#because they don't have that sense of foreignness

[lbulldesigns]

Group Chat between Vi, Mylo, Claggor, and Ekko.

VistandsforVictory has created Chat titled "Pow Patrol"

LadyKiller: Pow Patrol? Seriously, Vi?

VistandsforVictory: Yep. We need to talk about this. Powder is trapped in Demacia, and we're all planning a party instead of rescuing her.

BotanyNerd: It's a charity event, not a party. And there's not much we can do in regards to Powder Vi, Demacia is in full lockdown it's near impossible for foreign dignitaries to enter the country, let alone a bunch of nobodies.

LadyKiller: Speak for yourself. I'm going places.

TheBoiSaviour: So you finally decided what your major is going to be?

LadyKiller: 🖕

BotanyNerd: You know the rules, Ekko.

TheBoiSaviour: Sorry.

VistandsforVictory: CAN WE STAY ON TRACK PLEASE?!

BotanyNerd: Okay Vi, say we hop on the first boat or airship to Demacia to ride to Pow Pows rescue. What's the plan gonna be?

VistandsforVictory: We find our sister and bring her home.

LadyKiller: Sounds straight forward enough.

BotanyNerd: Where do we begin looking? Where would we, foreigners who have never visited the country before, start looking that the Demacian local law enforcement haven't?

TheBoiSaviour: There's also the whole "kidnapped royalty" to factor in, we don't know if in our search to find Pow we'd unwittingly draw the people she's staying out of sight of to her. And given Demacia's arrest first policy, I don't think she'd be given a fair trial before being sentenced.

LadyKiller: Also, Silco is handling finding her. He will keep us updated.

VistandsforVictory: Oh, right. Because he's done a fine job finding her and bringing her home so far.

TheBoiSaviour: He can't exactly hog tie her and bring her back Vi. That would be considered kidnapping. Also, Powder would be pissed.

VistandsforVictory: But safe.

BotanyNerd: Vi your not going to Demacia. One, Demacia is on lockdown, and their arresting anyone and everyone they consider suspicious or dangerous. Two, if your search to rescue Pow results in both of you being arrested, there would be little we could do to get you back and then we would all be pulling our hair out worrying about the two of you. And three, Dad really needs us here right now helping him with the pub, the event, and Isha.

VistandsforVictory: Don't tell me what you do! And the kid has nothing to do with any of this.

BotanyNerd: At some point Vi, you're going to have to actually acknowledge Isha's existence. She's our little sister.

VistandsforVictory: Powder's our little sister too!

LadyKiller: Vi have you been drinking?

VistandsforVictory: NO!!!

LadyKiller: Had to ask, because your making FUCK ALL SENSE!!

TheBoiSaviour: Okay, okay. Stop! This is getting out of hand. Mylo, you mean well but you really need to learn tact man. Vi, you need to understand that Isha isn't replacing Pow and Pow wouldn't view her as a replacement. I really think you need to speak to your therapist about this. Also I really, really don't think Pow would appreciate you running to her rescue.

BotanyNerd: That's it I'm bringing in Silco and Dad.

VistandsforVictory: Wait!!!

BotanyNerd invited TheEyeofZaun and WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy: Hello

LadyKiller: Why is your username WolfDaddy?

WolfDaddy: Powder made my profile for me, she said that it was factually correct whilst being anonymous. Now what's going on? Is this about Powder?

@lullabyes22-blog

[schraubd]

Things People Blame the Jews For Volume LXXIII: Los Angeles Wildfires

The raging fires that have torn through the Los Angeles area are gripping the world's attention. Natural disasters like these don't typically have a direct culprit to blame, though of course, in a more abstract sense changing weather patterns brought on by global climate change play a role. Or, you know, it's a Jew thing. Jewish control over the weather is well-known trope to readers of this series, and few can forget congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene contributing "Jewish space lasers" to the antisemitic dictionary. But a variety of far-left groups now are making their own entry into the genre by tying the fires to America's support for Israel. For some, the rhetoric seems to be one of divine retribution, akin to how Mike Pence thinks of hurricanes ("When US taxes go to burning people alive in Gaza, we can’t be surprised when those fires come home."). Others play the game where America's foreign aid budget is presented as dollars out of hard-working American pockets, or, in this case, the Los Angeles Fire Department budget -- never mind that those pots of money have nothing to do with one another and in any event the widespread meme that the LAFD faced a draconian budget cut last year appears to be false (the fire budget is actually $53 million more than it was last year, but if I fact-checked every subclaim in this series I'd never get any sleep at all). More broadly, I was just thinking about how the immediate right-wing pivot to blame the fires on "DEI" (by which they mean, the fire department has women in its leadership) reminded me of classic antisemitic conspiracy theorizing -- the immediate impulse to find the Jewish connection and shriek "this explains everything!" Whereas some pin every bad thing in the world on "the Jews", others do the exact same thing but plug in "diversity" or some other analogous buzzword as their "explanation of first, middle, and last resort". Remember when the Wall Street Journal blamed the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank on the fact that it had one (one!) Black director in its board? It's the same play. The conspiracy theory "explains everything" because it always "explains everything", because that what a conspiracy theory is -- it is a way to immediately, reflexively, and automatically explain anything and everything by reference to whatever it is you hate. The "wildfires are caused by DEI" takes the rhythm of an antisemitic conspiracy theory and applies it to a new context. But while I certainly enjoyed basking in that familiarity, it is always reassuring to know that someone would go the OG route and blame the Jews and Jewish institutions directly. Not that I had any doubt it would go that way -- it always does, sooner or later. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/HbFjEmx

[flastar13]

I think a Netflix Live Action series would be interesting. As for the change of nationality, my opinion is most certainly extremely unpopular but please don't crucify me, it would be very interesting and perhaps necessary. Something that caught my attention in the first anime and Crystal, is that all the operations of the dark kingdom are in Tokyo-Japan, despite the fact that: 1) Each general has a specific area assigned to work in, only Jadeite deals with Asia, and the rest should deal with other places like Europe, America and the Middle East. 2) It is not smart to keep attacking the same area in search of energy, even if you have already searched in other places for a mystical magic crystal, stealing energy from a specific place would attract unwanted attention from the sailor senshis. On the other hand, collecting energy from different places makes it harder for them to locate you.

Also it's pretty weird that they all reincarnate in the same place, maybe it makes sense with the sailor senshis, but as soon as the shitennou Another History hinted that they were reborn in other countries. I don't think Queen Serenity would be so dumb to make her enemies reincarnate near her daughter, so they must have been born in other countries. One Piece introduced a diverse cast even though the characters were considered Japanese, although in its favor the world in which the plot takes place doesn't have fixed ethnicities, so everyone can be multiethnic. Going back to the previous point, I think it's more realistic that the characters come from different places, I always found it too convenient for the plot that all the sailor senshis live in the same city, in the same country and that three of the five attend the same school. In other shows it's because a higher entity transferred them to the same class cough Evangelion. I think each Sailor Senshi awakening their powers in a different country, fighting the general that controls the neighborhood, and then reuniting with the rest of the team is great cough Evangelion again but it makes sense and is realistic that the chosen ones are not born in the same place neglecting the land, only Rei and Shinji are Japanese, Asuka and Mari are foreigners, okay Asuka has a half Japanese mother but her father is American and she herself was raised in Germany. I really liked PGSM, its plot twists were spectacular. It is the adaptation that best develops the cast, taking their backstories which were rarely or never touched on in the manga or any of the anime. We really see the family situation of Rei, Ami, and Makoto, and how that affected them so much that they were very lonely people until Usagi arrived. We really see the Shitennou interact with Mamoru, and remembering the past does not turn everyone into perfect soldiers loyal to their respective master. Each side and character takes information in a different way and acts according to their personality and character arc. It shows that a good live-action adaptation with its own plot development is possible. Its flaws aside from the special effects are the lack of information about the Shitennou’s second life pre-dark kingdom and Minako’s characterization. I love that Mina is an idol but can we have a flashback to her Sailor V days based on her prequel manga please? The Minako from the manga has been fighting the dark kingdom since she was thirteen, destroyed the dark agency on her own, worked with the Tokyo police, killed her first love in her first transformation and then had to kill her almost boyfriend Ace, only to remember how all her friends died and how her real boyfriend turned evil and joined the bad guys. I hate how the first anime makes up some absurd love triangle story, where Minako makes her surrogate older sister believe that she died just because the boy she likes is said surrogate older sister's boyfriend and that's her big tragedy. What the hell? Not only did they take away any depth from Minako but in my opinion they made her seem mean for traumatizing Katarina just because Alan loved her instead of Minako. The Minako of Damn Sailor V, disguised herself as the love of a boy she liked just to help him not get expelled. As for PGSM giving Minako a nameless deadly disease just to increase the angst is unnecessary when Minako's backstory written by Naoko is so rich and interesting, it's inexplicable why it wasn't used in PGSM given the darker and more serious approach, it was the perfect setting to show how screwed Minako is after the events of Damn Me Sailor V, as well as being an opportunity to explain how Minako became an idol, she had to participate in dark agency idol events and the Kaito Ace movie, attracting attention from the media and idol recruiters.

I didn't like that she was so serious, granted Minako is actually quite serious but she always wears a mask of perpetual happiness, I felt that Minako from PGSM was missing that, they made her an expy of the outers. I love the outers but they are their own characters. I think Minako is more of a joker type teacher like Gojo. At least that's how I see her. I think Minako is an idol who acts like a clone of Usagi but as Rei gets closer to her, she realizes that she is the opposite of Sailor Moon.Sailor Moon Crystal was a missed opportunity to develop the Dark Kingdom arc more with a bigger budget than PGSM, especially if they decided to make SenshiXShitennou canon, but sadly while it was fairly faithful to the manga, it didn't develop the themes that the original work introduced. We get more development of the SenshiXShitennou ship in the musicals than in a TV adaptation. Rei and Ami's family life was not given any screen time, even though Naoko had already published "Casablanca Memory" a short story that chronologically takes place in the Dark Kingdom arc, it deals with Rei's past and why she distrusts men. Why wasn't it adapted in Crystal? But it was used in PGSM, it wasn't 100% faithful but it was used to develop Rei's arc. As for Ami, while her family life was introduced in the Dream arc in the manga, a slight glimpse would help give her more depth, the same as her friendless state before she met Usagi.I think any change of nationality isn't that important as long as the plot is good.

If Hollywood was able to get their hands on a Sailor Moon Live action movie who would you want to do it?

TBH, I would be super nervous about Hollywood touching Sailor Moon. They don’t have a great track record with adapting anime of any kind, and the extremely small handful of female-dominated ensemble movies I can think of are nothing like Sailor Moon. Hollywood is pretty familiar with superhero films by now, but magical girls and superheroes have very distinct flavors and conventions despite their similarities, and I think a lot of the charm that makes Sailor Moon what it is would be lost in an effort to make it recognizable for an American audience. Plus, it would be pretty much guaranteed to be whitewashed, what with Usagi being blonde. 

I seem to recall a Japanese live action Full Metal Alchemist movie that looked amazing. I’d be way more interested in something like that, or a Japanese-produced Netflix collab. 

[yibennianyaji]

It’s always bothered me that all of the Parent Trap movies are contemporary to their own production rather than period pieces. Das Doppelte Lottchen was published in 1949, and while I’m sure that even then separating infant twins was not the norm, the whole concept of divorce was much less socially acceptable. It was the sort of thing people didn’t talk about, so there was more space for them to do objectively crazy things in response to it. Not to mention that the idea of children having minds and inner lives of their own and thus, a right to know their siblings and parents is also relatively recent. It makes much more sense that people would think this was a semi-normal thing to do if you set it in that period than in late 90s America.

[nekohrine]

ace culture is listening to a fun popular song and not relating to a single lyric

[ayara-resara]

.

[abigailnussbaum]

This is why it's always bothered me that all of the Parent Trap movies are contemporary to their own production rather than period pieces. Das Doppelte Lottchen was published in 1949, and while I'm sure that even then separating infant twins was not the norm, the whole concept of divorce was much less socially acceptable. It was the sort of thing people didn't talk about, so there was more space for them to do objectively crazy things in response to it. Not to mention that the idea of children having minds and inner lives of their own and thus, a right to know their siblings and parents is also relatively recent. It makes much more sense that people would think this was a semi-normal thing to do if you set it in that period than in late 90s America.

Lawyer: How would you like to handle the custody agreement?

Parent: I want my wife to take one of my infant daughters to the UK and I’ll take the other one and we will never see each other again.

Lawyer: You want to fucking what?

[sallykie]

I've decided. I don't like the HTTYD movie sequels' xenophobia era. I don't think the themes should have gone that way.

[leatherbookmark]

i went ????? huh?? what??? us??? but then i remembered america exists

[extendedpain]

-

[hypermascbishounen]

Ime It's pretty easy to tell when an author doesn't care about your experiences as a queer audience member, but about how they personally look telling your story for you to other people.

Like, it's on a scale. There's definitely stuff that's well intentioned if a bit clumsy, vs stuff that's deeply cynical "praise me for including u, faggot". And sometimes there's also people really just trying to tell their own story and struggling.

But overall, I think a lot of it comes from a really cowardly position of just fully ceding ground to bigots on media interpretation. Because the idea that queer things aren't canon or real unless you fully halt the story to spell it out to the audience in painstaking detail, is also the position of every homophobe who denies queer subtext/implications in any work they happen to think should be about them by default. (It's also basically the position of erasing queer people from history and treating cisheterosexuality as default, but that's a deeper topic).

I simply do not think looking at a work bleeding with queer subtext so dense there's no cisheterosexual explanation for parts of the plot, and then declaring it "not canon" and thus not "real" representation, compared to a work with what amounts to shallow tokenism, is a progressive stance actually! Sometimes shit is just gay, and not admitting that is asinine. I think at best, people who've internalized "queer subtext is invalid" often go into writing not knowing how to show and not tell, when it comes to character identity or relationships - things that often go poorly when *just* told.

If it's really that difficult, and you're personally lucky enough to not have to deal with censorship(reminder that ability to publish uncensored queer work is often more just privilege than being particularly brave or creative), you can put it in a character bio.

at a phase in my life where when i get the sense a book is trying to offer me Representation (TM) i hiss and scream and start kicking and ripping bricks out of the wall. this character's Coherent Identity And Articulation Of Their Issues had Better fit in with the rest of the worldbuilding (it won't)

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Lae'zel's character and her entire situation at the beginning of the game becomes so much more funny when you find out she's 22. It makes so much sense. Imagine you're 22 and you're exposed to this dangerous toxin or chemical or something - but not to worry, you learnt that this can be easily fixed, you just need to dial 911 real quick. Common knowledge. Everyone knows that. You learnt that in kindergarten, it's up there with fire alarm drills.

But the people you're stuck with have no concept of modern medicine and when you say "let's go to the hospital" they will say shit like "i think they kill people at the hospital" and "we should ask this swamp lady" or "this guy over there told me about this homoeopathic healer kind of guy but he got abducted" or "this random bard wants to help" and "I'm not going to dial 911 because I don't want the government to know my home address" or "maybe we should consider a deal with Satan". And then a bunch of them KEEP consuming the chemical because it makes them "stronger". One guy might explode for unrelated reasons. You have a few days before this situation is getting critical and suddenly they're solving crime and doing general charity for the community.

And FOR SOME REASON you still try to help these idiots and you STILL want to help them get the cure even though they all keep insisting the "doctors" at the "hospital" might try to "kill them" and they don't have insurance. And you keep telling them to just. go. to. the. hospital. before the time runs out and you all die very horribly of a very treatable condition.

And also you're 22 in a foreign country and you're responsible for shepherding this gaggle of idiots who are all ranging anywhere from 24 to 240 years old.

[medicinemane]

One issue I have is there's a whole lot of things where it's like "I'm actually nearly on your side, I'm very sympathetic to this, I just need one or two issues addressed and then I'd be with you on this... you just have to kinda... walk me through how this thing that feels like a kinda big problem isn't a problem"

And pretty much always it's just kinda like "oh, well it's not a problem, so don't worry about it"

...mhh... yeah... but I need some actual proof. I want to trust you, but I need something that actually deals with it, not to just basically be told to have faith... I have no faith, I'm a faithless person

And it's such a shame cause... instead of being able to work along side people I tend to hover off to the side trying to support it in my own small ineffective ways cause... I just have serious issues no one's ever bothered to address

Just sucks, you know?

[trainsinanime]

I've seen a number of people worried and concerned about this language on Ao3s current "agree to these terms of service" page. The short version is:

Don't worry. This isn't anything bad. Checking that box just means you forgive them for being US American.

Long version: This text makes perfect sense if you're familiar with the issues around GDPR and in particular the uncertainty about Privacy Shield and SCCs after Schrems II. But I suspect most people aren't, so let's get into it, with the caveat that this is a Eurocentric (and in particular EU centric) view of this.

The basic outline is that Europeans in the EU have a right to privacy under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive (let's simplify things and call it an EU law) that regulates how various entities, including companies and the government, may acquire, store and process data about you.

The list of what counts as data about you is enormous. It includes things like your name and birthday, but also your email address, your computers IP address, user names, whatever. If an advertiser could want it, it's on the list.

The general rule is that they can't, unless you give explicit permission, or it's for one of a number of enumerated reasons (not all of which are as clear as would be desirable, but that's another topic). You have a right to request a copy of the data, you have a right to force them to delete their data and so on. It's not quite on the level of constitutional rights, but it is a pretty big deal.

In contrast, the US, home of most of the world's internet companies, has no such right at a federal level. If someone has your data, it is fundamentally theirs. American police, FBI, CIA and so on also have far more rights to request your data than the ones in Europe.

So how can an American website provide services to persons in the EU? Well… Honestly, there's an argument to be made that they can't.

US websites can promise in their terms and conditions that they will keep your data as safe as a European site would. In fact, they have to, unless they start specifically excluding Europeans. The EU even provides Standard Contract Clauses (SCCs) that they can use for this.

However, e.g. Facebook's T&Cs can't bind the US government. Facebook can't promise that it'll keep your data as secure as it is in the EU even if they wanted to (which they absolutely don't), because the US government can get to it easily, and EU citizens can't even sue the US government over it.

Despite the importance that US companies have in Europe, this is not a theoretical concern at all. There have been two successive international agreements between the US and the EU about this, and both were struck down by the EU court as being in violation of EU law, in the Schrems I and Schrems II decisions (named after Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist who sued in both cases).

A third international agreement is currently being prepared, and in the meantime the previous agreement (known as "Privacy Shield") remains tentatively in place. The problem is that the US government does not want to offer EU citizens equivalent protection as they have under EU law; they don't even want to offer US citizens these protections. They just love spying on foreigners too much. The previous agreements tried to hide that under flowery language, but couldn't actually solve it. It's unclear and in my opinion unlikely that they'll manage to get a version that survives judicial review this time. Max Schrems is waiting.

So what is a site like Ao3 to do? They're arguably not part of the problem, Max Schrems keeps suing Meta, not the OTW, but they are subject to the rules because they process stuff like your email address.

Their solution is this checkbox. You agree that they can process your data even though they're in the US, and they can't guarantee you that the US government won't spy on you in ways that would be illegal for the government of e.g. Belgium. Is that legal under EU law? …probably as legal as fan fiction in general, I suppose, which is to say let's hope nobody sues to try and find out.

But what's important is that nothing changed, just the language. Ao3 has always stored your user name and email address on servers in the US, subject to whatever the FBI, CIA, NSA and FRA may want to do it. They're just making it more clear now.

[guiltyidealist]

That does explain why Google couldn't just translate it on one go. It did do that. It perceived everything except "fakir" as French and gave "rest of the ____". Fakir by itself it took as Turkish and gave "poor". I got my translation by splicing those translations together. Together they made sense and I didn't investigate it further

"Le repos du fakir" (2003), Stéphane Argillet and Gilles Paté

[notbecauseofvictories]

I'm re-reading the Discworld series for reasons, and honestly the most relatable part of reading these as an adult is how many of the protagonists start out being tired, used to their little routine and vaguely disgruntled by the interruption of the Plot. Sam Vimes wants to lie drunk in a gutter and absolutely doesn't want to be arresting dragons. Rincewind is yanked into every situation he's ever encountered, though he'd much rather be lying in a gutter too. (Minus the alcohol. Plus regretting everything he's ever done said witnessed or even heard about fourth-hand in his whole life.) Granny Weatherwax is deeply suspicious of foreign parts and that includes the next town over; Nanny has leaned into the armor of "nothing ever happens to jolly grannies who terrorize their daughters-in-law and make Saucy Jokes"

Only the young people don't seem to have picked up on this---and that's fortunate, because someone has to run around making things happen, if only so Vimes and Granny and Rincewind have a reason to get up (complaining bitterly the whole time) and put it all to rights. Without Carrot, Margrat, Eric, etc. these characters don't have that reason; they're likely to stay in the metaphorical gutter and keep wondering where it all went wrong or why anything has to change.

............well, that's not quite true. You get the sense that Vetinari knows how much certain people hate the Plot. And as the person sitting behind the metaphorical lighting board of Ankh-Morpork, he takes no small pleasure in forcing the Plot-haters specifically to stand up, and say some lines.