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wispforever · 3 years ago

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if youre still doing the character thing, how about spirit or marie?

I sure am. How about Spirit And Marie? Both wonderful characters. I’ll do Marie first, then Spirit. Thanks for the excuse to infodump, really. You people are too kind.

Marie Mjolnir

My first impression of Marie was the same impression I get of most female characters in anime. It’s either “why do their clothes have to look like that” or “oh god here comes the obligatory sexist heteronormative romance”. For Marie, it was more of the second. They mention in the same episode she’s introduced that Stein is her “first love”, which told me that if she had a large place in the plot, her assigned male counterpart around which to orbit would be him. Though I’ve never read the Soul Eater manga, I believe they do end up getting together there (I could be wrong). Whatever the case, I was relieved that Marie’s and Stein’s relationship (though heavily implied to be romantic, at least on Marie’s side) was left open to interpretation in the anime. I’m just very sick of cool badass female characters like Marie being reduced to the man they pine after. So, I guess my first impression of Marie and my impression of her now are largely the same. While I appreciate the moments we get to see her strengths and ability to operate on her own, I do think that her character really suffers because of the whole sexist “oh gosh all I want is to find a husband and retire” “oh my I have to take care of Stein” like okay, I had enough at the cat girl smothering Soul with her humungo-tits. I had enough at sexualizing underage girls and women in general. I had enough at making sexual harassment a punchline. That being said, when we push all of the shitty writing to the side, I admire Marie for her strength and how she interacts with the children, Crona in particular. Which leads me to my favorite moment(s).

The relationship Crona and Marie have interests me the most, since I’m really drawn to the parallels between Marie and Medusa. As parental figures (and as characters), they’re about as different as you can get. As Crona’s mother, Medusa is obviously abusive. Along with being negligent, she abuses Crona mentally, emotionally, and physically. In general, Medusa is a person who doesn’t appear to value interpersonal relationships, putting it nicely. She instead is more focused on her own interests, often to the detriment of those around her. Crona is Medusa’s only immediate family (besides Arachne who she is estranged from), and so they suffer the most from her refusal to show even a shred of human decency or warmth. They suffer especially because they are her child, meaning they’re stuck with her essentially, and repetivie abuse between family members like a mother and child often becomes complex because of the necessity of having a parental figure in your life to support you as you grow up. Medusa teaches Crona that their boundaries don’t matter and that they are only good as long as they are useful and do as they’re told. This is what makes Marie’s influence on Crona so cool to watch. Marie is caring by nature, loving and nurturing by nature. Her very wavelegnth is healing. She is kind and does what’s right reflexively. Marie is the exact embodiment of what Crona always needed but what, even upon being rescued by the academy, still felt so foreign to them: unconditional love. Crona struggles to understand why the other kids helped them, why Maka felt the inclination to stop their battle and save Crona instead by trying to understand them, why the kids are still so kind to them even after everything. They do not understand that love is not a bargaining chip. It isn’t leverage in an argument. It’s not a tool for emotional manipulation. Love is caring for the people close to you, just because. Love for the sake of love. The other kids and teachers at the academy are the ones who are able to pull Crona out of all Medusa’s lies, and Marie is a Huge part of that. Even though I have greivances with this being the largest part of her character and what that implies for female characters in general, it doesn’t stop being so beautiful to me that she could help Crona heal in this way. Marie = best mom for the win

Most of the story ideas I have for Marie involve her relationship with Crona or Stein. Say, this covers my unpopular opinion too. I don’t like Stein and Marie as a couple, but I really enjoy writing them as friends, because even though I don’t really jive with them being together romantically, I think their dynamic is an interesting one to explore because they Are so different.

Getting into that a little bit more, I’d like to start by saying I don’t care if other people like Stein and Marie being a couple. That’s great doods, keep doing you. The fanart’s adorable, the meta’s fantastic. Whoever you are, SteinMarie shippers, ffs keep kicking ASS. This is just my preference and opinion. Zero shade in this house. That said, because of my frustrations about Marie’s character I discussed in the first paragraph, I don’t like the idea of her and Stein being together romantically. It’s really a classic sexist trope: the troubled man and his sweet nurse. I’m also just fed up in general with the hetero-nonsense, so there. However, they are both wonderful characters that I enjoy very much seperately. Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that I’ve only seen the anime, so I can’t speak for the manga as far as their relationship or Marie’s character in general.

Oh shit I accidentally already talked about this one lmao [see the second paragraph]

One headcanon I like to think about when I’m writing Marie is that she likes women (in addition to men or not) and she struggles with comphet. Just something interesting I like to think about. It’s really fun for me to take characters who have been written as pining or had 10 million failed relationships and be like “say what if they can’t find a husband cuz really what they really need is a wife”. I’ll talk about that more with Spirit inevitably.

Spirit Albarn

My first impression of Spirit, obviously him being a cheater, really came with a lot of distaste. I come from a family that was torn apart by infidelity, among other things, so it really rubs me the wrong way. However, his saving grace for me was that he genuinely loves his daughter. It appears that, whether it’s played for laughs or not, he just can’t find fulfillment in his romantic relationships. The reason is left up to the veiwers. Spirit, ultimately, is not just a shitty person, which is how most cheaters are protrayed in media. “Well, they cheated because they don’t care if they hurt people”, “they cheated because they are shit and that’s it”. That’s a fine explanation if you plan to do nothing with whatever character you’re describing, but Spirit is relatively recurring and is shown to be neither mean-spirited or emotionally unintelligent. It bothers me that his cheating and routine sexist behaviour isn’t taken seriously enough to be a subject that Soul Eater tackles and deals with. But that’s fine. I’ll just do it myself. At any rate, I still feel that same way about Spirit’s character, but I find it intriguing that he seems to genuinely want to become a better father and is actually a pretty good dad when it comes to his interactions with Maka. If Soul Eater had been brave enough to develop him more, maybe delve into the reasoning behind his impulsive romantic affairs, I think Spirit as a character could have been done more justice. It seems to me that he could be suffering from some of that wonderful compulsory heterosexuality that I mentioned before, then becoming confused when the woman he claims to love leaves him feeling empty. Rattling my gay little cage

When I think of my favorite moments with Spirit, I think of his moments with Maka, but I’m gonna hold off on that until I get to favorite relationship(s). In reference to what I talked about in the first paragraph, one moment I find really interesting when I’m thinking about my interpretation of Spirit’s character is the scene where he and Maka are on the roof talking. Maka asks Spirit why he cheated on her mother if he did, in fact, love her. He doesn’t appear to know the answer, and he doesn’t really understand how to effectively communicate that, though he was shitty husband, what he really wants now is to try and be a better dad. We hear his inner monologue, and he says something like “I love you [Maka] and your mama. That’s the truth. That’s the truth. That’s the truth.” Every time he says “its the truth” it sounds more like he’s forcing it. This is actually something that is SO strange to me. Even if I didn’t project a queer narrative on to the characters I love, I would look at this and be like “huh that is a Weird thing to say in that specific way”. Why does he say it like that? Why does he have to say it more than once? He’s only talking to HIMSELF. It isn’t like he’s trying to convince Maka. Why does he have to convince himself?? Could it possibly be because he’s reached a conclusion about his romantic/sexual orientation that he’s been trying to swallow his Entire Life??? makes ya wonder, doesn’t it, queers?

Just like I said when I talked about Stein, most of the stories I have in mind with Spirit center around that sweet gayness. But also, I like to think of ways Spirit could come to terms with his sexuality, how it might have affected him when he was young, his relationship with all these women, with his wife. I love to think about him being a dad at 18 and trying his best, but how much responsibility that must have been. Lots of great ideas when it comes to Spirit.

Um? unpopular opinion would be all the standard like I said with Stein lmao. “Oh no!” scream the heteros, “that they/them on tumblr is making Soul Eater queer we canst not allow that in our church!!!111!” But besides that, maybe even the fact that I think he’s redeemable?? Idk most everyone I’ve met thinks Spirit is funny at least and just calls him a dumbass and a slut (affectionate). Doesn’t mean anybody thinks cheating on your wife 56 times is okay so. I like this fandom, it’s chill here. My favorite is when I see my art tagged like “aw the stupid man and his crazy bf” like YOU ARE RIGHT

My favorite relationship when it comes to Spirit (besides Stein cuz if I start talking about them again I’ll never finish this ask) is the one he has with Maka. If you can call it a relationship lol. I guess I just find Spirit’s approach to Maka as a parent really refreshing. Not that the parents in other shows don’t love their kids or whatever, it’s just that the loving parent always seems to be paired with some other trope that makes their character hard to approach. especially in anime. Like the perfect mother who dies in the first episode, and we spend the rest of the show mourning her. Or the father whose love is somehow everlasting even though he’s never home. It’s really the fact that Spirit is even THERE that I love. He knows what Maka is up to. He talks about her. He’s invested in her life, and he loves her. All he wants is to spend time with her, and though he’s sad when she turns him down, he doesn’t push her. god dammit I just like a dad who actually loves his kids without all the usual strings attached like. oh my kids are a huge pain in my ass, but I love them in spite of it. oh i’m a man so can’t relate to my children in a meaningful way but i try. Get the fuck outta here with that shit. I want all the dads to get so happy when their daughters wanna hang with them that they throw up like Spirit. Give me the guy who loves his daughter so naturally, whose daughter is such a huge part of his life, that it doesn’t even occur to him stop trying even if she literally wants to murder him. That’s Spirit. jfc

To end with a cute little headcanon, I really love to think that when Spirit gets older and starts losing the color in his hair, instead of getting white or grey, his hair turns a pale pink color cuz he’s such an aggressive redhead. Wouldn’t that just be adorable? late 30′s, early 40′s, Spirit starts getting little pink streaks in his hair and then bam. Little pink old man Spirit XD

There ya have it. Thanks for the ask, and feel free to send more.

#Soul Eater #Ask #Ask game #anon #Marie Mjolnir #Spirit Albarn #this is wisp

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desert-dyke · 5 years ago

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the things I’ve read in 2020 and some thoughts...

hey blacklist this now because it’s gonna get long from here. I spent NYE home alone and reading and it has really set the tone for this year. Fortunately, I’ve been reading way more for the first time in...I literally don’t even know? Maybe forever? Which is really dope! Books are fucking fantastic and I hope this trend continues for the rest of the year. So I’m gonna use this post (and continue to add to it as I finish books) to talk about the things I’ve read. It could be annoying. I could give up on it really soon. People might not read this at all. It’s okay! It’s my blog I’ll use it how I want and I want to talk about books I otherwise don’t really have a place to talk about them.

The Shape of Water - Guillermo Del Toro & Daniel Kraus

If you know me irl you’ll know that I love this movie. Like, it’s probably my favorite movie as an adult. I love watching a movie and then going back and reading the book to compare and vice versa, but knowing that the book came out after the movie did discourage me at first, making me think it was nothing more than a cash grab. Though I was talking to (my boss) who also loves this movie and is a huge bibliophile and she highly recommended the book, so I figured I’d give it a stab.

The writing style is beautiful and enticing and overall I was impressed with the quality of it. It’s fast paced and switches perspective between characters frequently, though remains easy to follow. The book focuses a little less on Elisa and more on the other characters and stories around her, including, surprisingly, Elaine Strickland, who despite never wondering much about during the movie, I enjoyed being included in the book. There’s a deeper exploration into pretty much everyone’s backstories, and more prominent character development. It’s excellent as a standalone piece, and supplementary to readers who have seen the movie. There’s also some alternative takes on certain scenes, which I don’t necessarily like better or worse than the choices made in the movie, but it makes for an interesting read.

The book explores themes of alienation and being othered, with a main cast that breaks the stereotype of straight white fully-abled male. Elisa is a mute woman, Zelda, a black woman, and Giles a gay man. With the political climate of the 1950′s, all of them are outsiders and all of them find solidarity in each other, despite their unique struggles, and also with the creature.

The only thing I didn’t quite like was the portrayal of the creature. I think greater efforts were put into making him more godlike and otherworldly, but also, simultaneously, he comes off as much more like a wild animal in the book, and the latter came off as strange to me, and not in the way I like it. Overall, even if the movie didn’t exist and I only read this, I’d still think it was a really good story.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate - Becky Chambers

If I depended on the synopsis on the back of the book to decide whether or not I wanted to read this, I don’t know if I would have bothered. To be honest, I only wanted to read this because Becky Chambers is my current favorite author and all other of her works I’ve read I’ve absolutely adored, so naturally, I wanted to give this one a chance, even if the concept wasn’t as riveting as I would have hoped.

She didn’t disappoint.

Whereas her other books take place in a vast space civilization where humanity is integrated with aliens and there’s technology beyond our dreams, this book took place in a different creative universe, a little more closer to our timeline. The book is about space exploration for the sake of learning and taking care to be as least intrusive on the explored worlds as possible. It’s a nice break from what I usually see in sci fi, with colonization and owning space and wanting to use knowledge in order to hurt others. It follows a research crew of four, sent to research four planets in a far solar system. There’s a lag in travel time, since FTL travel had not been discovered yet, so a common device is communication with Earth is off by years. Eventually, the crew realizes they have lost contact with Earth and Earth had likely suffered some sort of devastation. It wonders if Earth has forgotten them or if it’s even worth it to return since they might be the last astronauts of their time.

The worlds they visit and research are unique and vivid and fill me with wonder. They’re realistic to the point where I found myself questioning if the book was prophetic. Chambers makes effort to incorporate science into her novels, but in a way that does not estrange a reader like me who only has a basic knowledge in science. It’s one of the things I find most attractive about her work, because it has this added realism and this feeling of “wow, this really could happen” and yet remains easy to follow.

I found the crew to be likeable and diverse. Three of them are in a relationship with each other, and while polyamory isn’t usually an interest of mine, it’s in the background as well as it’s never used as a point to cause drama. It’s a healthy functional relationship. Also, one of the crew is a trans man and another is asexual, both details that exist within a single line, but yet important to be included to flesh out the characters.

What I didn’t like was the almost rush to the end of the book. It’s a short book, roughly 100 pages, but it seems to me as if it reaches it’s climax and then the book just ends and it kind of feels like it’s still in the middle of things. I’ve had time to think about it, though, and I’ve considered that maybe anything else written would have been redundant or just filler and therefore not needed. So in that case, that’s fair. It still felt a little abrupt to me, but that’s what fic is for.

Overall, if you haven’t read anything by Becky Chambers you need to change that immediately. Please don’t leave me alone and fanning over this incredible author!!

All Systems Red - Martha Wells

This was another short one, and in fact, I read it entirely in one sitting. The concept of the book was really intriguing, and actually I selected it because I liked the opening line so much. I have a lot of feelings about AI and robots, so this was a naturally alluring story to me. Mixed with the fact that the beefed out security robot, who calls themselves “Murderbot”, was absolutely obsessed with soap opera tv just absolutely gets me!

The story is told through Murderbot’s perspective, who is assigned to guard a research team. They had recently hacked their government module, which now allows them full autonomy and no longer having to obey orders from their assigned humans. It’s interesting to see Murderbot actively choose to help the humans. Also, needing to maintain an illusion that they aren’t unshackled, since what they did was forbidden.

The research team is full of interesting characters, who I find tragically under explored. The only couple in the story is wlw, which I vastly appreciated, along with they obviously cared and loved each other and their relationship was not used for drama purposes. In favor of the lack of development with the cast of characters, since the narrator is Murderbot and part of Murderbot’s personality is they are actively trying not to care about these humans, it does make sense. Still, I would have loved to see more of the crew and more development between Murderbot and them.

I like the dark lore that is hinted behind Murderbot’s existence. There’s organic counterparts to their machine made from cloned humans. It’s creepy and morbid, but a lot is with the lore of the universe that the story takes place in. There’s hints towards a heavy capitalist society in space where the humans and Murderbot came from, where the right price will get you anything, regardless of morals. The overall tone of the story is very quirky, but it needs to be to offset just how dark everything that happens actually is. The book explores the concept of corporate greed, from the existence of Murderbot to the deaths that come to humans on the planet the crew is studying.

This book was deeply fascinating, but I didn’t love the way it was written. I love every concept and choice made, but I didn’t love the execution. It left me wanting without satisfaction. It’s not a bad book and I still over all enjoyed it. It is part of a series, which I did not realize at the time of reading it, but the ending leaves room for more to be written, so maybe in the following books there will be the development I desired. However, the ending of the book leaves it apparent that Murderbot will not be interacting with the same characters of the first, but that is just an assumption and I could be wrong. I’m not sure yet if I will read more in the series but I’m not entirely opposed to it.

All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders

This is another one that I definitely would not have read if I had to choose based on the synopsis alone. The synopsis made it sound so run-of-the-mill star-crossed-lovers, which, hey, maybe that actually helps sell the book because its a pretty well loved trope, but for me it was off-putting, as well as isn’t fair to what the book actually turned out to be. But that’s what reviews are for, and I found this book from some sort of list, I think it was best sci-fi books written by women.

The general idea of the book is a witch and a techie fall in love while the world is falling apart due to a conflict between magic and technology. The book is lauded for bending genre and honestly, it fucking has. It’s as equally a sci-fi novel as it is a fantasy novel. There’s advanced technology, such as robots, two second time machines, rocket ships, and ultimately, a portal leading to a different universe in hopes of escaping the destruction of earth. On the magic side, there’s a connection to nature, rules that have to be abided, quirky witches and magicians and mystique. Both Laurence and Patricia are outsiders that have seemingly found these secret niches in the world that becomes their own.

Both plots are interesting in their own, and could possibly exist as two separate books, but what ties the entire story together is the connection Laurence and Patricia have, and their ultimate romance.

The romance is a wonderful slow burn, from childhood friends, to adult friends to lovers. By the time Patricia and Laurence finally get together, you really fucking want them to. They weave in and out of each other’s lives throughout their own personal plots. There’s tensions and there’s release. And most importantly, they have lives outside of each other. Their romance compliments the story, rather than the story being entirely about romance.

Similar to the former review, there’s a lot of quirkiness in the story, that ultimately offsets how dark the story can be. The story doesn’t shy away from complicated relationships with parents and siblings and friends and other people, people of mixed ages and backgrounds. It explores abuse, bullying, natural disaster and loss. The story would have been miserable and a drag to read without the whimsical qualities of it. Plus it’s a fantasy/sci-fi, so it should have some quirkiness to it! And it made for a very enjoyable read!

My criticism for this one is, yet again, the ending. The conflict resolves and the story comes to an end. In favor of how it was written, the way things resolve, I believe the world is about to go through a grand change. While the story is quirky, I think it would have been too corny to have had a glittery magical wave drag across the land, altering the world as it went. So, it’s fair, I guess, that the author chose to end it where she did. Still, it left me craving more. Maybe because the story was so good and I wasn’t yet ready to let it go.

Also, as a side note, the author is a trans woman. So if you’re looking for books written by trans authors to support, put this at the top of your list.

#book review 2020 #the shape of water #to be taught if fortunate #All systems red #all the birds in the sky #idk how to write about books and these are only partial reviews/reccomendations so sorry if it sucks #also I plan on adding to this post so better blacklist it now #feel free to recommend things

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homestuckcontroversyin2020 · 5 years ago

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My Opinions on The Epilogues

So I expect that this isn’t going to go over too well, whether it be because I get absolutely zero attention on this post, or for the fact that I’m literally typing up what is probably a hate post that’ll spark up some, “Oh fuck you.” comments. Either way, I don’t really care about the possible hate to be garnered or anything. I’m here to state my opinion on this, and opinions can’t kill anyone when you’re as weak at arguing as I myself am. Now, this isn’t a fucking logical article, I’m not taking time with comprehensive research and making sure I fact check every little detail because that would involve reading Homestuck for and eighth time and re-reading the Epilogues so I have the biggest refresher in the world. I’m not doing that, so take my sub-par rambles.

Preface over, let’s get into the meat.

My original thought when I heard that the Epilogues came out was initially an eye roll big enough to be like when Hulk smashed Loki in the ground. An arch of, “What the fuck, Hussie.” In other words? I didn’t want to read them. I spent the first few days in agony, complaining about how Homestuck was probably just becoming a money grab, and hearing from other people about the content that came out.

It.. wasn’t as bad as I expected when I jumped into it. People made a bigger deal about them than I thought was even insanely possible. Let me get this out of the way. I don’t hate the Epilogues. Do I think they were poorly done? Yes. Do I think that the writing was subpar? Absolutely. Do I think that fourteen year olds in their bedroom typing away at shitty fanfiction or roleplaying smut on MxRP/MSPARP have a better grasp on the characterization of each individual character than the people who took over and wrote the Epilogues? 10000%. Still, I thought they were a clever addition to alternate timelines. I had heard from a source they were meant to be a satirical take on fanfiction, and was a mocking poke at the Homestuck community... until Beyond Canon came out.

So here we are now with an 18 year old who’s spent their time on this planet obsessing over Homestuck since before they could read cuss words without feeling embarrassed telling you about how they’re pissed off with some small things that are of no value.

I’m an Alpha Kid Stan(TM) so everything that happened to my sweet babies has made me want to blow my brains out over the walls. Let’s go down the line.

Jane, sweetheart? Who hurt you? Now, I’ll be honest, I rushed through the Epilogues in my, ‘fuck I don’t want to read this but I feel like I need to in order to satiate my burning curiosity.’ mode. Jane’s whole... situation seems really fucked up to me. The color of her text in the EPs is another thing that pissed me off beyond belief, and I’m not sure why. The consistency between comic and canon was draining on my nerves. Jane, in Homestuck, is a whiny teen, but in no way do I look at her and see racist Hitler. Also, what the fuck was up with the clown thing? Why did she have an obsession with fucking Jake? Sure, she was into him before, but wasn’t part of her character arch getting over the buck toothed bangaroo? I thought so. I also thought that Jane was, you know, just a normal girl living her best life. She sure complained, but who doesn’t?? The Jane we’re given in the Epilogues seems to lack the internal dilemmas that the dear, sweet Crocker we’ve grown fond of does. There’s barely a hit of self hate, she doesn’t blow up, and sure we could possibly count this to her being older, but, what? She didn’t seem to be pissed off about the entire existence of trolls in Homestuck. Sure, her time with them was minimal and she didn’t really get all the shit through, but she fought side by side with Kanaya, even. I just don’t see it at all.

Jake. Oh boy. This is a big one. In either case, Jake’s whole thing really bothers me. He doesn’t seem like Jake. He seems like a watered down version of himself that doesn’t even make fucking sense? He’s an aloof dork, but he’s not horrendously stupid, there’s no reason to make him an alcoholic, and why the fuck is he an attention seeking slut? Yes, yes. We could blame this all on Dirk but really, what were the authors thinking? They had complete control over what happens in this and they turn Jake into something he’s not. He had other drives and passions than living out his life as the sexy action movie woman we all need in our lives. Jake’s smart to his own degree, stubborn, and kind of a flirt! He’s not insanely oblivious, either. For instance, I recall a specific moment where he insinuates that Jane was having a wet dream about him in Homestuck. I’m not going to find the quote, but I know it’s there. Jake spent time working on the robot rabbit for John with Jade and outright refused help from some outside sources. Jake is smart! He’s got an extensive vocabulary! He’s just a nerd, and he’s more than an uwu gay boy for Mr. Triangles.

Roxy, oh no. This is where I expect to get the most heat. Roxy is a beloved character. The light of my life and the best of the kids, in my opinion. (I’m an avid Dirk Stan, but Roxy has won my heart truly and thoroughly.) I don’t like the whole trans/non-binary thing. Not because I’m transphobic or anything, because I’m absolutely not. It’s because it feels like it just doesn’t fit with her as a character?? Roxy grew up in isolation in a place without humans, you really think she’s going to have an outright conceptualized view on gender roles and norms? Basic fucking psychology would tell you otherwise. This is something that her brain would have trained her to do based on a societal view. I may not have paid a huge ass amount of attention in psychology, but gender is a thing that’s completely up in the air and taught to us. Roxy didn’t have that. You could argue and say that her house has something of the sort that’d lead her to feel that way, or perhaps she’s learned this all off the internet, but her clothes scream femme and she had to make them herself, is all I’m saying. Again, whatever, go off, make Roxy trans. It’s not a huge deal, but that isn’t the only problem I have. Roxy as a character seems to have just lost her spark. There’s little outright love and enjoyment and adoration for her friends that there is in Homestuck. She’s not your hype go get them loving girl. Again, maybe you could blame this on the fact that they’re all older, but getting older isn’t going to drastically impede your previous personality and make you an entirely different person. They essentially turned Roxy into a watered down version of Dave, but trans. It’s like they couldn’t make Dave trans so they just made a new Dave. It’s annoying to me, and that’s my biggest problem. I love Roxy. I don’t care for Epilogue Roxy. If they had done it right, if they had used specific things from Homestuck, if Homestuck itself keyed in on this or ANYTHING, fine. But Roxy was old enough to question her identity, most people do around 16, and she could have had the opportunity to start representing this already. I mean, who was stopping her? Then the baby stuff. Huh? What? Why? Doesn’t make sense, pass. Her bffsy, brother, and person that cared about her most off and yeets himself from the top of the nearest belltower and all she can think about is copulating with John??? Alright, fam.

Onto Dirk. Y’know what? I don’t have many huge problems with Dirk. I found his personality in Meat really funny, I found the death in Candy absolutely soul crushing. Dirk is a good character. I don’t think they did his personality well, but I don’t think they did any of the characters well. Maybe John. Maybe. Dirk really just sounded like a child who wasn’t getting what he wanted, and it was amusing to say the least. He sounded horrible from the way people talked about him before I read it, but I really just found his overzealous ego entertaining. I found the fact that they made him still totally desperate for Jake kind of annoying though. Dirk broke of their relationship. Dirk was the one who took a moment to realize it wasn’t healthy for either of them, and getting what you want isn’t good. Taking over the narrative and making your ex nearly jizz himself in public is hilarious and all, but also, what??

Alright. Alphas. Let’s move onto Betas.

I skipped a lot of it, not going to lie. Rather than breaking it down for each character like I did with the Alphas, I’m just going to ramble and see where the wind takes. me.

I don’t ship Davekat. I don’t see it working in a romantic aspect. I see them being bros, and it felt really forced in both sides of the story. The homoerotic tension could maybe be smelled for a mile away, but lets not forget something very important. Dave has shown interest in women. Dave was interested in Terezi, he called Roxy and Jane hot, he totally fucking jizzed his jeans for Jade. The fact that so many characters in the Epilogues were exclaiming that Dave was gay, and Dave himself leaning towards the sentiment, didn’t seem to really match up. Dave’s not just pretending to like chicks either, he’s definitely interested in them to the point of being genuinely flustered and embarrassed (I.E The Hot Mom conversation.) So, I don’t really enjoy that. I think the economy shit is cute, his alternate counterpart seemed to have a good hand for business according to the spiel that was made about him, I liked it.

Rose? Didn’t pay a lot of attention to her. The drug abuse shit really pissed me off. Rose in general really pissed me off in the Epilogues.

John is a can of worms. His characterization was done well, but I guess I just don’t see the point in the two timeline deals. Also, why did he have sex with Terezi? Why was he so much of a baby when the rest of the people around him apparently seemed to mature? Who knows. I sure as hell don’t.

And... then there’s Jade. Poor, sweet Jade. She’s been done dirty almost as much as Jake has, if not worse. She has a dick for one. Yikes. She’s extremely sexually driven, which isn’t something I can see for canon Jade who just wants to hang out and vibe. She’s also so fucking insistent with the “uwu lets date Dave and Karkat” shit that it drives me up a fucking wall. Jade, you should know better! You dated an alternate version of Dave! You dated the OG motherfucker fresh timeline bitch who lost everyone, and sure he was depressed, but I think if I remember correctly you know about all of this???? Hmmmmm!!!! Big questions. It almost leads one to believe she’d know better than to enter into a relationship like this with Dave since it could be emotionally unfulfilling. :))))

Anyways, this entire thing is a can of fucking worms and I don’t suspect I’m going to use this account often aside from shitposting, so have this one uneducated article and if you made it through it and agree, disagree, or what have you, don’t be an ass in the replies? I get it, I’m opinionated and should probably shut my mouth, but it’s the internet and I don’t really care at this point.

#homestuck #epilogues #opinions #spoilers #roxy lalonde #dirk strider #dave strider #jade harley #rose lalonde #john egbert #jake english #jane crocker #rambles #controversy #trans roxy #hs epilogue

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theowritercal · 5 years ago

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Okay, so I wanna observe the idea of a default. Looking around, you might wonder why there are a lack of female/queer/disabled/non-white/(etc.) characters in media, or at least media that doesn’t explicitly focus on topics that those characters would face in real life. Even in media created by the same people who are negatively affected by this lack of diversity, you might see things in their work that don’t really add up. For example, why is/was there ever a trend of female protagonists in novels needing a boy’s presence to change their lives for the better, when a lot of these authors are women themselves? That’s a sexist idea! Wouldn’t that hurt them?

In Western media, the “default” character is a white, cis, straight, (some other specific things, but you get the point) man. This isn’t the cause of the problem; the cause of the problem is centuries of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and a lot of other things that would take me all day to list. What I just listed are forms of othering. Othering creates the illusion of there being a ‘normal’ person. If you don’t face any negative consequences for being something you can’t change, you are ‘normal.’ You get to live a normal life, with all of your needs met, and free of discrimination.

People know themselves best; each person is their own “default.” Even if they don’t match the traits that make up the Western Default Character, they may have the same feelings, desires, and be able to relate to these characters regardless. It takes a lot of characters to establish a default to begin with, so there are many characters that share the same physical/social traits that have different personalities, giving audiences many characters to see parts of themselves in, even if other parts are largely ignored. Default characters don’t have to face the things that make life unfair for The Other, which makes them perfect to use as a form of escapism. And if you can’t fully relate with any of the Default characters in Western media, you have two choices: either latch on to ones you vaguely relate to, or write your own media with the knowledge that the same traits that make you The Other in the eyes of Western society will make it much harder for your work to receive recognition and reach other people. You might even get harassed for it when it does!

But not every character in Western media is a Default Man! There are female characters, black characters, gay characters, etc. What of those? You see, these characters are not Default, they are The Other. They will not be treated as normal. They won’t get as much screen time or character development as their Default peers. They are there to assure you that the writers don’t have biases, but these biases affect the number and types of Othered characters we see. Among Othered characters, you may noticed that characters of certain groups are only allowed to have a limited spectrum of personalities, careers, or paths in life compared to their Default counterparts. If you haven’t noticed, many others have. This creates an obstacle. These biases don’t start or stop with the writers; they’re simply a product of Western society. We have them too.

If you’re interested in writing media, you have a choice. You can continue the trend of writing characters that feed into the idea that there are Default humans, indirectly contributing to the harm that those considered The Other face, or write characters who would normally be Othered. If you face these issues yourself, or care about people who do, the answer seems obvious. All it takes is writing an Othered character the same way you would write a Default one, right? In theory, this may be true, but biases exist and we have them. Even if we think you’re writing an Othered character without bias, we may be subconsciously contributing to the same stereotypes that Western media and society would give to them. Even if not, there’s always a chance that we’re contributing to a stereotype about The Other we didn’t even know existed. Even if we’re in the same group of Othered! Bias and bigotry change with time; what isn’t a stereotype now may’ve been one in the past, and to make things more confusing, many of these stereotypes conflict, so avoiding one won’t ensure that we’re not falling into another. Our best intentions can still harm these groups in real life.

This is especially true if we only have one character to represent an Othered group. This is what is called a Token. Token characters are the sole characters representing their Othered group in a piece of media. Tokens can create bias, since by nature, there aren’t enough of them in the work of media to prove that the writers (us) don’t think all people from their group are like them. These aren’t concerns when writing a Default character. We can write a Default character with any personality or circumstances we want without the worry of negatively impacting real life groups considered to be the Default. Is it really so simple, writing an Othered character?

If you grew up in Western society, some of these stereotypes and biases might even seem true. This could be because your knowledge of certain Othered groups are limited to media, complex histories affecting how those groups are able to express themselves that most people wouldn’t be aware of if you’re not part of them or completely up-to-date on your group’s history, or a combination of both. The point is, growing up in a Western society can make it hard to imagine certain dynamics being different.

That brings me back to my question. Why do Othered writers sometimes write characters and stories that could harm their own group? They might be doing the best they can. From the society they lived in and the stories they consumed, they might not be able to imagine much different. Maybe they are trying to make a difference, but the difference is something most people won’t notice or appreciate.

I worry this sounds like whining about how “writing diversity is haaaaaaard” and “people won’t appreciate it so why bother??” I only intended to explain why marginalized people might shy away from writing about characters like them, why they fall into the same pitfalls while writing these characters as non-marginalized writers, and why writing a marginalized character is not always as easy as changing a pre-existing non-marginalized character to be marginalized. A lot of work and care has to be put into these things, and it may not always come out as perfect, but I feel that putting forth our best efforts to create more marginalized characters is the way to break the cycle of Defaults.

#writing #media #media analysis #diversity #my post

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therebelwrites · 6 years ago

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Re: Election 2020: Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Trump??

Surely not Native Black Americans!

Black people, do not be lured into the collective fear of Trump pervasive throughout so-called “liberal” white society. While THEY stand to lose power, I assure you that your ancestors have not only survived through, but have triumphed over much WORSE circumstances.

While I presented my point about Native Black Americans currently lacking a solid presidential candidate to support in a comical manner, the underlying statement was anything but a joke: unless a sound, independent candidate with a Black agenda materializes, a protest vote for the 2020 presidential election will absolutely be in order.

It makes no sense whatsoever for Native Black Americans to continue to support Politicians Formerly Known As Democrats (PFKAD) when they have proven to us time and time and time again that they do not and will not represent--or even address--the Black agenda. (Maya Angelou said when a person shows you who they are, believe them. Obama let us know from the jump that he was NOT a “Black president.” Why in the hell didn’t we believe him??? Wishful thinking, that’s why! SMH.) They continue to usher Native Blacks to the BACKS of buses, the BOTTOMS of barrels and the BENEATHS of shoes, yet Blacks barely bother to battle for BETTER.

DEAD THAT BEHAVIOR. Actions based on fear never work for your benefit in the long-term, remember that!

I repeat: “Liberal” whites who whisper about the fall of society at the reins of dear Mr. President are only fearful of the PERSONAL loses (in power, capital, equity, social standing, etc.) that they will be subjected to as a collective. They use these scare tactics in order to persuade Blacks into partaking in what is not actually a Black battle at all! (According to the U.S. Census--which I don’t believe at all--we only 13% of the population. Yet WE are expected to incessantly shoulder the moral responsibility of sacrificing OUR OWN NEEDS for the sake of the greater good while the other 87% of the population idles in ignorance and hatred and elects candidates who are set on destroying the very “democracy” that the 87% seeks to protect?? No deal!)

We BEEN caught in the socio-political crosshairs of the incessant conflict between white economic wills! Said another way, we BEEN suffering since we got here! At this point, NO president has represented the Native Black American voice--none. White people want YOU to be scared of a two-term Trump not because they have a sincere interest in Black interests, but because THEY, THEMSELVES ARE terrified of him. Have Blacks NOT been subjected to an infinite struggle since our arrival to this continent via Europeans?? (Yes, there were Africans in the Americans before Europeans; visit museums in Mexico.) Why should we suddenly doubt our own survival now?? We’ve endured WORSE!

2020 = 20/20. Blacks are expected to have a CLEAR collective VISION by next year, yet many of us are still terrified of taking the actions necessary to truly incite LASTING change.

The “good” news is that Trump is not necessary “targeting” the Black populace in particular; he’s targeting EVERYBODY who’s not like him (so poor people, gays, immigrants, etc.). Yes, Blacks are a part of those groups, but there’s a distinct difference between being the BULLSEYE and being on the PERIPHERY. While no place on the target is safe, we gotta do what we’ve always done: make the best of the shit-u-ate-ion.

THINK ABOUT THE LONG-TERM. A blow to the face of the democratic party delivered by the collective Black FIST by rescinding our decades-long loyalty will teach them to never again take the Black vote for granted, nor to DOUBT our commitment to attaining true LIBERATION.

The democratic party as a whole has gotten TOO comfortable, and this is the ONLY way to get our message across. WE have the power. Do not fear loss; at least we KNOW that Trump is not attempting to govern in our favor, unlike the politicians who dance to our music and then go back to ignoring our issues after election day has passed. Black folks have ALWAYS fared better when dealing with KNOWN enemies. While the immediate implications of engaging in a protest vote may sting, we must understand that the temporary pain is a small sacrifice for a far greater, long-term gain.

When you’ve always been on the bottom, you become accustomed to not having anything, thus you don’t FEAR losing anything. Let the people with the most to lose stand up and fight for a change. The fact that the Democratic party continues to churn out sub-par candidates from which Blacks to choose shows how poorly they regard Black people anyway. As a result, Blacks should be poised to divorce the democratic party altogether.

Knowing the consequences as outlined above, I stand behind my original statement: Native Black Americans should be fully prepared to vote for Doc McStuffins. Even if Trump wins the 2020 BATTLE, Black people will win the WAR, and democrats will never again take our loyalty for granted. Best of all, they--as well as their republican counterparts-- will learn to put some RESPECT on our LINEAGE!

Bet on it!

#Wolves: do you prefer them big and bad--or cloaked in sheep's clothing???#Presidential election 2020 #The Great Divorce from the Democratic Party #Black Liberation #ADOS agenda #U.S. government #politics #Can't worry about battle WOUNDS while at WAR #Tangibles 2020 #We aint neva scared

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mxadrian779 · 6 years ago

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It really sucks when you find out someone you thought was a friend (or at least a good acquaintance) is actually a pretty trashy person.

Okay, let me build up the backstory. Almost seven years ago, I created a niche political page. I tended it alone for about a year before enlisting the help of a second admin. In comes this guy we'll call Richard. Richard and I got along decently. We shared a lot of thoughts and identities. I thought he helped me with the page considerably. He helped tend the page with me for about two years or so. We chatted a lot, and I really liked him. Then things start getting weird between us. Richard seems to start getting weird. There's stuff going on in his life, divorce and whatnot. I get a notice that the page we had was scheduled to be deleted within seven days. I loved my page; I certainly didn't schedule it for deletion. I ask Richard, who swears he didn't and blames his ex-husband, whom he insists must have hacked his account. I don't know who to believe, although I am certainly more suspicious of Richard than of his ex. I remove the deletion schedule, and bump Richard's page access down—basically, I took away his power and control over my page. Things are okay, kind of. The stuff Richard posts to the page is half decent and half questionable. Then he posts a swastika picture, a meme comparison of some current figure to a past Nazi figure with a swastika flag in the background. I wasn't aware of the post at the time; I was busy with school. I only heard of it when my stalker elsewhere online started circulating news of that post (my stalker watches every one of my online pages and presences) and calling me antisemitic—because of something I didn't post and wasn't even aware was posted! I immediately track down that post and remove it, and talk to Richard about it. He claims innocence and dodges the matter. I don't remember what else went on between us, but I certainly remember him being vague and dodgy about it, even after I told him what a shitty thing that was, and told him to at least consider the image that post projects. He didn't care.

(edit: looking back at my messages to him and finding a host of other problems that happened at once. I wanted to address them but he just ignored me. Transphobia, the swastika post, and he'd made some crude sexual posts, as well.)

Now, I don't remember the exact timeline of events, but this was coming to a head about two years ago, when I was coming out of my transphobia. Richard had made a few transphobic posts on the page over its lifetime, which I didn't protest then. But then I started to see its shittiness and started deleting it all. I tried to open a discussion about it with him, like, “hey, what's up with this stuff?” kind of thing. Richard ignored me. A little later, I removed him from the page completely, which he didn't protest or maybe even notice. Richard was no longer an admin, but I spent the next few months cleaning up his messes and remaking the tone of the page. I tried to track down his old crappy posts and delete them. I know there must be many more, but they're buried beyond reach. I made it clear on the page that we are no longer to be transphobic, and that we are to be welcoming instead of mocking. I ran solo for a long time, afraid to enlist another admin and another Richard.

A few years ago, before anything went sour, Richard decided we should have a group counterpart, which he created and added me as an admin. I was hardly active with it, though, more focused on the page part. I was last in the group three years ago—my last post. The group fell inactive and I stopped caring about it, especially when I started seeing what a richard Richard was.

Recently, this group came back to the fore when one of the other people Richard enlisted as an admin came back and started poking around. He took issue with what I had posted three years ago, and flew into all these weird accusations about it. He questioned my integrity and my identity, and said I shouldn't be an admin there. He especially didn't like when I told him I was transgender (he said something derogatory about me being a woman or something, so I countered). I private messaged Richard, and said, “What's going on with the group (i.e., this asshole)?” He replied that he'll handle it. I wish I took record of exactly what was said in the group by the other guy, but that wasn't on my mind. I'll finish this off with the transcript of our messages.

>me

>>him

>Okay, what's going on with the group?

>>I have no idea. [he] messaged me about your post im reading it now. But i dont particularly see anything controversial

>It's so old xD I don't get the sudden action and the “I don't think you should be an admin”

>>Think he just wants my attention...:P

Ill tend to him

I didnt know your not a woman

>I'm female, but I don't identify as a woman.

>>K well.. he says and I agree thats [accusation]

>No, it isn't.

>>And I was having such a pleasent day... haha

Drama queening over a dead group

>Did

Did you just ban me?

>>No y

>I think [the other guy] removed me.

I can't access or even FIND the group.

>>Dont worry about it. Were chatting ill take care of u in a min

And dont talk to him... shes just in a mood. This a mans job

>? [I have no idea which of those was intended for me]

>>Sigh... just let the men talk thats all you gotta do. RN

>Uh, okay then, I'll let the penises talk.

>>Lol

>> […]

>>Ok weve decided to reinvent the group and its gonna be male exclusive

>Why??

>>Because its a dead group anyway and if we reinvent it we can just say its been here for years. Also engage gay men in intellectual discussion and dialouge

Which isnt something woman are not typically interested in anyway

>Only cismen are interested in intellectual discussion? Wow, seriously dude?

>>Yeah actually. Its true. But ill let you know if theres something interesting going on in it :)

>No, it actually isn't, and I didn't have you pegged as a sexist turd. Don't bother. I'm not interested in whatever Grindr knockoff you're going to turn the group into.

I can't believe you're doing this. We used to be a team. You wouldn't even have had the platform without me and the page, and you're just going to turn around and betray me like this?

>>Its a dead group hun. Buisness comes first... also didnt need page platform for anything. Actually thats what killed it imo

Also no its not grinder. Its for intellectual dialouge and discussion.

We smoke cigars and drink brandy like men. And its a beaitiful thing

And that's that. Richard is gone. I feel betrayed, but I don't know what I'm entitled to feel when I wasn't that close with him for the last few years anyway. He was married to a man and for all intents and purposes, he bills himself as gay, but he recently had a very strong and public relationship with a woman and got close to her son. Apparently that relationship is no more, and he still calls himself gay. Meanwhile, his page is full of questionable things. I haven't been keeping track of him, but he had recently started cropping up on my feed again. One of his posts said something to the effect of “the country went to crap when we gave women and minorities the vote” and it's just like WOW ARE YOU KIDDING ME. How was I EVER friends with this dude??

#dead friendship #racist #misogynist #sexist #transphobia #transphobe #betrayal #wtf was i thinking #rant #vent

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lysandersnake · 6 years ago

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Wherever you’re most comfortable. Lysander had considered that advice, and then totally ignored it. The places he was most comfortable were also far away from people: the law library, the planetarium, night swimming. Instead he opted for a rooftop bar, complete with twinkly lights and handcrafted cocktails. At least he could still see stars. The study was compensated. If it meant he could get Natalie a ring faster, he figured she would be okay with him just talking to a stranger. A male stranger at that, a fact that twisted his stomach into nervous knots. Lysander scanned the list of questions again, a wet ring already left behind on the first page by his ginger beer. That was another stipulation: phones off and away, but Lysander preferred the feel of paper anyway. He wore the plain black rubber band that had the number of the study on it so that his counterpart could find him. Minutes ticked by, and four minutes past the time they were supposed to meet, Lysander was seriously considering bailing. Nothing would be more embarrassing then being stood up by someone being paid to meet you. Until he saw someone tall and handsome approaching his table. He wasn’t gay, but he was all of a sudden bothered that he hadn’t put more thought into his own outfit or appearance. “Hey. Albus, right? My working theory is that we only got paired together because our weird archaic names matched.”

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emubop · 7 years ago

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Adding on to my post from yesterday, I’m just gonna list all the issues I have with Disco (a separate list of the things I love soon to come!)

Under a cut for length and for spoilers. Seriously. Major spoilers ahead. And tw for discussions of character death, if that bothers you.

With that in mind, let’s get to it! (This is in no particular order, btw.)

Starting with the last two episodes, since they’re pretty fresh in my mind - they felt very rushed. I’ve seen some people say that the season should have ended right when they got back from the mirrorverse, and I completely agree. The final arc felt like it needed at least two more episodes to be fleshed out. I wanted to see more of the characters actually dealing with what happened in the mirrorverse, and having time for development; and while we got a little bit of that between Michael and Ash, it wasn’t very much. And like, I get why. When you’ve only got two episodes to get the plot where you need it to go, of course character development is going to be sacrificed for time. Which is why I think they should have either a) added more episodes to the end of season one, or b) ended the season with the mirror arc, so that they’d have more time to explore the Klingon war thing at the beginning of season 2. Disco has some very wonderful characters who are very deserving of development and growth, and it’s unfortunate that they didn’t get it.

Culber’s death... This is the main point where I’m like “yeah, I don’t blame you for not liking the show anymore,” because I came very close to that too. In the end, I do still think I like the rest of the show overall, but this part... I just about stopped watching. In short - the way the show treated Dr. Culber was absolutely shitty. Sure, I’m like 99% certain they’ll end up bringing him back in season 2, but in the meantime, he’s still very much dead. And NOT ONLY did they use the “bury your gays” trope, but out of only TWO gay characters, they buried the man of color. Like... that’s just... what the fuck.

I’m expanding this into multiple points, bc it’s the biggest point I have. Culber’s death is legitimately the worst thing Disco has done. Not only just the fact that they killed him, but how they did it. His death was violent, sudden, and meaningless. The main characters barely even get to react to it before moving on. His killer doesn’t face trial or repercussions. (Note - I personally see Voq as being entirely the murderer and not Tyler, since Tyler had no agency in the killing and was if anything just a tool, but either way, no justice is served.) And then we, the audience, have to see the brutal killing scene AGAIN in the “previously on” section of the next episode or two, which makes it seem like they’re using this horrific event as mere shock value. I literally felt sick to my stomach watching it. What happened was disgusting, and I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to watch the show anymore because of it.

I trust Wilson Cruz. I trust Anthony Rapp. I trust them when they say that there’s a plan, that Culber will come back, that this will work out at some point. Their reassurances do help me personally to make some measure of peace with the situation. I don’t want to think that two openly gay actors would sign onto the script if this is how it ends between their characters. But right now, Culber is still dead, for no good reason that I can see, and it still stings. This is justifiably upsetting. And until I see him come back with my own two eyes, yeah, I’m not gonna be happy about it.

Aaaaand speaking of death, let’s talk about Georgiou. I just... that’s not a good way to start your show off, ngl. You take a very strong and deep character, played by Michelle Yeoh no less, and then just kill her? It’s bad writing. They could have easily had Michael transferred off the Shenzhou and arrested and kept Captain Georgiou alive. They could have even kept the whole “tragic backstory” thing in play, with Michael and Philippa no longer on speaking terms, and Michael mourning the loss of what was once such a close relationship. (I do appreciate that they brought her back as her mirror counterpart - and boy howdy the Emperor is a good character - so that does take a little bit of the sting out, but still. Not the best way to open the show.)

And then Landry dies in both universes?? I can accept mirror!Landry dying because of the whole “Lorca’s second hand” thing, but like... god, this show has got to stop killing off poc. Especially woc. I can understand that they’re trying to do a “raceblind” thing, and I understand their reasoning - the whole “it’s a utopian future and everyone is treated the same!” thing - but it doesn’t really work like that irl for the audience. Unless someone is actually literally colorblind and sees everything in greyscale, no one has any business saying they “don’t see color.” And no one should be casting with that mindset. The situation could certainly be a lot worse - they’ve got Michael, at least, and she’s fucking amazing - but it could also be better.

And yeah, it’s a warzone, and people are going to die. I get that. But just... do some critical thinking about who you’re killing, why, and if it can be avoided. If for no other reason, it makes the story a lot stronger in the long run.

It’s the year of our lord twenty-gayteen, can we stop having the makeup on white people playing Kingons being so hmmm questionable maybe?

(With regards to several of the above points, I’m white, so please let me know if I’m overstepping my bounds here. And like the point about Culber - I wouldn’t blame anyone for disliking/not supporting the show because of these reasons, and I’m not ever going to try to convince anyone that these things are okay. Because they aren’t. Just because I like certain elements enough to give the show a second chance with season two, doesn’t mean that anyone else will or should do the same. Continuing.)

Why the fuck is this show so obsessed with eating people? Stop it. Get some help.

The only explicitly bisexual/pansexual person we see is the Emperor, who sleeps with both a man and a woman and seems very satisfied with both parties afterwards. Which, okay, cool, except she was also trying to get information out of them, so whether or not she was even attracted to either one is debatable. I personally think she was - thanks to Michelle Yeoh’s acting, which is a goddamn gift - but that still leaves us with the only representation of bi/pan people being a murderous emperor from the mirror universe. And the “relationship” is entirely sex-based, as well as being with multiple people at once, which only furthers the stereotype of bi/pan being promiscuous, being only bi for a threesome, being untrustworthy. And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with one night stands or poly relationships! Those things are perfectly fine! But when that’s all that bi/pan people are shown as, it can play into really damaging stereotypes - and as a bi/pan person, I’m frankly getting a little fucking sick of it.

(I mean, it’s better than DS9′s “mirrorverse=gay/bi/pan” thing, I’ll give it that, but I’m not going to give any show brownie points for reinforcing harmful stereotypes. You’ve improved slightly, Trek, but not nearly as much as you should have.)

I’m just making another point here for Dr. Culber’s death because seriously. Fucking seriously. What the fuck.

I would’ve liked to have seen more one-off episodes, like “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad.” That was a fucking awesome episode. It’s fun! It’s got character development! I wanna see more of that!

The portrayal of Klingon culture is a bit inconsistent. And okay, to be entirely truthful, I’m really not that into Klingons in general? So having a plot centered around them wouldn’t be my first choice anyway. But if you’re going to do it, please do it right. It felt like the writers sometimes “forgot” important elements of Klingon culture for the sake of the plot, and just... come on. The Klingons are brutal warriors, yes. They’ve killed innocent civilians in the course of battle, sure. But they have a whole honor code, and going out of their way to murder thousands of helpless, defenseless people? Correct me if I’m wrong, but it just doesn’t quite seem to fit.

I really, really wanna see more of the bridge crew! I wanna get to know them! They seem so cool who are they please Disco I’m begging you

This is a very dumb, very tiny thing, but I was kinda hoping I’d see some Cardassian makeup in the crowd while we were in the Seedy Black Market on Qo’noS. Did appreciate the Trill lady tho!

I dunno, the ending almost felt... too neat? If that makes sense? I would have liked things more ambiguous, a few more loose ends. It felt like they threw in a happy ending out of nowhere; it didn’t really match the tone of the rest of the show.

Speaking of tone - it felt to me like Disco was trying to mix the upbeat, thoughtful, philosophical tone of classic Trek with the grittier, more critical, more heavy tone of DS9. I love both classic Trek and DS9, but they don’t exactly mix very well. Disco’s tone felt a bit confused and convoluted. And like, here’s the thing - classic Trek doesn’t preclude heavy subjects (”Conscience of the King” from TOS is a great example), and shows like DS9 don’t preclude fun and optimism (there’s episodes like “Explorers” that are uplifting, and “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” is a fucking delight). Star Trek at its best should always tackle difficult issues, should always have determination, should always have hope. DS9 had a more morally gray outlook, yes, and certainly questioned the idea that the Federation is utopian, but it was still underpinned by the main characters wanting to do good. Wanting to improve the world around them. It managed to do a very good job of adapting Trek’s message to its darker tone - whereas Disco feels like it’s flip-flopping between having a darker tone and trying to be like TOS. Like, buddy, just pick one. You just gotta pick one.

The more times Sarek shows up in Disco, the more he looks like a complete dick to Spock in TOS. This isn’t necessarily a complaint, because Sarek being a dick is certainly in character for him, but I’d like to see that disparity in how he treats his children addressed. By his wife. Specifically by his wife. Amanda is a national treasure and I need her to call her husband out.

idk I think there’s more but like, I’ve been working on this for hours - WAIT HANG ON

This has been bugging me since the beginning of the show, because while Michael’s mutiny was certainly a bad idea, she technically... didn’t really do much of anything before being taken to the brig? She almost has the ship fire on a Klingon vessel, but Georgiou shows up and stops her. Helm locked phasers on the vessel on Michael’s orders, yes, but earlier they locked phase cannons on the vessel for a short time, which Georgiou agreed to. Her actions during the mutiny didn’t really change their situation at all. So why does everyone blame her for starting the war?

“But she killed that Klingon during her spacewalk!” Yeah, she did, because he came charging at her with a bat’leth with the intention to kill. In that scenario, her actions were self-defense. She attempted to talk to him, he then proceeded to try to kill her, so she fought back to save her own life and ended up killing him in the process. And all this happened while she was investigating a foreign object in Federation territory. So while I can see why she was charged with mutiny and assaulting a fellow officer, I don’t think it’s fair to say that she started the war. The Klingons on the ship of the dead were planning to start shit before anyone even got there.

I can understand why Starfleet would have thought Michael started it, at least at first, because unlike the audience, they couldn’t see the Klingons planning beforehand. That’s fair. But then Ash Tyler shows up, and he’s revealed to be Voq - who was there! he knows what happened on that ship! - and eventually, he loses Voq’s consciousness but retains the guy’s memories. So Ash knows how the war started. Ash knows, or should know, that the Klingons on that ship were the instigators. Why wouldn’t he tell Starfleet before fucking off with L’Rell? He says he loves Michael, so why wouldn’t he want to set the record straight? And most importantly, why wasn’t Michael told any of this?! She’s been blaming herself for this whole war, she’s been suffering needlessly for it, let her fucking rest! Yeah, she was exonerated and accepted back into Starfleet, which is great, but it came across as “welp you basically cleaned up the mess of a war you started and saved Earth from annihilation, so I guess we’ll clear the slate for you.” It should have been more like “well given what we know now, we can say that you’re innocent of starting interstellar war; and as for the rest, stopping the destruction of Earth is a hell of a community service, so you know what? Welcome back.”

My point is, Michael Burnham has done nothing wrong, ever, in her life

Alright, at this point I think that about sums it up, and I’m tired of looking at this anyways because it’s been hours now, so uh, yeah. Thanks for coming to my ted talk

#star trek disco #star trek discovery #caps lock #death mention #violence mention #star trek discovery spoilers #star trek disco spoilers #long post #(like. really fucking long. this is not a drill)#anyway welcome to 'i love star trek - now let me tell you how i hate it'#a novel by me #star trek #i mean i guess this counts as #star trek discourse #sort of? idk man its more of a ramble than anything else #but i needed a place to put my complaints so here it is

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who-gives-a-ship · 7 years ago

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(1/3) Hey, so, I really like your posts regrading yaoi and fetishizing and I respect your viewpoints, so I wanted to ask your opinion on something. I made friends with an independent writer some time ago; she sold herself as a writer of LGBTQ+ fiction, and as a trans mlm writer myself, I fell in with her. She's an older woman, and 100% not in the fandom scene. She has had 0 contact with yaoi. I know this for a fact.

(2/3) However, she has somehow managed to reinvent some of the worst yaoi tropes in her own stories (think some of the worst helpless uke and abusive seme traits.) She focuses heavily on romance of many variations, and while I have problems with a lot of her stories, only her mlm couples suffer these particular problems. This makes me... really uncomfortable, as it's definitely tied to the fact it's mlm.

(3/3) When talking to others about how this makes me uncomfortable, I did describe it as fetishizing, but now I see that's not really the right word. I'm sure it's a flavor of homophobia, but I also can't help but feel there's some particular titillation for her in the fact that the relationships are between two men. How do I fairly express this particular kind of discomfort and criticism?

----------

That’s a very interesting situation, anon. I think you’re entirely justified feeling uncomfortable about it, and yeah, it definitely qualifies as some kind of homophobia. I wouldn’t call it fetishizing so much as just plain incorrect. Maybe stereotyping or something too.

First of all, I think telling her is useful for you both. I’m a writer myself and if I were making a mistake like that, I’d want to know about it. If she’s an experienced writer, I’d imagine she’s used to receiving criticism well, especially from her fellow writers. Not everybody is, but most serious writers are. It can be really difficult to criticize a friend’s work and the impulse usually is to just say it’s good no matter what, because that’s the polite thing to do, but it’s important. Sometimes you have to be impolite about things that matter, and I bet she would understand that.

As for how to bring it up, I’m not too great at social interaction. My first guess would be to discuss your own writing with her, and then bring up how you’re worried about falling into stereotypes regarding a mlm relationship and use that as an excuse to explain what the stereotypes are and how they differ from real life mlm couples. I don’t know if you have that kind of relationship with your friend, but maybe you do and she’ll get the hint. You could also try a more direct approach, if your friend would be receptive to something like that or if she asks for honest feedback on her work. Another good option is to find an example of these problems in other fiction and bring them up in casual conversation. Bring up a movie you’ve seen recently or a book you’ve read that had these tropes and talk about how they really bothered you and broke your suspension of disbelief. If she’s paying attention, she’ll think about the tropes she uses in her own work and maybe ask you for tips to help avoid the same problems.

As for zero contact with yaoi, it’s not hard to imagine how someone could get stuff like seme/uke dynamics from other sources. There’s a reaction to same-gender couples in general and mlm couples in particular that makes people want to impose stricter than normal gender roles. It’s the idea that all gay men are either a top or a bottom, or that all lesbians are either a femme or a butch, and the two counterparts only pair up with their opposites. I think it’s just homophobic people trying to force the world into something they feel more comfortable with, but there’s probably a whole thesis paper in all the reasons why stuff like that exists. But the point is, yeah, that’s kind of already in our culture and we didn’t import it from Japan.

And there is an appeal to mlm couples for women, specifically for women at least in part attracted to men. It’s a safer way of fantasizing. Because no matter what, both people are in the relationship are still men and that means we view them as able to protect themselves when women can’t. It ties in with the obviously incorrect idea that men can’t be victims of abuse. Men may have a higher murder rate overall, but women are much more likely to be murdered by an intimate partner. If a woman ends up dead, odds are the husband did it. And as a big fan of hurt/comfort, let me tell you that safety is sexy. So it is based in sexist assumptions, but there is a reason why so many women prefer mlm couples in fiction, and I think as society becomes better on issues of gender, that impulse will eventually go away.

Anyway, here’s your fun fact:

The Turk was a chess-playing automaton that became famous across Europe in the late 18th century. It was eventually revealed to be a hoax that mostly consisted of just hiding a human chessmaster in the cabinet next to it.

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princess-of-the-corner · 7 years ago

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Okay, I need more interaction between Sunset Shimmer and Flash Sentry, and since EQG isn’t doing much and any fan content I can dig up is /romantic/, I’m going to have to do this myself. (Minor disclaimer: I don’t hate the romantic content between them. It’s just not my cup of tea.) This is ended up as a lot of ‘Sunset’s past and motives’, but the relationship with Flash is explored in how that went down during their ‘relationship’ and also after the reformation.

Anyway, headcanon time!

So, one of the biggest questions people have is ‘how did Sunset manage to get Flash to go out with her if she was so widely known for being terrible?’. The answer is that she wasn’t terrible for a while.

Let me elaborate. Sunset, when she came through the portal, was about 13. While she was a bit entitled, she wasn’t ‘evil’. She....

okay, this is going to get into a ‘Sunset’s Past’ headcanon if I go on too long, but short version is that she hadn’t ever wanted power for power’s sake. It was because she saw small cracks in Celestia’s persona as ‘Princess’, and wanted to know more about the real Celestia. She decided that the only way this would happen would be to become a Princess as well, and did whatever it took to make that happen.

The biggest problem she ran into was Celestia herself, as her ‘Princess Persona’ was a poor coping mechanism that I definitely don’t have time to get into here. The other problem she had was having to prove herself over and over to the Nobility who questioned her every move.

So, Sunset Shimmer, being the rash teen she is, runs through the portal and gets trapped there for at least a few years. She’s 13, angry, hurt, but also quite lost and scared because she’s in a strange new world with a body she doesn’t understand and no usable magic. And above all, she can’t see the point. The one thing she wanted, to prove she was worthy of being Celestia’s equal, no, her friend, is shattered because she tried too hard.

As the years go by and Sunset starts her life in this new world and makes it to Canterlot High, she’s not a terrible person. She’s not the ‘bully’. Sure, she’s not friendly, but she’s not purposely being mean or blackmailing others. Her need to be the best is still there, even if she doesn’t have somewhere to aim it. So she blends in, almost too well. Despite the more prickly parts of her personality, she’s pretty and charming. And there’s just enough of her past as a Unicorn slipping in to make others interested in her, though they don’t know why. She makes it to being Princess of the Fall Formal on her own merits, just with this. She wasn’t trying.

Of course, she tries a little more after that. Again, she hasn’t hit the ‘bully’ stage yet, but she’s trying more to be ‘popular’, even if the love and respect she gets isn’t what she’d originally wanted.

Now, since she’s trying, she want some sort of boyfriend to help her image. Sure, it would he oh so easy to seduce an upperclassmen, and that would’ve gotten short term points, but a long, stable(ha) relationship gets more points.But there’s also a conundrum: She doesn’t want to actually string someone along, and she definitely doesn’t want to have to actually engage in romantic activities.

While she’s debating this, she meets Flash. Well, she’d met him before, since they’re in the middle of Freshman year at CHS. He was sweet, perhaps a little to nice in Sunset’s opinion, and quite popular. But that’s not the reason Sunset chose him.

You see, some People and Ponies are more connected to their Counterpart than others. As in, they can on some level communicate with their Counterpart through Dreams. So far, the only two I’ve headcanoned with this ability are Flash and Pinkie.

With Flash it’s just, well, flashes of memories. He can brush it off as just a strange reoccuring dream about being a Pegasus, but clear enough that he can tell stories of events.

With Pinkie, she’s a Lucid Dreamer so she and her Other Self can actually talk to one another.

Anyway, this is why Sunset chooses Flash above other options. She overheard him telling his friends about the ‘weird Pegasus dream’ again. At first, she think it’s a coincidence. She absolutely chokes on her sandwich when he says ‘and our principal was some kind of winged Unicorn horse Queen!’

As for how she gets him into the relationship, she does kind of let him know she’s using him, but she doesn’t tell him the right reason she’s using him. Specifically, she corners him and puts on the act of ‘Hey, my parents found out I’m gay and want to kick me out. Can you pretend to be my boyfriend so they think I’m straight?”. To be fair, that’s only 1/3 a lie. Her parents know she’s gay, but they don’t want to kick her out.

Flash, kind as he is, agrees immediately. He figures out pretty quickly that it’s at least partly a lie. They hang out at Sunset’s place to have the illusion of dating, and he notices her parents are never around. While it’s actually because her parents are in another dimension, she says they’re ‘always on business trips and never home’. Absentee parents aren’t going to be able to find out their daughter is gay.

At first, he’s suspicious. Because why lie your way into a relationship? But as time goes on, she never tries anything. Their interactions remain entirely platonic. And while he doesn’t quite understand what’s going on, he sees that she needs a friend.

And oddly enough, they do become friends. Whether or not Sunset acknowledges it as friendship, that’s what happens. While at School or around Flash’s foster parents they’ll play the romance, they’re dorks together. They have their own game tournaments where they kick each others’ ass at Mario Kart. Hell, Sunset even tries to convince him to ‘fake their breakup’ to go pursue someone he actually likes(like the cute bass player. Seriously Flash go for it. He likes you.)

Seriously, they learn as much as possible about one another. Sunset knows everything about Flash, and the only things Flash doesn’t know about Sunset are the exact details of her past, since she can’t say ‘I’’m actually a Unicorn’.

It’s not until the beginning of Junior year that thing start to go down hill. You see, over summer break was when, in the other dimension, Nightmare Moon returned. Due to Flash’s weird dream connection bullshit, Sunset already knew she’d been replaced, but now she’s been outdone. Not only did Twilight Sparkle become Element of Magic, but she got Celestia to care as more than ‘Princess’. This starts the wheels turning, giving her an idea of how to get her original goal: Prove to Celestia that she’s worthy of her friendship. If she can take the Element of Magic for herself, if she can wield it, then it would show Celestia just how worthy she is.

Her plan involves making sure that there’s no one to stop her. Very few would follow her through the portal(especially since her original plan was to be there and gone before anyone noticed), so she needs to counter threats from the Human world. She can’t find this world’s ‘Twilight’, but she managed to figure out the other five. So her plan is to break them apart. This is where she becomes the bully, because she can’t just break them apart, because others would help them. She has to break apart the entire school.

At first, it’s subtle. It’s not even the ‘nobody can prove it’s her’ subtle, it’s legit ‘no one suspects her’ subtle. Anonymous blackmail to the right people, pretty words encouraging what she wants, that sort of thing. Yet, for all she’s doing, she isn’t being outright terrible.

No, through all this, she’ still nice, she’s still Flash’s friend, she’s just doing terrible things to justify her goal. But it’s when he finds out that everything breaks. Because he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand what the point of it all is. She’s hurting people for what, popularity? Control? What is it? And Sunset can’t tell him, because how do you explain all that? How does she tell him that she’s an interdimensional Unicorn that’s so desperate to get what she wants that she has to do this? She tries, but she can’t tell him the full story. And it’s Flash that leaves. Because as much as he can see she’s hurting, as much as he still cares about his friend, he can’t stay around her if this is what she’s choosing to do.

After that, she snaps. You don’t realize what you have until it’s gone, right? Even though it wasn’t Celestia, she had a friend, someone who genuinely cared about her, and once again, her need to be worthy of Celestia’s love made her screw it up. She doesn’t bother with ‘nice’ anymore. This is Sunset the bully, the terror of CHS.

But it is not Sunset the Demon. She has lines she won’t cross still. So yes, she’ll tear someone apart with insults and threats, but she’ll never cause physical harm, and some secrets are best kept safe. She never tells anyone anything about Flash, even though it would be easy revenge. She doesn’t pick on people for things out of their control, and especially never does any sort of ‘threatening to drag them out of the closet’ thing.

Sunset the Demon is different. Magic is so intertwined with emotion, especially the Elements of Harmony. She felt betrayed, like everything that should have been hers was taken from her, and it made her cruel, lying and manipulating her way to get back the one thing she though could make her happy. The Element of Magic reacted to that, and turned it up to 11. Emotions so powerful it turned into physical pain, and it overtook her and warped her ideas into something terrible. It took away the line to cross, and made her want more than just Celestia’s care.

Sunset and Flash hadn’t talked since he left. And even after the Fall Formal, neither can bring themselves to talk, to try and fix things. And with Flash, since he let her, he’s wanted to hate her. Because he should, right? She became a terrible person, she turned into a literal demon. But he can’t, because he knows the real Sunset Shimmer. And he thinks he’s crazy, because that girl had to have been fake.

And when the Sirens come in, and their magic pushes Desire into overdrive. He wants to hate her, because he should hate her, And he should love hating her for all she’s done. “There’s the bad girl we all love to hate!”

Even with their short talk in Legend of Everfree, in talking about starting over, it still takes a while to talk. And when they do, she tells him everything. While everyone learned about Magic and Equestria and Ponies and Counterparts, very few learned about her life there. Just her friends. And the time she told him, she went into everything. Every single instance she could remember that led her to this Dimension. And she told him about everything after, not just why she made terrible decisions, but the pain of her Demon form. She’d only told Twilight before, both Twilights, but neither was told because of her own pain. She broke down. While she’d cried at the Fall Formal, that was more due to realization and pain. Here, she cried because it was so much to happen. Because with the perspective, she realized how fucked everything was. And partly, because she was happy to have someone who cared, someone who had seen the worst of her and the best of her, yet never hated her, no matter how much she probably deserved it.

After that, they work to repair their friendship. It’s just like it was before, sitting in Sunset’s place, kicking each others’ ass at Mario Kart, swimming, laughing at jokes both old and new. But there’s differences. Not only their closeness, but the fact that they have more friends. You should have seen them working together when someone dug out a gamecube and Mario Party 7.

#mlp headcanon #Sunset Shimmer #Flash Sentry

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everythingtimeless · 7 years ago

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Historical Hour With Hilary: 1x10

It’s been a couple weeks, so you can get up to speed here. But what we definitely want to do is head to September 25, 1780, and the most famous traitor in American history (justified or otherwise) for a whole lotta revelations about the Capture of Benedict Arnold...

It’s no secret that this is my favorite episode, and perhaps it’s then no surprise that the history that surrounds it is so fascinating (and terrifying): a mix of eighteenth-century parlor intrigue, Revolutionary War spy rings, plotted betrayals, secret societies, and much, much more, including some major connections to the present day. But it’s also the episode where we discover, alas, that the Time Team (or at least the screenwriters) Did Not Think This Through, and really should have figured this out at least eight episodes ago. I love that Rittenhouse is based on real history, and especially one guy, but, well. When it’s taken your heroes ten episodes to realize something that could have been solved in five minutes with a quick Google search, that, my friends, is called a plot hole. I will overlook it for the sake of things, but yes.

First things first: Benedict Arnold, the second man in Western history (after Judas Iscariot) whose name has become synonymous with “traitor.” (And zomgz, he betrayed America that’s really bad. /clutches pearls/). As Lucy points out in the episode, however, his reasons for doing so were complicated. The Battles of Saratoga in 1777 are cited in every single account of the Revolution as the turning point to victory for the Americans, and they were only won because of the nearly single-handed, overwhelmingly heroic efforts of Arnold. A monument to his wounded leg exists on the battlefield, and as we also see in the episode, it never fully healed. Congress didn’t recognize Arnold’s efforts, he was passed over for promotion, and he disapproved of the proposed alliance with the French. He had spent a great deal of money on the cause already and was hard up for funds, and his young second wife, Margaret “Peggy” Shippen Arnold, was a devoted Tory (and was almost certainly involved in helping him come up with the treason plan). It was on 23 September 1780 when the British spy with whom Arnold had been corresponding, Major John Andre, was caught and the plot to turn West Point over to the British was revealed, forcing Arnold to flee. On 25 September, he wrote to Washington pleading for mercy for Peggy, but he had of course made a grave mistake in jumping ship for the losing side, and the victorious Americans made sure to thoroughly revile him down the years. (Arnold’s family papers are now in Harvard University special collections.)

The technique that the Time Team uses to chase Arnold into enemy territory (pretending to be defectors as well) was the actual one used by John Champe, the man sent after Arnold on the orders of George Washington and his close associate, Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, a talented cavalry officer from a prominent Virginia family. In one of the most monumental cases of irony in hindsight in history, Henry Lee is probably more familiar as the father of... Robert E. Lee. Yep. That Robert E. Lee. Let’s just let this sink in for a second. Robert E. Lee’s father helped George Washington try to catch a talented, high-profile general who had traitorously turned against his country during a war. (Henry Lee also gave the famous eulogy of Washington at his funeral in 1799.)

Awkward.

The Culper Ring of spies actually did play some part in the attempted apprehension of Arnold, as well as serving as Washington’s sophisticated intelligence network throughout the war, using code names, dead drops, encrypted messages, and other familiar tools of espionage to pass information through their associates in Long Island. So yes, they had a spy on the inside, that’s right... Hercules Mulligan! (Also: Mulligan’s slave, Cato, was one of the Culper Ring’s trusted agents as well, and no, he was not a free man. Just in case you forget that, you know, the Founding Fathers were slaveholders. Mulligan did, however, help found the New York Manumission Society with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in 1785, so... he’s got that going for him?)

And now, therefore, we reach the Big Problem with this episode: David Rittenhouse (and not that he’s, at least in Timeless-verse, a horrible creeper). Because frankly, I gotta call serious, serious BS on a) Lucy not knowing about this guy to start with, and b) everyone being aware that “Rittenhouse” was a big part of whatever’s happening, but apparently not bothering to do so much as five minutes of a Google search. Because that would have answered their question right away, they could have headed to the eighteenth century, gotten this done much more efficiently, and... yes. I’m judging.

As noted in that link above, David Rittenhouse was a famous astronomer, clockmaker, inventor, philosopher, professor at the University of Pennsylvania (there is the David Rittenhouse Laboratory on campus, and the popular Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia) and was widely admired by Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and others. He made a beautiful orrery (model of the universe) that’s still on display at UPenn. You can join the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, and there’s a crater named Rittenhouse on the moon. He clearly exists in the Timeless verse, in his proper historical moment, so what, Lucy, who knows everything about even obscure American historical events, just... doesn’t know about this guy at all? Even if we allow that fictional Rittenhouse may have tried to suppress records about itself post-1780, David had already given a lecture to the American Philosophical Society on February 24, 1775 that so impressed them that copies were ordered printed out and distributed to the delegates of the Constitutional Convention. In it, Rittenhouse muses on the possibility of extraordinary achievements in the name of mankind, and also (unlike his slave-owning fictional counterpart) decries slavery, in the context of imagining the possibility of contact with aliens from other planets:

Our religion teaches us what philosophy could not have taught, and we ought to admire with reverence the great things it has pleased divine Providence to perform, beyond the ordinary course of nature [such as time travel, one wonders?] for man, who is undoubtedly the most noble inhabitant of this globe. [...] Happy people! and perhaps more happy still, that all communication with us is denied. We have neither corrupted you with our vices, nor injured you by violence. None of your sons and daughters, degraded from their native dignity, have been doomed to endless slavery by us in America, merely because their bodies may be disposed to reflect or absorb the rays of light, in a way different from ours. (pp. 565-66).

Hmm. It’s hard to escape the feeling that poor ol’ Dave Rittenhouse has gotten a bit of the shaft in Timeless’ version of him (though that lecture is definitely creepy in the eighteenth-century-idealism way if you read it through). Rittenhouse seems considerably based on the Illuminati (yes, they’re real too), a secret society founded in Bavaria in 1778, and which was considered to really get going in 1780, the way Rittenhouse is in Timeless canon. It held to the same project of wanting its members to benevolently exercise power from the shadows for the betterment of all humankind (and thus their “illumination” or enlightenment). It was quickly suppressed, and almost immediately accused of plotting to overthrow various governments, as the eighteenth-century version of Alex Jones would like to tell you in his 1798 book, Proofs of a conspiracy against all the religions and gouvernments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies. They were also blamed for inciting the French Revolution, in the 1801 On the Influence Attributed to Philosophers, Free-masons, and to the Illuminati, on the Revolution of France.

Conspiracy theories! Ah, those go way back. So, Rittenhouse isn’t real, right? Just a fictional version of a small group of powerful and dangerous crazy guys who control America today, and that’s not actually...

Oh, shit.

The “Fellowship” or “the Family,” the subject of an absolutely terrifying 2008 book by award-winning journalist and Dartmouth professor Jeff Sharlet, is the most powerful right-wing (and I mean hard right wing) conservative Christian political lobby group in Washington. They are just like Rittenhouse, but you know, real: they take a vow of secrecy, no public information is available from them, they count a huge number of American senators/congressmen, corporate executives, government officials, and international politicians among their ranks, they feel they are above the law, and they’ve been responsible for funding dictators and bloody regimes throughout the world. Remember Uganda’s heinous “Kill The Gays” bill? Yeah, that was them. The Family is described as “anti-labor, anti-gay, and pro-life. It is also anti-communist, but not necessarily a firm believer in democracy. Rather, it favors a totalitarianism for Christ, a sort of Christian theocracy. In foreign policy, it promotes a “soft” U.S. expansionism.”

The Los Angeles Times attempted to examine their membership and other document records (before the archives were sealed) and corroborated many of the claims in Sharlet’s book (and the Harper’s article he released before it). That bastion of radical left-wing journalism, Newsweek, wrote in September 2009:

The Fellowship, as this group is called, has the slimmest scrap of a Web site. Nothing about its organizational structure is visible to the public: not its board of directors, nor its executive team, nor its mission statement, nor its 200 subsidiary ministries, nor its national or global membership. (For, as its surrogates tell me, there are no "members.") [...] The Fellowship is 75 years old. It organizes the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event attended by 3,000 people from all over the world who pay hundreds of dollars per ticket to pray, ecumenically, with the president himself. Some of the world's most powerful people are included in its circles—as regulars or merely occasional participants. It flies business and political leaders abroad to meet with other "friends"— heads of state and local despots—in the name of Jesus. But it is in the midst of a PR crisis: Sharlet has leveled certain substantive charges that demand answers.

Defenders of the “Family” insist it’s a completely innocuous Christian advocacy group, certainly not like those crazies Focus on the Family or Christian Coalition, that promotes cross-party unity and prayer, and that this is all a paranoid left-wing view of their activities. Having read Sharlet’s book, I can concede there are times when he comes off pretty alarmist. But on the whole, his research is thorough, his conclusions are terrifying, and when the organization itself admits that’s pretty much what it does (it denied that it existed until 2009, which isn’t suspicious at all for your nice little Capitol Hill prayer group), and there’s bupkis that we can do about it, since it’s still going on right now... I mean?

Sleep tight, kiddies!

Next week: We head to the World’s Fair 1893, and the Devil in the White City.

#nbc timeless #timeless #timeless rewatch #timeless meta #historical hour with hilary #1x10

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knightofbalance-13 · 7 years ago

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We all are.

http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/163386771476/i-am-so-tired

Yeah, we all are, you two. Well, not me. I find this kind of logical deconstruction fun.

I am so tired of being told that I have to be The Good Gay™ and take all the homophobia and harassment and beatings and everything with a smile on my face in order to be respected. That I have to be grateful when someone laughs in my face because they noticed me!

Okay, let me break this down quick:

1. Yeah, you do have to fight for it. Respect is not entitled to you, it is something you earn. You earn people’s respect by doing the right thing, by being cool headed and logical in debates, by enduring. You can’t just have respect handed to you: That devalues the concept. Yeah it sucks but welcome to life.

2. What homophobia? What Harassment? What beatings? I’ve never seen that around here and if it is as common as you say it is, then surely you can prove it. How do I not know you are just crying wolf for attention or trying to make yourself look like a victim to do whatever you want or maybe you were being a dick about something that is only tangently related to your sexuality at best? Without context and proof, why should anyone listen to you?

And if it’s not happening directly to you: Then don’t talk abut it as though it is personally happening to you. Especially if it’s not happening in your country since who knows what the other country is like and the way you talk groups all of humanity together which we are NOT a hivemind.

And what does being a “good gay” actually entail? because with you Invested, it could mean anything from “taking abuse” to “not screeching homophobia at everyone who doesn’t exactly agree with you.” Because I have seen you attack people for saying you are looking too deeply into stuff when you YOURSELF agreed you were looking too deeply or when a content creator just thinks shipping has gone out of hand (http://invested-in-your-future.tumblr.com/post/161686615570/wait-can-i-ask-what-the-issue-with-murderofbirds). And BTW: Being called a bigot in this world of ours is worse than being black or LGBT or whatever, especially since minorities are treated as not being ABLE to be bigots and that the “majority” should just take the abuse with a smile.

Because unless you are one of The Good Ones™ who always is nice no matter what kind of privileged bullshit Straights™ keep spewing, then you are literally a demon for daring to feel awful and to want to have equal rights.

Exactly that: equal rights. Equality. That just means that people should stop caring about you and treat your argument about your sexuality and race the same as everyone elses: Nonexistent. People stop giving a shit about what you are both ways and treat you as WHO you are. And considering this is the type of person who screams homophobia at everyone who disagrees with you (including members of your own community!)

And you talk about the “privileged bullshit Straights” when you used a similar statement to be sarcastic about the situation with the Good Gays, meaning that you are being malicious towards straight people the same way you perceive malice being directed at LGBT people, especially since the context of this post stells me you want every straight person to support whatever you do because you are LGBT: You are literally being a bigot the same way you say people are being towards you. A straight person calls you out for calling a series creator(s) homophobes for not pandering to you immediately and not supporting your attacks on them? Well, then they are a bigot and not being a Good Straight and is wrong.

You want equal rights? Okay then: You are a liar since you lied about JAC’s video being anti-LGBT when it was anti-shipping, you tried to portray Murderofbirds as being a homophobe when eh just dooesn’tw ant to get into the whole shipping debacle. (http://invested-in-your-future.tumblr.com/post/161686615570/wait-can-i-ask-what-the-issue-with-murderofbirds) as well as lied about them being involved in the BMBLB controversy. Which brings me to my next point: you act like BBLB is being homophobic when this exact same thing happened to Black Sun shippers so by your logic it would be equal because they did it to the biggest hetero and homo ships in the fandom. (http://invested-in-your-future.tumblr.com/post/162372941890/you-know-its-funny-people-keep-claiming-rt-is-so) You misinform people by saying the person is calling you a crazy feminist when they were just asking you why you have to act like everything is political and they don’t want politics in their media, which is good considering how blatant politics ruin media. You are a hypocrite in saying that there are homophobes in the fandom when the top ships in the fandom are LGBT (Bumblebee, Sea Monkeys, White Rose, Freezerburn, Lady bug, Monochrome, Nuts and Dolts) and you are seen as weird for not shipping LGBT, a big compliant in the fandom is no LGBT characters and the big names are LGBT. You act like you are entitled to representation and such even as you attack and insult whereas if someone criticizes you, they are labeled with one of the most dangerous labels in our society. None of this is because you are LGBT: I would say this all to a straight person. What is going is that you are just not a good person and it becomes associated with your sexuality because you force the two together.

Its kind of hilarious because it all stems from the very same heteronormative bullshit of “normalcy” - unless you conform to the privileged heteronormative society and say “thank you, kind sirs” for every hit, the Straights™ will go out of their way to shame you and claim you are not normal or you are dangerous.

Heterosexuality IS normal: it is literal the norm being about 75-80% of americans at most (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation#United_States / http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/19-percent-americans-dont-consider-themselves-heterosexual) and around 5% at least (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-adults-overestimate-homosexual-population-much-tenfold) fact is: being heterosexual is normal. Not being hetero isn’t bad: it just means you’re not normal. And that’s not a bad thing for sake.

And homosexuals DO have more rights in some aspects than heterosexuals: If a baker doesn’t want to bake a cake for a heterosexual couple, no one would bat an eye. But if not for a homosexual couple, a controversy is created. If a straight person is stereotyped, it’s fine but you can’t be stereotyping gay people. This comes right down to phobia: homophobia has a lot of stigma behind it whole many people refuse to acknowledge heterophobia. Straight people are not the only privileged people on the planet.

And guess what? You, Invested, ARE dangerous. Not to straight people but to your own brethren. You keep talking this way, acting this way, speaking this way and thinking this way soon enough people will give up on trying for representation and equality because they will think the LGBT community is unpleasable and just not even bother anymore. And at time, real bigots will come in and take that one step further and start taking your rights away again. until the world you are talking about actually happens. All because you keep asking to be treated specially and differently instead of equal.

Well you are goddamn right I am dangerous threat to society - I have ALL episodes of Orphan Black and L Word on DVD and I am not afraid to watch it!

... You’re an idiot. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. And if you want t live in your little bubble for the rest of your life: Well, humanity won’t be missing much except for another bigot,

And now for...Dudeblade.

The “Normies” should be afraid of disgruntled minorities. They should be very afraid. Nothing is scarier than a person who wants equality, and has nothing to lose. This is why the Civil War happened people. The African Americans weren’t going get their equality by being The Good Black™ and taking all the shit that they took back then. Why should the LGBT+ Community be the same?

First off: These people are not like African americans back then: They have rights now. They have equality now. Now, they are asking to be treated like delicate angels who should have whatever they want. And they are going to fuck it all up for everyone. Stop defending these people, Dudeblade: you’re just making things worse.

And you’re right they didn’t get their equality in the Civil War. Ever heard of Jim Crow laws? Segregation? the Grandfather Clause? All happened after the Civil War and all limited the rights of africian americans. The time they got their rights was, shocker, the Civil Rights Movement in which they acted EXACTLY the way you mock. The only thing that extremeists got in that time were fear and their cultural counterparts: When the Black Panthers went to far, the KKK rose up as a result. Do you WANT an LGBT version of the KKK? because that is what will happen when things go too far.

#rwde bullshit #invested in your future #dudeblade

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imspardagus · 6 years ago

Text

Belongings

I look into the mirror. The face that stares back at me is tired and wary around the eyes. I recognise it as my own while recalling with a ripple of regret that it used to look younger and more confident. In almost the same instant, and in the same features, I also glimpse my father, even though his Brilliantined hair, always precisely parted and regimentally slicked back from his forehead, remained a rich black all his life where mine is now a spikey, snowy white.

But my brain hasn’t finished with me. Indeed it has hardly even started. Without my asking it to, it has registered the shades of blotchy pinks, yellows and sallow browns of my ageing skin, the shapes of my features, and reported to me that the face in the mirror is classified as white, and not just Western European, not even British, but English. It has determined that I am male (and fired a small salvo of regret through my mind). It has picked up an insecurity about who and what I am, somewhere between the sad compression of the lips and the illogical but patent wish of my reflection’s eyes to avoid looking back at me.

I realise that my brain is doing this all the time, as I move around. It is like having a scanning and recognition unit constantly at work inside my head. As people approach, in the street, in shops, bars and restaurants, driving cars, riding bikes, I am made aware of age, sex, orientation, bearing, mood. An assessment is made of the risk to my safety and comes through as a prickling tension. An appraisal report reaches me as to the racial or ethnic background of the individual: Irish, Latin, possibly Romanian, Polish, Mali, Muslim, Hindu, Scandinavian. All in a split second.

I have no need for this speculation and, most of the time, no way of checking its accuracy, but, in all my years, I have never found the switch to cancel the operation. It is occurring well below the level of conscious control.

Perhaps the racial side of this acute awareness is a product of my upbringing. I grew up in the Fifties in an Essex town on the fringe of London in a country imbued over centuries with a sense of its own supremacy. We did not think of ourselves as discriminating. The word “racist” would not be coined for another 20 years. But we had a name for every version of humanity that wasn’t “us”. Mostly not kind words; epithets and abbreviations that reflected not merely that we had noticed their differences but that we regarded those differences with disdain, if not active hostility. It is tempting now to list them but I will resist. I know better, even if my brain doesn’t.

It is easy to say we did not mean any harm. We were just doing what we had been brought up to do, generation following generation. But harm was done. Oh, yes, harm was done. In a world where racial, and sexual, inequality was (and is) rife, it is an awful irony that the best equality our racialism, and sexism, has generated has been an equal and opposite reaction in those of whom we mis-spoke and whom we routinely ill-treated; a claim of right to behave badly based this time in victimhood and vendetta: because your people abused and oppressed my people now I am entitled to abuse and oppress you, and you just have to take it.

In our relatively comfy suburb, I recall, we allowed ourselves a low-hate version of discrimination. We didn’t have misogyny. Men and women simply “knew their place”. We weren’t in your face xenophobes. We would go out of our way to remark of any Irish or German or Italian or French, or whatever, person whom we actually encountered (as opposed to generality of their kind) that they were really nice “all things considered”. We would allow an Indian doctor to practise medicine on us, noting that he had “such nice manners for an Indian”. If we ever encountered a brown face we would exude a post-colonial patronising condescension. It wasn’t as if they wanted to move in next door – yet. We weren’t in the frontline. All these people who were “not us” were so rare that we had the time and space to flatter ourselves that we were good people, tolerant, benevolent, even while we reminded ourselves that they were a lesser version of us.

The problems came later when they gave up the pretence of feeling gratitude for being patronised and started demanding to be treated as equals. Which, of course, they were. And right then, if we had been the decent, tolerant people we thought we were, it should have been possible to see that we could equalise up. But just that very proposition made many of us feel like we were having to give up something vital to our own well-being. Our sense of self-esteem was not founded in our own worth as people but in our perception of the inferiority of others.

Though the terms of abuse were evenly spread across the nationalities, fostering and supporting the sensitivity to origin that I still find going on in my head, it was, of course, easier to identify those whose cosmetic and physical differences stood out from our pallid, mousey, beige norm: the gingers, the fuzzy-haired, the olive and brown skinned, the sari wearers, the hooded and turbanned. These we clumped together with obsessive efficiency and, regardless of their individuality of experience or culture, proceeded to stereotype into threats to “our way of life”.

I don’t know why I didn’t have that mindset. I certainly had the racial awareness. It didn’t stop there either. As a boy and then a man, I also had an awareness that I was supposed to be better than the female half of the species, too. And, as homosexuality became visible, the assumption that I was a straight man should have led to my regarding those who weren’t as deviant. As, nominally, C of E, I was supposed to revile the rabid, God-bothering servility of Catholics. As a nominal Christian, I was supposed to despise the money-grubbing, wily, Christ-denying Jews. As a nominal God-fearer, I was supposed to scorn the heathen antics of Hindus and Muslims. Most people around me did. I didn’t because I couldn’t. Simply, I could not make it consistent with what I saw in reality. Quality, decency and beauty, and their opposites, worthlessness, inhumanity and ugliness existed in all of us, regardless of race, religion, sex, gender or orientation. That much was, to me as I looked around, obvious and undeniable.

But what I could never lay aside, though it upset me, and still does, was the recognition process. And like a persistent journalist, its presence badgered me, and still does. If I was constantly racially aware, how could I be sure that I wasn’t quietly xenophobic? If I was always aware of the physical differences that men and women manifest, how could I be sure that I wasn’t an unconscious sexist? If I had a part of my brain pointing out other people and whispering to me “gay”, “lesbian”, “tranny”, how could be sure that my behaviour towards them wasn’t affected by the perception? If I thought belief in gods was delusional, how could I be sure that I wasn’t allowing that to colour my judgment of those who believed?

I couldn’t. I can’t. All I can do is be aware and do my best to neutralise it. I think that is right. All the sense I can make of it is that the process is too deep-seated to be excised and yet too dangerous to be ignored.

This process comes down to us from the earliest of our sentient ancestors and it is not confined to our species. Discrimination, the process by which we identified small differences in the landscape and creatures around us and learned to link them to degrees of risk was a matter of survival then. As we evolved in a challenging environment, where territory, holding it, losing it, could make the difference between abundance or scarcity, literally between life and extinction, belonging to the group was core and being cast adrift was a death sentence. Identifying with the tribe was vital and mistrusting the outsider, the interloper, the non-conformist, was its counterpart.

But that doesn’t make it right now. It just goes some way towards explaining where the propensity for these uncomfortably pressing intolerances comes from. There are so many of these residues of our distant past wired into us which would be unacceptable if given free rein now. We have mostly learned to suppress or redirect them. The vast majority of us do not kill other humans (not by direct action, at least) and most of us believe that to do so is wrong. The vast majority respect other people’s property though we may covet it and though it would be so easy to join together to relieve them of it.

It goes further, into the positive. That feeling of fairness and unfairness which guides most of us to want to help those in need though they are unrelated to us in any close way, and to decry the oppression of those whose awful lives do not affect us beyond allowing us to source an abundance of cheap goods, that feeling is an extrapolation of another deep-seated instinct, the feeling of community, kinship, that we had when we lived in small mutually-supporting families and tribes. It is called empathy, or sometimes now, emotional intelligence. We have taken a very old human trait and, tearing down its former boundaries of familial extent, applied it, more or less, to the world.

It may simply be impossible for our brains to stop noticing differences in our looks, our preferences and our behaviours. But if so, then then it is essential for us to keep noticing our brains’ noticing. We must demand of our conscious minds that they act as custodians and monitors of the unconscious. Awareness is key to preventing the misapplication of our natural and primitive responses. Awareness gives us the choice of doing the right thing for the right reason. And thus to make our old responses work for a better world. We need to train ourselves to understand that the colour of a person’s skin is of no significance as a measure of that person’s character or intellect or propensity to harm us. That the physical differences between a male and a female body are purely functional and not indicative of any comparative value or merit. That the attraction that occurs between people is simply that, and not indicative of the quality of their morals or righteousness.

And then, when we have taken to heart the lesson of the speciousness, and the downright wickedness, of such superficial associations, we have, consciously and deliberately, to accept and understand that most of what actually divides us is cultural and to insist on not making colour, ethnic origin, sex or sexual orientation a cypher for culturally-derived behavioural choices. While the content of religion is a cultural and political construct that we are entitled to challenge as an argument, the need to believe, the need to create ethical structures strong enough to make us feel secure in our relationship with others, is human and universal, even among atheists.

But above all, we have to see that we, ourselves, are both individual and universal. There are only people. We are one family, one race. But we are a race the diversity of whose members runs into billions. Diversity does not threaten us, it sustains us. We are diversity.

The word “kind”, meaning benevolent and well-disposed, has the same root as “kind” and “kin”, meaning family. Just as we are one kind, one species, one race, one family, we need to learn to be kind to each other. If we do not, if, in this crowded world, we allow false and unsustainable notions of the significance of difference to divide us, then belonging becomes baggage, weighing us down, impeding our progress, preventing us from solving the real problems that we have. If we can be kind to all mankind, if we consciously and conscientiously belong to the world, then the world and all its problems will come right.

#Kind #kindness

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