaayyyy more Islamophobic of a statement and I felt offended on my friends' behalf with that one.
I feel bad for the teacher for seeing that doc, but then again, I myself am suffering because someone leaked all my personal opinions to the class. I'm a super conflict avoidant person because I have severe ADHD and OCD and mild autism (ASD1, to be specific), and I hate being involved. I want to sympathize for her. I really do. But when asked to apologize for what she said, she started defending herself and saying we were all closed-minded for not thinking what we previously thought was wrong. My mom wants to take me out of the class to do an independent study project so I can pass the required course without being in that classroom. Because nothing gets in the way of Jewish parents. Especially during Passover.
My classmates are saying she's a sweet lady and it was wrong of us to get upset at her, so are we the bad guys and/or am I overreacting to this scenario.
Anon I'm going to be very honest here. You are absolutely NTA here. And you're not overreacting at all. Your teacher is being very offensive, not to mention historically wrong.
And the doc? If she didn't want to have her offensive opinions called out in front of everyone, maybe she should stop being offensive.
I'm going to say, personally if she were my teacher the doc would be the least of her problems. She would not like me very much.
I hope you're safe tho, you and the other students she's hurt. You don't deserve to be treated like this
-🐺
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antiporn-activist · 4 years ago
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The Children of Pornhub
Why does Canada allow this company to profit off videos of exploitation and assault?
By Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist, Dec. 4, 2020, New York Times
This article contains descriptions of sexual assault. It’s also really long.
Pornhub prides itself on being the cheery, winking face of naughty, the website that buys a billboard in Times Square and provides snow plows to clear Boston streets. It donates to organizations fighting for racial equality and offers steamy content free to get people through Covid-19 shutdowns.
Yet there’s another side of the company: Its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. A search for “girls under18” (no space) or “14yo” leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren’t of children being assaulted, but too many are.
After a 15-year-old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub — in 58 sex videos. Sexual assaults on a 14-year-old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to the authorities not by the company but by a classmate who saw the videos. In each case, offenders were arrested for the assaults, but Pornhub escaped responsibility for sharing the videos and profiting from them.
Pornhub is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos. A great majority of the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year probably involve consenting adults, but many depict child abuse and nonconsensual violence. Because it’s impossible to be sure whether a youth in a video is 14 or 18, neither Pornhub nor anyone else has a clear idea of how much content is illegal.
Unlike YouTube, Pornhub allows these videos to be downloaded directly from its website. So even if a rape video is removed at the request of the authorities, it may already be too late: The video lives on as it is shared with others or uploaded again and again.
“Pornhub became my trafficker,” a woman named Cali told me. She says she was adopted in the United States from China and then trafficked by her adoptive family and forced to appear in pornographic videos beginning when she was 9. Some videos of her being abused ended up on Pornhub and regularly reappear there, she said.
“I’m still getting sold, even though I’m five years out of that life,” Cali said. Now 23, she is studying in a university and hoping to become a lawyer — but those old videos hang over her.
“I may never be able to get away from this,” she said. “I may be 40 with eight kids, and people are still masturbating to my photos.”
“You type ‘Young Asian’ and you can probably find me,” she added.
Actually, maybe not. Pornhub recently was offering 26,000 videos in response to that search. That doesn’t count videos that show up under “related searches” that Pornhub suggests, including “young tiny teen,” “extra small petite teen,” “tiny Asian teen” or just “young girl.” Nor does it necessarily count videos on a Pornhub channel called “exploited teen Asia.”
I came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive.
Pornhub profited this fall from a video of a naked woman being tortured by a gang of men in China. It is monetizing video compilations with titles like “Screaming Teen,” “Degraded Teen” and “Extreme Choking.” Look at a choking video and it may suggest also searching for “She Can’t Breathe.”
It should be possible to be sex positive and Pornhub negative.
Pornhub declined to make executives available on the record, but it provided a statement. “Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating child sexual abuse material, and has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community,” it said. Pornhub added that any assertion that the company allows child videos on the site “is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue.”
II.
At 14, Serena K. Fleites was an A student in Bakersfield, Calif., who had never made out with a boy. But in the eighth grade she developed a crush on a boy a year older, and he asked her to take a naked video of herself. She sent it to him, and this changed her life.
He asked for another, then another; she was nervous but flattered. “That’s when I started getting strange looks in school,” she remembered. He had shared the videos with other boys, and someone posted them on Pornhub.
Fleites’s world imploded. It’s tough enough to be 14 without having your classmates entertain themselves by looking at you naked, and then mocking you as a slut. “People were texting me, if I didn’t send them a video, they were going to send them to my mom,” she said.
The boy was suspended, but Fleites began skipping class because she couldn’t bear the shame. Her mother persuaded Pornhub to remove the videos, and Fleites switched schools. But rumors reached the new school, and soon the videos were uploaded again to Pornhub and other websites.
Fleites quarreled with her mother and began cutting herself. Then one day she went to the medicine cabinet and took every antidepressant pill she could find.
Three days later, she woke up in the hospital, frustrated to be still alive. Next she hanged herself in the bathroom; her little sister found her, and medics revived her.
As Fleites spiraled downward, a friend introduced her to meth and opioids, and she became addicted to both. She dropped out of school and became homeless.
At 16, she advertised on Craigslist and began selling naked photos and videos of herself. It was a way to make a bit of money, and maybe also a way to punish herself. She thought, “I’m not worth anything any more because everybody has already seen my body,” she told me.
Those videos also ended up on Pornhub. Fleites would ask that they be removed. They usually would be, she says — but then would be uploaded again. One naked video of her at 14 had 400,000 views, she says, leaving her afraid to apply for fast-food jobs for fear that someone would recognize her.
So today Fleites, 19, off drugs for a year but unemployed and traumatized, is living in her car in Bakersfield, along with three dogs that have proved more loyal and loving than the human species. She dreams of becoming a vet technician but isn’t sure how to get there. “It’s kind of hard to go to school when you’re living in a car with dogs,” she said.
“I was dumb,” she acknowledged, noting that she had never imagined that the videos could be shared online. “It was one small thing that a teenager does, and it’s crazy how it turns into something so much bigger.
“A whole life can be changed because of one little mistake.”
III.
The problem goes far beyond one company. Indeed, a rival of Pornhub, XVideos, which arguably has even fewer scruples, may attract more visitors. Depictions of child abuse also appear on mainstream sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. And Google supports the business models of companies that thrive on child molestation.
Google returns 920 million videos on a search for “young porn.” Top hits include a video of a naked “very young teen” engaging in sex acts on XVideo along with a video on Pornhub whose title is unprintable here.
I asked the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to compile the number of images, videos and other content related to child sexual exploitation reported to it each year. In 2015, it received reports of 6.5 million videos or other files; in 2017, 20.6 million; and in 2019, 69.2 million.
Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a three-month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accounts in six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children. By contrast, Pornhub notes that the Internet Watch Foundation, an England-based nonprofit that combats child sexual abuse imagery, reported only 118 instances of child sexual abuse imagery on its site over almost three years, seemingly a negligible figure. “Eliminating illegal content is an ongoing battle for every modern content platform, and we are committed to remaining at the forefront,” Pornhub said in its statement.
The Internet Watch Foundation couldn’t explain why its figure for Pornhub is so low. Perhaps it’s because people on Pornhub are inured to the material and unlikely to report it. But if you know what to look for, it’s possible to find hundreds of apparent child sexual abuse videos on Pornhub in 30 minutes. Pornhub has recently offered playlists with names including “less than 18,” “the best collection of young boys” and “under- - age.”
Congress and successive presidents have done almost nothing as this problem has grown. The tech world that made it possible has been mostly passive, in a defensive crouch. But pioneering reporting in 2019 by my Times colleagues has prodded Congress to begin debating competing strategies to address child exploitation.
Concerns about Pornhub are bubbling up. A petition to shut the site down has received 2.1 million signatures. Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, called on the Justice Department to investigate Pornhub. PayPal cut off services for the company, and credit card companies have been asked to do the same. An organization called Traffickinghub, led by an activist named Laila Mickelwait, documents abuses and calls for the site to be shut down. Twenty members of Canada’s Parliament have called on their government to crack down on Pornhub, which is effectively based in Montreal.
“They made money off my pain and suffering,” an 18-year-old woman named Taylor told me. A boyfriend secretly made a video of her performing a sex act when she was 14, and it ended up on Pornhub, the police confirmed. “I went to school the next day and everybody was looking at their phones and me as I walked down the hall,” she added, weeping as she spoke. “They were laughing.”
Taylor said she has twice attempted suicide because of the humiliation and trauma. Like others quoted here, she agreed to tell her story and help document it because she thought it might help other girls avoid suffering as she did.
IV.
Pornhub is owned by Mindgeek, a private pornography conglomerate with more than 100 websites, production companies and brands. Its sites include Redtube, Youporn, XTube, SpankWire, ExtremeTube, Men.com, My Dirty Hobby, Thumbzilla, PornMD, Brazzers and GayTube. There are other major players in porn outside the Mindgeek umbrella, most notably XHamster and XVideos, but Mindgeek is a porn titan. If it operated in another industry, the Justice Department could be discussing an antitrust case against it.
Pornhub and Mindgeek also stand out because of their influence. One study this year by a digital marketing company concluded that Pornhub was the technology company with the third greatest-impact on society in the 21st century, after Facebook and Google but ahead of Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.
Nominally based in Luxembourg for tax reasons, Mindgeek is a private company run from Montreal. It does not disclose who owns it, but it is led by Feras Antoon and David Tassillo, both Canadians, who declined to be interviewed.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada calls himself a feminist and has been proud of his government’s efforts to empower women worldwide. So a question for Trudeau and all Canadians: Why does Canada host a company that inflicts rape videos on the world?
Mindgeek’s moderators are charged with filtering out videos of children, but its business model profits from sex videos starring young people.
“The goal for a content moderator is to let as much content as possible go through,” a former Mindgeek employee told me. He said he believed that the top executives weren’t evil but were focused above all on maximizing revenue.
While Pornhub would not tell me how many moderators it employs, I interviewed one who said that there are about 80 worldwide who work on Mindgeek sites (by comparison, Facebook told me it has 15,000 moderators). With 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded a year to Pornhub, that means that each moderator would have to review hundreds of hours of content each week.
The moderators fast forward through videos, but it’s often difficult to assess whether a person is 14 or 18, or whether torture is real or fake. Most of the underage content involves teenagers, the moderator I spoke with said, but some comes from spy cams in toilets or changing rooms and shows children only 8 to 12.
“The job in itself is soul-destroying,” the moderator said.
Pornhub appears to be increasingly alarmed about civil or criminal liability. Lawyers are circling, and nine women sued the company in federal court after spy cam videos surfaced on Pornhub. The videos were shot in a locker room at Limestone College in South Carolina and showed women showering and changing clothes.
Executives of Pornhub appear in the past to have assumed that they enjoyed immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms on which members of the public post content. But in 2018 Congress limited Section 230 so that it may not be enough to shield the company, leading Mindgeek to behave better.
It has doubled the number of moderators in the last couple of years, the moderator told me, and this year Pornhub began voluntarily reporting illegal material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. After previously dragging its feet in removing videos of children and nonconsensual content, Pornhub now is responding more rapidly.
It has also compiled a list of banned content. I obtained a copy of this list, and it purports to bar videos with terms or themes like “rape,” “preteen,” “pedophilia” and “bestiality” (it helpfully clarifies that this “includes eels, fish, octopus, insects”). Diapers are OK “if no scatophilia.” Mutilation depends on context but “cannot depict severing parts of the body.”
So while it is now no longer possible to search on Pornhub in English using terms like “underage” or “rape,” the company hasn’t tried hard to eliminate such videos. A member called “13yoboyteen” is allowed to post videos. A search for “r*pe,” turns up 1,901 videos. “Girl with braces” turns up 1,913 videos and suggests also trying “exxxtra small teens.” A search for “13yo” generates 155,000 videos. To be clear, most aren’t of 13-year-olds, but the fact that they’re promoted with that language seems to reflect an effort to attract pedophiles.
Moreover, some videos seem at odds with the list of banned content. “Runaway Girl Gets Ultimatum, Anal or the Streets” is the title of one Pornhub video. Another user posts videos documenting sex with teenage girls as they weep, protest and cry out in pain.
While Pornhub is becoming more careful about videos of potentially litigious Americans, it remains cavalier about overseas victims. One Indonesian video is titled “Junior High School Girl After Class” and shows what appears to be a young teenager having sex. A Chinese sex video, just taken down, was labeled: “Beautiful High School Girl Is Tricked by Classmates and Taken to the Top of a Building Where She Is Insulted and Raped.”
“They’re making money off the worst moment in my life, off my body,” a Colombian teenager who asked to be called Xela, a nickname, told me. Two American men paid her when she was 16 for a sexual encounter that they filmed and then posted on Pornhub. She was one of several Pornhub survivors who told me they had thought of or attempted suicide.
In the last few days as I was completing this article, two new videos of prepubescent girls being assaulted were posted, along with a sex video of a 15-year-old girl who was suicidal after it went online. I don’t see how good-faith moderators could approve any of these videos.
V.
“It’s always going to be online,” Nicole, a British woman who has had naked videos of herself posted and reposted on Pornhub, told me. “That’s my big fear of having kids, them seeing this.”
That’s a recurring theme among survivors: An assault eventually ends, but Pornhub renders the suffering interminable.
Naked videos of Nicole at 15 were posted on Pornhub. Now 19, she has been trying for two years to get them removed.
“Why do videos of me from when I was 15 years old and blackmailed, which is child porn, continuously [get] uploaded?” Nicole protested plaintively to Pornhub last year, in a message. “You really need a better system. … I tried to kill myself multiple times after finding myself reuploaded on your website.”
Nicole’s lawyer, Dani Pinter, says there are still at least three naked videos of Nicole at age 15 or 16 on Pornhub that they are trying to get removed.
“It’s never going to end,” Nicole said. “They’re getting so much money from our trauma.”
Pornhub has introduced software that supposedly can “fingerprint” rape videos and prevent them from being uploaded again. But Vice showed how this technology is easily circumvented on Pornhub.
One Pornhub scandal involved the Girls Do Porn production company, which recruited young women for clothed modeling gigs and then pushed them to perform in sex videos, claiming that the videos would be sold only as DVDs in other countries and would never go online. Reassured that no one would ever know, some of the women agreed — and then were shattered when the footage was aggressively marketed on Pornhub.
Girls Do Porn was prosecuted for sex trafficking and shut down. But those videos continue to surface and resurface on Pornhub; last time I checked, videos of six victims of Girls Do Porn were on Pornhub, which continues to profit from them.
One of the Girls Do Porn women I saw on Pornhub is now dead. She was murdered at 20, allegedly by an angry ex-boyfriend who is about to go on trial. I’m not disclosing her name because she should be remembered as a vibrant college athlete, and not for a sex video that represented her most mortifying moment.
VI.
So what’s the solution?
I had expected the survivors to want to shut down Pornhub and send its executives to prison. Some did, but others were more nuanced. Lydia, now 20, was trafficked as a child and had many rape videos posted on the site. “My stomach hurts all the time” from the tension, she told me, but she doesn’t want to come across as hostile to porn itself.
“I don’t want people to hear ‘No porn!’” Lydia told me. “It’s more like, ‘Stop hurting kids.’”
Susan Padron told me that she had assumed that pornography was consensual, until a boyfriend filmed her in a sex act when she was 15 and posted it on Pornhub. She has struggled since and believes that only people who have confirmed their identities should be allowed to post videos.
Jessica Shumway, who was trafficked and had a customer post a sex video on Pornhub, agrees: “They need to figure out who’s underage in the videos and that there’s consent from everybody in it.”
I asked Leo, 18, who had videos of himself posted on Pornhub when he was 14, what he suggested.
“That’s tough,” he said. “My solution would be to leave porn to professional production companies,” because they require proof of age and consent.
Right now, those companies can’t compete with mostly free sites like Pornhub and XVideos.
“Pornhub has already destroyed the business model for pay sites,” said Stoya, an adult film actress and writer. She, too, thinks all platforms — from YouTube to Pornhub — should require proof of consent to upload videos of private individuals.
Columnists are supposed to offer answers, but I struggle with solutions. If Pornhub curated videos more rigorously, the most offensive material might just move to the dark web or to websites in less regulated countries. Yet at least they would then not be normalized on a mainstream site.
More pressure and less impunity would help. We’re already seeing that limiting Section 230 immunity leads to better self-policing.
And call me a prude, but I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa.
I don’t see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation.
These measures wouldn’t kill porn or much bother consumers of it; YouTube thrives without downloads. Siri Dahl, a prominent porn star who does business with Pornhub, told me that my three proposals are “insanely reasonable.”
The world has often been oblivious to child sexual abuse, from the Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts. Too late, we prosecute individuals like Jeffrey Epstein or R. Kelly. But we should also stand up to corporations that systematically exploit children. With Pornhub, we have Jeffrey Epstein times 1,000.
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butwhatifidothis · 3 years ago
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Tumblr is starting to VERY MUCH dislike how long the other reblog chain is getting, so this will be Reblog Chain 2 of my jotting down notes of this fic. Here is the first reblog chain for Chapters 1-20
But it appears as though I was correct in sleeping off Chapter 20, because Chapter 21 is. Hm. bad. Very. Not good.
Chapter 21:
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Transcript under the cut:
Chapter 21: It's Called Scars so it Gonna Be Ass
- To be blunt, the constant need to reaffirm that yes, Edelgard went through terrible experimentation and that yes, they were very horrific, is tiring. This is chapter 21. The experiments occurred in chapter 2. Every single chapter between now and then have, at some point, mentioned that INDEED, Edelgard DID in fact go through horrific trauma. It is tiring to the reader to constantly have to reread the same thing - we know it happened. We know it was terrible. There's no need to constantly say so; we already understand as readers.
- "Every time the spark of life broke through Byleth’s blank face, it brought a flickering hope to the Flame Emperor’s heart." ->
- Firstly: Awkward use of the Flame Emperor epithet (its usage is on and off with how appropriate its been - this is off).
- Secondly: Once again, Byleth's face was rarely if ever blank. She was never the Ashen Demon, as even the last chapter showcased. The author is mistaking reservation with emotionlessness, which is simply wrong
- "There had been so many empty days and nights, without friendship, love or joy. With nothing to hope for, except someday, the peace of the grave." -> Suicidal tendencies: another trait that Edelgard doesn't have... (strikes against canon: 89)
- ...but Dimitri does. Counter: 12
- "Dimitri, too, was troubled by the thought, grasping the side of his head and frowning. As the spasm passed, he turned to Edelgard and smiled warmly." -> It seems a little callous to so casually toss Dimitri's symptoms into his interactions with others when such things simply don't occur in the canon interactions. It's not impossible, or strictly against canon, but it does not feel natural; it's more as though the author is shining bright neon signs that say DIMITRI HAS MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES than a genuine attempt at writing Dimitri's mental health issues. This is not the first time this sort of seemingly thoughtless showcasing of symptoms has happened (Noted separately: Dimitri having drastic mood swings)
- "No, this world must be ruled by humans…not cruel gods who ignored the prayers of little girls." -> This statement follows Edelgard internally chastising the actions of not gods, but the Children of the Goddess. This is a weaselly attempt at dodging Edelgard's racist beliefs that Nabateans should not be allowed positions of power by shifting the belief to apply to miscellaneous gods instead. While not inaccurate per se - she does also canonically believe that gods should have no power in human affairs - it is not honest
- "Byleth nodded with childlike simplicity. “We should all try to get along.”" -> Again describing Byleth as childlike and/or innocent. Counter: 3
- For those curious: yes, the rat scene is implemented, yes it is sloppy, yes it is out of character for Claude - so much so that it is being noted separately - and yes it is forced to all hell
- What will be noted here, however, is that this is yet another instance of a man being demeaned/humiliated for the honor of a woman. See quote: "Byleth was on him in an instant, a tempest forming in the sea of her blue eyes. “That isn’t funny.” She crossed her arms sternly. “Jokes are about bringing people together...about making them smile. Right now, the only person laughing is you.”" with Claude reacting awkwardly. Once again, Man Bad Woman Good
- In a showcasing of a complete lack of self-awareness within the fic: "“Maybe if you’d have taught the Deer instead…but since you seem to have no ambitions outside of cleaning up Edelgard’s messes…”" -> This is Claude being portrayed as the bad guy, not the one being completely and utterly right
- " She slapped Edelgard on the back, and smiled heartily. “I agree, Dimitri!” Edelgard grimaced, trying to hide the fact her teacher had just struck the wound she had received during the mock battle." -> As well as where undoubtedly countless scars would be, yes? Scars that still cause Edelgard pain? In fact, Edelgard has been slapped on the back by Byleth and Jeralt numerous times before, and yet expresses no pain or discomfort.
- Another thing, that I had not noted though ought to have: Edelgard, a victim of sexual assault (in this fic), rarely seems to mind people touching her. She gets a little surprised if someone tries to get her attention with touch, yes, but Byleth's constant unprompted and random touching of Edelgard is never said to do anything but bring warmth and joy and comfort to Edelgard. It seems as though Edelgard suffering through sexual assault is just another source of trauma for the author to dump onto her for nothing more than pity points
- This is incredibly harsh to say, yes, and I would usually refrain from attributing such harshness onto a piece of text, but remember that Edelgard's scars only cause her pain when it's convenient, that she only experiences headaches when it's convenient, that she experiences PTSD episodes (when Claude mentions the rat) when it's convenient (note that in this fic he does it outside of battle, where her getting triggered wouldn't compromise her chances at victory). Edelgard not being touch averse and being a victim of sexual assault are not inherently something bad - survivors react to trauma differently, after all - but it is another in a steadily longer line of instances where Edelgard is simply given trauma for the sake of making her pitiable to the reader and the love interest, not something that Edelgard genuinely has to struggle with.
- "As Claude and Dimitri looked at their classmate expectantly, Edelgard was wracked with another bout of guilt. Deep in her soul, the princess knew these peaceful days would end soon. When that happened, no feast or vows of friendship could make up for the chaos and horror she would unleash. It would be better to pull away, close off her heart, rather than fuel the flames of her inevitable betrayal." -> Aka, "Feel bad for me, I feel guilty for planning to cause the death and ruination of countless innocents' lives all because I convinced myself that my way is the only way to get things done my way without ever actually trying to see if more peaceful ways could have worked. I'm going to orphan children, force families to fight each other, have the land be rampaged by banditry, and overall bring chaos onto these days that I ADMIT ARE PEACEFUL all because I feel that my way would be better. Wah wah pity me but I don't wanna be pitied I promise wah wah."
- "Byleth shrugged with a characteristic blend of innocence and spirit. “I guess I just like winning.” She began to blush and grabbed Edelgard’s hand. "It's so exciting! I’ve never had anyone other than Papa to celebrate with before!”" -> Byleth = innocent/childlike. Counter: 4
- The fic likes to reaffirm again and again that Byleth is "now" only acting like this due to Edelgard's presence in her life. Note also these statements written previously: "Every day, [Edelgard] was watching the person she loved grow and change. Become who she always was supposed to be." This, perhaps unintentionally, again enforces the "Lesbian Love is Pure and Innocent" trope; these wlw are only allowed to be their good girl, innocent selves - who they were always supposed to be - due to the pure lesbian love they have found with one another
- Count Bergliez didn't know of the experiments initially, but he eventually found out and did nothing to stop them, fleeing from a young and tortured El who was pleading for him to save her - Unnecessarily painting Count Bergliez as a spineless coward too afraid of Duke Aegir to save a child in pain
- Once again, a man fails to save a woman and further traumatizes her
- It should be noted that Bergliez is fearful not for his own life, but for that of his children, who were the ones Duke Aegir threatened. He, very similar to Ionius, cannot save Edelgard, except Bergliez (unlike Ionius) has a tangible, physical, explainable reason as to why he couldn't, and yet it is him who is painted as the bad guy, not Ionius. He is worthy of Edelgard's scorn and hatred, but Ionius only receives a begrudging feeling of betrayal from Edelgard that she feels guilty for harboring, even though he failed her far more than Bergliez failed her.
- "Daughters must always be loyal to their fathers" trope
- "No decent person thought the things Edelgard did. Just as her body had been twisted and shattered by the experiments, her mind bore terrible scars. Scars that the monster kept hidden, so she could walk in the world of men." -> Dehumanizing oneself as a monster as well as having violent thoughts (that specifically stem from trauma) one feels guilty for harboring are not traits Edelgard shows in canon... (strikes against canon, 90, 91)
- ...but Dimitri does. Counter: 13, 14
- "world of men?" Did the author perhaps mean "world of man," as in mankind? Keep note of
- The reason as to why Bergliez is said to have witnessed young El's tortured state and did nothing to help her is revealed: in canon, he dislikes her. It is blatantly and objectively said that he and Edelgard share a mutual displeasure in the other's company. What this fic had him do will be used as an excuse as to why he doesn't hate her, since no one is allowed to dislike Edelgard on the "good" side
- Edelgard, upon being asked if revenge is the reason she is doing what she's doing (reuniting Fodlan): "“No.” Edelgard put her hand to her chin thoughtfully. “I think for a long time, it was…but after a while, I realized that revenge wouldn’t satisfy me.” She looked at the blue sky above. “After you go through that much suffering…when you beg for help, day after day, and no one cares...you realize that nothing will ever truly make you feel safe again. The only thing I want is for this madness to end.”" -> This is internally inconsistent. See chapter 15 note: ""You know why they created me in the first place.” / “To reunite Fódlan,” spat Hubert. “It was all my father talked about.” / “And I will give it to them. "" This directly connects Edelgard's want to reunite Fodlan to the wants of her tormenters (as this states she is doing it out of spite). Note how Hubert spits at the idea of reuniting Fodlan, and how it was all his father - portrayed as a villain - talked about. This is not what this Edelgard wants, at least not of her own independent want. Earlier in this very chapter, Edelgard internally states a want to hurt Bergliez for leaving her behind. To say that she now no longer thinks vengeance would satisfy her, or that none of the reason that she is doing everything she does is out of a want for revenge, is ridiculous
- Edelgard to Bergliez, upon being asked what will happen to him and his family should Edelgard rise to power: "“All those who distinguish themselves will be rewarded. Given your history, I have little doubt you will be among them.” She nervously played with her white gloves. “All I ask is that when I seize back control of the throne, I can count on the military’s support.”" -> Yes, all who distinguish themselves to Edelgard, for Edelgard's cause, that Edelgard can see and/or know of. How likely is it that a poor farmer who is exceptional at fighting will actually be noticed by Edelgard and be given the credit he deserves, when others who may not be as meritable but do have some merit have the connections to show themselves directly in front of Edelgard? What means will Edelgard give the poor soldiers (that she or Byleth aren't already friends with, notably Dorothea and Leonie) that will allow them to be able to be seen by her and have their merits recognized? Edelgard is the one who says who gains power after all, so it is her they must prove themselves to, but how can they realistically do that?
- What about professions that are not immediately beneficial to Edelgard's cause, such as the arts? How will they fare in Edelgard's society, when their works and talents yield no tangible, objective results (such as, say, farming)?
- Something the fic will address?
- Edelgard does not nervously do anything in front of those she is trying to negotiate with in canon, not even Thales. Strikes against canon: 92
- "[Bergliez] could only laugh in response. “I think we’re going to get along rather well, my lady…and the other?”" -> Except Bergliez and Edelgard don't get along well, ever. Pre ts they are stated to dislike each other, which continues even onto post ts with Bergliez being the only noble Edelgard couldn't bring to heel. Strikes against canon: 93
- As predicted: No one is allowed to dislike Edelgard on the "good" side
- Literally forgot Hubert was with Edelgard and Bergliez lmao
- Ionius tried to consolidate power to be rid of the consort system due to his unending love for Anselma -> A ridiculous idea, plain and simple. Ionius was Emperor. If he wished to be rid of the consort system there was no need for him to try and take away all power from the other Imperial houses.
- If Ionius truly loved Anselma, why did he allow her to be exiled from the Empire? Why didn't he step in and use his influence as Emperor to help her?
- Edelgard, when she is Emperor - passed down a supposedly empty crown, at that - showcases the all-encompassing power the title of Emperor truly holds to one willing to use that power. That Ionius supposedly wanted to do all of these reforms and yet nothing at all was done, ever (save for ruining Houses Hrym and Ordelia, something even this fic has as canon), if Ionius did want to make these reforms, means that he was too spineless and cowardly to truly go through with trying to pass them. This again unintentionally showcases how awful a ruler and weak-willed a person Ionius was when he had power when trying to paint him in this righteous light.
- Lambert was stated to be trying to pass reforms before he died in canon, not Ionius. From parents to the children, the author is attributing traits from Lambert onto Ionius just as he (author's confirmed gender is male) attributes traits from Dimitri onto Edelgard
- " Her father and mother…she had thought their romance a fairy tale-a story from her father to make a motherless child feel valued. But…they truly had loved each other." -> Edelgard does believe Ionius when he told her of the story of when he and Anselma (supposedly) met each other. There is nothing to indicate that Edelgard thought it to be a lie: in fact, in canon: "But I choose to believe there was genuine love between them." Strikes against canon: 94
- It seems as though finally, after around 18 chapters, Edelgard's scars will finally cause her genuine inconvenience due to her complex about them as well as her trust issues. She has a gash on her back from the Battle of Eagle and Lion, but will not have it treated if Manuela isn't the healer, and yet the woman is occupied dealing with the rest of the students who were injured. How will this fic deal with this?
- Ingrid, referring to her and Sylvain: ""We just switched from Felix lecturing us all day to listening to Edelgard moralizing, didn’t we?"" -> The author is trying to compare a childhood friend whose friends have had years to get used to their barbed tongue to a stranger that directly insults the dreams of one of them. Something which Ingrid canonically hates having be done to her, even from Felix, a childhood friend. Once again, Ingrid being so casual about Edelgard being so disrespectful of her dreams is out of character. Strikes against canon: 95
- "Sylvain shook his head knowingly, ignoring Felix’s truly alarming scowl. “You should have seen his face, Edelgard. Dimitri would go on and on about this girl he met when he was a kid…and Felix would complain about her for hours!” He looked at Felix and smiled. “For all his whining about the “Boar,” nobody loves Dimitri more than him.”" -> Oh? A romantic gay male relationship presenting itself within the fic?
- Another vision of SS experienced by Edelgard. Word from a nameless guard: "The woman, Byleth, leading their forces... She’s not human! She killed half my battalion with one swing of that sword of hers. She didn’t speak, she didn’t shout, she didn’t even change her expression!” The panicked man was teetering on the edge of hysteria. “All those people rallying around her, and it’s like she doesn’t care at all. Like she's a walking corpse!"" -> Obviously saying that Byleth becomes the Ashen Demon if not allowed to be with Edelgard.
- Unintentional statement: Byleth can't be the pure innocent (lesbian) woman without Edelgard's (lesbian) love granting her purity, reverting her to a monstrous, corrupt demon incapable of humanity
- See chapter 20 note: "Implying that choosing SS - aka, choosing the Nabateans - makes Byleth less human. Intentional?" Confirmed to be intentional. Also false: in canon, even when accounting for CF's lesser chapter count, Byleth emotes far more on SS than on CF, which matches with CF having Edelgard call Byleth detached in their A support. Strikes against canon: 96
- The same nameless soldier, same context: "And those Faerghus kids…” / Edelgard leaned forward in her chair. “Ingrid…Sylvain…what of them?” / “They…they were animals. Screaming and ranting about revenge for the King.” -> Is the author really demonizing Sylvain and Ingrid for (potentially!) being mad at Edelgard for murdering one of their childhood friends? Is that really the depths the Edelgard worship will sink to, that friends becoming enraged at a friend's unjust murder from a warlord is being portrayed as something sad for the warlord? Just what else should Edelgard be pitied for?
- "The scared girl desperately tried to drown out the thoughts that reverberated incessantly. / They’re going to despise us…it’s destiny. And how could they not? If we were truly good, the Goddess would have saved us…protected us. But She didn’t. The Goddess took Mother. She took our family. And soon, She’ll take everything else we love. She hates us. / It’s what we deserve." - Now confirmed that Edelgard hears multiple voices in her head tormenting her. That trait that, once again, Edelgard does not have... (Strikes against canon: 97)
- ...but Dimitri does. This is the third time this chapter that this has happened, and far from the only chapter to display such baffling characterization of Edelgard via Dimitri's traits. It is nonsensical.
- " Why had [Edelgard] even been born at all? Nonexistence would have been preferable to watching every faint dream be dashed, to suffering alone over and over. She was just…so tired of being alive." -> Once. Again. Suicidal tendencies/thoughts is not a trait Edelgard shows in canon... (Strikes against canon: 98)
- ...but Dimitri does. The fourth! The fourth time in one chapter the author desperately wanted to just write Dimitri!
- If the fic wanted to take Edelgard in a different direction than canon does and has her display some of these traits, it would be more passable, but this fic is under the delusion that it is in any way following canon closely, especially in regards to Edelgard, and so this can only be seen as a desperate attempt from the author to have Edelgard be sympathetic by donning the skin of an actually sympathetic character such as Dimitri
- "Edelgard looked at herself in the mirror. The back of her academy uniform was stained red, the rhythmic, soft dripping of blood assaulting the princess’ ears." -> And no one commented on this? No one was worried? Not Ingrid, Sylvain, and Felix, who were sitting right by her? Not Lysithea, who saw her take the blow to her back and never get it healed? Not Dimitri, who delivered the blow? It just so happened that literally no one at all noticed this?
- Byleth literally slapped Edelgard on the back earlier? Wouldn't her hand come back red with blood if it were seeping through the uniform?
** The scene that follows the previous note is too long to quote, despite how truly terrible it is. Long quotes, even extremely long quotes, have been presented in these notes before, but the length this quotation would be if the full extent of it were written here would be a mess, and quite frankly, at that point it would do one better to simply go to the fanfiction itself and read the text from there. With the context received from these notes, if one wishes to see the words for themselves, go to chapter 21 of The Emperor and the Goddess, enter Ctrl + F (or Find in Page on mobile devices), and enter the phrase "Byleth crossed her arms, clearly frustrated" verbatim. The following note will not be quoting the entire scene from the fic (merely summarizing it), though context is needed to understand how truly bad the scene is. **
- To have hope in this fic performing anything correctly is proving to be a fool's dream, for it has yet to do anything right; that includes the aforementioned gash upon Edelgard's back. As stated, it did not draw the attention of those who were sitting around her nor did it draw the attention of the one who witnessed the injury itself, nor of the one who delivered the injury itself, so no one commented on the gaping, bleeding wound Edelgard was "hiding" from everyone as she turned her (bleeding) back to them and left for the baths to clean up (it must be heavily stressed: immediately after leaving it is revealed that the blood is seeping through her uniform). As she was washing - naked, of course - Byleth just so happened to step into the baths with only a towel wrapped around her "for modesty," much to the horror of Edelgard, for she does not want Byleth seeing her scarred body. A slight argument arises between the two over Edelgard getting her injuries checked, before Byleth warns Edelgard that she will go to Rhea and force her to go to the infirmary should Edelgard continue to refuse treatment, which drives Edelgard past the brink. She raises her arms from the bathwater and presents her scars (""Fine!... If you want to see so badly, here!""), to the horror of Byleth ("Byleth Eisner was not a woman given to strong emotional reactions, but she staggered back, hands over her mouth."). Edelgard cries in hysteria, fear of her beloved teacher running away in disgust over her ugly, mutilated body overwhelming her. But Byleth, childlike in her innocence, shared that she too is scarred in strange ways, and that she too is scared of failing those around her - that she has no ambitions save to help and protect those around her. Byleth reveals that it is Edelgard whom Byleth looks up to for always being so strong and always moving forward, and shows that without Edelgard Byleth wouldn't know how to handle the pressure everyone else puts on her. The exchange ends with Byleth reassuring Edelgard that she is beautiful and not the monster she thinks she is.
- There is no nice way of putting this: this is a classic example of how not to write someone opening up to another about something. Edelgard views herself as weak, ugly, repulsive, a monster, shameful, but it is Byleth's love and affection that gives her comfort and warmth, that gives her hope of something more. It forces Byleth to behave wildly out of character (the author can try to excuse this with "well she wouldn't normally behave like this!" all he wants, it doesn't matter when it goes against the base, canonical Byleth. Strikes against canon: 99) in order for Edelgard's scarred body to be seen as something that is repulsive, that is ugly, that is stained, so much so that the pure, childlike, innocent Byleth couldn't stand to see something so tainted. And yet it is that same pure, childlike, innocent Byleth's pure, innocent, childlike love that pushes away the pain of Edelgard's scars for just that moment. Other characters become suddenly blind and/or forgetful of Edelgard's obvious, bleeding wound so that it is Byleth who can be the one to save Edelgard with her pure, innocent, childlike presence and her pure, innocent, childlike uncertainty about her own insecurities (but only when it is convenient for Edelgard, as even Byleth didn't noticed the gaping, bleeding wound until she was alone with Edelgard where no one could interrupt their bonding moment). This scene is inorganic and forced, ham-fisting Edelgard and Byleth in the same room - the wash room, where both are either naked or nearly naked - so that Byleth is the one to find Edelgard, no one else. No one was worried enough about the sudden exit Edelgard took from the conversation she was having to follow her and make sure she was alright, and Byleth just so happened to enter the baths right after Edelgard. The scene is, to be frank, insulting.
- There have been a couple of joking references to a book titled Stones to Abigail in these notes, but in all seriousness, this scene plays unsettlingly similar to a scene in said book, where a scarred girl who is naked reveals her "ugly" and "revolting" scarred body to the love interest, who goes on to soothe and comfort the naked girl as best they can. The resemblance is uncanny
- Byleth described as childlike/innocent. Counter: 5
- Edelgard, in canon, never expresses feeling herself to be ugly, or repulsive, or a monster. Strikes against canon: 100
- Again, Edelgard's scars are only important when they are convenient - this time, in helping develop the romantic relationship between her and Byleth
- There are ways in which scars can be utilized without being problematic, but certainly not when this much focus is placed on them and yet they are only truly present when they cannot hinder Edelgard.
- Perhaps particularly insulting is this phrase from Edelgard: "Did she actually love Byleth at all, or just being saved by her?" Yes, Edelgard, you do simply want to be saved by Byleth, because that is precisely what the narrative has been drilling into the reader's heads ever since Byleth showed herself. Byleth is Edelgard's light, Byleth is Edelgard's hope, Byleth gives Edelgard back her humanity, Byleth is Edelgard's one source of joy, Byleth is Edelgard's entire life, and nothing, absolutely nothing in this fic has shown this to ever be a bad thing. This dependence on Byleth to bring Edelgard joy at the near complete expense of everyone else has been propped up as something romantic, and yet it's now, 21 chapters and over 85K+ words in, that we're supposed to believe that this was actually Edelgard being unhealthy? Even though the author himself said that this was what he enjoyed about their relationship, how much they found each other in each other? Even though we see what the author thinks would happen to the two of them should they separate - Edelgard, lonely and afraid without her beloved teach, and Byleth, the Ashen Demon who cares for nothing without her beloved student - in her visions of SS? This is a joke
- It cannot be overstated that Byleth came to the bathhouses completely independently of Edelgard. She did not come to specifically see her because she followed her out of worry for Edelgard due to her injury - she only knows that Edelgard's injured in the first place due to seeing bloody bandages that Edelgard removed in the bathhouse, before Byleth arrived.
- Author's notes: "On Bergliez, we find out very little in-game, but he 1) offers himself for execution so his men can go free in SS and 2) seems to be actually competent at his job. I thought a nuanced portrayal was more interesting, since I've been writing Aegir as the absolute worst person in the world." -> Note: this is what the author believes to be a nuanced take on someone. Someone who likes Edelgard entirely and does nearly whatever they can to help her, but they did one thing that's morally gray (leaving a child behind to save his own children from the same fate) that is portrayed as objectively bad, so now they are nuanced. While perhaps this sort of character would be truly nuanced in better hands, as it is with his actions being portrayed as something that is obviously so completely and utterly wrong and him someone who deserves complete and utter condemnation - and yet Ionius, who does far worse for far less understandable reasons, gets a comparative slap on the wrist - it causes confusion as to Edelgard's lines. Bergliez seeing her the one time and never helping her is enough for her to want to hurt him as she was hurt, but her father repeatedly coming to and "being forced" to watch her actively be tortured and doing nothing does little to invoke similar depths of resentment? Even granting the idea that "she gives more slack to her father," Ionius is objectively and far worse than Bergliez, down to doing hard things to protect their children, and yet it is only Bergliez who is shined in this unpleasant a light
- To be clear, Bergliez's decision was not a good one, but understandable. It is a gray decision to make. But notice how he is called "gray" and "nuanced" and yet Ionius is nearly completely innocent, as described by the author himself, despite their being no given explaination as to why "he was a figurehead" should be a good enough reason to wash him literally standing there and watching as his children - some of whom aren't even teens yet - get slowly tortured and killed.
- "There are many localization changes I understand (Byleth wanting to get drunk after the battle is one of them), but Treehouse's decision to remove Ionius' entire reason for power centralization (eliminating the consorts) was a big, big mistake." -> Given the history of this author's grasp on the Japanese language, this needs to be checked, as he cannot be trusted as a source as to whether this is true
******* Notes of Claude mischaracterization: Chapter 21, section 1, paragraphs 1, 21 & 23, 27 *******
66 notes · View notes
ellesstorm · 3 years ago
Text
A Yule Ball Proposition, Pt. 1
a/n part 2 on my tumblr page!
“Pssst. Granger.”
It was a late school night, and Hermione was burrowed in her homework at the quieter tables in the back of the library. Although fourth year had just begun, Hermione wanted to make sure she was on top of her game for her OWL exams next year. 
“Granger!”
Hermione whipped her head around, looking for the source of the whisper. To her surprise, Draco Malfoy stepped out of the shadows, his face carefully blank. 
Hermione narrowed her eyes, immediately tensing. “Malfoy. If you’ve got something to say to me, please drown yourself in the Great Lake,” she bit at him. She was really getting tired of the smarmy insults Malfoy and his friends had thrown her way over the past years. Once she’d gotten over the initial sting of his rude remarks, Malfoy had become less of a bully and more of an annoying housefly.  
Malfoy sneered back, pale blue eyes glinting as he sauntered over to her table with his chin forward. “Don’t worry, Granger. I’d rather have the Giant Squid strangle me than suffer from your presence.” He dropped into the chair across her, expression suddenly becoming oddly serious and vaguely uncomfortable. “Actually, I have a proposition for you.”
Hermione blinked at him. “A proposition?” She briefly wondered if this is a prank. 
“First. No one knows about this,” Malfoy ground out, his voice tight. 
Hermione smirked at Malfoy’s discomfort. “Why Malfoy,” she simpered. “You don’t want your friends to know you’re speaking to a mudblood?” 
“Would you want Potty and Weasel to know you’re secretly meeting their sworn enemy in dark corners of the library?” Draco arched a brow at her. 
“What’s the proposition?” Hermione asked, unwilling to concede that he was correct in his assumption.
“The Yule Ball is approaching, and given your subpar dancing abilities--”  
“My dancing is fine, thank you.” Hermione glared at him. 
Draco snickered. “Your dancing might be fine for a prancing hippogriff, but not if you’re going with Krum. Did you know that the champions of each school perform a dance at the ball?”
“And how do you know I’m going to the ball with Viktor?” Hermione hadn’t told anyone that, save for Ginny, the only person she trusted not to spill her secrets. 
Draco gave her a wide, Cheshire Cat smile. “I caught you practicing with Krum the other night. I’m surprised to see he still has full use of both feet.” 
Hermione immediately felt her face burn. She had spent so much of her life feeling like an outsider. In muggle primary school, she’d frequently been bullied for her accidental bursts of magic, turning to the companionship of her books instead. And when she found out she was a witch, Hermione had been elated, hoping to finally find a place where she could belong. She eagerly swallowed as many books on the wizarding world as she could the summer before first year, but soon discovered that she was an outsider here, too. On top of her blood status, her classmates continued to mock her for her proclivity toward knowledge, her appearances, and her apparent bossiness. 
So when Viktor Krum, international quidditch star and handsome celebrity, asked her to the Yule Ball, Hermione finally felt some sense of acceptance and belonging. But unfortunately, she quickly discovered that she had two left feet. She and Viktor agreed to practice dancing together frequently, and though Viktor’s dancing was far from lacking, his teaching skills weren’t on the same level. Their practice sessions often ended with bruises on Viktor’s shins and meet and Hermione profusely apologizing. 
“What are you offering?” Hermione inquired.
“I’ll teach you how to dance.”
Hermione blinked again at Draco, wondering if she heard him wrong. “You don’t even tolerate me, and you want to teach me how to dance?” 
Draco scoffs. “Of course I don’t want to teach you how to dance. However, I am in need of--” Draco’s face contorts into one of disdain as he breaks off, and Hermione internally rolls her eyes at his inability to get over his pride. She briefly wondered how desperate Draco was to lower himself to her level. 
He shifted in his chair, clearing his throat. “I need tutoring. My grades are not...great. I’ll ensure you don’t make a fool of yourself dancing if you help me study.” 
Hermione stares at him. “Why me?”
Draco sighs, rubbing his face as if relieving a headache. “Despite your blood status--” Hermione felt her hackles rise again--”I suppose you are the Brightest Witch of our age.” Draco visibly grimaced again, as if he’s in physical pain at the mere acknowledgement of her abilities. 
Hermione pondered Draco’s offer. The press was already writing awful things about her, and she didn’t want to hand them another knife. And tutoring wasn’t hard--she helped her friends with studying all the time. 
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Really?” It was Draco’s turn to look surprised. 
“Yes. On the condition that you will not make racist remarks at me.”
“Fine.”
Hermione extended her right hand, her gaze meeting his. “Shake on it.” 
He grasped her hand firmly, staring boldly into her eyes. “Meet me next weekend in the library. This table will do.” 
Draco stood up, and inclined his head in farewell.
Hermione watched him disappear into the dark library shelves, her hand tingling at the missing warmth. 
140 notes · View notes
angelofthequeers · 4 years ago
Note
How is Zoe's comic racist? (sorry don't mean to question you, genuinely curious) Also, I admit I was also sucked into the salt fic whirlpool, but quickly left after I realized how toxic it was being. Could you also elaborate on GalahadWilder, if it isn't too uncomfortable for you? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, or ask uncomfortable questions.
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I can’t point out everything off the top of my head but the racism (along with everything else but that’s not the focus) is a large part of what made me throw my hands up and write this. And I won’t be answering any more asks about any of this because I just want to get it out there so people know (because of how many people genuinely don’t see it) and then go back to trying to forget that this shit ever existed, rather than dragging out some new fandom drama. Also keep in mind that while I’m West Asian/Arab, I’m also white-passing so if I get anything wrong, I appreciate call-outs. (Also I finally got my laptop charger today so I can snip my posts again 😭)
Her treatment of Max in ‘Gamer’.
It’s not unique to her; it’s a very common salter thing to utterly tear into Max for being a “sexist jerk” and daring to underestimate princess Marinette because she’s a girl. Never mind that they canonically aren’t close friends because of Chloé’s bullying, so Max probably had no idea that Marinette’s liked video games all this time, where Adrien is the new boy so it’s just one more thing to learn about him.
It’s especially heinous compared to how the other classmates are treated far more leniently for their own mistakes - they still get salted on but Max, aka the Black boy, always seems to get singled out and held to higher standards. Just look at ‘Chameleon’ and how the other classmates are mildly to moderately attacked by salters but Max gets utterly ripped to shreds because he “should know better”. (Never mind that just because he’s smart doesn’t mean he’s good at human interaction. They just want to attack him).
It also angers me because people like Nathaniel and Ivan are absolved of what they do as akumas (like kidnapping others and literally forcing someone to go on a date with them) because they couldn’t help it, yet Max is literally held responsible for what he did when akumatised (because he dared to go after Princess Marinette) and even for daring to get akumatised in the first place. Both these things just make him a sore loser, apparently.
So SL ‘Gamer’ was the final straw for me, especially with how she characterised Max as a smug arsehole, and it made me so angry that I just exploded to my friends, but I didn’t know how to directly call it out without looking like a petty bitch.
Here’s a post I made about salters and ‘Gamer’ if you’re interested in a more coherent and in-depth thing about it.
Alya’s treatment throughout the whole thing.
In canon, she’s an enthusiastic and passionate girl who sometimes gets carried away and goes too far and who idolises Ladybug because Ladybug stands against evil. Here? She’s treated as the butt of the joke for being so starry-eyed over superheroes that she idolises Scarlet Lady while Marinette mocks her behind her back. Never mind her iconic line of “all that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing” and this is why she loves Majestia in the first place. Never mind that she loves Ladybug because Ladybug is kind and passionate and strong and creative. Canon Alya wouldn’t want a bar of Scarlet Lady, who just sits around complaining, and yet SL!Alya worships her because...why? Running joke? The only Black girl in the series is treated as a gag to be made fun of by someone who’s supposed to be her best friend, just for the audience’s amusement. Marinette’s probably meant to look funny and relatable here, but she just looks like a major bitch to her new friend. Alya’s flaws are basically blown up and exaggerated for comedic effect, while Marinette in contrast is airbrushed to perfection, with no flaws and no anxiety that was only alleviated in canon by - guess what - being Ladybug.
It’s like Zoe wants to stick to canon while adding her own little “fun” twists for humour, like making Marinette snarky and perfect (which just makes her look like an utter bitch) and in the case of Alya, it does her so dirty that even Lila is more sympathetic. LILA. After SL humiliates Lila, Alya looks doubtful but buys some bullshit excuse so that she can continue to be the Scar-worshipping idiot. And then in the aftermath, her concern isn’t for Lila, the girl who was humiliated and bullied by a literal superhero and then ended up sick. No, she’s angry because...Lila lied on her blog. The blog that doesn’t have nearly as much recognition as in canon because SL would never validate her, unlike Ladybug. So her passion for her blog is exaggerated to imply that she’d say that a girl deserves to be bullied and sick because she told a few lies (since at this point, Alya doesn’t know about any possible malice on Lila’s part, just as in canon. All that’s known is the lying for attention).
It’s horrible hypocrisy, where Alya is held to higher standards than the other (white) characters and when she fails to meet those standards, she’s torn into. She’s not afforded any sympathy for being hurt that Lila lied to her; in fact, she’s demonised for feeling hurt, especially because of the running joke that her blog is focused on someone so horrible and she doesn’t see that. Lila is presented as the sympathetic one here. LILA. Just because Alya dared to believe her in canon.
Also, how she’s constantly trying to either tease Marinette for having a crush or insist that Marinette’s only doing what she does because of a crush...even though according to this ‘verse’s canon, Marinette is too good to make mistakes and do obsessive stuff over a crush, which is why canon Alya thinks this about her in the first place. That didn’t just come out of nowhere in the show purely for “woe is Marinette, her best friend doubts her”.
Like in the first part of ‘Gamer’, where she’s accusing Marinette of only entering the tournament to flirt with Adrien while Marinette so “coolly and calmly” rebuts her...why? By the ‘verse’s own logic, Marinette isn’t a flustered mess around Adrien. The only purpose of this scene is to glorify Marinette and her amazing calmness while making Alya look like a nosy idiot who dares to doubt her best friend. The logic of the ‘verse and of canon clash really jarringly in moments like this, and it becomes clear that the only purpose of these moments is to make Marinette look better at the expense of others. Most often her best friend, who’s an utter idiot for not seeing Scarlet Lady’s true nature and just can’t keep her nose out of Marinette’s business and so comes to wrong conclusions. Why are Marinette and Alya even friends in this ‘verse? SL!Marinette’s been nothing but condescending towards Alya most of the time.
Uh, and also the way she occasionally whitewashes Alya. Just look at the SL headers. She literally made Alya, aka a Black girl who’s one of the good guys, lighter than Lila, aka a white girl who’s one of the bad guys and not even that tanned in canon. Why do people make one of the villains darker and often whitewash one of the heroes? It’s not that hard to figure out.
(Also the way she really played into the aggressive Black girl stereotype in ‘Horrificator’ over a minor argument, even physically threatening Nino. Why? Literally why did she have to go full-on aggressive instead of just looking angry and scolding him or something?)
This all might not be conscious on Zoe’s part but the way Alya is treated is still disgusting, especially if you’re operating on internalised salt from other aspects of the salty fandom. I’ve seen her claims that she’s trying to help Alya improve and she’s not being salty but...even if she’s not being consciously salty, her salt is definitely still leaking over it and part of that salt includes racism. I also don’t see how making Alya a joke and exaggerating her flaws is helping her to improve when there was plenty to go off in canon but, well, that might just be me.
Even Marinette, who’s pretty much treated as white for 99% of it.
Marinette, aka the girl who’s only made visibly “Asian/Other” in SL ‘Reflekta’ with her Chinese-inspired Black Cat suit and name which is a one-off, while her permanent Bee outfit is just the bland tight suit that salters criticise Ladybug for having and her name is just Marigold. It comes across as using “Asianness” as a costume and it really didn’t sit right with me at first, but it took me a while to tease out why exactly this made me feel ick.
There’s nothing wrong with touching more on Marinette’s heritage and expanding on it in ways that the show doesn’t, especially because this is a big sticking point for salters, but again...it’s only a one-off. A costume. There aren’t casual hints sprinkled throughout the comic that just normally establish Marinette as half-Chinese, aside from like a page or two in ‘Timebreaker’ showing Sabine’s outfit. It’s another ‘Kung Food’ where it’s slammed into one episode and shoved into our faces that Marinette Is Chinese and it’s really jarring and unpleasant.
It just comes across as fetishising, is all. I don’t think it’s something most people would pick up on unless they’re used to being able to see this kind of thing.
Master Fu. Oh, Master Fu.
From an old man who made mistakes but tried as best as he could with the limited knowledge he had, he’s now a bumbling idiot who...put the earrings in Marinette’s bag instead of her room for some reason? To kickstart the plot? Especially because the ring was still in Adrien’s room. It’s very, very contrived.
And then in one of the most recent updates, Zoe has Adrien - a white boy - physically threaten Fu, aka an elderly Asian man. It’s disgusting. I was gobsmacked when I first saw it. And that’s the thing with salters: they tear into Adrien for being a white boy so they can look Enlightened when he hasn’t actually done anything racist, yet they then turn around and perpetuate actual racism in trying to “fix” him
There’s probably more but those are the examples that jump out at me of the racism in SL. There are plenty more problems but...whatever. I’ll be here all day if I try and cover those.
As for the Galahad thing...it’s personal. That original post was as much as I was comfortable revealing.
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rwdestuffs · 4 years ago
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The real problem with the show.
Look: I’m not one of those idiots who is going to constantly shit on the show for this whole thing, nor am I one to blindly praise the show for doing the bare minimum.
But I am someone who is going to try to put this into perspective.
Our main issue that’s going to be talked about is the fact that this show doesn’t really address the issues from previous volumes.
Take Weiss’ racism for example. They didn’t want to have to address her developing. The whole issue with Weiss is that the whole thing got resolved off-screen. There’s no reason to have the conflict on-screen if the whole thing was going to be resolved off-screen. The big problem is that this show didn’t want to tackle heavy subjects that they weren’t comfortable or capable in tackling. And like, I get it. There are some subjects that people aren’t that well-versed in, and truth be told, there’s a hard way to determine if something that is wrong is worse than something that isn’t there at all. They didn’t want one of their main characters to be a racist.
But the problem here is that that’s okay. Especially when the characters grow and learn from that. I’m sure that everyone has pointed this out already, but Sokka was a sexist in the early episodes of A:tLA, but he learned his lesson and started regularly chugging his Respect Woman juice happily and regularly. Weiss’ whole racism thing was kinda… dropped. That’s not really interesting.
Your characters should have flaws. Real flaws. Ad real character traits. Character quirks that could make for some really interesting moments. I think I mentioned this somewhere on an earlier post, but Ruby being a weapon nut could have been a really good and natural way to explain everyone’s weapons. She could brag about hers, hype up Yang’s, pester Weiss about hers, or even ask about Blake’s, and boom! Everyone’s weapons are explained. Their names, what they can do, and how they work. And maybe even whether or not they made them (I imagine that Blake made hers with help from others, while Yang and Ruby made theirs on their own from scratch, and Weiss got a hers commissioned). This could have even extended to team JNPR too. We already know that Jaune’s is an heirloom, but what about Nora? What about Ren? How about Pyrrha? The thing about that quirk being dropped is that it takes away something from Ruby. HBomb talked about it in his video, but an arc where Ruby helps Jaune forge a new weapon or even add to his existing one would have been so awesome. But no. The upgrade comes from a never-will-be-seen-again blacksmith in Volume 4, and the best it can do is… Become a bigger sword. Then it gets another one in Volume 7 where it’s Penny’s creator that delivers the upgrade. These aren’t emotionally significant in any major way. Sure, the first upgrade is combining Pyrrha’s stuff with his, but it would have been more emotionally impactful if he had saved those things, did his damnedest to bring them to Pyrrha’s family, only for them to now say something like “Pyrrha sent us letters about you. She would want you to have them.” And then and only then, would he incorporate them into his weapons. Imagine how impactful that would have been! Imagine how heartwarming that moment would have been! I’m the resident Jaune hater of the rwde tag, and I’m pretty sure that I would love that scene. I might’ve even called it my favorite.
Like… These character moments get dropped for no real reason. A lot of character moments are just rendered insignificant because of them wanting to advance the story. But a story takes time. It takes setup. Let’s take Dragonball Z for example. There’s a lot of buildup to Gohan being Goku’s successor before he eventually gets upstaged again because the fanbase wanted Goku back. He had those bursts of power that made him stronger. It was built up to. It was hyped up. There was a lot of foreshadowing. Pyrrha’s death… Didn’t really have any of that. Outside of her name, she wasn’t really set up to die. Especially since she hardly had any interactions with the characters outside of Jaune. Because of this, Pyrrha’s death doesn’t hit as hard as it could. Why exactly is Ruby going ballistic? We never saw any major scenes that would indicate them as anything beyond classmates. Like… Moments where Ruby and Pyrrha bond over having high expectations for them. Ruby’s supposedly the daughter of a famous huntress, so everyone seeing her as basically another “Summer Clone” would be a really awesome move to go with. Ruby’s quest should not only to be to save the world, but to also prove that she isn’t a carbon copy of her mother. Have characters like Yang ad Qrow point out what Ruby does different. Maybe one of them is encouraging of being different, while the other doesn’t like it because they want Summer back. I guess Yang would encourage Ruby being different while Qrow would discourage it. A major theme in Volumes 6 ad 7 seems to be how the previous generation kinda screwed things over for the next one. Couple this with Oscar also trying to separate himself from Ozpin (and then immediately trying to talk down Ironwood in a way that Oz would try to do (seriously… WTF?)), Ruby could do something different.
Something that Ruby could do different is something in regards to her plan to stop the end of the world. Instead of trying to defeat Salem, she could try understanding her. I mentioned that Salem was effectively gaslit into being the villain, so the characters trying to help her recover would be an awesome moment. As of right now, everyone (even the fndm) wants to demonize Salem, and doesn’t want her to be redeemed. This is despite all the shit she went through. If anything, Salem was restraining herself when all she wanted was freedom and a life with Ozma. She could have very well have wanted to get back at the world that wronged her. Salem shares so many traits with the titular team that if anything, the fact that she is named after an event where women were killed for false prosecutions should be an indicator as to how much more sympathetic Salem is. Stopping Salem isn’t the answer. All that will do is delay the inevitable until an even worse and less sympathetic version of her comes along… Probably Cinder, but I think I’ve covered her already. The main point I’m trying to make here is that Ruby and her relationship with her mother is something that should be touched upon more. In fact, Ruby and Yang should have this subject brought up. The problem is that these writers don’t want to do anything that doesn’t lead to a fight scene because they’ve come to the conclusion that people are only here for the fight scenes.
And really, they should go to DEATH BATTLE or One Minute Melee if they just want a cool fight scene. People are ultimately here for the shipping and fight scenes. When it comes to character moments, that’s forgettable… Unless it’s something to mock the characters for like Yang’s singular burnt item in the comics automatically making her a bad cook. Why is that capitalized on, but Ruby’s “It’s also a gun” line hardly gets brought up anymore? Is it because people can mock Yang for it? Like… I know that I’m biased because I’m a Yang fan, but come on! COME ON! Yang had to take care of Ruby. This is something explicitly stated in the canon show. Unlike Raven’s up to interpretation line about her killing OG Spring, which has a lot of ambiguity to it, Yang’s whole taking care of Ruby thing is explicit. Ruby even states in Volume 1 that Yang read her fairytales when they were kids.
And this all ties back to the dropped character traits and/or moments. These are important moments for the character. Yang is a Mom Friend for a reason, and Blake is the Rebel Aunt friend for a reason too. Blake has shown that she has a lot of resolve when it comes to her beliefs. Weiss can be treated as the “Deprogrammed Karen” friend. The one that used to have some prejudices, but ultimately was able to move past that. Ruby could be the “Young and aspiring hero” type too. But these initial traits are forgotten because instead of them having their personality traits clash with the world around them, they are forgotten so that they don’t. These characters don’t grow on-screen. They don’t learn their lesson on-screen. They don’t even have it implied on-screen. We just have to assume that Weiss learned her lesson off-screen. We just have to assume that these characters worked and trained hard together off-screen. Like… Was a montage too expensive?
All I’m saying is that these characters are deep. But that deep characterization is never explored or used to its fullest extent because the writers don’t know how to keep having a character grow beyond that. Once a character is finished growing, instead of having said character help others grow, or show how that growth impacts others or themselves, they are forgotten.
Except for Jaune. Jaune’s more shallow than a puddle.
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charliejrogers · 4 years ago
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Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) - Review & Analysis
Here’s a non-controversial statement: 2017’s Wonder Woman is a legitimately great film (if you discount the last act’s boring battle). A fun, yet emotional anti-war tale with a great period aesthetic. What elevated it from greatness was its starkly bleak reveal that Ares does not start man’s wars, but he merely gives humans ideas for how to instigate them. Ultimately, it is Man who holds responsibility for our own destruction, and despite this Wonder Woman still chooses to help us poor creatures. Cool themes, cool hero, cool movie.
Wonder Woman 1984 shares the main character from its 2017 forerunner, as well as its dedication to recreating a particular period aesthetic (here the 1980s), but the brilliant writing from the first film is gone. The main themes are essentially… “be careful what you wish for” and “winners never cheat; cheaters never win.” Not the most grand and interesting follow-up to the prior film’s genuine insight into human nature.
But that’s OK. I’m really not sure why this movie is getting so much flak online. If DC’s recent prior history with filmmaking should have taught us anything, it’s that 2017’s Wonder Woman was a fluke. Remember that this is the same studio that brought us the outstanding climax to Batman vs. Superman where one grown man learns that another grown man’s mother is also named Martha. Oh, and did we all just forget that Justice League is one of the worst movies we have all collectively ever seen?
So let’s not be too hard on WW84 for not meeting the quality of 2017’s Wonder Woman. Few comic book movies can. In the more fair comparison to other movies in the DCEU, it sits below Shazam! and Aquaman, and just a smidge below Birds of Prey, but certainly above Suicide Squad, and then literally leaps and bounds over every other movie they’ve made.
Let’s start with the good. Honestly, despite my gripes about the themes of the movie not being very profound, I found the story to be interesting. The movie centers around Diana Prince (Gal Gadot in her role as an archaeologist for the Smithsonian and not as Wonder Woman) stumbling upon an ancient stone whose inscription invites people who hold the stone to make a wish. No one takes it really seriously at first, so two people make wishes without thinking they could come true. The first person is Diana herself who wishes to bring her boyfriend (whom she only knew for about a week, mind you) from the dead. As a reminder from the first film, her boyfriend Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) had died nearly 70 years prior to the start of this film in a dramatic, sacrificial, world-saving act. Apparently, Diana hasn’t moved on at all from the 1910s and still considers her short-time lover to be her forever lover. She’s not really a human and did not grow up a human, so I think we can forgive her for not moving on… but it is weird to imagine that Diana somehow works at the Smithsonian (without going to college? Or did she?) without developing any friends or interest in life. Wouldn’t she have moved on... like a little bit?
Anyways, she wants her boyfriend back, and that’s wish #1. Wish #2 comes from new character Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig… who I am shocked to find is 47 years old! She looks fantastic and far younger in this film). Were Barbara a man, the way she is treated by her colleagues would put them in the stereotypical role of a future school shooter. Barbara is a brilliant gemologist for the Smithsonian, but goes completely unrecognized for her brilliance. She is shy and unconfident, and subsequently people frequently forget that they have even met her. Add on to that the fact that she has to work in the same office as Wonder Woman, and her loneliness and subjective feelings of unattractiveness increase as male employees drool over Diana while they ignore and mock Barbara. Therefore, we would forgive her for having a chip on her shoulder. Yet, for all this, Wiig avoids playing her as an angry, emo goth. Barbara kinda has this air about her of “Well, this is just how life is, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.” Given the character’s lack of self-confidence and lack of social grace, it at times seemed like Wiig was just reprising her old SNL character, Penelope, the socially awkward one-upper. But that’s not fair to her character. Wiig portrays Barbara with an earnest goodness to her. She’s one of those people who when allowed to talk one-on-one proves to be more eloquent and interesting than you could have imagine. Far from being angrily envious of Diana’s confidence and beauty, she’s more sadly jealous. Naturally, then, she wishes on the stone to be more like Diana… unaware that this wish might have some unintended benefits.
But then, there’s a third key character to the film (and a third wishmaker), the main villain Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). I cannot tell you if this was a good character or not… and I cannot tell you whether the imperfections of the character are more due to the film’s writing or Pascal’s performance. Lord is another loser, and like Barbara, his “loser” status is the result of being a victim of America’s prejudicial attitudes. But whereas Barbara fell victim to sexism, Lord falls victim to racism. Hispanic in origin, Lord grew up in America with an abusive father at home and racist classmates at school. Beaten down from an early age, all he wants in life is to make a name for himself, to prove he’s not a loser. In a clever twist, Lord (the person who originally ordered the wish stone to come to America before it was confiscated by the FBI and sent to the Smithsonian for analysis) does not simply use the stone to wish for riches and power… he wishes to BECOME the stone. That way, he can get nearly infinite wishes so long as he can con the people around him to wish things for him.
The scenes of Max Lord as a flawed human who just wants to not be a loser show Pascal giving a great performance as a human being at the ends of desperation. The scenes of Max Lord the supervillain are… not good. In a long string of over-the-top, eccentric, hyperconfident supervillains in countless superhero movies, Pascal’s Lord is just not interesting. In fact, he is literally a weak character. He cannot fight for himself as his body is crumbling (a side effect of wishing to become a stone). Furthermore, his initially grounded motivations to finally be respected and successful seem to be just utterly lost by the end of the film when he just wishes for world chaos… only then to turn around and declare undying love for his son. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Failure to understand a character’s motivations casts a shadow over Barbara’s character arc as well. It is explained that the wish stone takes something in return for granting someone their wish. So as payment for bringing Steve Trevor back to life, Diana loses some of her strength. Still… this strains to fully explain why Barbara, after gaining Wonder Woman-like strength, turns into a walking humanoid cheetah (complete with bad CGI like she walked straight out of the cast of 2019’s Cats.) Like I get that she lost some of her humanity and morality in exchange for strength… but Cheetah girl seems like a little much. And though initially it is fun to see Wiig get to play Barbara as a confident and sexy woman who fights back against the patriarchy, the movie (I think) unfairly pushes her into the villain role. In my opinion, she should be treated as a tragic character, something akin to a Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, as her villainous tendencies are not really her fault. She literally had the part of her that cares about other humans taken away from her when she naively and innocently wished to be like Diana. Instead, the movie has Diana lecture her that she shouldn’t be so evil. She literally can’t, lady! Stop being so hard on her! In any case, it seems like a failed opportunity to generate sympathy for a genuinely likable character who tragically becomes a villain not through her own accord.
That failure to create genuine emotions extends to Diana’s story as well. As soon as Steve is resurrected, you know by the movie’s end he will be dead again. There’s no other way this movie ends. Yet, the fact that Diana is so stubborn in refusing to give up Steve makes it hard to sympathize with her. She is simply being selfish, making her eventual decision to say goodbye to Steve feel more like her finally doing the right (and obvious) thing, and not some heartbreaking decision. Also the fact that seemingly Diana hasn’t even tried to move on in the last seventy years doesn’t help matters for me: it more just feels like a lazy way to write in Chris Pine’s popular character into the second movie. The move certainly weakens the idea of Diana as a strong, independent woman by making her emotionally stunted and crippled for the last 70 years. It would have been a much more satisfying (and daring) choice if Diana had moved on from Steve emotionally and had to deal with the guilt of having brought him back by accident, particularly if he didn’t want to go back to being dead. Instead... Steve knows he has to go back and Diana feels no guilt keeping him around. It’s weak character writing.
These poor choices I contrast with two of my favorite TV shows that demonstrate perfectly how former lovers who miraculously reunite eventually have to say goodbye for good: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Jane the Virgin. For risk of spoilers to those still watching Jane, I’ll stick to the Buffy example. There’s an episode of Buffy (though technically an episode of the spin-off show Angel) where Buffy and her vampire lover Angel are fresh off their recent and tumultuous break-up, but through some dark magic that neither seeks out, they are given the opportunity to live a life where Angel isn’t actually a vampire and their love can be fully expressed. Yet, in the end, Angel opts to give up his life as a human and return to being a vampire. The choice is so moving precisely because (due to circumstances I cannot begin to explain) in choosing to give up his life with Buffy, he saves her life as well. Whereas in this movie, Diana choosing to let Steve go is really just her choosing to undo her choice to essentially cheat death. Angel, however, is actively choosing to give up a life of happiness he never wished for but was just given on a silver platter, and will now live in a world where his lover will never know his selfless act and will go on hating him. It’s heartbreaking in a way Wonder Woman dreams it could be.
And not to get too Buffy-heavy… but that show also deals with the emotional consequences of being ripped out of the afterlife much better than this movie. Steve just kinda unrealistically adapts to being alive again in all of five minutes. If, perhaps, from the start he questioned why he was there and hinted to Diana that something was wrong, the emotional aspect of this story, the doomed nature, the feeling of “this is the last chance we’ll have together” could have made this a stronger movie. I wanted to find myself crying when Diana finally says bye to Steve, and I was no where close to that. Gal Gadot shares at least part of the blame. She’s a pretty wooden actress. It’s something I noticed in 2017’s Wonder Woman, but in that movie she was supposed to be a fish out of water so her stilted presence seemed appropriate. Here, where she’s supposedly become an assimilated American for 70 years… it is just bad acting.
Anyways, another aspect of this film that was lacking were the visuals. The bad CGI of Barbara as Cheetah is just scratching the surface here. The opening flashback to Diana as a girl performing in the Amazonian Olympics just… looks fake. I don’t know. The reliance on CGI over practical effects is clear and distracting. It’s only worse in the subsequent scene where Wonder Woman stops a theft from occurring in a mall. The effects are just bad. Like passable for a film in the 1990s or early 2000s. But for a 2020 blockbuster, it’s noticeably bad. And already the scene where Wonder Woman is running towards the camera with a weird green screen behind her seems to have become a meme given just how weird it looks.
And yet, for all the negatives I’ve listed, this is a decent action flick. There’s even some nice set pieces like the one in the White House. As little as I liked Max Lord as a supervillain, I found figuring out the other half of each of his various Monkey Paw wishes (i.e. the downside of each wish) to be clever. unfortunately, each of the main three characters fails to have a story line that takes full advantage of their emotional potential, or they are just poorly acted. With few exceptions, the film eschews “fun” in favor of “seriousness.” Really the only exception is, as in the first film, the chemistry between Pine and Gadot. Their chemistry makes for some of the movie’s best moments, like when Wonder Woman makes the plane they’re flying in invisible and the pair flies over fireworks on the fourth of July. But that sense of whimsy in their scenes is largely absent from the rest of the film. This is particularly true of the action sequences, especially those at the climax. The seriousness makes them rather boring. Really, I’m comparing these action scenes with the last half hour or so of Birds of Prey which really set the bar for superhero movie fight choreography. So in the end, it’s overall an OK movie. It certainly isn’t as bad as others make it out to be, but I cannot believe I’m saying this… in 2020 if you’re in the mood for a fun superhero movie, you’re better off with the Suicide Squad sequel than the Wonder Woman sequel.
**/ (Two and a half stars out of 4)
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goodnightallwhites · 4 years ago
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Dark Times: Cuz Sonia by Zenalite
Chapter 1 - Sonia Life could be strange. Growing up, people taught me that it was better to appear strong than weak, and that strength was the only way to get what you wanted. There were so many cringy scenes in middle-school where this failed to bring results. One time a classmate had asked me if she could copy the answers from my homework; I told her sure, so long as she let me kiss her. She rolled her eyes and walked her sweet young ass away while my male buddies laughed and congratulated me. When the weakest guy in our class gave her his homework, we called him out and mocked him, but our cutie responded by giving him a quick peck on the cheek when it was over. I remember burning with rage at the thought that some spineless little shit felt her lips while I, who was daring as I was told I should be, was left a kissless virgin. It never occurred to me to use the same strategy. That I later met Lara in high school and watched her slowly succumb to wanting to black cock addiction to the point that I held her as a party as they stole her virginity before my eyes was pure chance. These things were accepted because I loved Laura and was afraid to lose her, not because of some grand plan. When Yennefer approached me and told me she wanted Lara to share me so I could be her boyfriend too, the entire thing blew my mind. Somehow, I, the loyal cuck that put up with everything, was the last boyfriend standing while the others got kicked to the curb. Through my selfless devotion to Lara, I not only solidified her love for me, but won the affection of the most popular ice queen in school. Even though none of them fucked me or would fuck me, there were butterflies of good feeling flying all around me. Scratch that, it felt amazing. Any fucking loser could go out and buy pussy with a few bucks, and there were plenty of dumb guys born with big cocks that could get a girl wet and willing for half an hour while they fucked only to face her cool disdain afterwards. I was loved. I was wanted. Of course, it did feel bad to think that I might not fuck any of them, but it was an okay sacrifice. It certainly helped that they wanted to fuck black guys and only black guys. On one hand, I wasn’t and could never be black, so there was no need to feel like I failed in any way. On the other hand, these girls were objectifying these poor black studs to such an extent that they spoke of them more like toys than people. It was all a little racist, but… There’s no way I’m going to call Lara or Yenn racists to their face. As I said before, Yennefer told me that she wanted me, and that Lara needed to accept that a great cuck like me needed to be shared, at least with the top bitch if not the entire school. It would’ve been nice if Yenn went and delivered this message herself; instead, she was sending me out there to get devoured if things went wrong. Lara opened the door for me dressed only in a pair of ripped denim shorts and a crop top. The frayed bits from the jeans brushed tantalizingly against her smooth and tan legs as she moved idly and the perfect outline of her breasts showing through the thin fabric of the top. A sexy smile played over her lips as the brown eyes settled on me. “Mr. Boyfriend, I presume? Where are my flowers?” “In my pants.” Lara burst with laughter, not expecting the wild card response. “That’s rich.” Then, her features softened and lost all tension. With a low whisper, she grabbed my hand with welcome gentleness and said, “Come inside, baby, I missed you.” She went barefoot over the polished floor of her living room, the muscles working along her long and tone legs as she dragged me along, those perky and soft breasts swaying enticingly under the crop top. Unlike Yennefer’s strong scent of lilac and gooseberries, Lara’s was understated, fresh and a little metallic. We headed into her room and she locked the door. “My parents might be home soon.” Some soft rap music played from her laptop resting in bed. I took note of the printer at the lying in the middle of the floor and the new images that were going up on her wall. All of them were pics of black guys or white girls, at times together, most of them captioned in the most overt way possible. One showed a blonde girl wearing a Swedish flag tee and surrounded by bare-chested dark-skinned guys: EUROPE IS IS GETTING BLACKED. Another was just a close-up of a girl’s sweaty abs: WORK HARD FOR BBC. Lara drank in my reaction. Her blood rushed just from looking at them, and her hands went absentmindedly over her nipples as they started nudging through. “Well? Do you like them?” “I do…” I made myself say, though it was strange. The political ones were especially strong. “Though maybe they’re a little” - her eyebrows began to rise suspiciously as the words left my mouth - “direct?” Lara watched me closely, then leaned in and let her hot breath fill my ear. “I am very direct. Mostly.” A giggle came out of her, then she grabbed the laptop and flashed a picture on screen, showing a white girl holding hands with a skinny white guy as she kissed a really buff black bull that must have been in his forties. Under it, Lara had written: BREEDING READY. “How about this one? Good enough?” She found it hard to take her eyes off of the image. “Uh. It’s nice.” “Oh, fuck off! Be honest with me! I’ll tell you what…” Her finger came up to her lower lip and moved across it. “If you give me a better one, I’ll give you a reward.” A reward? Well… “How about HER HAPPINESS COMES FIRST?” Lara thought about it then bobbed her head happily and giggled. “That’s great. I love that.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she made the edit, then our creation slithered out of the printer and across the floor like eldritch baby. My beautiful girlfriend grabbed it and pinned it to the wall next to the others. “There we go! Now, about your reward…” Lara turned around and came towards me slowly, swaying her hips in a sensual way while her fingers circled caresses around her toned tummy. Close enough that her breasts almost pushed into me, though she made a point not to engage in any physical contact. “Do you think I’m breeding ready?” As my eyes went over her wide hips and jiggling breasts: “Definitely.” “I could get pregnant even today. Can you imagine? I’d make a baby for us. A strong black baby, of course, the only type that’s worth having. Would you like that? Would you like to know your girl is carrying a superior man’s child?” She took my hand and placed it over the hot flesh of her stomach, letting me feel the silky skin and the hard abs flexing under it. “Can you imagine cuddling me to sleep as a black baby is growing inside of me, sweetheart?” She brought her braid around and stroked it suggestively as I melted under her unbearably hot gaze. Suddenly, Lara stepped back and grinned, as I was left trembling with arousal from her words. “Got you.” It was funny to her, but scary to me. In a matter of seconds she managed to take me to an entirely different place. Surely I wouldn’t have wanted another guy to really make her pregnant. But all it took to make me feel like that's what I wanted most in the world were a couple of well-placed words. “I--” Her phone rang before I could speak. Lara spoke to her mother quickly and politely, then hang up and cursed. “Fuck. Honey, you need to go. My mom’s coming. We’ll talk later.” And just like that, with questions in my head and an unbearable erection, she threw me out of her apartment, even before I could deliver Yenn’s message. She can’t say I didn’t try.   It’s time to unwind, I thought. But as soon as I got home, Mom came and told me in a hush-hush manner that my cousin came over and that she was resting in my room. “Be nice to her, she’s having a rough patch.” My cousin Sonia and I weren’t very close. We had been once upon a time, eons ago, but then she moved away with the rest of her family. I still remembered the clumsy way we parted ways when she left home, with her refusing to come out of the car to say goodbye. I only saw the back of her ginger head through the window. Of course, we talked since then, but it always felt like talking to a stranger… So, why did she come here today? The door to my room opened soundlessly, and Sonia was just there… sleeping on the bed. The way her hip rose in the air was as a mountain, the light jeans stretched to their utmost as she bent towards my view. Despite the larger-than-life rounded fat ass in front of me, her waist was small, and her lower half bent almost entirely out of view so that it was all one could see from the door. I gulped. “Sonia?” She exhaled softly. “Cuz? Is that you?” “It is.” Her head came around, just enough that one of her bright aqua eyes connected with me and realized her huge butt was lewdly directed right at my face. Blushing, she sat up and awkwardly played it off by toying with her fingers. “Sorry about that…” But now I could see her chest and the extreme way the ribs of her green sweater stretched across it. God, how big had she gotten since I last saw her? Even with as thicc as she was, those cowtits were massive... “Sorry to pop in like this.” “No worries, I’m happy to see you.” Sonia seemed weirded out by that. “You are? But we barely talk… Listen, I wanted to ask you something: Do you think I’m a good person?” “S-Sure,” I quickly voiced. “Why wouldn’t you be?” “You know I’ve been dating this guy for a while now… and I think I screwed it all up. He had this friend he said was platonic, his best friend, but I made him break off all contact with her. Then it turned out he was talking with her after all, and so I followed them.” “You followed them?” “To prove that he was lying! But I didn’t get the reaction I wanted… He was just… He cried, Cuz. He said I made him break the heart of his best friend. And she called me a bitch. And so…” And so she came to me to make her feel better about her shitty behavior. Six years we didn’t speak, and now this?... I did my part. I weaved her a version about how he should have been honest from the start or explained his position better, and how I always knew she was good and honest. It was enough to make tears well in her eyes and get her to smile. “Oh, Cuz, you’re so nice to me… You always knew how to make me feel better. I missed that. A lot.” As she spoke, I couldn’t help but wonder how big those jugs on her chest were. They were at least three times bigger than Lara’s - simply gigantic. And none of it was there when I saw her just a few summers ago. The words BREEDING READY from before came to mind, and all I could imagine was a black baby suckling from each one of those milkers. “Hey… You aren’t staring at my boobs, are you? Hehe!~ Don’t worry, everyone does it. Even old grannies.” Her hands came around them as if they were her babies. “You need strong hands just to lift them up.” “Black hands.” My reply wasn’t even conscious. I just spoke. “Huh? Come again?” I couldn’t believe what came out of my mouth. “Nothing, nothing! I was muttering to myself.” But seriously, it was undeniable that she would have looked perfect getting blacked. All those soft white folds enveloping a big black cock, that ginger hair getting pulled on by strong dark hands… “Was your boyfriend white?” Sonia thought about that. “I mean, yeah. Why do you ask?” I shrugged. “A lot of girls in my school date black guys.” “Really? Oh, wow. I could never do that!” The way she said it sounded so amazed and confident that there wasn’t a doubt in my mind she meant it: the idea of dating a black guy hadn’t even occurred to her. “I don’t really think I’d feel comfortable, you know?” “Dating someone that isn’t a pale ginger?” Sonia smirked. “No, you idiot! Dating a person that’s, you know… God, don’t make me say it. I feel bad saying it. But black guys aren’t exactly my type, let’s put it that way.” The almost completely unveiled racism combined with my antipathy towards her coming all this way just to use me made me want to see her punished and blacked. Hard. “Why don’t we go out?” “Hmmm? Go out? Where to?” “Let’s find you a boyfriend.” “Hahaha! You aren’t serious, are you? You’re crazy, Cuz. I don’t even have good clothes.” “You look fucking amazing already. Come on.” Sonia lowered her head shyly, so far down it was almost in her boobs. “You keep complimenting me, I’m gonna die. But okay. Let’s do it!” Before that, I needed to make a call. I left her in the room and headed to the bathroom, then scrolled with shaky fingers for Yennefer’s name. It rang a couple of times, then it said busy. Busy? Seriously… As I stared at the screen at the denied call, I suddenly saw my face reflected back. She was video calling me. Oh god… Her pale and dark-haired form materialized on my screen. She wore a shiny robe and was brushing her hair. “Why, hello darling. You’re a fast little worker bee, aren’t you? I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Has dear sweet Lara seen come to terms with the new way things will work from now on?” “Uhhh… I’m working on it,” I said optimistically. Yenn stared right into the camera so I could feel her icy stare and sighed. “Disappointing, yet predictable. What would you like from me? I hope you aren’t begging for a show, I’m quite dressed and ready for my beauty sleep.” “Uh, no, no, no…” Her eyes narrowed threateningly. “I mean, I would LOVE that, but no… I wanted your help. You see my cousin’s over and I thought I would, uh…” “Initiate her in the Dark Arts?” “Something like that, yeah.” “And she’s come to our church begging for our teachings, or are you seeking the BBC version of a koan to force enlightenment upon her?” “Whatever the second is, probably.” Yenner smiled affably. “You are endearingly stupid, do you know that?” “Yes.” “Now, now.” She raised a finger in warning. “Vanity does not suit a man. Anyway, I suppose I can arrange this for you. I am very generous. Get your delightful cousin, I’ll send you an address soon enough.” “Thank you, Yennefer.” A smirk. She reached so far back with her brush that the robe began to open, showing a glimpse of-- Call ended. Sonia and I snuck out before my mom became aware. I only called her once we were at the bus station, pretending that Sonia insisted I go and that I had no choice. Meanwhile, Yenn sent me an address that appeared to be closeby. Standing there at the bus station by herself, my ginger cousin looked oddly vulnerable. She seemed very conscious of her bovine ass and breasts and the way everyone stared at her over them. A few girls that were trying to show cleavage by squeezing together some breasts that were baby-sized gave her genuinely hateful looks. “I hope that place we’re going to is more friendly…” I was worried Yenn would send us to some seedy club, but it turned out to be some teenage meeting spot, a book store turned cafe after 5 p.m. where people could take books out and read them while drinking. Sonia loved it, and we sat there for a whole two hours while I wondered if I had gotten the place wrong. “This is great, you know!~” She smiled happily as she flipped through another book she found. “Going out was a great idea. Not many boyfriends here though, except maybe the ones in these pages.” There was nothing to do but pay and make our way back home. Yennefer, what the hell? It was as we were chatting and walking up towards the bus stop that three guys got in our way. They looked like proper thugs, with face tats and golden teeth that flashed while they spoke. I said black guys, not fucking criminals, Yenn. “The fuck do we have here?” one of them said, circling around Sonia. “Ginger meat.” Another rubbed his palms together eagerly, then pulled on his crotch. “Looks tasty.” Sonia’s gaping eyes glanced at me as the three walled her in and started groping her, tugging at her tight sweater, palming her huge ass cheek, and running their dark fingers through her ginger hair. The few white guys that passed us by pretended not to see it and kept going like proper cucks. “Leave me alone…” said Sonia breathlessly. “I’ll call the police. Cuz!” I raised the phone to give the impression, at least, until one of them yelled at me to put it down or get my ass beaten down. I was beginning to question whether or not these people had anything to do with Yennefer at all. Could they have just been random guys? A bit suspicious… “Seriously…” Sonia tried again, her voice breaking down. One of the guys reached up and got a feel of her breasts, sinking his fingers into the warm folds of the plump flesh. “Goddamn,” he drawled. “These are some monster tits on you, aren’t they? We should inspect these. Make sure you don’t have breast cancer.” “I don’t!...” It was too late for her to fight back, as they were already pulling her after them. Whatever fight there was in Sonia evaporated pretty quickly when facing three black guys with arms about as thick as her waist. What kind of girl could have fought just one of them, let alone three? “Cuz! Do something!” she yelled. “What’s he gonna do?” one of the guys asked, laughing. That was true, I wasn’t about to do much of anything, except follow along and see where this led. They took her down an alley and then up a set of stairs that led to an apartment. They got her in the living room and locked the door, then threw her on the sofa as they took off their tops. Even my cousin, as strongly as she must have felt against the idea of being taken like this for the first time, took a moment to stare at the rippling musculature of their glistening and tattooed chests. Already, their dicks were so hard that they were outlined down the side of their pants, twitching ready. To my surprise, they didn’t rip her clothes off. In fact, despite all their big talk about how they were going to inspect her and so on, patting her down and feeling her up through her clothes was the most of what they seemed to be doing. Sonia looked away as they explored every curvy of her body, moaning each time they squeezed too hard on her. One of them came and dropped down on the sofa and pulled her in his lap, while the other two flanked Sonia. “Such a pretty ginger slut,” the one to her left said, coiling some of her ginger hair around his dark finger. “Uhm…” Though she appeared distressed, it was clear that the all the touching and attention affected her body on a deep primordial level. Not only were her cheeks a deep red, but her eyes were fluttering and her chest heaved with her heated, breathless inhalations. “Cuz?”...” said a lone whisper, but she wasn’t even looking at me. Only at the strong black bulls surrounding her that were ready to put her in her place. The guys took her pale hands and brought them down to their dicks as they throbbed through their pants, snaking so far down their thighs that even I found myself hypnotized. I watched dumbfounded as Sonia’s expression went from one of excitement, to pure shock as her fingertips explored the length and shape of their powerful shafts. “You like that?” they asked her. “You feel that thing under you?”  The guy she was sitting on started moving his hips and grinding her ass back and forth over his dick, slowly moving her back and forth while she jumped each time his dick hit her crotch. I could only wonder what her parents or boyfriend might have seen if they saw her being slutted up like this. Her mind was being warped in real time, and I could see the enchanted smile that started curling her as she took in the true size and might of those big black cocks. Her palms started moving by themselves over the shafts; at the same time, her own hips started rocking and helping the bull under her. Turned on by her new show of interest, the studs plunged their hands into her doughy breasts, each one kneading a different part, their strong fingers abusing the soft teenage tits of this breeding snowfunny as her white cousin watched helplessly. At some point one must have accidentally pinched one of her nipples, because Sonia threw her head back in pure pleasure and cooed submissively. The guy under her grinned, flashing his golden teeth. “You like that, bitch?” The aqua eyes looked to me for a brief second, as if seeking my approval. “I love it,” she confessed, still blushing wildly with shame, but completely unable to help herself. From the exhilarated way she sought to touch their cocks, it was crystal clear that the drugging effect of BBC lured her in. Her eyes went from one dick to another, gaping and unable to look away. “They’re getting bigger!” Sonia was awestruck. “No shit.” My cousin bit her tongue, then the wet mouth opened instinctively. “Can I see?...” she whispered, as if hoping no one could hear that. “What was that?” asked the guy under her. “N-Nothing,” stammered Sonia. The thugs brofisted each other and laughed it up. “You hear that, bro? She wants to see your dick.” The more I watched these guys, the more I realized there was something off about them. They were just so… stereotypically thuggish. There was an unreality about their behavior that went at odds with the mild manner in which they conducted themselves. The black guy under her yanked her head back by the hair and looked her in the eyes. “Well? Did he hear it right? You want us to get our dicks out and fuck you?” Sonia hesitated for a second. But it was only a second. A clear gulp went down her throat. “Yes.” The thug shook her. “Say it, you dumb white bitch. I want to hear it.” The obscene cowtits trembled on her chest. “I want to see your dick.” “My black dick.” Sonia’s eyes closed and she took a deep breath. “I want to see your black dick. Please,” she added. “Please? Well, ain’t you fuckin’ thoughtful. On your knees.” “Huh?” Before she could follow any order, the thug threw her to the ground and stood up before her, ordering her to kneel. “On your fucking knees, bitch! Now! Don’t you fucking hear me?” Sonia did as told and got down in a position of total submission, presenting herself as her hands were folded in her lap. “Please, sir…” He grabbed her by the ginger locks and came close enough that the outline of his big black cock twitching in his pants was right in her face. “Why don’t you kiss my dick? Show me how much you like it.” This time, there was no lag between his order and her actions. As if she were planning to do it all along, the full lips puckered up and landed right on the shaft, not just once, but many times over, delivering kisses so gentle they could have been meant for a lifelong lover. Even her tongue came out to lick it up and down, not caring it was trapped behind a layer of fabric. The thug laughed grimly, then pressed her face against his dick gleefully. I watched my racist cousin smile happily as she got her nose and mouth rubbed against his black cock. Yenn, you delivered… “Please, sir, just let me see it… Please…” she begged, as obedient as any worshiper now. How she went from a kidnapped victim to a cockcrazed slut in less than fifteen minutes was pure magic. He snorted and pushed her away. “Fuck no. Dumb white bitch. You think I’d waste my energy with you? We’re done here. Come on, get the fuck out of here.” Before Sonia could wipe the shock off her ashen face, he started kicking at her to get out, finally grabbing her by the hair and to shove her out the door like unwelcome trash. I was left behind, and once the door closed, the thug came over to me and spoke casually: “Okay, I think we’re done here,” he said, in a totally different voice. “Are we good?” “Uhm. I’m not sure?...” “Yenn said she needed a bit of a push... so, we got her there, right?” The other two started removing the gold off their teeth and wiping off the face tats. Wow. It had all been a sham? The guy watched me impatiently. “Well?” “Yes, you did great…” “That’s wonderful.” He put his hands together and bowed ever so slightly. “Thanks. So how would you rate my performance, on a scale of one to ten?” “Oh my god,” the other two said, dropping their thuggish voices as well. “Leave the kid alone, man, he’s not here to rate your acting. Performance, he says.” They snorted. “You haven’t gotten a role in two months.” “If this wasn’t a role, then I guess I won’t share the pay, huh? Anyway, you should go now. Tell our friend things went well, I could use the boost.” I came out of the apartment amazed at their and Yenn’s professionalism, and found a dismayed Sonia waiting for me. “Jesus!” She ran over and hugged me, and I could feel the warm breasts pressing into me. “I thought they were going to hurt you.” “Thankfully not.” She took a step aside and pushed her hair back, avoiding eye contact. “What happened in there… You know that was just acting, right? I was just trying to avoid getting raped or worse.” There was no way that was the truth of it. Even if she played it up, she definitely got excited by them… she still was, as could be seen from the glazed eyes and the shivers that kept passing through her. Yenn, you should’ve told them to go the whole way... As we went back home, I could tell her mind was elsewhere. “You said… those girls at your school only date black guys?” she asked me once we were back on the bus, going home. “Most of them.” “Huh.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “None of them got hurt?” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Hurt? Why would they get hurt? How racist are you, Cuz?” “Not racist! I’m just wary of new things, that’s all. But that’s… that’s good to hear.” For someone that had just been kidnapped and molested by black thugs, at least as far as she was aware, this was a very sudden change of heart in the opposite direction. “Maybe one day I’ll give it a shot.” I felt like toying with her further. “You just have to be careful.” “Careful?” Sonia blinked anxiously. “Of what?” “You know…” I kept my voice low as other passengers crowded around us. “That.” “I don’t know,” whispered Sonia harshly. “Tell me!” “I mean, you saw it even tonight. Black guys have cocks so big that they’re incomparable to tiny white pencil dicks. Most girls can’t take that. Some of them like serving as cocksleeves, sure, but it will still tear you apart and ruin you. These bulls will fuck you so hard that you scream and lose your voice. You won’t even be able to walk or talk after they’re done with you. You’ll just be a shivering hot mess. And the best ones get so many girls that they have no long term interests. All they’ll do is break you, put a black baby inside of you, and then throw you away like a used rag.” I could almost see the whole scene playing out in her head through the small movements of her face. At the end she just looked inwards, licking and biting her lip. I felt proud, pulling the same trick on her that Lara did on me, though I was getting aroused as well.. “Sounds awful,” she whispered, not even there with me anymore. Sonia was in her mind now, getting destroyed by black cock. In the span of a single evening, my “cuz” was turned into yet another BBC slut. I did this, I realized. Pride swelled in my heart.
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drawlfoy · 6 years ago
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Faux Diplomacy p.2
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pairing: draco x mugglebornslytherinilvernmornyfem!reader (a mouthful i’m so sorry)
request: nah i’ve always always wanted to write this
warnings: draco malfoy being a class A dickwad, swearing
summary: reader is an ilvermorny student who was given an opportunity to travel abroad and spend a year at Hogwarts. At first she’s thrilled, but things start to get weird--why is everyone on the trip muggleborn? why were they all put into slytherin, no questions asked? and what is that draco malfoy kid doing? takes place during 6th year so peak angst
a/n: i apologize for the fact that i’m clearly favoring this story over Sound of....Magic? but it’s mostly because i’m writing what i know and i don’t know how to adult lol. also i hope you’re enjoying the slowburn! we might hate draco a little bit but i swear i’ll mend it soon!
music recs: i have a writing playlist specifically for this fic that i might share one day
word count: 2,240
The door was hard under Y/N’s fist, something that she should’ve guessed but the fact of which still managed to surprise her. Maybe she was more intoxicated than she originally assumed.
She knocked four times, slowly but loudly enough for anyone awake to hear her. The last thing she wanted to deal with was an angry racist. 
Three seconds passed by, each little mississippi begging her to run the other way before the door opened. She prayed that he was gone or at least deep in sleep. There was no telling what he’d do if he saw her. He couldn’t kill her, at least, but there were hundreds of other things that could happen to her if he was evil enough.
Her worst fear came true as the door flung open, revealing a very disgruntled and very pissed Draco. His pale hair was tousled with some pieces hanging in front of his forehead, breaking Y/N’s conception of his perfectly kept hair.
“What on earth do you want?” He hissed, his eyes burning with an intense emotion that Y/N couldn’t quite put a finger on. 
Y/N suddenly felt very silly standing outside his room with an outfit to rival Cher from Clueless as she took in his slightly rumpled silk suit. He was doing whatever important job he seemed so focused on while she was trying to get him to come out and join a party he was so clearly avoiding.
“Um,” she began rather lamely.
“Um,” Draco repeated back in a nasal voice clearly meant to mock her accent.
“Pansy uh..she wanted you to come out. It was a stupid game of truth or dare and she slipped Veritaserum into my drink so I can’t lie and say I did it when I didn’t-”
“You do realize that’s complete bullshit, right?” Draco interrupted. “The Veritaserum? Do you seriously believe that Snape would let us get out hands on that? First years fall for that every year. First time I’ve seen anyone over 12 believe it, though.”
Y/N’s cheeks grew hot as she realized he was probably completely right. Now that she actually thought about it, she couldn’t guess how Pansy could get her hands on something that dangerous much less spike drinks with it. 
“Oh. I guess that makes sense.”
Draco nodded with an “uh, yeah” look in his eyes and made his way to slam the door in his face when a glimmer caught her eye.
In her inebriated state, she told him point-blank, “Cool necklace. Who’s it for?”
Draco froze as he turned to look at his bed, the same one that had a very ornate necklace laying on it. He slowly turned back to Y/N with a terrifying expression on his face. 
Uh oh.
He grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and dragged her inside his room, slamming the door shut behind her and shoving her against the wall.
“What the fuck dude-”
“What’s your allegiance?” he hissed, stepping in her eyeline so she couldn’t see the necklace anymore. Their proximity was uncomfortably close. Y/N could smell peppermint on his breath, no doubt remnants of a cup of tea he’d had earlier.
“My allegiance.....sheesh, I don’t know, I don’t know where I fall on the political spectrum, but I am really frustrated with the Senate for impeding any type of impeachment proceed-”
“No, you bloody idiot!” He cut in again. “I mean in the wizarding world. Not.. whatever the fuck you’re going on about.”
“Oh, you mean like... the issue with Death Eaters and everything? I dunno, I haven’t read enough about British politics to know but it’s so ridiculous, y’know? Like, someday all of them are gonna wake up and realize they’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid and that they’re never gonna get rewarded the way the think. It’s really sad, they’re basically in a cult.”
Draco stared at her with wide eyes and a defensive expression on his face. He was still gripping both of her wrists in one hand, pinning them above Y/N’s head and making it impossible for her to weasel out of his grasp.
“I mean, pretty general stuff. American wizarding media is always like, ‘look at these idiots thinking that they’re gonna restore blood purity, aren’t they crazy? BLESS the fact that we left in 1776’ and whatnot. I don’t know, we all kind of chuckle at it and make memes about the fact that there’s even people out there that still buy into that shi...”
Y/N’s eyes managed to catch a quidditch uniform hung up on the bedpost with the name MALFOY printed across the back in silver letters. Suddenly it all made sense--she had just read about his father being incarcerated for being a Death Eater. She trailed off when the realization set in.
Oh no. 
“You know, with that thought, I think I’m just gonna go back to the party...I normally don’t get this political. Forget I said anything. Please!”
Draco’s face was the definition of fury. Now that Y/N knew he was Lucius Malfoy’s son, she had no clue what he could be capable of. She briefly wondered if he would kill her before immediately casting the thought aside.
That’d be absurd she reminded herself. He’s still just a teenager, just like you. He’s not gonna kill you.
He took a few moments to glare down at her before opening the door and pushing her out.
“You’re never speaking of this to anyone,” he snapped. “Go back to your party and fall for more of the pranks we like to pull on 11 year olds. Just don’t ever come back here. I mean it. Don’t ever.”
With that, Draco slammed the door in her face. Y/N stood in front of it for a few seconds as she regained her bearings. What had just happened? She was very tired, she realized suddenly. 
She was just turning around and walking away when his door cracked open just an inch. 
“Are you deaf? I said, go!”
Y/N turned to send Draco a dirty look before walking away for real. 
♥♥♥♥
Professor McGonagall was a complete sweetheart and the embodiment of what an empowered witch ought to be, but she had messed up one crucial point when it came to just how dining space would be available for the Slytherin table.
With all the new students, there was rarely a portion of the table empty enough to sit alone or even with a respectable amount of space between oneself and another person. 
Y/N suffered the consequences of this the most out of her classmates considering the fact that she was always late. By the time that she got to the Dining Hall for any meal, there was only one part of the table that was consistently open--spots next to Draco and his goons.
The rest of the house was wise enough to know to avoid them and did so well, but Y/N was not so lucky. Nearly every day she was forced to squeeze in next to either Draco, Pansy, or Blaise and was subject to listening to whatever drabble they wanted to discuss each day.
However annoyed she was, she couldn’t help but notice some interesting changes. As the fall days grew shorter, Draco’s appetite seemed to grow smaller. At one point, Y/N was taking portions nearly twice the size of his, and she was a rather light eater to begin with. She heard his irritatingly posh accent less and less, and slowly meals turned into conversations between Blaise and Pansy while Draco stared off into space. 
One of these days, Blaise turned to look Y/N straight in the eye, startling her enough to near drop her fork. They never looked at her.
“So,” he began awkwardly. “I hear that you played Quidditch as a seeker while you were at Ilvermorny.”
“Yeah, and what about it?” 
Y/N was not about to take any shit.
“Well, you see,” Blaise told her, a sincere look in his eyes, “Draco here is our seeker, and he’s a little busy, so he won’t be joining us this season.”
“Tragic.”
“And you were good, right? Like, really good? I saw your record. It was impressive.”
“Thanks. I didn’t suck.”
A tiny smile cracked on Pansy’s face. Had Y/N actually amused her?
“Okay, enough of the niceties,” she cut in. “Blaise wants you to play for us. Please?”
She batted her eyelashes in a way that Y/N prayed was ironic. 
“Well, I suppose,” Y/N answered. “What’s in it for me?”
“For starters,” Blaise told her, “Instant status. People like you if you play Quidditch.”
“So I’ve heard. Is that why Draco dropped out? People didn’t like him enough anymore?”
“You shut up,” Draco grumbled, refusing to look her in the eye.
“So you’re in?”
“Yeah, whatever. I’m dropping out the second either of you mess with me, though.”
Blaise grinned and Pansy kicked his foot under the table. Y/N immediately felt like she was witnessing something that she was not supposed to see.
“Get a room, you two,” Draco reprimanded them, rolling his eyes as he pushed his food around on his plate. 
♥♥♥♥
Y/N’s first Quidditch match came and went. The Slytherin team creamed the Hufflepuffs so badly that Y/N probably didn’t need to do any work at all, but regardless, she still caught the snitch. 
In Slytherin fashion, her team decided to throw a giant party in the common room. Everyone was permitted a plus one, which was ridiculous since Y/N wasn’t friends with anyone from any other houses. She jokingly extended the invite to Bella in a very dramatic gesture with roses and everything, and her best friend just as dramatically accepted, leaping into Y/N’s arms and requesting that she be carried away.
It was the biggest scene the dining hall had witnessed all year, enough so that when the news of Katie Bell being cursed and nearly killed broke, it took the dining hall a few moments to calm down. 
Everyone stared as Dumbledore addressed the student body.
“Students.” He cleared his throat wearily. “If you are not already aware, one of your fellow scholars has been cursed, presumably by a necklace that was gifted to her. Please do practice caution as you accept gifts going into the holiday season. These are dark times indeed.”
Nervous chatter filled the room back up with noise but did not distract Y/N from her pondering.
A cursed...necklace? Where had she heard that before?
♥♥♥♥
Y/N was never a perfect student, but she did enjoy potions and especially appreciated Slughorn’s teachings, so much so in fact that she was invited to join the Slug Club after a few weeks of classes.
Blaise was also there, and the two often sat together and joked about the overenthusiastic Gryffindors and the unresolved sexual tension between Harry and Ginny. It was hardly a secret that the two were into each other, but it seemed that the only people who weren’t aware of it were Ginny and Harry themselves.
“Pray for Dean, Y/N,” Blaise would often whisper to her as they observed the two flirt awkwardly with each other. 
The budding friendship between them was odd, but very platonic. Y/N knew he had no trouble excusing prejudice considering the fact that he put up with Draco’s nonsense, but he seemed to see some flaws in the practice.
The most shocking part of their newfound connection happened to be what Blaise confided in her about Draco. 
“He’s hardly sleeping anymore,” he told her one cold winter day. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s lost weight and he’s not talking to me. Have you heard anything?”
“No,” Y/N had told him. “Draco doesn’t particularly like me.”
♥♥♥♥
After a particularly energetic Quidditch party in December, Y/N exited the common room and decided she wanted to take a walk about the castle to clear her head.
The snow fell softly outside the window, flurrying about and blanketing the ground in a gentle pristine white. She climbed the stairs of a random tower slowly, savoring the brisk air and relishing the silence that came along with it. 
Y/N wasn’t the least bit afraid of getting reprimanded for curfew--she deserved a break, and she was nearly an adult, for Christ’s sake. There was less underage drinking outside than there was inside her current common room, so she could always pull that argument.
She prayed that the top of the tower would be one with an open side so she could be closer to the snowstorm, and as she climbed  higher, her desires seemed to be more likely. The breeze was becoming chillier by the second.
Reaching the top of the staircase, she was overjoyed to see a railing overlooking the campus. Y/N jogged up to the barrier, leaning over the edge and taking solace in the freezing air and the cold snowflakes coating her hair. 
“What’s it with you and your insistence on interrupting my alone time?”
Y/N turned to see Draco Malfoy curled up in the corner of the tower. His hair was slightly mussed from the wind and his suit crinkled from sitting down, and as Y/N drew closer to him, she came to the most shocking revelation.
His silver eyes were pools of salty liquid, rimmed red at the edges and puffier than she had ever seen them before. His cheeks were shining with dampness, doing nothing to hide the dark bags under his eyes.
Draco was crying. 
final a/n: i swear a new update will come soon! i’m sorry that it seems like i might be rushing it. i promise im gonna slow it down a little and focus on the *subtle* fluff
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wildflowerhigh · 5 years ago
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Second Time Around (c.h.) | Part 8
Read part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7
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Summary: Maybe, just maybe, Calum Hood isn’t so cynical about love anymore.
Word Count: 2.8K
A/N:  This is the end! What a rollercoaster to get here, but we’ve finally arrived. I’m genuinely sad this series is over, but like I said before, this is not the end! I’m hoping to post a couple of bonus one shots. Anyway, thank you so much for sticking with me and reading this till the end. I hope you guys loved this series as much as I loved writing it. Also, y’all are more than welcome to come and shout in my inbox about Harper and Calum! I’m more than willing to keep writing about these two, but you gotta tell me what you wanna read. So… send me blurbs or something, I don’t know hehe. Okay, I’m just gonna shut up now and let y’all read, bye!
---
“HIGH SCHOOL REUNION - CLASS OF 2014,” Harper read off the massive banner hanging inside the school gym. Luke, Michael, Harper and him were at their high school reunion, surrounded by their ex-classmates sipping wine from stem glasses. Ashton obviously hadn’t come, choosing to have a date night with Kaykay instead. Sierra and Crystal had decided not to come either.
“Technically we’re not class of 2014, we dropped out before we graduated,” Luke commented as they surveyed the gym. As Calum scanned the room, different names popped into his head as he recognized each person. Some of them he had actually been friends with, but most he had barely known.
“Yeah, but you’re famous, that’s probably why you got called,” Harper said, smirking, before walking off to talk to someone else she had spotted. The group split, and Calum found himself talking to Jenny Campbell. She had been a cheerleader, and in a quite cliché manner, had looked down her nose at him and his friends. But here she was now, talking to him like they had been the best of friends in high school. If Ashton had been in his place, he probably would have made a snarky comment to her face and walked away, but Calum was unfortunately nicer than him.
“Hey Cal, come with me, I wanna show you something,” Harper slid up next to him, grabbing his arm to pull him away. She interrupted Jenny’s rant about some topic (that was verging on racist territory) and made Calum want to claw his eyeballs out, so he was glad that his girlfriend had stepped in. Jenny cleared her throat, to get Harper’s attention.
“Jenny. Hello,” Harper said, and Calum could hear the mock pleasantry in her voice. “How are you?”
“Calum and I were having a conversation, Harper, before you so rudely interrupted,” Jenny replied scornfully.
“Oh yeah? What you were talking about?” Harper asked, turning around to face her. Calum remembered now that Jenny and her had never actually gotten along; Jenny was fake nice, which Harper hated.
“Something you wouldn’t really understand, Harper.” Jenny smiled at Harper condescendingly, and it was clear that Jenny thought her and Calum were somehow better than Harper. Calum cringed at the thought.
“Right, of course. And how’s the divorce coming along?” Harper asked cheerfully, but Calum noticed the scathing tone in her voice. Jenny’s jaw dropped, and from the expression on her face, he could tell Harper had hit a nerve. “Heard it lasted only ten days, and he cheated on you with your bridesmaid? That’s just so, so, sad.” She looked at her with mock pity. “Okay, Jenny, it was great talking to you, bye!”
She turned Calum around and pushed him away, shooting her a condescending smile. He struggled to stifle his laughs- he managed to say goodbye to Jenny, and she looked like a volcano ready to burst when he last saw her. Harper and Calum made it out of the gym, laughing so hard that his stomach hurt.
“That was cold, baby,” he said between laughs, the nickname seamlessly slipping out of his lips. Harper’s grin somehow got even wider. 
“I’m up to here with her bullshit,” she said when they had stopped laughing, gesturing next to her head with her hand. “I never stood up to her in high school, but I couldn’t give less of a shit now.”
“And that’s how it should be,” he said encouragingly, giving her a high five. She smiled at him, her cheeks slightly red. “How did you even know all of that?”
“Amy told me all of it, just now,” she replied. Amy had been Harper’s other best friend. She was quite a nice girl, as far as he remembered.
“Oh yeah, how is she?”
“She’s doing great, she’s an entrepreneur now,” Harper said, nodding.
“Wow.” Harper and Calum just stood there looking at each other, smiles stretched across their faces. “Why did you pull me away anyway?”
“Oh!” Harper smacked her forehead. “I wanted to go see our old classrooms.” She grabbed his hand, and pulled him up the stairs.
“My Year 12 classroom,” Harper murmured, peeking into the first room to the right. Calum peeked in too- that was where he would have studied if he hadn’t dropped out. It looked identical to his older classrooms, to be perfectly honest.
“Year 11,” she mumbled to herself, moving on to another classroom. By now she had a lazy smile on her face, probably saturated with memories and nostalgia. Calum joined her in looking at Year 11. He was there for most of it- it had been good in terms of the friends, but he just couldn’t hack the studies part of it. 
“What did they say when I dropped out?” Calum asked, and Harper shrugged.
“Don’t remember, actually. I don’t think people were actually that surprised.”
Calum squinted at her. “I wasn’t that bad at studies, was I?”
“No, but everyone knew the band was your main goal towards the end. It simply became a matter of time,” she replied, and rubbed his arm soothingly. “Don’t worry, love.”
They moved on to the Year 10 classroom, reminiscing about that year, and then finally to the Year 9 classroom. The year Harper had joined.
Harper stepped in and looked around the room, a wistful smile stretched across her face. The room hadn’t changed one bit in so long. “I’m so glad my dad got transferred here,” she murmured, and Calum smiled at the back of her head. He was glad too.
After their evening at the cliff, he had taken her out on a couple dates, which had only cemented his decision to make this relationship work. She was absolutely incredible. He had asked her to be his girlfriend, and to his delight, she had instantly said yes.
Calum walked over to his old table, two rows from the back of the classroom. He sat down on the bench (he was too big, he just barely fit on it), facing the blackboard. Harper looked over at him, amused. “I was sat here, just like this, when you walked in that day. On your first day of school.” He tapped the table slightly. “You introduced yourself, and I’ve been whipped for you ever since.”
"Just like that?" She teased, half giggling, and did a mock catwalk into the room, twirling around like a Miss World contestant.
"Exactly like that, yeah," he managed to get out in the midst of fond giggles at his girlfriend's fooling around.
She smiled at him and crossed him to sit at her own old table, diagonally to the right behind his. He swiveled around in his tiny seat to face her. "You would lean over and correct my maths work," he remembered.
She shrugged. "It was the only way to talk to you," she said, making Calum's eyes go wide. “Yeah! I used to keep looking at your work to see if you made mistakes- and you made a lot of them- and I would correct you.” She chuckled slightly, shaking her head. “I stupidly thought that was the way to weasel myself into your heart.”
“But it worked, though,” he said, and she smiled at him. "I wish I had asked you out then."
"I'm actually glad you didn't. We would have turned out as different people if we had been together then, and…" she walked over to sit on his table, and he looked up at her. His hand automatically moved to her calf, lightly stroking it. "I like the people we are right now."
He stood up in front of her, pulling her legs around his waist. She smirked at him, and his heart flipped like it always, always did. "I like the people we are right now too,” he said, and pressed his lips to hers. The kiss almost immediately got more intense, her hands ruffling through his short hair as he tilted his head.
"Mr Hood, Miss Romano, maybe don't make out in this classroom," a familiar voice piped up near them, and Harper and Calum instantly pulled away to look at the source. Mr Wayne, their English teacher was standing in the doorway, frowning amusedly at the couple. "There are children who study on that very table."
"Mr Wayne, hello!" Harper said, jumping off the bench, brushing her hair. Calum brushed a hand over his face and hair as well. "We were just reminiscing!"
"By kissing? That’s an interesting method," he commented.
“Sorry, Mr Wayne,” Calum said, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. Mr Wayne shook his head, a smile appearing on his face. He had been a pretty chill English teacher, Calum remembered.
"I really don't know if you kept him and the others in less trouble, or if they got you into more trouble, Miss Romano," he said, walking closer to them, his hands behind his back.
"Let's just say it was a mix of both, Mr Smith," Harper said, making Mr Lee chuckle.
"And you two are reconnecting in an unconventional manner," he quipped, and both Harper and Calum blushed, his hand moving to the small of her back. 
"Yeah, it... just happened."
"Well, please don't make out again in the classrooms. It was nice seeing you two again." He turned around to leave, and then looked back at them. "And I must say, it’s about time." He smiled at them and walked out, leaving the two of them confused.
“What the hell was that supposed to mean?" Harper whispered.
"I have no idea."
---
An hour and a half later, after a decent dinner hosted by the school itself, the four of them drove back home together. They had gone in Calum’s car, so he was driving. Harper had placed her hand on his that was on the gear stick five minutes into the ride, leading to a constant barrage of teasing from Luke and Michael, but Calum didn’t care- all he felt was contentment. 
They dropped off Luke and Michael at their respective homes, and as the car sped away, Harper sighed loudly. “I don’t wanna go home,” she whined.
“You don’t have to go home right now if you don’t want to, you know, you’re an adult,” he remarked, and her eyes grew wide.
“I’m an adult. Oh my god, I can do whatever I want!”
Calum chuckled at her. “Yeah, being back home makes you feel like a kid again, doesn’t it?”
“It really does, I feel like I should be at home doing homework right now,” she replied, giggling.
“So, Ms. Harper Romano, the adult,” he joked. “Where do you wanna go?” He pulled over on the side of the road- he didn’t wanna overshoot their destination that she was yet to pick. 
Harper looked around; suddenly, her hand gripped Calum’s tighter. “Benny’s Diner. It’s right there.” She pointed at a tiny restaurant on the side of the road with her free hand.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah! I remember all the couples used to come here for dates back then,” she said. Calum shrugged, stopped the car and got out, his hand disconnecting with hers for a few seconds till she was by his side again. This time, she slid her hand fully into his, and Calum couldn’t help the smile that formed on his face.
The name of the diner sounded kinda familiar to him, and as they walked in, he realized where he had heard it before. “I’m pretty sure Luke used to come here with his high school girlfriend,” he remarked, and Harper nodded.
“Probably. Literally everyone popular ate here. I’m pretty sure they came here after the school formal too,” she replied, settling into one of the booths. Calum sat down next to her, and he reluctantly let go of her hand. “I didn’t go with them, though. I went home after the dance. There’s only so much socializing I can do.”
Calum smiled at her, and looked around. It was a cute place, but he didn’t think he had ever come there before. He definitely hadn’t come here on a date, he would have remembered. “Who did you go to the formal with?” he asked.
“Tommy Huang,” she said, looking up from the menu she had picked up off another table. Calum’s mouth fell open at her answer.
“Seriously?” he asked, for the second time that night. “That guy was such a douche!”
“Yeah, but he was the only guy who asked me, and everyone else had dates.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “I didn’t wanna be that chick that’s all alone at the formal.”
The waitress interrupted them just then- Harper ordered a chocolate milkshake while Calum ordered a tea. 
“If I had been there, I would have asked you to the formal,” Calum said, after the waitress had left, and she smiled warmly at him.
“And I would have said yes, but you were in London,” she replied. She didn’t sound at all bitter, but the guilt ripped through his heart anyway.
“I’m sorry we abandoned you,” he said, reaching out to grab her hand, and she gladly took it. “And left you to get through the mess that is high school all alone,” he finished, and she shook her head.
“You didn’t abandon me, Cal, you guys were following your dreams! I would be a horrible friend if I felt bad about this.”
“So you don’t feel bad at all?”
“Well, I-” She paused, looking for words. “I was a little lonely, of course, I don’t blame you guys for it,” she said pointedly. “In fact, I’m glad you guys went to London, I mean, look where you are now!”
The universe has a funny way of proving points, and as if on cue, the diner’s speakers started playing She Looks So Perfect. Both of their jaws dropped- while Harper’s expression was more of amusement, Calum’s expression was sheer horror.
“And your song wouldn’t be played at random diners if you hadn’t gone to London!” She clapped her hands in glee, getting up from the booth. Calum put his face in his hands, hiding the smile that popped up from looking at his girlfriend’s joy. 
“You’re kidding, right?” he asked, watching her dance and sing along to Luke’s verse of the song.
“I am not kidding, Calum Thomas Hood, now up you get!” She dramatically raised her hands,  gesturing to him to stand. He got up, smirking at her shining face. “The whole world loves you, baby,” she cooed, taking his hands into hers, and he laughed. She forced him to dance, moving his hands like that of a doll, and he sheepishly went along with it, unable to stop laughing. He noticed the waitress staring at them like they were crazy, but at this point, he kinda felt like they were.
During the chorus, he even twirled her around; Harper cackled, which made Calum cackle as well. He felt carefree- like the world was only him and her in this diner, dancing to a song that he had made, acting silly.
When his verse came, he serenaded her, getting down on his knees as he sang the line, ‘If I showed up with a plane ticket, and a shiny diamond ring with your name on it, would you run away too? ‘Cause all I really want is you!’
Harper laughed as he sang, cracking up so hard she couldn’t talk. Calum was laughing just as hard- he could feel his stomach clench from laughing so much. After they finally caught their breath, Harper stood up fully, pulling him closer by his shirt. They were still giggling, and Calum doubted they would stop soon. “What are the odds of them playing this song right-fucking-now?” she asked, amused. He shook his head, his hands gripping her waist.
“Very, very slim,” he replied, and bent down to kiss her cheek. She grinned at him, and Calum felt like he was on cloud nine. The song had reached its end by now, and some other hit pop song started playing.
“I would, by the way,” she added, after a few moments, and Calum shot her a confused look. “If you showed up with a plane ticket and a shiny diamond ring with my name on it, I would run away with you.”
Calum didn’t think his heart could melt for her even more than it already was, but it did. Looking at her cheesy grin- the smile that bowled him over in the first place, that would forever be etched in his memory- he fell head over heels for her once again, as he had countless times before. In this time that he had reconnected with her, which was almost a year, he had found something worth fighting for.
Looking into her eyes, Calum felt a tinge of apprehension, of fear that he would lose her and go through the awful feeling that was heartbreak all over again. But much stronger than that apprehension, crushing it into pieces, rose hope- hope for a future of love, with her. A feeling he hadn’t experienced in so long, it seemed almost foreign.
“Consider it done,” he murmured, and her smile widened. And when she stepped closer to him, her hand brushing his cheek, and pressed her sweet lips to his, Calum knew there was nowhere else he wanted to be.
---
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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago
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This is a heartbreaking investigation into how Donald Trump's DISGUSTING 🤢, VILE, DESPICABLE, APPALLING, and DEPRAVED behavior is trickling down in our society and having REAL LIFE EFFECTS(including suicide) on our children and young people. The FISH ROTS from the HEAD. Melania it looks like your 'BE BEST' campaign isn't working out so well. Perhaps you should start by taking your husband's phone away and removing him from public view. PLEASE READ 📖 and SHARE this investigation. TY 🙏🏻🙏🏼🙏🏽🙏🏾🙏🏿
HOW THE BULLY-IN-CHIEF IS TURNING AMERICA NASTIER
By Paul Waldman | Published February 13 at 4:07 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 14, 2020 |
Sometimes we overestimate the degree to which a president can change a country, not just altering federal policy but also transforming our national life. But President Trump, there can be little doubt, will have as profound an effect on America as nearly any president in memory. The problem is that he’s doing it in all the worst ways.
As a new report from The Post demonstrates, across the country schools are reporting increased incidents of bullying and harassment directed at minority children in the time since Trump began running for office:
Since Trump’s rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.
It’s not all kids bullying kids — some of the cases involve teachers telling minority students that Trump will deport them or saying things such as “You’re getting kicked out of my country” (and there are also cases, though much smaller in number, of pro-Trump children being bullied).
Amazing what happens when you take the most repugnant human being in America and put him in the White House.
I exaggerate — but only a bit. I’m sure there are some Americans who are more morally despicable than Trump. Serial killers, for instance. But whether you like his administration’s policies, the president of the United States is a con man, a tax cheat, an accused sexual predator and the most prolific liar in the political history of Planet Earth, among other things.
But he might have been all that and not produced this kind of bullying. In fact, it was utterly predictable, because bullying is at the core of Trump’s being — and his political persona.
When he started running for president in 2015, Trump made clear that not only was he selling an agenda of xenophobia and racism, but he also wanted people to proclaim their hatreds loudly. “I’m so tired of this politically correct crap,” he said, and he wasn’t just talking about campus speech codes. He was angry at the foundational idea behind “political correctness,” that in our daily lives we should try to treat each other with respect.
The hell with that, Trump said. Every day he offered an instruction in the liberating power of being offensive. Not only shouldn’t you let a bunch of scolds tell you what kind of language to use, you should revel in the transgressive thrill of telling other people just what you think of them.
Trump plainly believes that if they see it to their advantage, people with more power should attack, victimize and humiliate those with less power. It’s something he’s known all his life, from when he was a young man being sued with his father for housing discrimination for refusing to rent apartments to black people, to when he was cheating struggling people out of their life savings, to when he refused to pay hundreds of small businesspeople what he owed them because they didn’t have the power to fight him.
In every case the logic was the same: He had more power than them, so he did what he wanted.
This is a man who mocked a reporter for his disability and who said women who accused him of sexual assault were too ugly for him to have victimized.
A different person might ascend to the most powerful position in the world and decide not to concern themselves anymore with petty squabbles. But if anything, Trump has accelerated his feuds, increasing the frequency with which he lashes out at those who are less powerful than him. Some are public figures who may be used to that sort of thing, but others are not.
One victim after another describes the disorienting feeling of being an ordinary person and realizing that the president of the United States is going after you. Just this week, Trump decided to attack the foreperson of the jury in the trial of his friend Roger Stone.
Imagine what it’s like to be her right now. You got the notice in the mail, went to do your civic duty, and now the president is insulting you on Twitter — with the inevitable threats and harassment from his supporters to follow.
And this is critical: Trump’s amen chorus celebrates him for his own bullying and the way he encourages others to be bullies. Recall the 2017 incident in which now-Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) body-slammed a journalist to the floor. On Fox News they cheered the assault as “Montana justice,” and host Laura Ingraham tweeted, “Did anyone get his lunch money stolen today and then run to tell the recess monitor?” Trump later appeared at a rally with Gianforte and said, “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!”
That’s the ethos of the Trump era: There are no more standards of morality or appropriate behavior or even simple politeness. There is only his power, and how you have to submit to it.
When Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for lying about an affair, they responded to the argument that it had nothing to do with his official duties by saying the president is a role model, so his behavior matters. They were wrong about a lot, but they were right about that.
The difference is that back then, nobody in Clinton’s party defended him for having an affair, let alone praised him for it. Today, Trump sends the message over and over that power and status should be used to punch down, mock, degrade and humiliate those you don’t like. And his legions of lickspittles laugh and cheer.
So it’s no wonder that Trump, who has the world’s biggest megaphone, has managed to spread his particular poison throughout the country, even to children. It would have a been a surprise if it didn’t happen.
*********
TRUMP’S WORDS, BULLIED KIDS,
SCARRED SCHOOLS .... THE PRESIDENT’S RHETORIC HAS CHANGED THE WAY HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN ARE HARASSED IN AMERICAN CLASSROOMS, The Post found
By Hannah Natanson, John Woodrow Cox and Perry Stein | Published Feb. 13, 2020 | Washington Post | Posted February 14, 2020 |
Two kindergartners in Utah told a Latino boy that President Trump would send him back to Mexico, and teenagers in Maine sneered "Ban Muslims" at a classmate wearing a hijab. In Tennessee, a group of middle- schoolers linked arms, imitating the president's proposed border wall as they refused to let nonwhite students pass. In Ohio, another group of middle-schoolers surrounded a mixed-race sixth-grader and, as she confided to her mother, told the girl: "This is Trump country."
Since Trump's rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.
Trump’s words, those chanted by his followers at campaign rallies and even his last name have been wielded by students and school staff members to harass children more than 300 times since the start of 2016, a Washington Post review of 28,000 news stories found. At least three-quarters of the attacks were directed at kids who are Hispanic, black or Muslim, according to the analysis. Students have also been victimized because they support the president — more than 45 times during the same period.
Although many hateful episodes garnered coverage just after the election, The Post found that Trump-connected persecution of children has never stopped. Even without the huge total from November 2016, an average of nearly two incidents per school week have been publicly reported over the past four years. Still, because so much of the bullying never appears in the news, The Post’s figure represents a small fraction of the actual total. It also doesn’t include the thousands of slurs, swastikas and racial epithets that aren’t directly linked to Trump but that the president’s detractors argue his behavior has exacerbated.
“It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected,” said Ashanty Bonilla, 17, a Mexican American high school junior in Idaho who faced so much ridicule from classmates last year that she transferred. “They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”
Asked about Trump’s effect on student behavior, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham noted that first lady Melania Trump — whose “Be Best” campaign denounces online harassment — had encouraged kids worldwide to treat one another with respect.
“She knows that bullying is a universal problem for children that will be difficult to stop in its entirety,” Grisham wrote in an email, “but Mrs. Trump will continue her work on behalf of the next generation despite the media’s appetite to blame her for actions and situations outside of her control.”
Most schools don’t track the Trump bullying phenomenon, and researchers didn’t ask about it in a federal survey of 6,100 students in 2017, the most recent year with available data. One in five of those children, ages 12 to 18, reported being bullied at school, a rate unchanged since the previous count in 2015.
However, a 2016 online survey of over 10,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that more than 2,500 “described specific incidents of bigotry and harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric,” although the overwhelming majority never made the news. In 476 cases, offenders used the phrase “build the wall.” In 672, they mentioned deportation.
For Cielo Castor, who is Mexican American, the experience at Kamiakin High in Kennewick, Wash., was searing. The day after the election, a friend told Cielo, then a sophomore, that he was glad Trump won because Mexicans were stealing American jobs. A year later, when the president was mentioned during her American literature course, she said she didn't support him and a classmate who did refused to sit next to her.
“‘I don’t want to be around her,’ ” Cielo recalled him announcing as he opted for the floor instead.
Then, on “America night” at a football game in October 2018 during Cielo’s senior year, schoolmates in the student section unfurled a “Make America Great Again” flag. Led by the boy who wouldn’t sit beside Cielo, the teenagers began to chant: “Build — the — wall!”
Horrified, she confronted the instigator.
“You can’t be doing that,” Cielo told him.
He ignored her, she recalled, and the teenagers around him booed her. A cheerleading coach was the lone adult who tried to make them stop.
“I felt like I was personally attacked. And it wasn’t like they were attacking my character. They were attacking my ethnicity, and it’s not like I can do anything about that.”
— Cielo Castor
After a photo of the teenagers with the flag appeared on social media, news about what had happened infuriated many of the school’s Latinos, who made up about a quarter of the 1,700-member student body. Cielo, then 17, hoped school officials would address the tension. When they didn’t, she attended that Wednesday’s school board meeting.
“I don’t feel cared for,” she told the members, crying.
A day later, the superintendent consoled her and the principal asked how he could help, recalled Cielo, now a college freshman. Afterward, school staff members addressed every class, but Hispanic students were still so angry that they organized a walkout.
Some students heckled the protesters, waving MAGA caps at them. At the end of the day, Cielo left the school with a white friend who’d attended the protest; they passed an underclassman she didn’t know.
“Look,” the boy said, “it’s one of those f---ing Mexicans.”
She heard that school administrators — who declined to be interviewed for this article — suspended the teenager who had led the chant, but she doubts he has changed.
Reached on Instagram, the teenager refused to talk about what happened, writing in a message that he didn’t want to discuss the incident “because it is in the past and everyone has moved on from it.” At the end, he added a sign-off: “Trump 2020.”
ust as the president has repeatedly targeted Latinos, so, too, have school bullies. Of the incidents The Post tallied, half targeted Hispanics.
In one of the most extreme cases of abuse, a 13-year-old in New Jersey told a Mexican American schoolmate, who was 12, that “all Mexicans should go back behind the wall.” A day later, on June 19, 2019, the 13-year-old assaulted the boy and his mother, Beronica Ruiz, punching him and beating her unconscious, said the family’s attorney, Daniel Santiago. He wonders to what extent Trump’s repeated vilification of certain minorities played a role.
[  More than 300 Trump-inspired harassment incidents reported by news outlets from 2016-2019]
Anti-Hispanic: 45%
Anti-black: 23%
Anti-Semitic: 7%
Anti-Muslim: 8%
Anti-LGBT: 4%
Anti-Trump: 14%
[ **Note: Some incidents targeted multiple groups and, in other cases,
the ethnicity/gender/religion of the
intended target was unclear. Figures may not precisely add up because of rounding. Source: Washington Post analysis of media reports]
“When the president goes on TV and is saying things like Mexicans are rapists, Mexicans are criminals — these children don’t have the cognitive ability to say, ‘He’s just playing the role of a politician,’ ” Santiago argued. “The language that he’s using matters.”
Ruiz’s son, who is now seeing a therapist, continues to endure nightmares from an experience that may take years to overcome. But experts say that discriminatory language can, on its own, harm children, especially those of color who may already feel marginalized.
“It causes grave damage, as much physical as psychological,” said Elsa Barajas, who has counseled more than 1,000 children in her job at the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health.
As a result, she has seen Hispanic students suffer from sleeplessness, lose interest in school, and experience inexplicable stomach pain and headaches.
For Ashanty Bonilla, the damage began with the response to a single tweet she shared 10 months ago.
“Unpopular opinion,” Ashanty, then 16 and a sophomore at Lewiston High School in rural Idaho, wrote on April 9. “People who support Trump and go to Mexico for vacation really piss me off. Sorry not sorry.”
A schoolmate, who is white, took a screen shot of her tweet and posted it to Snapchat, along with a Confederate flag.
“Unpopular opinion but: people that are from Mexico and come in to America illegally or at all really piss me off,” he added in a message that spread rapidly among students.
The next morning, as Ashanty arrived at school, half a dozen boys, including the one who had written the message, stood nearby.
“You’re illegal. Go back to Mexico,” she heard one of them say. “F--- Mexicans.”
Ashanty, shaken but silent, walked past as a friend yelled at the boys to shut up.
In a 33,000-person town that is 94 percent white, Ashanty, whose father is half-black and whose mother is Mexican American, had always worked to fit in. She attended every football game and won a school spirit award as a freshman. She straightened her hair and dyed it blond, hoping to look more like her friends.
“It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected. They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”
— Ashanty Bonilla
She had known those boys who’d heckled her since they were little. For her 15th birthday the year before, some had danced at her quinceañera.
A friend drove her off campus for lunch, but when they pulled back into the parking lot, Ashanty spotted people standing around her car. A rope had been tied from the back of the Honda Pilot to a pickup truck.
“Republican Trump 2020,” someone had written in the dust on her back window.
Hands trembling, Ashanty tried to untie the rope but couldn’t. She heard the laughing, sensed the cellphone cameras pointed at her. She began to weep.
Lewiston’s principal, Kevin Driskill, said he and his staff met with the boys they knew were involved, making clear that “we have zero tolerance for any kind of actions like that.” The incidents, he suspected, stemmed mostly from ignorance.
“Our lack of diversity probably comes with a lack of understanding,” Driskill said, but he added that he’s encouraged by the school district’s recent creation of a community group — following racist incidents on other campuses — meant to address those issues.
That effort came too late for Ashanty.
Some friends supported her, but others told her the boys were just joking. Don’t ruin their lives.
She seldom attended classes the last month of school. That summer, she started having migraines and panic attacks. In August, amid her spiraling despair, Ashanty swallowed 27 pills from a bottle of antidepressants. A helicopter rushed her to a hospital in Spokane, Wash., 100 miles away.
After that, she began seeing a therapist and, along with the friend who defended her, transferred to another school. Sometimes, she imagines how different life might be had she never written that tweet, but Ashanty tries not to blame herself and has learned to take more pride in her heritage. She just wishes the president understood the harm his words inflict.
Even Trump’s last name has become something of a slur to many children of color, whether they’ve heard it shouted at them in hallways or, in her case, seen it written on the back window of a car.
“It means,” she said, “you don’t belong.”
Three weeks into the 2018-19 school year, Miracle Slover's English teacher, she alleges, ordered black and Hispanic students to sit in the back of the classroom at their Fort Worth high school.
At the time, Miracle was a junior. Georgia Clark, her teacher at Amon Carter-Riverside, often brought up Trump, Miracle said. He was a good person, she told the class, because he wanted to build a wall.
“Every day was something new with immigration,” said Miracle, now 18, who has a black mother and a mixed-race father. “That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.”
Some students tried to film Clark, and others complained to administrators, but none of it made a difference, Miracle said. Clark, an employee of the Fort Worth system since 1998, kept talking.
Clark, who denies the teenager’s allegations, is one of more than 30 educators across the country accused of using the president’s name or rhetoric to harass students since he announced his candidacy, the Post analysis found.
In Clark’s class, Miracle stayed quiet until late spring 2019. That day, she walked in wearing her hair “puffy,” split into two high buns.
Clark, she said, told her it looked “nappy, like Marge off ‘The Simpsons.’ ” Unable to smother an angry reply, Miracle landed in the principal’s office. An administrator asked her to write a witness statement, and in it, she finally let go, scrawling her frustration across seven pages.
“I just got tired of it,” she said. “I wrote a ton.”
Still, Miracle said, school officials took no action until six weeks later, when Clark, 69, tweeted at Trump — in what she thought were private messages — requesting help deporting undocumented immigrants in Fort Worth schools. The posts went viral, drawing national condemnation. Clark was fired.
“Every day was something new with immigration. That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.”
— Miracle Slover, referring to Georgia Clark, her former English teacher
Not always, though, are offenders removed from the classroom.
The day after the 2016 election, Donnie Jones Jr.’s daughter was walking down a hallway at her Florida high school when, she says, a teacher warned her and two friends — all sophomores, all black — that Trump would “send you back to Africa.”
The district suspended the teacher for three days and transferred him to another school.
Just a few days later in California, a physical education teacher told a student that he would be deported under Trump. Two years ago in Maine, a substitute teacher referenced the president’s wall and promised a Lebanese American student, “You’re getting kicked out of my country.” More than a year later in Texas, a school employee flashed a coin bearing the word “ICE” at a Hispanic student. “Trump,” he said, “is working on a law where he can deport you.”
Sometimes, Jones said, he doesn’t recognize America.
“People now will say stuff that a couple of years ago they would not dare say,” Jones argued. He fears what his two youngest children, ages 11 and 9, might hear in their school hallways, especially if Trump is reelected.
Now a senior, Miracle doesn’t regret what she wrote about Clark. Although the furor that followed forced Miracle to switch schools and quit her beloved dance team, she would do it again, she said. Clark’s punishment, her public disgrace, was worth it.
About a week before Miracle’s 18th birthday, her mother checked Facebook to find a flurry of notifications. Friends were messaging to say that Clark had appealed her firing, and that the Texas education commissioner had intervened.
Reluctant to spoil the birthday, Jowona Powell waited several days to tell her daughter, who doesn’t use social media.
Citing a minor misstep in the school board’s firing process, the commissioner had ordered Carter-Riverside to pay Clark one year’s salary — or give the former teacher her job back.
[A snapshot of the harassment in 2019 ( SEE WEBSITE)]
In the three months after the president tweeted on July 14, 2019, that four minority congresswomen should "go back” to the countries they came from, more than a dozen incidents of Trump-related school bullying — including several that used his exact language — were reported in the press.
Jordyn Covington stood when she heard the jeers.
“Monkeys!” “You don’t belong here.” “Go back to where you came from!”
From atop the bleachers that day in October, Jordyn, 15, could see her Piper High School volleyball teammates on the court in tears. The sobbing varsity players were all black, all from Kansas City, Kan., like her.
Who was yelling? Jordyn wondered.
She peered at the students in the opposing section. Most of them were white.
“It was just sad,” said Jordyn, who plays for Piper’s junior varsity team. “And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.”
Go back? To where? Jordyn, her friends and Piper’s nine black players were all born in the United States. “Just like everyone else,” Jordyn said. “Just like white people.”
“It was just sad. And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.”
— Jordyn Covington
The game, played at an overwhelmingly white rural high school, came three months after Trump tweeted that four minority congresswomen should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
It was Jordyn’s first experience with racism, she said. But it was not the first time that fans at a school sports game had used the president to target students of color.
The Post found that players, parents or fans have used his name or words in at least 48 publicly reported cases, hurling hateful slogans at students competing in elementary, middle and high school games in 26 states.
The venom has been shouted on football gridirons and soccer fields, on basketball and volleyball courts. Nearly 90 percent of incidents identified by The Post targeted players and fans of color, or teams fielded by schools with large minority populations. More than half focused on Hispanics.
In one of the earliest examples, students at a Wisconsin high school soccer game in April 2016 chanted “Trump, build a wall!” at black and Hispanic players. A few months later, students at a high school basketball game in Missouri turned their backs and hoisted a Trump/Pence campaign sign as the majority-black opposing team walked onto the court. In 2017, two high school girls in Alabama showed up at a football game pep rally with a sign reading “Put the Panic back in Hispanic” and a “Trump Make America Great Again” banner.
In late 2017, two radio hosts announcing a high school basketball game in Iowa were caught on a hot mic describing Hispanic players as “español people.” “As Trump would say,” one broadcaster suggested, “go back where they came from.”
Both announcers were fired. After the volleyball incident in Kansas, though, the fallout was more muted. The opposing school district, Baldwin City, commissioned an investigation and subsequently asserted that there was “no evidence” of racist jeers. Administrators from Piper’s school system dismissed that claim and countered with a statement supporting their students.
An hour after the game, Jordyn fought to keep her eyes dry as she boarded the team bus home. When white players insisted that everything would be okay, she slipped in ear buds and selected “my mood playlist,” a collection of somber nighttime songs. She wiped her cheeks.
Jordyn had long ago concluded that Trump didn’t want her — or “anyone who is just not white” — in the United States. But hearing other students shout it was different.
Days later, her English teacher assigned an essay asking about “what’s right and what’s wrong.” At first, Jordyn thought she might write about the challenges transgender people face. Then she had another idea.
“The students were making fun of us because we were different, like our hair and skin tone,” Jordyn wrote. “How are you gonna be mad at me and my friends for being black. . . . I love myself and so should all of you.”
She read it aloud to the class. She finished, then looked up. Everyone began to applaud.
t's not just young Trump supporters who torment classmates because of who they are or what they believe. As one boy in North Carolina has come to understand, kids who oppose the president — kids like him — can be just as vicious.
By Gavin Trump’s estimation, nearly everyone at his middle school in Chapel Hill comes from a Democratic family. So when the kids insist on calling him by his last name — even after he demands that they stop — the 13-year-old knows they want to provoke him, by trying to link the boy to the president they despise.
In fifth grade, classmates would ask if he was related to the president, knowing he wasn’t. They would insinuate that Gavin agreed with the president on immigration and other polarizing issues.
“They saw my last name as Trump, and we all hate Trump, so it was like, ‘We all hate you,’ ” he said. “I was like, ‘Why are you teasing me? I have no relationship to Trump at all. We just ended up with the same last name.’ ”
Beyond kids like Gavin, the Post analysis also identified dozens of children across the country who were bullied, or even assaulted, because of their allegiance to the president.
School staff members in at least 18 states, from Washington to West Virginia, have picked on students for wearing Trump gear or voicing support for him. Among teenagers, the confrontations have at times turned physical. A high school student in Northern California said that after she celebrated the 2016 election results on social media, a classmate accused her of hating Mexicans and attacked her, leaving the girl with a bloodied nose. Last February, a teenager at an Oklahoma high school was caught on video ripping a Trump sign out of a student’s hands and knocking a red MAGA cap off his head.
And in the nation’s capital — where only 4 percent of voters cast ballots for Trump in 2016 — an outspoken conservative teenager said she had to leave her prestigious public school because she felt threatened.
In a YouTube video, Jayne Zirkle, a high school senior, said that the trouble started when classmates at the School Without Walls discovered an online photo of her campaigning for Trump. She said students circulated the photo, harassed her online and called her a white supremacist.
A D.C. school system official said they investigated the allegations and allowed Jayne to study from home to ensure she felt safe.
“A lot of people who I thought were my best friends just all of a sudden totally turned their backs on me,” Jayne said. “People wouldn’t even look at me or talk to me.”
For Gavin, the teasing began in fourth grade, soon after Trump announced his candidacy.
After more than a year of schoolyard taunts, Gavin decided to go by his mother’s last name, Mather, when he started middle school. The teenager has been proactive, requesting that teachers call him by the new name, but it gets trickier, and more stressful, when substitutes fill in. He didn’t legally change his last name, so “Trump” still appears on the roster.
The teasing has subsided, but the switch wasn’t easy. Gavin likes his real last name and feared that changing it would hurt his father’s feelings. His dad understood, but for Gavin, the guilt remains.
“This is my name,” he said. “And I am abandoning my name.”
Maritza Avalos knows what's coming. It's 2020. The next presidential election is nine months away. She remembers what happened during the last one, when she was just 11.
“Pack your bags,” kids told her. “You get a free trip to Mexico.”
She’s now a freshman at Kamiakin High, the same Washington state school where her older sister, Cielo, confronted the teenagers who chanted “Build the wall” at a football game in late 2018. Maritza, 14, assumes the taunts that accompanied Trump’s last campaign will intensify with this one, too.
“I try not to think about it,” she said, but for educators nationwide, the ongoing threat of politically charged harassment has been impossible to ignore.
In response, schools have canceled mock elections, banned political gear, trained teachers, increased security, formed student-led mediation groups and created committees to develop anti-discrimination policies.
In California, the staff at Riverside Polytechnic High School has been preparing for this year’s presidential election since the day after the last one. On Nov. 9, 2016, counselors held a workshop in the library for students to share their feelings. Trump supporters feared they would be singled out for their beliefs, while girls who had heard the president brag about sexually assaulting women worried that boys would be emboldened to do the same to them.
“We treated it almost like a crisis,” said Yuri Nava, a counselor who has since helped expand a student club devoted to improving the school’s culture and climate.
Riverside, which is 60 percent Hispanic, also offers three courses — African American, Chicano and ethnic studies — meant to help students better understand one another, Nava said. And instead of punishing students when they use race or politics to bully, counselors first try to bring them together with their victims to talk through what happened. Often, they leave as friends.
In Gambrills, Md., Arundel High School has taken a similar approach. Even before a student was caught scribbling the n-word in his notebook in early 2017, Gina Davenport, the principal, worried about the effect of the election’s rhetoric. At the school, where about half of the 2,200 students are minorities, she heard their concerns every day.
But the racist slur, discovered the same month as Trump’s inauguration, led to a concrete response.
A “Global Community Citizenship” class, now mandatory for all freshmen in the district, pushes students to explore their differences.
A recent lesson delved into Trump’s use of Twitter.
“The focus wasn’t Donald Trump, the focus was listening: How do we convey our ideas in order for someone to listen?” Davenport said. “We teach that we can disagree with each other without walking away being enemies — which we don’t see play out in the press, or in today’s political debates.”
Since the class debuted in fall 2017, disciplinary referrals for disruption and disrespect have decreased by 25 percent each school year, Davenport said. Membership in the school’s speech and debate team has doubled.
The course has eased Davenport’s anxiety heading into the next election. She doesn’t expect an uptick in racist bullying.
“Civil conversation,” she said. “The kids know what that means now.”
Many schools haven’t made such progress, and on those campuses, students are bracing for more abuse.
Maritza’s sister, Cielo, told her to stand up for herself if classmates use Trump’s words to harass her, but Maritza is quieter than her sibling. The freshman doesn’t like confrontation.
She knows, though, that eventually someone will say something — about the wall, maybe, or about how kids who look like her don’t belong in this country — and when that day comes, the girl hopes that she’ll be strong.
______
Julie Tate contributed to this report.
______
What is your school doing to stop politically charged bullying?
A Washington Post reporter may contact you with additional questions. We will not publish your name or what you submit below without first contacting you. We offer options to securely send information to our journalists using encrypted messaging services and email. To find out how, please go to website to fill out form.
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tharizdun-03 · 2 years ago
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86 Part 1 Review
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I am moving some of my Twitter threads over to Tumblr as well. This is one of them.
The two biggest issues in 86 are:
1) The very underdeveloped setting which leads to a simplistic depiction of its themes of racism and dehumanization. 
2) The largely bland and simple cast that for the most part ranges from annoying to just uninteresting.
Let’s go through them both, starting with...
Issue 1: Underdeveloped Setting
Let’s start with the first point, alright? When I first watched the series as it was airing, I found its setting so underdeveloped I actually had to ask for clarification about the reasons behind all this racism and war.
Of course, people being people, said that I just don’t understand racism, cause ”86 doesn’t need to give any deep reasons behind it people are just racist”, ”stop trying to justify it”, and ”why is racism lol”. Sigh… Every moral issue in the series is presented very black and white, there’s absolutely no subtlety here, it’s all blatantly in your face. War is bad is such a common theme you really gotta make it interesting nowadays for it to work.
The military is so cartoonishly evil, with their only insult being calling the 86 pigs every damn time they’re on screen and this dehumanization by the upper ranked members is just not writing down 86’s deaths lol, and our protagonist Lena is very clear about how all this is bad.
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It's just a very simplistic depiction of segregation and class injustice when the ways we actually dehumanize people in real life are a bit more complicated than just, pretending they don’t exist or calling them pigs. And the fact that it all just started 9 years ago is insane.
Anette was friends with 86 people in school, everything was cool, they were equal, but then, BAM, SUDDENLY OUT OF NOWHERE, they were gone and segregated. And only then was she mocked by her classmates for having been friends with an 86 (she is very confused about this for some reason when all her other classmates aren’t). 
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Are we really saying that all this prejudice against people without silver hair only kicked in 9 years ago when the government suddenly took action? That is such a simplistic and naive representation of dehumanization. The fact that any racism wasn’t present prior to 9 years ago makes the setting so fundamentally weak that makes me think that it just has to be a fault of the anime, right?
It just didn’t include this information from the LN. Of course, doesn’t change anything, as it is the anime I’m talking about, but I can’t imagine the setting being so under-developed that it's the case in the light novel as well. You don’t just change to fascism overnight. There is a history of an underlying chain of events behind things like this. Very poorly done. 
It just opens up a lot of questions.
It is difficult for me to believe that after having been oppressed for so long and been made to fight to die, they’d still fight for them voluntarily. You know, maybe I can understand that they wouldn’t want to rebel now but are you telling me they’ve never even tried rebelling in the past? We should get some mention of them fighting back against the dehumanization but the series presents them as if they just accepted it from the start and haven’t tried to do anything about it.
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Another thing, if the Albas are only people with white skin color (and they all seem white anyway, including Albas and 86, so?), and the white/silver hair, isn't that a minority? As literally every other skin and hair color would be 86, they should be way more. Unless, of course, UNLESS! There was a history of selectively trying to make sure only Albas were born or something but that would only work with a long history of dehumanization, something apparently not a thing in this series, as it all seemed to have happened only 9 years ago. Another potential question was what about just dyeing their hair? I'm sure there's some way they could do it, and not that I'd expect it to work, but it'd show at least some 86 tried to resist the oppression. Maybe they’ve been identified since birth, so the government knows what hair color they were born with, it’s all documented? Would be a quick way to kinda show how the 86 tried to resist, but we get nothing about that, and also can’t be the case cause they was only racism since 9 years ago. 
Do you see how many small things immediately fall apart when this struggle has only been a thing for 9 years?
It’s also difficult for me to believe that Lena is the only handler that has not only not gone insane or not killed herself from being teamed together with the Undertaker squad, but also the only one that’s realized their treatment of them is wrong? And because of her uncle, I guess, she doesn’t really suffer any consequences from speaking up against the Empire, which might make sense in setting (but honestly, she gets away with too much for it to make total sense), but isn’t a very good decision from a narrative point of view. I’m also surprised that the public hasn’t realized the 86 are the ones being killed? Eventually, it’d leak out somehow, and there would be at least some people speaking against it. You know, make it nuanced, instead of basically everybody being a racist piece of shit. Don’t worry tho, they do say that some Albans are good and not racist, but most of them we don’t ever see, they just mention that they’re out there somewhere. Also, why is there a war in the first place? In real life, you know, World War 2 was a thing because Hitler convinced his people that the economic rut they’re in could be fixed with revenge against the rest of the world, or the current war over in Ukraine being because Putin wants to restore the former glory of the USSR. Even in AoT, there are a history of reasons there. We don’t really have any political reasons in 86 though. The whole war against Legion, the military figured out that they will stop functioning in two years, yet somehow haven’t figured out the whole absorbing human brains thing? They don’t even have a backup plan just in case they’re wrong, or the 86 all die before that? Nothing. Also, we finally got some air missiles in EP 9, and I'd like for the show to touch more upon why that isn't used more often. Because if they can just use 86 as resources, rather that?
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Honestly, though, 86 isn’t really about racism and dehumanization. It doesn’t really delve into those themes, they’re just kinda there in the background to add a kind of edgy flavor to the series, so it stands out from its peers. Should be evident as they are all still teenagers. They control drones but we have never seen them train and get that experience. They are teenagers. Lena is a highly ranked military member, a major, the strongest one in the entire Republic. She is 16 years old. Make it make sense.
Issue 2: Underdeveloped Cast
Let’s move on to the second issue, which does tie into the first one, but isn’t wholly dependent on it, the characters. Lena is very much your typical LN Mary Sue heroine personality-wise a lot of the time, and constantly switches between this serious idealist, and waifu bait(tripping, blushing, crying a bit too much, etc.). I don’t know why she’s falling for Shin, the guy she just talks ”on the phone” with, and it’s not really about much, and there’s no real chemistry there.
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Their interactions just aren’t good enough to warrant a romance yet. And she’s a bit dumb? Sorry Lena lol. Her rhetoric is bad with just repeating the same talking points over and over again (”86 are human too, they’re suffering”), and seems to understand racism, yet was surprised when it was revealed to her that they’re just fighting to die which seemed obvious from episode 1. 
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Also, her scene with Annette supposedly breaking down her ideals and hypocrisy just didn’t even make sense?
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Shin was easily the one I was the most intrigued by, but he ended up kinda generic? 
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Most of the intrigue was with his backstory with his brother, which was really just that he was stressed and took it out on Shin, I guess. I mean, don’t get me wrong, his send-off was a perfectly decent cathartic scene, tho the insert song was way too loud and kinda ruined the moment, but I just, expected a little bit more substance to tug at there. And that’s really all that was set up with Shin. 
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I’m sure they’ll do more stuff with him, but what was set up has been executed at least, so my intrigue about him is now gone. Personality-wise, not too much going on either. You know, he just didn’t really end up doing much. Also, his telepathy does seem a bit out of place. The rest of the characters are whatever really. I don’t care for them, because the show hasn’t given us a reason to. They dump all these characters at us from episode 1, and then start killing them off, but if they don’t get substantial characterization, why should I care? In fact, some of them were actively annoying, like Daiya, so I’m glad he died. It’s not enough to just spend time with them and have a little poking fun at their crushes or some beating up the pervs scene, I need actual substance. There’s some potential with the ones left though, I quite enjoyed the SoL in the last few eps, tho I still don’t think it did much characterization-wise, just general atmosphere-wise, it was much more effective than what has been previously. Uhm, let’s just quickly talked about what I liked, cause I’m sure some of you are wondering why my score is a light 6 (my scoring system is fucked up). It looks great, most of the time. It’s one of the better-looking A-1 shows, I’d say. Generally, the directing is strong, though there are the atrocious CG battles and silly food transitions, but most of the time it's strong, and the sound design can be really cool during Lena’s breakdowns, and I like the sketchy censors drawn over faces in Shin’s visions. Music, for being Sawano, who quite frankly has just fallen off in recent years, is pretty bad tho. It’s stereotypically Sawano with its vocal tracks, that are often not appropriate in the scenes they’re in, and otherwise, it’s just piano so bland I can’t tell if it’s more than just one song over and over again. Play some damn violins, they’re the best. I liked what they did for Fido in the end, with the whole camera-perspective send-off.
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I also quite liked the last few eps. Have no real issues with them. This is really a series I’d say is quintessentially mediocre, but the last few eps were problem-free so it managed to bump it up to that light 6. 
But that’s it. Plenty of the time it is harmless, and it seems to be improving, but it’s a mostly mediocre series with big world-building issues. 
Score:
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Original Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/Tharizdun03/status/1521882350279434242?s=20&t=WWFjjbVhIH5xR1aw_63oqg
Part 2 Review: https://www.tumblr.com/tharizdun-03/701001430746660864/86-part-2-review?source=share 
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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago
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Several stories showing racial profiling of black Americans by police and white Americans continue to go viral — in one video, a white woman calls the cops on a black man babysitting two white children in Georgia. In another, a white student calls 911 when she sees a black classmate sleeping in a dormitory common room. In this essay, a former police dispatcher remembers the racist calls she used to take every day and law enforcement’s rules that forced her to respond to every caller, regardless of the incident.
It was the end of an 18-hour shift. My butt hurt from sitting in one place with only a couple of five-minute bathroom breaks. My brain hurt from staying awake that long, and my stomach ached from all the coffee I’d drunk to keep myself alert.
But the phones rarely stopped.
“911, what’s the address of your emergency?” I said into the headset.
The man gave me his address and then said, “There’s a woman pushing a shopping cart in front of my house.”
This one stumped me. I worked in a large metropolitan area. Yes, the city where I worked was affluent, and most people used their cars to get groceries. But surely he’d seen a person using a personal grocery cart before.
“I’m sorry, I’m not getting it. What’s the problem?” I waited for more clarification as I racked my brain for the correct penal code under which this infraction might fall.
“You need to get out here now.”
“Um.” A dispatcher has to be cautious about how she phrases things. Of all the jobs in emergency services — firefighters, police officers, nurses, doctors — dispatchers are the only ones who are recorded during every single thing they do. Everything they say — and their whole job is speaking — is part of public record. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re reporting.”
“She’s black.”
My heart sped up as it did every day when I heard this kind of thing. This Northern California city was affluent and very white, bordering Oakland, much of which was neither. “Sir, I’m still not seeing the problem. Is she being loud? Is the noise of the cart disturbing your peace?”
His tone got harsher. “Where do you live?”
I was so startled by the question that I answered it. “Oakland,” I said.
“You wouldn’t understand, then. This isn’t Oakland. We don’t have people like her in this neighborhood. Just send someone out to get rid of her. I’m not talking to you anymore.” The click in my ear was his goodbye.
The worst thing about it? I had to send someone out. Dispatchers usually don’t get to choose which calls lead to the dispatching of emergency personnel and which don’t.
If a person wants to make a report, they get to make a report. You can think of police reports as being like lawsuits. Anyone can make one about anything, no matter how stupid. Shortly after 9/11, I had to send an officer to take a report from a citizen because she’d had a dream about a knife-wielding man from Afghanistan.
Of course, dispatchers do have a tiny bit of control. I sent our one Afghan officer to take the report from her. He was amused; she, not so much.
By now, you’ve probably heard about the white Oakland woman who called the cops because black men were using a charcoal grill at Lake Merritt. She’s been memed and mocked, and the department has been criticized for sending officers out. But it all started with a dispatcher, answering that first phone call.
According to the computer logs, which have been made public, the call came in 11:22 am. A woman reported a 40-year-old heavyset black man using a charcoal grill. The dispatcher spent less than a minute asking her for more information. He typed NFD at the end, which stands for No Further Details.
Here’s where I start guessing things, based on 17 years of dispatching in the Bay Area. I’m guessing that the dispatcher rolled his eyes at this call so hard they almost fell out of his head. Yet another white lady upset over what black people were doing. Every single day of my career, I took that call. Every single day, I wanted to slam down the phone.
Instead, the dispatcher typed NFD. That’s subtle dispatch code for “this caller was a pain in the butt and couldn’t give more information about this lame-ass complaint.” It was entered as a Priority 3 call, which essentially means “not important” — the police officers on duty at that moment had much better things to do in a city like Oakland.
Two hours passed, and police had not responded. But then someone called to report the original caller was still on scene and now fighting with the people barbecuing, which prompted an immediate dispatch. “Life before property” is the code by which emergency services run. Potential property damage reports will hold for hours, if not days, if officers are busy intervening in situations where people are in physical danger. Once it was reported that people were fighting, an officer arrived at the scene of the barbecue eight minutes later.
Am I saying police officers aren’t racist — that they question black citizens more aggressively than white citizens because responding to most complaints is obligatory? Heck no. Many are. We live in a country still mired in institutional racism, including its policing. I’m not in the business anymore, and the relationship between police departments and communities of color was one of the reasons I left to write full time.
But I am pointing out that those cops on the video didn’t look happy to be forced to take the complaint seriously. They had way better things to do that afternoon than investigate some guys cooking out in a park.
In every city in America, 911 rings around the clock. Dispatchers are usually too short-staffed to take real breaks, and they can’t shut the center for weekends and holidays. They are the ones who suck it up and keep hitting the answer button, no matter what.
My co-worker once got a call from a man who said, “My neighbors keep parking in front of my house. And they’re black.”
Dispatchers all have moments when they reach the end of their patience, and that was Bonnie’s moment.
She said, “It’s a city street. Unfortunately, anyone can legally park wherever they like. I’m sure it’s very frustrating for you. Why would you bring race into this?”
“Are you black?”
“I am,” she said.
“Put your supervisor on the phone.”
He filed a police report against her instead of his neighbors.
She went through an internal affairs investigation because, of course, any report against a member of the police department has to be investigated. She was cleared of breaking any technical rules — she had stated clearly that no laws were being broken; she hadn’t had an attitude in her voice.
But she was sternly advised to be more circumspect in the future or her job would be at stake. She told me later, “That was the moment I decided to leave the industry. Every time I answered the phone, I felt like I got punched in the face. And I had to shut up and take it.” A few years later, she became a therapist on San Quentin’s death row. She said her new job was easier than dispatching.
The phone rings again. You mime stabbing yourself in the eyeball as the next caller says that she thinks three kids outside the 7-Eleven are getting ready to rob it.
“Why do you think that?”
“They’re wearing hoodies. You never know what those kinds of kids are carrying in their pockets. Every one of them could have a gun, you know. They probably do.”
“Did you see a gun?”
“Just check.” Click.
You swallow your cold oatmeal, you roll your eyes at your cubicle mate, and you enter the call for eventual dispatch even though you wish you could pretend you never got it. (If you don’t enter the call and something happens, you could lose your job for negligence.) Then you grab the next call.
Of course people should call 911 if it’s an actual emergency. But think before you call the cops to handle your feelings about a barbecue, or where someone is parked, or if they’re playing music on a Saturday afternoon. If you get it wrong (and all of us, living in the privileged bubbles of our own creation, often get it wrong), you could be the reason someone gets hurt or even killed.
With some rudimentary math, I’ve worked out that I’ve answered at least a quarter of a million 911 calls in my career. Amid the meaningless, racially charged calls, I’ve gotten so many by concerned citizens who genuinely want to help someone who is hurt or in danger. Good typically wins over evil. But it’s awfully damn close sometimes. And we all have to pick a side.
Rachael Herron is the best–selling author of the novel The Ones Who Matter Most, named an editor’s pick by Library Journal, as well as more than 20 other novels and memoirs. She received her MFA in writing from Mills College, Oakland, and she teaches creative writing in the extension programs at both UC Berkeley and Stanford.
First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at [email protected].
Original Source -> I used to be a 911 dispatcher. I had to respond to racist calls every day.
via The Conservative Brief
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bloodfromtherock-blog · 6 years ago
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KAVANAUGH & THE CORONATED CREEPS
Daniel Hutchens October 10, 2018
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"It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice." -Howard Zinn **********************************************
Kavanaugh repeatedly lied to the US Senate under oath during his job interview for Justice of the Supreme Court. These lies have been well-documented at this point, and aren’t even being contested; the essence of the reply from the Republican oligarchy is, “It doesn’t matter.”
And American women at this point have been demoted to second-class citizens by the Trump administration. This is clearly observable. Trump’s attacks on women are relentless; his push toward more restrictive policies on contraception and abortion, his rollback of gender equality pay laws, removal of paycheck transparency, forced arbitration clauses for sexual harassment, sexual assault or discrimination claims...for me, as the father of an 11 year old daughter, this is all a sinister slap in the face. But more to the point, Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court now puts Trumpsters firmly in control of the move to strike down Roe v. Wade. Understand this clearly: female American citizens are considered nothing more than property by the Old Boys Club, and women’s voices regarding reproductive rights and their own bodies are considered irrelevant. In Trump’s eyes, women are cattle to be branded and used as deemed appropriate.
Kavanaugh is staunchly anti-abortion and has no intent of ruling objectively on this issue. When Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, shadily swung her support to Kavanaugh during the hearings, she apparently felt compelled to grandstand dishonestly for the cameras, maybe in deference to the power of the #MeToo movement, considering her stature as a female Senator. Her behavior reeks of a back room deal, after her previous assertions that if Kavanaugh lied he should be disqualified. She helped Republicans by putting a woman’s face on their warped campaign to shame and discredit survivors of sexual assault, thereby aiding Trump’s shitty backlash against #MeToo, and his brain dead catch phrase, “It’s a very scary time for young men in America.” #MeToo is so powerful that people like Susan Collins have to pretend to support it. She said that Kavanaugh would preserve Roe v Wade and legal abortion. Bullshit. “Operation Rescue,” a group working since the ‘80s to “make America abortion free,” and the rest of the extremist anti-woman crowd have all supported Kavanaugh’s nomination right down the line.
The looming abortion showdown is grim news for American women and those who care about them, alright. The notion that there’s some religious or ethical justification behind returning to back-alley amateurs and economically-selective access to these medical procedures is a sleazeball scam. And just for the record, the “religious right” who have supported Trump have completely forfeited all claim on morality, forevermore, end of discussion. Their previous hand-wringing over opposition candidates for sexual scandals, affairs etc.—then their ridiculous postures that “God chose Trump,” and they “weren’t electing a Sunday school teacher,” their transparent indifference to his cheating on all his wives with porn stars, scamming American citizens with rackets like Trump University etc., his history of racist business practices, his shady record of tax fraud and his whole laundry list of decidedly unChristian behavior, in the most basic sense of spirituality and genuine concern for others, which some of our parents actually schooled us about...yeah, those evangelical hucksters are exposed and discredited and can shut their mouths permanently about abortion and everything else. There are people with genuine soul convictions about these issues, but there are also plenty of imposters and their servility to a snake like Trump spotlights their insincerity. Ye shall know ‘em by their fruits, I’ve heard tell.
Of COURSE Trump wanted Kavanaugh on the Court. Kavanaugh has confirmed himself as a “get out of jail free card" should Trump ever be charged with any crime. Not to mention that Trump and Kavanaugh are plainly fellow members of a perverse fraternity we might as well call “The He-Man Woman Haters Club,” with apologies to the Little Rascals. They both have histories of a predatory mindset, insulting attitudes toward women in general (and no, hiring a few females or minorities does not erase acts of bigotry, and none of us fail to understand the concept of “making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality”)…and Trump’s recent sideshow of mocking Dr. Ford was one of the most jaw-droppingly ugly little political performances this nation has witnessed in many years. (Excepting other Trump tantrums, of course.) Not so long ago, such a warped demonstration would have dropped like a stone any American politician from favor by both parties, immediately and with extreme prejudice. Not so in today’s world of Trumpian “alternative facts” and low-rent bullying.
Also revisit the whole Justice Kennedy/Deutsch Bank scandal, and put the pieces together. Plenty of in-depth and sobering articles are available on this subject, and the bottom line takeaway is that Russian money and influence indeed are swaying American policy and elections, and the whole thing is directly tied to the slow-moving Republican/Russian takeover of everything from our Supreme Court on down. By all means, don’t take my word for it, but by all means do your own research and do your own thinking. But these topics expand and branch out mighty far. Let’s snap focus back onto Kavanaugh.
******************************** “The politically convenient, scientifically baseless theory that sexual assault so traumatized Christine Blasey Ford she mixed up her attacker is now something like common wisdom for many Republicans… less than three weeks ago, when the mistaken-identity theory was first formulated, it was so widely ridiculed that a pundit who advanced it on Twitter subsequently apologized and offered to resign from his job.” -Avi Selk ********************************
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October 5th Dr. Ford cover Illustration by John Mavroudis for TIME. © 2018
Some of Kavanaugh’s defenders have criticized Dr. Ford for being “coached” and otherwise manipulated. I have no doubt she got some advice from lawyers, etc., nor that the timing and presentation of her complaints were orchestrated through Democratic channels. That’s the name of the game in Big Time American Politics, folks. But her testimony was believable and compelling, and she retained adult composure through her emotions (it’s tough to imagine the storm of criticism she would have received from Republicans if she had behaved anything like Kavanaugh.) But the implication that Kavanaugh wasn’t also coached (with a professional eye toward manipulating opinion) is high-grade bullshit, or else a stunning level of naivete. Kavanaugh’s TV appearance in which he portrayed himself as a meek little virgin til long after high school, etc., was harshly disapproved of by Team Trump, and they coached him up with specific instructions for the Senate hearing: their advice was that he needed to unleash his anger. And Kavanaugh ran with the “anger” bit and it got away from him; that much-reported nasty temperament of his glared through the cracks in his public facade, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Kavanaugh’s face...God have mercy. Now in addition to Trump, we have another bitter, hideous visage to haunt our collective dreams. Understand we’re not discussing aesthetics. I’m referring to that old notion that eyes are the windows to the soul, and that intuitive interpretation of facial displays gives us significant information about an individual’s attitude, sense of humor, empathy...or the lack of it. And we were burned by flashes of Kavanaugh’s inner demons during the hearing. Much like Trump, Kavanaugh’s features contorted into a repellent mask of childish temper, ill-mannered impatience and lurking malevolence. It was a freak show that could have taught Hollywood’s monster make-up artists a trick or two. To the extent that Kavanaugh was moved (instructed) to write a quasi-apologetic op-ed piece after the hearing. But we all know what we saw.
During that hearing he raged at those who had questioned his nomination and he hinted not-so-subtly at retribution. He was prodded by White House counsel Don McGahn, who sat directly behind Kavanaugh during the hearing. The whole performance was sickeningly indignant, unashamedly entitled and arrogant, and stunningly partisan in a way that would have disqualified any nominee from previous years—but again, not so in today’s atmosphere of Trumpian distortion and pettiness.
Plenty of us out here recognize Kavanaugh for who he is. We’ve all known “that guy” in our lives; the spoiled, sneering little punkass who talks differently about women as soon as they walk out the door, and who suffers delusions of superiority, and who no one wants to hear any more shit from down at the corner bar.
Kavanaugh’s appointment was questioned or condemned by vast numbers in this country, represented by such organizations as the American Bar Association, Yale Law School, over 2400 Law Professors nationwide, many former classmates and friends, and the National Council of Churches (which represents 100,000 churches and about 45 million churchgoers.) Not to mention the many womens’ groups, the #MeToo movement, etc. Such outright opposition to a nominee for the Supreme Court is extraordinary, and the fact that said opposition was mocked, belittled and outright ignored by the Republicans determined to ram this nomination through come hell or high water—“we’re going to plow right through it,” as Mitch McConnell claimed without shame—yeah, such utter disregard for mass portions of the population is ominous. (And by the way, Trump’s dumbassed claim that Kavanaugh was “proven innocent” indicates a farcical, childish lack of legal comprehension.)
And of course, the meager FBI “investigation” allowed was nothing but a front. The whole circus was rushed and hushed, with zero perceivable interest in knowing the real truth. If team Trump had any interest in uniting the country or in general fairness, they could have trotted out any of a dozen other nominees, all of whom would even have satisfied the wish list of the conservative right, without all the unnecessary baggage. But there are higher priorities for these particular elected officials than fairness or the genuine best interests of the nation.
To pretend Kavanaugh isn’t a partisan shill now planted in the land’s highest court is preposterous belief in “alternative facts” and simplistic hype. The only ones who are fooled by Trump’s blather at this point are those who want to be fooled. His outright nonsense and habitual lies are easily spotted from miles away, but the sad fact is that his supporters don’t give a fuck. They don’t care if he lies, or demeans women or minorities or stirs up international diplomatic firestorms with “shithole countries”-style verbal diarrhea. As Trump himself famously said, he could “shoot somebody and not lose voters.” It’s strangely, sadly true.
It’s also true of Trump’s new handpuppet, Kavanaugh. To whom the idea of “a personality that is even-handed, unbiased, impartial, and dedicated to a process, not a result” in no way applies. Certainly not at this point, after he ranted about “the revenge of the Clintons,” and openly attacked “the Left,” “Democrats” and (for Crissakes) “the media” during his whinefest in front of the US Senate…beyond the pale, folks. We live in a strange new land, in strange new times.
Post-American, by many accounts. The much-revered and much-hated icon of the Left, Michael Moore, predicted Trump’s election in a written article in 2016. The prediction was often reprinted and ballyhooed as campaign-banner fodder by the Far Right. But they missed the warning flash of Moore’s article, and the unnerving prediction: “And now you’re fucked…When the rightfully angry people of Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin find out after a few months in office that President Trump wasn’t going to do a damn thing for them, it will be too late to do anything about it…Goodnight America. You’ve just elected the last president of the United States.”
Pretty dramatic words, but unfortunately the further we sink into the era of the Trump regime, the less incredible such sentiments sound. We’re witnessing an active dismantling and attempted discrediting of institutions ranging from public education to the Free Press. And the schemed attack on the Supreme Court, again, has proven successful for far-righters who don’t give a damn about being even-handed or protecting an independent judiciary.
Trump said that Dr. Ford seemed “a very credible witness”and “very compelling” on one day. Then a few days later he openly mocked her like he was a dimwitted schoolkid. He gushed about what a great man Kavanaugh is, then the next day said, “I don’t even know him!” It’s all topsy-turvy and bizarre, the truth is treated like a curious artifact from a long-dead age, and Trump’s supporters act like it’s all “normal.” But it’s not. And the glimmer of hope is that there are plenty of us out here who understand perfectly well that Emperor Trump ain’t wearing any clothes. We see very clearly what’s happening in this country, the legitimizing of white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, and bigotry of every stripe. We see you. We see you and know you and so does the whole world, and so will the history books, baby.
“I know Brett Kavanaugh but I wouldn’t confirm him,” wrote Benjamin Wittes, who had previously published and even admired Kavanaugh. “I cannot condone the partisanship—which was raw, undisguised, naked, and conspiratorial—from someone who asks for public faith as a dispassionate and impartial judicial actor. His performance was wholly inconsistent with the conduct we should expect from a member of the judiciary.”
And the message to women in this country, again, is sadly obvious. “Shut the hell up. Because if you ever dare to speak up about this kind of thing again, we will openly ridicule you and no one in power will ever take you seriously.”
******************************************** “Kavanaugh, though, has a distinct honor: He will be the first justice nominated by someone who lost the popular vote to earn his seat on the bench with support from senators representing less than half of the country while having his nomination opposed by a majority of the country.” -Philip Bump *********************************************
CODA: Yeah. The country is divided in a way it hasn’t been since Vietnam. Extremists are multiplying, and they’re nurturing diseases that were seething under the surface for many years before Trump. And indeed, we’re witnessing a perverse resurgence of tolerance for fascism and white supremacism worldwide. But here in America, Trump is the ringmaster of the new Ugliness; his lowering the bar of public discourse, his smug approval of greed and cruelty, his nod-and-a-wink okey-dokes to racism, misogyny and all manner of bigotry—he has legitimized, pardoned and coronated the creeps, the rotten underbelly of our society, the very worst we have to offer.
Let’s vote some of these bastards out in November, folks.
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epacer · 4 years ago
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Surge of Xenophobia and Racism
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Asian Americans Wary About School Amid Virus, Violence
A Chinese American mother in the Boston suburbs is sending her sons to in-person classes this month, even after one of them was taunted with a racist “slanted-eyes” gesture at school, just days after the killings of women of Asian descent at massage businesses in Atlanta.
In the Dallas area, a Korean American family is keeping their middle schooler in online classes for the rest of the year after they spotted a question filled with racist Chinese stereotypes, including a reference to eating dogs and cats, on one of her exams.
As high schools and elementary schools across the country gradually re-open for full-time classes, Asian American families are wrestling with whether to send their children back out into the world at a time when anti-Asian hostility and violence is on the rise.
Some Asian American parents say they’re content to keep their children in virtual classes, especially with the school year winding down and COVID-19 cases rising in places. Others are conceding to adolescents craving normalcy, while still others refuse to shield their youths from bigotry.
Asian American students have the highest rates of remote learning more than a year after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered school buildings and forced districts to pivot to online classes. A federal government survey released earlier this month found just 15% of Asian American fourth graders were attending classes in-person as of February, compared with more than half of white fourth graders.
Those rates appear to be rising in some cities, but are still far lower than those of Black, Latino and white students. In Sacramento, Boston and Chicago public schools, for example, roughly a third of Asian American students are expected to return to in-person classes this month, compared with some 70% of white students, according to the most recent district data available.
Asian American youths have also not been spared anti-Asian harassment. A September report by Stop AAPI Hate found about 25% of Asian American youths surveyed experienced discrimination, including verbal harassment, social shunning, cyberbullying and physical assault, during the pandemic. The San Francisco-based group, which tracks incidents of discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, also says more than 12% of its reported incidents involved youths ages 17 and under.
Concerns about virus spread and rising racism are factors in the in-person learning disparities, but many Asian families also benefit from living in multi-generational households where grandparents and other relatives can help out, said Peter Kiang, director of Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
“These ethnic-defined support systems have been operating for more than a year already while parents are out working long hours, so there is no urgency to return to in-person classrooms,” he said.
Another factor is that many Asian Americans live in major urban areas like Boston where schools are only now starting to widely re-open, said Robert Teranishi, a professor of education and Asian American studies at UCLA. Meanwhile San Francisco, where about a third of public school students are of Asian descent, has no timetable for the return of middle and high school students.
For Grace Hu, a 16-year-old in Sharon, Massachusetts, who has been learning remotely all school year, the decision to go back to in-person classes later this month was easy.
The high school sophomore helped organize a recent rally against anti-Asian hate in Boston, but said she's not concerned about facing vitriol in school. The district, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Boston, has a sizeable Asian American student population and she's felt generally safe and welcomed.
“I’m feeling trapped at home,” Hu said. “I just want to see my classmates again.”
Closer to Boston, in Quincy, a city with the highest concentration of Asian Americans in the state, Kim Horrigan said she and her husband have struggled with their decision to keep their 8-year-old son in remote learning this school year, but for altogether different reasons.
Horrigan said she’s never really considered racism a threat to her family, even though there's been tension in Quincy over the years as the Asian American community has grown to roughly 25% of the population, transforming a city famous for being the birthplace of two American presidents.
Instead, she's most concerned about exposing her household, which includes her Chinese immigrant parents, who are in their 70s, and two younger children, to COVID-19. At the same time, Horrigan worries about her son falling behind the longer he's home.
“We’ve taken so many precautions and sacrificed so much,” she said. "Why would we drop our guard now, with just a few weeks left?”
Meanwhile, in Needham, another Boston suburb, Denise Chan said she hasn’t second-guessed placing her three young sons back in classes full-time in recent weeks, even after the “slanted-eyes" incident.
Chan said another student approached her 11-year-old son at lunchtime, made a comment about Korean eyes and pulled his eyelids upward in the mocking gesture as other students looked on.
She said her son called out the racist remark, and his teacher eventually had the student apologize and promised racism would be addressed in the class curriculum.
“If the teacher did not deal with it the way she did, I would be more worried about sending him back,” said Chan. “I was also proud of the way my son handled it. We’ve talked about why it’s important to speak out.”
But in Carrollton, Texas, Joy Lim said her parents decided to keep her younger sister in remote learning after publicly raising concerns about the racist test question.
The 21-year-old college student said the decision is in part because of fear of reprisals if the sixth-grader returns to classes. The district denounced the exam question as “derogatory and hurtful” and placed three teachers on administrative leave.
“What’s been most discouraging is that people are still defending these educators,” Lim said. “These aren’t joking questions. They’re cruel.”
Swan Lee, a Chinese American mother in the Boston suburb of Brookline, isn’t so sure keeping Asian American students at home is the answer to what ails the country.
Her two high school-age teens are preparing to return to classes full-time later this month, and she's emphasized the importance of being strong and staying positive, though she admits she's worried about what might happen outside the relative safety of the school building.
“It’s not about protecting and shielding them. That’s too passive and too defeatist,” Lee said. “It’s about confronting this in a constructive manner. People need to understand this kind of racism is wrong. That’s the only way it goes away.” *Reposted article from the Associated Press by Philip Marcelo, April 20, 2021
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