#but instead that becomes an aborted future because? EVERYONE gets powers?? and that caused the apocalypse again???? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

linkspooky · 4 years ago

Photo

Eren Jaeger’s Final Words

So there are many people unimpressed with the final statement given by Eren’s character, either finding it inconsistent with the build up to this point, or too ambiguous a motivation for trampling all over the world. I’m not really here to talk about the quality of the story, whether it was good or bad, because I don’t really care. However, I think it’s fascinating what the text is trying to say about Eren’s character and his motivation.

This is why, “I don’t know, shrug” is both an answer and not an answer to why Eren did what he did in the end. For making my point in this analysis, I’ll be talking about Eren’s character from Marley on showing both the Eren that appeared before Reiner, the one that talked to Zeke, and finally the one Armin saw are all the same person.

1. And Now for Something Completely Different

Before I even begin though, let’s talk about something entirely different. My favorite episode of Doctor Who is from the 4th Doctor Era, entitled “Genesis of the Daleks” first broadcast around 1975. What makes this episode my favorite episode is both the premise, and the question it asks. If you haven’t watched Doctor Who the basic premise is the main character is a time traveler who can go everywhere and everywhen in the universe. One of his common enemies is the Daleks, a race whose goal is to kill everything else in the universe. The Time Lords order the Doctor to go back in time to the era the daleks were created, and prevent their creation in order to prevent every person they would eventually kill.

He goes do the Dalek homeworld, and meets the scientist who created them Davros. Eventually, the doctor fails enough that he’s not able to prevent their creation, but he could, wipe them out when they were just newly born children and completely innocent. The doctor decides not to kill them right then because that would be a pre-emptive genocide, and the Doctor is a pacifist. When Davros witnesses him making this choice it prompts this conversation one of my favorite in all of television. The link to the clip is here if you’re interested. [Source.]

Davros: "Now, future errors will be come victories. You have changed the future of the universe, Doctor." Doctor: "I have betrayed the future. Davros, for the last time, consider what you're doing. Stop the development of the Daleks." Davros: "Impossible. It is beyond my control. The workshops are already fully automated to produce the Dalek machines." Doctor: "It's not the machines, it's the minds of the creatures inside them. Minds that you created. They are totally evil." Davros: "Evil? No. No, I will not accept that. They are conditioned simply to survive. They can survive by becoming the dominant species. When all other life forms are suppressed, when the Daleks are the supreme rules of the universe, then you will have peace. Wars will end. They are the power not of evil, but of good." Doctor:"Davros, if you had created a virus in your laboratory, something contagious and infectious that killed on contact, a virus that would destroy all other forms of life, would you allow its use?" Davros: "It is an interesting conjecture." Doctor: "Would you do it?" Davros: "The only living thing, a microscopic organism reigning supreme... A fascinating idea. Doctor: "But, would you do it?" Davros: "Yes... yes..." [ Davros raises a hand as if holding the metaphorical capsule.]

Davros: "To hold in my hand a capsule that contains such power, to know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure of my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything... Yes, I would do it! That power would set me above the gods!

Davros’ motivations seem at first brush look one-note and evil, just another mad scientist playing god. However, what makes the conversation great is the context it takes place in. Here is the choice offered to the doctor, kill a race that he knows will go on to make war and kill innocents in the future in their infancy before they have done anything wrong, or don’t kill them and ensure the future you know will happen.

The Doctor isn’t saying that his choice is the right one. He’s not saying he’s doing good by choosing not to slaughter an innocent race. He’s saying, he can’t bring himself to make that choice. In that situation he chooses not to choose, because it would be against his pacifist believes to choose either way. Which Davros at first, takes to mean the Doctor siding with him. However, when they begin to debate it, notice how they’re not talking about what is the philosophically correct choice to do. The doctor hammers in this point, would you do it? Would you do it? After getting Davros to admit that yes, he would do it, his motivation becomes much clearer, he doesn’t actually care whether his actions result in a good thing or a bad thing, he simply wanted to be the one who got to choose.

What does Davros want? The power that surpasses a normal human being’s ability to choose. Davros himself is basically written to be pure evil, but his desire itself is a little more complex. Davros is a person lacking in agency, if you tear him away from his support system he’ll die within thirty seconds. He designs what he believes is the perfect race capable of conqueringthe universe which are reflections of him. They’re soft little squid creatures in mechanical shells which are inpenetrable. Davros himself cannot seize that power, he is inferior because he’s attached to the life support system (in his own mind), so the power he wants instead is the power to make the choice to unleash them upon the world.

If the Doctor by failing to make that impossible choice in the situation, by not wanting to even hold the capsule in his hands and have that ability to choose remains a man, then Davros chooses to throw away his humanity (which he ties to his inferiority and weakness) and becomes a god instead. To tie my long tangent which just shows how much of a geek I am back to Eren, Eren’s choice wasn’t actually about bringing a good result or a bad one at all. He simply wanted to choose. People who are lacking for agency, who feel powerless and inferior to tend to grasp for it. They try to fix external circumstances instead of internally facing what is within them, because they can’t bear to face it (hence the complex about being inferior in the first place).

People often compare Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul to Eren because their stated motivation bears some resemblance “we were doing this all to protect our friends”, however, it’s important to grasp that Kaneki and Eren are liars and unreliable narrators both. Their stated motivation isn’t necessarily true. I don’t think the final chapter is as clear as it could have been in nailing down the finer points of this, but Eren does in fact change his stated motivation from “I was doing it all to set up you as heroes of the world” to “I would have done it anyway even if you didn’t come to stop me” to “I don’t know. I just wanted to.” So, the fact that Eren will directly lie about his motivation and try to rationalize his actions and even switch stories in the space of one conversation is at least established.

So to bring the comparison back to Kaneki, both Eren and Kaneki lie about their external motivations that they are doing this for their friends when really they act because of unacknowledged internal motivators. They are secretly selfish, while presenting their actions as some kind of great sacrifice they’re making for the sake of others. The deepest we ever dig into Kaneki’s head he makes this statement.

I’m going to do something that will make everyone love me. Good, bad, it could be anything. After that, I wanna die heroically!

Eren and Kaneki aren’t the same because they’re brave people who fight for their friends, it’s because internally they’re pathetic and unlovable. They’re so starved for agency and attention that they’ll do anything for it, and they just don’t care about the consequences for their actions. Kaneki also, later on in the manga engages in mass slaughter for once again what is a pretty bad reason. It’s not to protect someone or for the sake of someone else. It’s because he’s lonely and wants comfort.

Kaneki doesn’t care about what he’s doing or the consequences of his actions, he’s desperate and wants to do what will immediately gratify him in the moment. He doesn’t even realize what he’s doing will unleash mass slaughter and have greater consequences because he’s not thinking about that.

Compare this to the doctor’s choice. The doctor knows the direct result of his actions, if he does not abort the daleks he will fail to prevent the deaths of innocent people. Knowing those consequences he says he still won’t make the choice because he believes his pacifist principles are something he won’t bend on. Kaneki, and Eren both have on principles, or no reasons. They just do whatever in the moment, and make up a reason after the fact. For Touka, For his friends, because he wanted to, because of freedom, because why not?

Kaneki and Eren can construct no good reason for their actions, and no principles behind their actions, because unlike the doctor, they don’t have a developed enough and they’re not capable of making measured choices. They steal away agency because they’ve been deprived of it, they want the feeling of power and control that comes with making the choice, but they don’t want the responsibility for it. The doctor knows if he doesn’t choose to wipe out the Daleks he’s responsible for that choice, but can’t bring himself to kill. His actions are pacifistic. However, Eren and Kaneki choose to kill in the same situation, and their actions inevitably cause the conflict to accelerate. The Doctor remains a man, Kaneki and Eren do not.

What kind of person would want to become a god anyway?

A person pathetically, incapable of feeling alright as a human being.

That’s why Kaneki and Eren make the choice to become monsters, because they’re incapable of living with themselves, or their actions as people. Either way they can’t live with it, hence why, Kaneki’s stated motivation is I’ll make everyone love me and then I’ll just die. Hence why the person who is making this statment is a childish version of him.

There is no good reason for what Eren does. That sounds like a cop-out answer after making you read all this long, but what is a good reason for killing people? This is a lot of rambling but I hope I’ve at least established that Eren’s internal reasonings make no sense, his internal mechanisms at least do. The reason he doesn’t come up with a reason is because he didn’t actually care about the result of his actions, he just wanted to be in the position to choose. He wanted absolute agency because he was denied agency like a child, and as a forever stunted child, he never grew up to realize that most people in the whole world eventually make compromises and live on with sadness instead of getting to do whatever they want.

Words that Eren was told again and again but failed to listen to. He’s not the only person that suffers in the world. He’s not the only person that’s lost people. He’s not the all-suffering protagonist of reality, he’s just one personin the greater scheme of things. However, the ability to compromise like that. To realize that other people exist besides you, that they have feelings separate from yours, that you are not the protagonist of reality is what an adult does, and what Eren can’t do. It’s easier to become god apparently, throw his whole life away as a child soldier making the ultimate sacrifice then just try growing up.

What’s the point of writing a character with such a pathetic motivvation? It’s because it’s human.

To badly misquote Jung, most people assume they are nice people when really they are in fact jerks. The reasons can be very complex, but sometimes it’s just as simple as not being able to look past your own ego and understand people feel differently than you do. Eren cannot accept other people, whether they be his friends, the comrades he’s fought with this entire time, the adults trying to guide him, he is just so incapable of accepting them that he regresses into a child making selfish demands of the world. It seems inhuman but imagine Eren in a completely different setting. What if Eren were just a shut-in? Just a teenager who didn’t leave his room. A fundamental ability to accept other people would sabotage all his other attempts to grow up and leave his room, and he’d choose to remain a child forever. The stakes are different, the situation is different, but the internal mechanisms are unmistakably human.

2. All Erens is the Same

Okay, here’s where I actually try to prove that Eren’s character arc is consistent with the story. What was revealed in 139 at all wasn’t a 180, and wasn’t a reveal that secretly Eren had good intentions all along. He never had good motivations, or selfless one. From beginning to end he was a selfish child, and his reasoning was always that of a stunted individual unable to understand the feelings of others but placing his own feelings as far more important.

What Eren does in 139 is rationalizing and changing his answer, which he has done several times before that point anyway, and is therefore consistent with his behavior up until that point. It’s important to acknowledge that Eren models himself, not after Grisha, but rather Eren Kruger. The foil to Grisha and the reaction to Grisha’s bad parenting is Zeke. The person who Eren makes similiar choices to is Kruger says the reason he picked Grisha is the eyes he possessed in childhood.

The thing about Kruger is, textually, Kruger fucking sucks. He says it himself. He claims he was doing it for the sake of helping others, and yet, all he ever felt like he was doing, was torturing people, and throwing them to the dogs. He kept saying he had good motivations, but his actions were repeated brutal violence, over and over again. He contributed more to the conflict than he helped to resolve it.

At the end of his life, Kruger says once again he doesn’t believe what he’s done has changed anything, and doesn’t believe he himself hs changed. He’s still the child with hatred in his eyes. His reason for passing it onto Grisha is because he knew Grisha wouldn’t grow up either, and would keep that inside of him. Kruger failed to grow, Grisha failed to grow, in a way that mattered, in time to make an actual change. They only ever made things worse, and that is, the model we are supposed to parallel Eren to.

Now this is at the same time that the Attack Titan’s future vision powers are shown to us. The question a lot of people are asking is if Eren had free will in his choice, or he was fated to make that choce all along. The answer is. No. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not at all. The fact that Eren was destined to do it, is yet another excuse, the like seventh change of motivation that Eren gives us. “I saw it happen in the future so I did everything I could to make it happen, but I didn’t think I had a choice this was the only way to make you guys hero,” Eren says, and then five seconds later. “I didn’t know what would happen , I probably would have done it anyway even if I knew you guys were all going to die and fail to stop me.”

Eren is once again making excuses, and avoiding all kinds of responsibility. If he is the chosen one, if his actions are controlled by fate, if he’s a god, if he’s a devil, he is not human and therefore he is not responsible. Eren wants the power to decide the fate for the world, but will do anything but accept responsibility for that choice. Eren wants to be Eren the bloody conqueror, but he’s not even self-aware enough to see himself as a bad person he can’t even own that so when confronted on his actions he reduces himself back to a child, and evades responsibility. Eren’s own motivation, his stated motivation is for no reason, however, the reasons he avoids the guilt like this are complex in their mechanisms as I wrote about above. The simple question is if Eren saw this future why did he not try to stop it? The simple answer is because he did not want to.

There are a million and one excuses Eren has for why he thought the future could be avoided, but his actions tell a different story. He didn’t lift a finger to try. He spent the next four years making rationalizations for what he eventually would do. I will now establish, Eren was actually given several oppurtunities to stop, and then he just did not stop.

In the Reiner and Eren scene while Tybur is speaking in the background, Eren is offered a choice. Quite literally, Tybur is narrating the same story that Eren wants to set up. Become the devil that tried to destroy the world, so the heroes (his friends) will defeat him. He’s given the chance to be genuine and talk things out with Reiner and what does he choose.

He chooses to accelerate. He could have stopped. Remember how Reiner was practically begging him to talk things out? Not only that but Eren sees that Reiner’s stated motivations for doing what he did were, completely fake, just rationalizations made up in the moment.

Eren is presented with the reality of who he really is, a child who hates himself, who wants to kill himself rather than take responsibility for his actions, and he chooses the narrative Tybur offers him. Rather than be hismelf, stop the story here, he chooses to move the story forward.And the conflict accelerates when they could have reconciled. Not because there was no other choice, Reiner was begging, crying, and holding Eren’s hand at the same time asking for peace and forgiveness but because Eren chose to accelerate the conflict.

Eren’s choices are always that of an accelerationist. When given the oppurtunity to stop, he chooses instead, to always make the conflict worse. That is, the result of Eren’s myriad of choices made throughout the arc. Everything is worse now, and more people are dead. Nothing good is achieved through these means because Eren wasn’t trying for good. Eren didn’t care about good results, he just wanted to be doing something. Easier to be an all powerful demon, than a powerless child which is what he sees Reiner as in the moment.

The only time I believe that Eren was putting on an act was when speaking with Mikasa and Armin. The rest of it wasn’t acts, it was just who Eren is, who he sees himself to be. The thing is most people don’t read Eren’s kind of behavior, constant masculine posturing, war mongering, accelerating the conflict, throwing himself into fighting, as childish and toxic when it is. The point of Eren’s masculinity is it’s a performance. Reiner crying and begging in front of Eren is embarrassing and pathetic yes, but it’s also how he felt in that moment, it’s a human vulnerability. Whereas, Eren’s outer persona is entirely empty of love and vulernability, of every emotion besides anger, and violence. However, because it’s empty, he just acts, empty... Great wording there I know. Eren when posturing in front of others basically has no personality. He is just guy who fights.

Eren performs the role of a ruthless soldier in front of others, because it prevents him from being vulnerable. Remember who Eren is posturing in front of, Reiner, and then later Zeke. What were they doing? They were both at the moment trying to appeal to his human side, Reiner by crying and begging for forgiveness a show of vulnerability, and Zeke by tryig to show Eren what their father did to them was wrong.

Calls for violence, posturing, warmongering and rhetoric, Eren’s every response when Zeke tries to examine his humanity. Eren insists over and over again, you see I’m not actually a human being. It was impossible for father to reach me because I was simply born that way. However, the kind of person Eren pretends to be is empty, someone incapable of feeling anything. The only way he knows how to be strong, is to simply not have feelings, to deny all human emotion and become something else and that’s just lame. We also know, that Eren himself is not like that because he contradicts his stated motivation that the only reason he killed those slavers was for the concept of freedom itself when he takes too long trying to look at Mikasa.

Eren denies himself empathy, he denies himself udnerstanding, and therefore no one will ever see his emotional wounds. That way, he can be invulenerable forever, but at the same time he denies MIkasa and Armin.

We return again to the motif of the story. It’s the same repeated image, someone tells Eren to stop, Eren says that it must not stop, the story must continue.

Both of Eren’s foils and family members,Zeke and Grisha tell Eren to stop this. That they do not want this. The whole world yells at Eren to stop, and he does not stop. Stopping would mean, accepting some measure of helplessness so Eren does not stop.

To be honest, what Eren says in 131 is far more telling than literally any of the excuses he came up with in 139 which is why I think it should be interpreted not as the final word on Eren’s character but rather, showing what his waffling actually looks like to an outside observer - not heroic at all but rather pathetic.

Eren’s childish desire to be this powerful, to stand up above everyone like a god while ignoring the suffering of the world around him - is pretty telling enough of Eren’s true motivations that he needs no further elaboration. Eren does not become god for the sake of his friends, he does not do it because he thinks it will make the world a better place, he does it because of childish delusions of grandeur and his inability to let go of his childish feelings of entitlement. The world isn’t the way he wants it to be and he can’t comrpomise with that in any way. Eren is more like a caricature of the most petty person on earth when you put it that way, but this is... a fictional story. Thematically Eren is a good example why ideals are ideals, and people are in fact, people, ulitmately very disappointing and falling short of those idealse. So once again moving past this.

Eren, you can literally just stop. Eren is basically given every choice in the world to stop, everyone else in the story tells him to, and he just doesn’t. The author does go to a painstaking extent to show that Eren in fact could have stopped. Every single time he is given the oppurtunity to stop he instead chooses to accelerate the conflict.

It is interesting to show the one time Eren actually did stop though. It wasn’t for Mikasa, it was Mikasa’s decision.

When Eren puts the decision on someone else, he can stop. Eren has feelings for Mikasa, but rather than confessing to her he makes her speak up about what her feelings are, even when everyone around him just, straight up tells him.

Why is he capable of stopping when it’s someone else’s choice? In those cases, Eren succesfully avoids responsibility. When he makes the decision to run away in the possible alternate reality he’s doing what Mikasa wanted.

The other time is when he decides to accept the result of whatever Mikasa decides. In both cases, Eren rather than accept responsibility for his actions and the results of his actions, just, puts it all on Mikasa.

Is he doing this for Mikasa’s sake? To set Mikasa up as the hero of the world? No, he can’t even face Mikasa and explain himself or his feelings. Eren makes the choices to... put the ultimate decision on Mikasa, and run away without explaining himself because, that’s easier than taking repsonsibility for his choices. Every choice Eren makes, is to either make the conflict worse, because stirring the pot makes him feel powerful and in control, or throw control away to someonee else or some other reason (predestination whatnot) because he can’t bear the responsibility of what he’s doing. He wants to kill a bunch of people, but like... he doesn’t want to feel like a bad person about it (hence the excuse, he was doing it for his friends and yet later in the same conversation him saying that if he had killed his friends and they failed he still would have done it anyway).

Therein lies the rub. Eren is not doing this for his friends, because he takes the one path that is guaranteed to take him out of their lives. He doesn’t do it for Mikasa because he does the one thing guaranteed to destroy her.

I love this girl so much, that I created this elaborate scenario where the only way she could save the world was to horribly behead me, the one family member left from her childhood after she spent her entire life trying to protect me from fear of losing her family - yeah that sounds completely insane.

It is meant to be. Eren is thinking jack all about what his friends are feeling. His feelings for Mikasa, his desire to keep her safe and away from everything else trump everything even the idea that his love might be returned. He loves at Mikasa. He’s not in love with her, he’s projecting his love upon her. “Why didn’t he just tell her about his feelings if he secretly loved her all this time?” the point was, he couldn’t. Eren’s ego isn’t developed enough to love another person, that requires actually caring about their feelings which Eren doesn’t do to well.

There’s a reason Eren and Mikasa’s connection keeps lingering back to the small kindness they showed each other as childhood,it’s because literally despite spending their entire lives growing up together, their connection hasn’t grown at all since then, because they can’t grown.

At the end of the series however, Mikasa makes the opposite coice of Eren. If Eren’s choice has been to remain a selfish child all this time, to make other people suffer rather than face his own hurt feelings. Mikasa makes the choice of selflessness, to grow up, beyond the child who loved Eren into the adult who knows that even if you love people, one day you might lose them.

Eren’s choices only ever make the conflict worse. Mikasa’s choice finally stopped the conflict that Eren kept accelerating. It didn’t save the world, it saved the world from Eren.

I think it’s important to remember that Eren didn’t see what MIkasa was going to do, that her actions were going to end up breaking the curse. He literally had no idea what was going to happena fter the massacre, all he saw was the massacre and decided to do what he could to bring it about.

“I did all of this for you guy.”

Backtracking, five seconds later, and making excuses it all would have happened anyway.

It’s the same behavior consistently shown throughout. Eren could have stopped. Eren did not stop. Afterwards, Eren wants to reconcile the guilt and believe that his motives were good, when his actions were the actions of a bad person. It’s the same as Reiner’s crying and begging after years of guilt and failure to reconcile his acitons with who he is. Eren can’t understand why he did what he did, he just knows he did it, and he can’t accept responsibility for any of it. So that’s why Eren throws the choice away.

Eren can’t understand his father’s words, because in the end, being born, living his life, growing up, falling in love, making friends, losing some of those friends, growing older, getting weaker, all of those things are things Eren doesn’t want to do. Eren begins his life with “You were born into this world, you’re free to live hwoever you want” and ends his life wishing he was never born, and that’s the utlimate tragedy of his character arc. Not that it was inevitable he would eventually do these things, but beause it wasn’t and Eren chose to do them anyway instead of choosing literally anything else. Therefore, despite claiming Mikasa and Armin as the reason behind all of his actions, they weren’t, because he was inacapable of making the simple choice to be with them and grow up with them which is all they ever wanted from him.

#eren yaeger #eren jaeger #reiner braun #grisha jaeger #zeke jaeger #attack on titan #aot meta #attack on titan meta #aot 139 #aot 139 spoilers #attack on titan spoilers #aot spoilers #snk meta #snk theory

787 notes · View notes

starshipsofstarlord · 3 years ago

Text

Jim and Jody - Bucky Barnes x reader

Summary; it was one of the biggest decisions of your life, but will you change your mind before your future is sealed?

Warnings; angst, mentions of abortion (everyone is permitted to do what they want with their body, in this imagine the reader wants to keep the baby, but pro choice, as everyone deserves control over their bodies and all 🤍), brief mention of sex and threats

Masterlist Link

To see him so relaxed, so completely and utterly himself was a paradise all on its own. There was a heaviness aboard your shoulders, but as you watched him goof tirelessly about, you had no other concerns, not even as you subconsciously raised your hand over your stomach. You shook your head at the sentiment, the two of you had already made the decision to abort this child, it was unknown how the poor fellow would turn out to be; with the combination of your powers and his super everything, it was sure to be quite the complication, and not one that you supposed was to be an easy course.

A smile pried at your face, simply from viewing him with the pack of children, the wind from the docks swept your hair into your face, and in turn, you swept the locks out and away from your vision, so that you had further access to watch the man that you loved in his absolute element. Through the years, past and recent, he had lost so much, and this child was just to be another mantle on the wall of memorial in his mind, it was sad really. If the two of you were normal, with average and lives that had perceptions with no regards of being heroic, there’d be no query about it, you’d keep the baby.

That life though, to your grave misfortune, did not exist, it was merely a fantasy living painfully inside of your mind, haunting you whenever you closed your eyes, with the flashing images of a resolution and end to the errors in your lifestyle. There’d be a big house, yet nothing to prissy, just enough room for the pair of you and few children of your own, a grand garden with a swing set and sand pit, where the infants could grow up and play in once they were older. Then there’d also be a shed for Bucky to work on small projects, such as attaining some love and care to his motor bike, as well as storing the supplies that he’d need to do so.

All that is a universe away, muffled from possibility by the stars expediting through the gorgeous veil of the galaxy, corrupting the possibilities of ever gaining access to such... peace. That was the one thing that the pair of you wanted, however catching a break was rather rare within your predicament. A stifled laugh reeled from the conjunction of your lips as you simply and endearingly surveyed how the boys, specifically Sam’s nephews hung from the vibranium branch of his arm. It was all your attention was focused on, until an extra person took a seat on the picnic table beside you, his sweet yet musky scent detailing whom it was. “If your not going to eat that, I’m sure Barnes Junior might want an opinion on that.”

The underlining of the words caused an abstract grimace to forlorn your features, as you stared not at the speaker of whom you were close with, but instead the slather of cake that was planted on a paper plate before you, the icing beginning to become slightly sick from the beating of the viable son. “You’re glowing, you know? Motherhood is a good look on you y/n/n, I wouldn’t be so soon to let that go.” Your fingers pried at the dismantled crumbs off your section of desert as you looked to your new captain, a resonating conformation fo bridled suffering and hopelessness clouding your view of his attempt at making you atone before you made a sin that you’d forever regret.

He, like many others, knew that the family life was what you wanted; you wanted to be your child’s hero, tending to their each necessary (and unnecessary) need, them being your main focus and project and life. Instead, you had been handed your options on a short stick, and thus, your decision, albeit somewhat of a sensible one, didn’t make it hurt any less. “Sam.” You spoke his name, observing from the corner of your eye how Bucky paraded around the dock with Jim and Jody. It’d be nice to give him a slice of this kinda life, he was thriving as an adult around children, you could only imagine him in the case of this one being birthed into the world. “It’s not that easy.”

“No one said it was going to be easy.” Sam responded quickly, affirming your fears to your nerve wrecked face. “I get it, I do. People will be after this kid, and that is no way to live, but you two aren’t alone in any of this, nor will you be in that. You have me, along with many other old friends of ours, hell even the Wakandan’s. Do you really want to sacrifice this one life so you can continue living this one? You and Bucky have both lost so much, you don’t have to force yourself to willingly give away something else. The decision can be changed the last minute, it’s a lot to take in, I get that, but I see the way Buck is with my nephews, and how you watch them when you think nobody’s looking over at you. With your state pardon, you two can retire, and go far away, and abandon everything for this one little guy or gal, because I know that if you do, no matter what, they’ll be worth it.”

Bucky wailed a warrior’s shout as Jim and Jody playfully struck him down, his unsheathed metal hand grasping at the cloth that was tightly aboard his addictive chest. He rolled on the ground as the children ran to retrieve their toy lightsabers, leaving him to be expendable against their weapons. There was a giddy and fitting smile smouldering his usual stoic expression. It was no wander why he found calm in visiting Sam and his sister’s small, and accepting family. The kids brought out another side of him, which he had been tortured to refrain from showing, but you had seen, and were contemplating many things within your mind. You were lapping up the image, as though you were dehydrated and the sight of him appeased by the company of young ones was a source of water.

Sam was right, he always was and had been. “The decision was on both of our parts, you don’t think Buck’ll change his mind, or do you?” You were invested in getting a responsive answer, yet the man spluttered a laugh at your confused expense. He heaved for a moment, bracing his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. There was nothing stopping him from gaining it back, unlike Bucky whom had grabbed a saber of his own and lightly began to paddle against the one that was directed against him, other than another round of hysterics that abandoned him. A reasonable smile resonated a comfortable position upon the former falcon’s face, as he tentatively patted your knee, watching as you broke off a small rupture of cake and popped it in your mouth, feeding not only yourself but the inmate within your womb.

“There isn’t really much for me to say, it’s easy, look at him. He will be fine with whatever decision that the pair of you succumb to, after all, it’s your body, but it will pain him like nothing else ever has if you go through with the abortion, and if not, then trust me, we’ve both seen how hard he fights; think of that but ten times the mass in consideration of this baby, because I am certain that he’d do anything for them. He lost his entire family when he awoke from his mode of hydra assassin, this could be him getting it back. Different members, but a family all the same.” He stole a little of your cake, making you lightly elbow him as a smirk rendered a beauty upon his face.

“What’s that going to make you, the patriotic uncle who just can’t keep himself from flashing his shield?” Now it was his turn to retaliate, he lightly scuffed your ankle with a feather light tap of the toe of his shoe, causing you to promiscuously roll your eyes. “I’m joking, that was Steve’s aesthetic, this new version of cap is your baby, I have great faith in you to make this world a better and safer place. The funny thing is, when you finally accepted that shield was yours, that’s when my mind shifted to the possibility of keeping this kid. It was and has always been a sign of hope and protection to Bucky, maybe it could be the same for our little one. It was just a thought, I’m not meaning to put pressure on your or anything bu-“

“I get it, and I’m honoured. And if that is how it seems, then I want you to know that I’ll be there to protect them too. The main bump in the road for now is for you to talk to that grumpy ass boyfriend of yours and figure this sperm plus egg equation out, send Jim and Jody over here, I got somethin’ to show those two anyway.” With a nod and a grateful pat upon your friend’s head, you slowly plodded over to where Bucky was being cornered against the side of the truck by the boys. His blue orbs danced around their small and imaginative beings, until they landed on you, it was as though his pupils were calling out for help, begging for you to spare some mercy upon him.

“Jim, Jody, your uncle Sammy has something for you two to see.” They groaned lightly, having been pulled away from the narrative of their play time, but nevertheless their faces were clean slates as they expressed hyper smiles, and bolted their route towards their mother’s sibling, carrying their lightsaber replicas along with them. “Two kids beat an infamous, deadly badass with a metal arm. I think you might be getting too old for these kinda battles Buck, you were losing, and quite terribly if I say so myself.” Crossing your arms, as he came to an upright stand, hoisting himself off the ground, so that he could be more level with you.

“Yeah, yeah, rub it in. Thought you were supposed to be supportive of me and all that, as you said to Zemo, you’d quite happily cut his dick off if he compared me to the shadow that I used to be.” His brow raised, as he reminisced on the thought of you threatening Zemo; it was hot, and certainly had gotten him going, which had shortly left you in this predicament, trying to save the world and execute the one last thing that exhumed hope to either one of you. The baby. It was almost a certain and solid fact that the little one inside of you had been procreated on the Baron’s private jet, more specifically, the small and clean bathroom that had became dirty with your primal sins.

“And I still regret not doing that, he’d have had much less leverage in any sense of the word of phallic if he had it sectioned off.” Silence emitted between the two of you, although a humoured smirk tantalised upon Bucky’s graceful face. For a change, he was not prompting the expression of a grumpy cat that was refused its nip, no, instead he could be compared to a future - actually, he already was a father to the bean held in the shield of your body, having been an ample ingredient in bringing the small person into being. “So, you having fun with Sarah’s kids, sure looks like you were quite in your element before I cut in.”

“I’m always in my element when you’re around doll.” He smiled, wrapping his uncoordinated hands around the oval of your waist, and tugging you sentimentally closer, your hips bumped with his, as your eyes ogled infatuatedly up at him. “They’re great kids, makes me realise exactly what we’re gonna be missing out on.” Bucky gulped, sparks of emotion taunted the behind of his eyes, like saucers of resentful fire. “You’d be the perfect mother, you know that right? After all you’ve done for me, you’ve nurtured me close to the man that I once was, the only difference is that I want to settle, but I don’t know how to go about dropping everything. This kid is killing me, he’s making me question everything.”

“That’s what kids are supposed to do, unborn, or very much avidly attacking grown men with false lightsabers.” Bucky deeply into your frustrated and corresponding eyes, your hands reaching up to play defiantly with the smooth dip in his chin that could be seen through the shading of his light stubble. “What if we did have a Jim and Jody of our own some day? We could keep him or her, they’d be our greatest concern, we don’t have to go down this painful and longing, rusted road. We could bring something good into this world, protect them against all forces that threaten to disrupt their life, I want this with you Bucky. We could move far far away, or go somewhere close to home.”

“Brooklyn.” He stated, causing a line to crease gently in the plain of his forehead. “I want to call them Brooklyn, if I am to fight the rest of my life for something, I want it to be my home. Last time I had to leave there, but it’s my amends to never leave this child of ours, if we’re going to do this, we need to put them in front of everything, and I mean everything.” He spoke, in reference to the other avengers and other aliases that you had stood by for so long. Bleakly you nodded, grasping his jaw down for an amorous kiss, humming against the palette of his lips, as your hands entwined behind his neck, pulling his face closer to your own, prompting his tongue to travel deeper within the realm of your mouth.

“Brooklyn is a nice name. How about Brooklyn Margaret Barnes? I think that has quite the ring to it.” You offered, and he hardly reacted, instead quickly appraising a pleasant smile onto the canvas of his work of art face, as he ducked his head down, conjoining the pair of you into a passionate and meaningful collide of your lips. Sam smiled as he watched the pair of you, pointing at you two from afar, as his nephews from afar. He was giving them a man to men talk, offering them advice that they would have valuable usage of in the future.

“Now that is love. You don’t give up for the one thing that connects you, and those two, well Bucky and y/n have been through a hell of a lot. They deserve this, and when you meet a woman when you’re older, and your mum is watching on towards the two of you, I want you to make her proud by treating your girl like a princess, willing to sacrifice everything simply to create the future that she wishes for you.” He emotionally wiped his eyes, rushing to stand before he grasped a lightsaber, leaving the other to spare for one of them. “Now Jim and Jody, which one of you will be my padawan?”

212 notes · View notes

somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years ago

Text

This is my honest opinion about the future of abortion rights in the United States: when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will announce a bill to protect the right to an abortion, and it will FAIL SPECTACULARLY, going down in flames! It'll pass the House by a razor thin margin, but it'll be rejected by the Senate. It will die in committee, or it will be tabled (in most countries tabling a bill means to push it forward, but in the US it means the exact opposite, it means to postpone it indefinitely, and it only takes one senator objection to table it), or Schumer will put it up to a vote and let it die on the floor without 60 yeas. There will be half-hearted talks about maybe nuking the filibuster, but it'll never go through; the Democrats don't have 50 votes for it. Joe Manchin will NEVER nuke the fillibuster; he won't come right out and say he supports an abortion ban, he'll say "we don't want to be too hasty, we don't want to retaliate tit for tat on every issue, banning and unbanning and rebanning based on political ideology instead of the constitution. I'm not gonna blindly vote one way or the other, I want to see a comprehensive bipartisan bill, and then I'll make my decision," which is kinda like asking to see a leprechaun blowing a unicorn. The Democrats will run on a midterm platform of abortion rights, and Joe Manchin will let all the wind out of their sails, sabotaging the entire party by refusing to commit to anything Schumer or Pelosi or Biden want to do, and they'll let him because they don't want to hurt his feelings and push him to become an Independent and caucus with the Republicans. The Democrats have power now, and are blowing it, and they think that they're gonna be rewarded with more power come November?!? Oh, I have no doubt that the base will be energized, but it's gonna be focused almost entirely in safe states where they already hold majorities because of Republican fuckery with the election maps and voting rights; the Democrats will win the nationwide popular vote, I guarantee it, but they will lose seats and the media will blame them for it for being "too radical." And even though the Republicans are the ones causing the problem, they will make huge gains because they are seen as more conpetent and unified than the Democrats; Republicans in power give Republicans what they want, but Democrats think their voters are babies who don't know what they want and have to be spoonfed the same decades old neoliberal bullshit because the party leaders don't want to shift one fucking nanometer back to the left. Abortion rights will evaporate this summer, and then we all get to grit our teeth and clench our fists until our knuckles turn white in the hopes that the midterms don't fuck us even more; best case scenario, the status quo is maintained, Democrats hold congress and continue to do nothing because a handful of conservatives among them want a compromise where none exists. More likely, the Democrats lose one or both houses of congress and then Biden becomes a lame duck whose only job is to veto Republican bills (and he'll never seat another judge for the rest of his term; McConnell will hold every single nomination hostage again, just like he did to Obama, and Biden will either not be allowed to make recess appointments or he will choose not to because he doesn't want to set the precedent that the president can put people on the bench without Senate approval, even temporarily, though we all know Republicans will have no such qualms should the tides ever turn against them like this).

We are witnessing a tragedy in slow motion. The ship hit an iceberg years ago, and the qater has been rising this whole time, but everyone in power has to pretend like everything is okay because they don't want passengers to freak out yet.

#abortion #roe v wade #mississippi #politics #political #i'm so mad I could spit #i have seen the future

7 notes · View notes

maaji-maji-majima · 4 years ago

Note

some kissing hcs for Majima?(if u can make it nsfw)

So I'm in a weird place with this. I don't want to leave you unanswered but I know you won't like the answer that I give. It has been a long time since I was active on tumblr and I'm not sure when along the timeline headcanon became synonymous with fanfiction. I appreciate fanfiction authors for their creativity, but I am not one myself. I use headcanon in the older definition of "this isn't in the source material, but it is true in my brain". They are either random things my half asleep mind thought of while walking home from work or a character analysis. At the same token your ask had crawled into my brainmeats and won't leave. So again, I apologize that this most definitely is not what you're looking for, but I hope someone out there finds this to be an interesting read.

Without further introduction, here is a character analysis of our favorite pansexual, gender fluid, emotionally stunted goblin in regards to relationships and why the he desperately needs therapy as brought to you by a different pansexual, gender fluid, emotionally stunted goblin who got therapy but probably needs more.

Trigger warnings: Abuse, self harm, mental disorders, poor coping strategies, unhealthy relationships, random tense changes, not fanfiction

Spoilers for the whole franchise, but very specifically for 0, K1, and 5.

Abuse does weird things to people's brains. In Yakuza 0 Majima has barely been out of the hole for a year. He might no longer be suffering the actual physical torture he had been subjected to the year prior, but he is still directly in the hands of his abusers and being watched every moment. He is still in a cage even if it doesn't look like one. He is depressed and likely suicidal, but doesn't follow through with those thoughts because he is determined to make sure Saejima has a home to come back to. He is willing to endure just about anything to allow Saejima a chance to exact that final moment of retribution because Saejima is the one who deserves it and Majima doesn't feel that there is any possibility for forgiveness. In all likelihood he hasn't sought out anyone for a hookup or paid company for an evening due to a combination of not feeling like he deserves anything that feels good and the fact that he's constantly being watched. The year in hole means he no longer really has a concept of privacy, but he's worried that getting close to someone, even for a few moments, could put them in danger if Sagawa or Shimano feels like holding something else over his head. It isn't worth accidentally dragging someone into his own personal hell. He no longer lives for the present, he is only living for that far-off future that he hopes isn't just a pipe dream.

Enter Makoto. At first she is a stand-in for Saejima's sister Yasuko, but it morphs rapidly from there. She is the light and kindness and hope that he hasn't seen in years and she's being dragged into his bullshit. He knows in his heart of hearts that she doesn't deserve what she is being forced into, so his mind snaps into the immediate and does everything he possibly can to save her. This is is the hill he wants to die on. Maybe, just maybe, he can end his miserable existence with a final act of good and he feels that Saejima might just be able to understand. But because he no longer has any relationships in his life that are not strictly professional or the abusers he cannot escape, he has little recollection of what a nuanced relationship or even friendship is any longer. Due to circumstance she is also the only person that he cannot keep at arm's length, no matter how desperately he tries. So he falls for her and falls hard. But in the end, after everything they go through he does the impossible. He lets her go. She has a life and a future, whereas he has neither of those. What would she do? Become his ane-san? Have some temporary happiness before she realizes she has a target on her back for the rest of her life? No. Majima believes she deserves so much more than that even though it hurts him deeply. What is one more hurt on top of everything else? He's gotten extremely good at burying his pain.

Getting to Tokyo flips a switch in Majima's brain. Like many people with mental trauma who don't have access to therapy he falls into excess as a way of self medicating. He fits virtually everything on the hedonism checklist. Drinking? Yeah. Violence? Hell yeah! Promiscuity? Yeah, but I ain't judging. Drugs? Probably, even though it isn't explicitly stated in game. Everything from his shift in personality to his wardrobe has become, intentionally or not, a defense mechanism. He has escaped from all of his abusers except for Shimano and he refuses to allow anyone to gain that kind of power over him again.

It is a double edged sword, however. His depression and PTSD are running unchecked. In all likelihood he hasn't fallen hard on vices as a way to reclaim ownership off his own body. Instead it seems more probable that he is dissociating. After everything he has been through he doesn't care what happens to his body in the long run because it isn't actually his anymore. Risky behavior, which is practically Majima's middle name, is also frequently used as a passive form of self harm because the end result is either temporarily feeling better thanks to endorphins and adrenaline or permanently feeling better after embracing death. He could achieve a similar feeling by taking up jogging and chasing a runners high, but that takes more time and energy than chugging a handle of whiskey or goading some chump into throwing hands. Sadly even now admitting to mental problems by seeking help is fairly stigmatized in Japan and it was only worse in the early 90s. Can't have a problem if no one tells you it's there, right?

Then he meets Mirei. She's intense but not wild like Majima. At that moment in time she is everything he needs. Head strong, domineering, and very, very determined. She knows exactly what buttons to press to wrap him right around her finger. And he lets her take the reigns, lets her run his life because he realizes he was doing a terrible job on his own. Better her than Shimano, right? Doing something wrong results in the cold shoulder instead of a vicious beating, and doing something right leads to more than simply the relief of avoiding a beating. He decides that making her happy is enough to make him happy. Until suddenly it isn't. He never wanted to be a father, but even the idea that he could have been was enough to cause a fundamental shift in his entire outlook on life. He could have had someone to live for, instead of just survive for. But he had no say in the matter and didn't know until the decision had been made for him. When Mirei told him she had an abortion he snapped. He hit her. The one and only time he raised his hands against her. Disgusted with himself, and wounded by her decision, he left. If he was capable of that, he knew couldn't be the person she had been trying to mold him into. He realized he was nothing but a weight around her neck dragging her down. And so that day signals the end of their short marriage. He spends the next several decades drowning in guilt for his actions while still resenting her for her choice.

That leaves us with Kiryu. Poor, oblivious Kiryu. Majima's fixation is multifaceted but in no small part due to the fact that Kiryu is one of the few people strong enough to hurt him, but is the only one that doesn't want to. And Majima just doesn't understand. After everything, he only deserves to hurt, right? Saejima, Yasuko, Makoto, Mirei. Everyone who gets too close to him ends up worse for it, so why won't Kiryu and his sense of honor seek justice on their behalf? So he does everything he possibly can to wind up Kiryu enough to Pay Attention Damnit, Fight Me. But Kiryu's response is always just flustered awkwardness because he doesn't want like fighting, it's just a part of his job, like wearing a suit or answering a phone. To Kiryu fighting isn't a thing done because it's enjoyable, it's done because it has to be. But he's still the only one who doesn't flinch when Majima brandishes a knife inches from his face.

And then Kiryu is arrested and in jail for ten years. And ten years is a long time to build someone up onto a pedestal. Like only wanting to talk about the best of a person after they've died. The same thing happened with Saejima. Build them in his mind to what he wants or needs them to be since they are not there to actively correct it. The decade is pretty miserable, going through the motions and trying to not make waves with the bigwigs while terrifying the minions into obedience. When he hears Kiryu is being released it is like waking up again. He all but waits at the taxi stand at the entrance of Kamurocho on the day of Kiryu's release, all but vibrating with excitement. It's a fight he has been waiting on for a decade, too bad it was little more than a disappointment.

So Majima decides to bring him back up to spec in that very Majima flavored way. Small fights, big fights, surprise fights. Kiryu is still reluctant because he doesn't have a reason beyond Majima's dreamed up training program he doesn't actually want to be a part of. Of course this only leads Majima to do everything possible to get under Kiryu's skin, including sharing his personal vulnerabilities while disguising them as jokes just to cause fights, but Kiryu just kind of rolls with it which leads to confusion and frustration on both sides. After a while Majima starts to get into Kiryu's hobbies, like pocket circuit, ostensibly as another form of picking a fight. And he discovers he actually enjoys a lot of it. And they are both too dense and emotionally stunted to realize they're basically dating at this point. At multiple points Majima takes potentially lethal blows meant for Kiryu and the excuse that he is the only one allowed to kill Kiryu is very, very thin. He just can't quite admit out loud that he doesn't want to see Kiryu truly hurt because that's weakness and he is Not Weak (tm).

Shimano's death and Kiryu's departure from the clan come as a whirlwind that destroys him all over again. He's left directionless. So he leaves the Tojo in an attempt to find his own way in the world, for the first time in over twenty years.

I think I need to call it here for now. I know I've left out Saejima and Daigo, among others, but I've been working on this for days and my progress has been eaten twice and I just don't have the energy to keep going right at this time. Maybe some day in the future I'll find the time and energy to write out the rest for all the other games.

tl;dr What Majima wants and what he needs are two different things. He wants to fightfuck, but he needs to be bear hugged into submission so that he can have that mental breakdown he's been carefully bottling up for over thirty years. He needs a good, ugly cry. And therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

#ask #character analysis #not fanfiction #yakuza games #yakuza headcanons #majima character analysis #rgg #rgg games #majima #majima goro #broken people doing broken things

33 notes · View notes

englishchinesetranslations · 4 years ago

Link

“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind”

Theodore Roosevelt

“Malthus has been vindicated; reality is finally catching up with Malthus. The Third World is overpopulated, it’s an economic mess, and there’s no way they could get out of it with this fast-growing population. Our philosophy is: back to

the village.”

Dr. Arne Schiotz, World Wildlife Fund Director of Conservation, stated such,

ironically, in 1984:

“A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”

Ted Turner, in an interview with Audubon magazine

“There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels.

Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get

the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population

is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian

government, even fascism, to reduce it....” “Our program in El Salvador didn’t

work. The infrastructure was not there to support it. There were just too

goddamned many people.... To really reduce population, quickly, you

have to pull all the males into the fighting and you have to kill

significant numbers of fertile age females....” The quickest way

to reduce population is through famine, like in Africa, or

through disease like the Black Death....

Thomas Ferguson, State Department Office of Population Affairs

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that

pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like

would fit the bill.... But in designating them as the enemy, we fall into the trap of

mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human

intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can

be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”

Alexander King, Bertrand Schneider – Founder and Secretary, respectively,

TheClub of Rome, The First Global Revolution, pgs 104-105, 1991

A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an

uncontrolled multiplication of people.... We must shift our efforts from the

treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will

demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.

Stanford Professor ” Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb

“In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per

day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”

J. Cousteau, 1991 explorer and UNESCO courier

I believe that human overpopulation is the fundamental problem on Earth Today”

and, “We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox.”

Dave Foreman, Sierra Club and co founder of Earth First!

“We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion,

about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is

the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people

left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”

Mikhail Gorbachev

“Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore

order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that

there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that

threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to

deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When

presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the

guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government.”

Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Dr. Henry Kissinger New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973

Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third

world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of

minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries”.

Dr. Henry Kissinger

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” and “The elderly are useless eaters”

Dr. Henry Kissinger

“World population needs to be decreased by 50%”

Dr. Henry Kissinger

“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major

crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”

David Rockefeller

“War and famine would not do. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and

fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be

solved. AIDS is not an efficient killer because it is too slow. My favorite candidate

for eliminating 90 percent of the world’s population is airborne Ebola (Ebola

Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years.

“We’ve got airborne diseases with 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing

humans. Think about that. “You know, the bird flu’s good, too. For everyone who

survives, he will have to bury nine”

Dr. Eric Pianka University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert,

showed solutions for reducing the world’s population to an audience on

population control

“The present vast overpopulation, now far beyond the world carrying capacity,

cannot be answered by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception,

sterilization and abortion, but must be met in the present by the reduction of

numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means necessary.”

Initiative for the United Nations ECO-92 EARTH CHARTER

“In South America, the government of Peru goes door to door pressuring women

to be sterilized and they are funded by American tax dollars to do this.”

Mark Earley in The Wrong Kind of Party Christian Post 10/27 2008

"Women in the Netherlands who are deemed by the state to be unfit mothers

should be sentenced to take contraception for a prescribed period of two years.”

Marjo Van Dijken (author of the bill in the Netherlands) in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/04/humanrights-women

“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature”

Anonymously commissioned Georgia Guidestones

“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to

lower human population levels.”

Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband, Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the

World Wildlife Fund

"Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents

hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use

contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for

childbearing.”

David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club

“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover

cutting the Fallopian tubes.”

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Frankly I had thought that at the time Rome was decided, there was concern

about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t

want to have too many of.”

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the

optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various

countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might

remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some

power to enforce the agreed limits.”

Obama’s Science czar John P. Holdren: From a book he helped write ‘Ecoscience’

“The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world

government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent,

all under their control.... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there

is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly

evil in intent.”

Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines 747 that

was shot down by the Soviet Union

P.S. And there's this:

“No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to

worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian

Initiation.”

David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations

(People will shortly be expected to line up to take the COVID vaccination, with its

Luciferase enzyme)

#depopulation #henry kissinger

2 notes · View notes

uncloseted · 5 years ago

Note

Do you think it‘s bad that so many girls post nudes or underwear pictures on instagram? i see sooo many of them... especially e-girls i think. ihave a very parted opinion on this 1. i think it‘s kind of sad because it gives men even more oppertunity to see women as a sex object but on the other side it seems kind of empowering but honestly it‘s not because you still expose yourself even when they think they decide for themselves or whatever. but then again now in quarantine i started taking

lingerie pictures because i ordered a lot of underwear haha and i actually felt great and now i kinda want to post pictures like that but at the same time i feel bad because of my mother, she is kind of a feminist that seems to be against those things. also it would be weird because of everyone that follows me from my old school on instagram, and my mother teaches there and they are all very talk active ... but yeah i don‘t know if i should feel bad for taking those pictures because i destroy

everything women fought for/against. because i would consider myself a feminist too bit i still like bras and underwear and i also don‘t think too bad about pictures like that... only because of the history or maybe because many men view women like objects and it‘s mostly women that are exploited in that sense... this is what i really don‘t like but i also find my self drawn back to taking fotos like that... even back then i wanted too but always was too scared someone finds out... now that i‘m

20, turning 21 this year i think it‘s okay to take pictures like that. but i also feel like everyone is looking at me like a child, also my mother (i am also very short so that maybe it haha) and i just feel very judged and i don‘t really know what to think about all this and how girls or not even girls, how everyone on instagram acts nowadays... it is like no one is afraid of consequences or no one has family or jobs that could see the accounts haha

This is a topic that’s a much bigger conversation within fourth wave feminism than I feel like I can really speak to, so if you’re interested in delving into it further, there are a lot of great academics writing about this topic. For a few easy, non-academic reads, I would suggest this article in The Guardian as a starting place, Peggy Orenstein’s book “Girls & Sex” and the corresponding NPR interview she did about the book. This article from The Onion is also surprisingly insightful (and funny).

That said, I’ll give you my opinion based on what I understand now, with the caveat that I’m not a feminist scholar, just someone living in this culture and being impacted by it the same way that you are. Also, apologies if this is a little disjointed. I want to make sure I say everything that’s on my mind. And also apologies that this is an essay. I can imagine that’s not what you expected when you asked this question, but I think this is important to talk about and your question is a great jumping-off point for discussion.

I don’t think this question is as black and white as “good” or “bad”. Feminism is complicated and comes in lots of shades of grey, and that’s why it’s taken me a few days to figure out what I want to say in this post. I want to start with two thoughts that might seem to conflict on the surface- women should be able to do what they want with their bodies, point blank, without being judged for it. But isn’t it’s a little convenient for straight men that “empowerment” has turned into doing the same thing that was previously called “pandering to the male gaze”?

I think it would be different if these supposedly empowering nude images were coming from a place of showing the female body as it is, devoid of expectations to be sexually appealing to men. And certainly, I’ve seen a lot of those images circulate. Those pictures are saying, “I’m free to exist as I am, without the pressures of being appealing or sexy or cute or professional or “natural” or any of the other oppressive ideas of what it is to be a woman”. Inevitably, some of those photos play into oppressive power structures themselves, for a number of different reasons, but I think the majority of those photos are empowering; they’re fighting against something.

But sexy naked photos aren’t really doing that same thing. I guess one could say that they’re fighting for the right to self-objectify instead of being objectified by others. But why would you want to be objectified anyway? I think the mentality behind this is sort of like breaking up with your significant other so that they don’t break up with you first. I understand why people do it, but is it really productive at the end of the day? What are you gaining from it? Just like how in a relationship, the best move is to fix the underlying issues your relationship has instead of breaking up with your boyfriend, I think the best move here is to dismantle the underlying power structures that cause women to be objectified by our culture in the first place. I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that by pandering to the male gaze through our actions.

Especially when there’s no financial transaction involved, I think for many, posting these types of pictures is a way of fishing for approval, primarily from men. If one wanted to appreciate their own body, they wouldn’t post naked pictures publicly. If one wanted female approval, they wouldn’t pose in a way that panders to the male gaze. Those images are, consciously or unconsciously, playing into the same power structure that oppresses women because it puts male approval above the approval we have for ourselves or the value we place on approval from the women around us. Empowerment stems from self-respect, and it’s difficult for me to believe that people who truly respect themselves would intentionally opt back into the system that has oppressed them for so long without a concrete change in how that system operates.

The Guardian article I linked above says, “only those already in possession of quite a lot of power would feel empowered by leggings, or a TED talk, or naked selfies. Empowerment has become .... a symbol of how identity politics can too often get distracted by those with the loudest voices and forget those most in need of it.” And I think that’s right. If you truly want to empower women, fight for the rights of the women and children in fast-fashion sweatshops that are making “empowering” merchandise touting trite feminist statements. Fight for abortion rights that are being slowly eroded across the US. Fight for paid maternity leave, healthcare, the education of women. If you want to post a naked selfie, post a naked selfie. But don’t pretend that it’s a some type of self-sacrificing feminist act, especially if you’re not changing any of your other beliefs or habits to empower women around the world.

At the end of the day, post the pictures or don’t post the pictures. The ability to choose whether to do that or not is feminist; the choice itself, maybe not. We live in a complicated culture with lots of conflicting incentives and opinions, and I don’t think posting naked pictures makes you a bad person. But do think about why you’re posting these pictures and what you feel like you stand to gain from doing that. And make sure you’re being safe. As awful as it is, nude picture are still taboo for women to have taken or to post. If those pictures come out, the men who looked at them aren’t going to be fired or considered “unprofessional” in their next job interview. You are. It’s important to make sure that your future career prospects won’t be damaged by those pictures at some point in the future.

I hope I don’t come across as too aggressive in this post, and I’m looking forward to hearing your opinions on this topic. Like I said, i’m not any sort of scholar on this topic, just a girl with a philosophy degree and a lot of time on her hands to think.

7 notes · View notes

msjr0119 · 5 years ago

Text

What took you so long?

Part 8- Discharged

Liam had been assassinated, Drake had left Cordonia before this. He had heard from Savannah about his friend- he felt guilty not returning. Someone had blackmailed him to not return, with only his sister knowing the truth. Leo had taken over the throne in place of his brother due to there being no heir....

*CHARACTERS BELONG TO PIXELBERRY*

{Drake x Riley}

Tags: @annekebbphotography @burnsoslow @drakesensworld @ladyangel70 @bbrandy2002 @kingliam2019 @butindeed @bascmve01 @drakewalker04 @pedudley @captain-kingliamsqueen @duchessemersynwalker @insideamirage @of-course-i-went-to-hartfeld @kozabaji @texaskitten30 @ibldw-main @kimmiedoo5 @nikkis1983 @dangerouseggseagleartisan @gnatbrain @walker7519 @lodberg @cmestrella @hopefulmoonobject @addictedtodrakefanfic @angi15h @liamxs-world @rafasgirl23415 @notoriouscs @yukinagato2012

******

Between Drake and the others they had tried to comfort Riley over the last few days. She was still confused with what was reality and what wasn’t. Maxwell tried to trigger her memory by showing her different social media sites - pictures of them all together. With no avail, the staff had warned everyone to be patient and eventually her memory could return. When there was no visitors- Riley emotions that she had held in burst.

Riley was due to be discharged, the friends not knowing where was best for her to stay in her state- had come to an undecided decision. The press were still camping outside the palace and Valtoria. If she wasn’t there, the press would automically go to Ramsford as she was an honorary Beaumont. The last option- Drakes cabin.

“She won’t want to go to my cabin. She’s still confused. At times I feel like she doesn’t know what she wants between us. Yes she has been saying ‘love you’ to me, but is that because we’ve all drilled into her confused mind that we were an item? Maybe she’s just saying it because she feels she hasn’t got a choice.”

“When we get to the hospital I’ll talk with her. After all, I’ve been through a lot with her. I flew back to New York with her that time.”

“That is probably a good idea Drake, let Liv try and talk to her.”

Drake nodded silently at Liam and Olivia. He still regretted not being there that night when she was shot. She had already been through enough shit, and he wasn’t there to protect her. And now all the pain she was feeling, not feeling herself - he wished he could take it all away.

The friends all gathered outside the palace- ready to visit Riley. All ready to support her with anything that she needed.

****

Riley impatiently tried to get out of bed on her own. She was due to have physio, but her stubbornness wanted to prove she could do it on her own. Swinging her legs over, she managed to stand up. Taking one step forward she was pleased with herself. Suddenly feeling slightly dizzy, she held onto the bed for dear life. The room was spinning- until two strong arms supported her. Relieved that someone was there for her- she turned around, her jaw become agape.

“What are you doing here?”

The man softly smiled at her- admiring what a beautiful young woman she had grown up to be.

“You are my granddaughter Riley. Of course I’m going to be here. I’m the only family you have left.”

“You Sir, will never be my family. You left my Gran and father. All for what? To become mayor. To mess about. Abandoning your family. I’d like it if you left me alone please, I’m doing just fine.”

“You are still my blood. We all make mistakes Ri. I’m here now, to help. The Queen Mother informed me. Why you would reject a kings proposal is beyond me. You could have been Queen!”

“I’m not power hungry like you are!”

Before Riley’s grandfather could respond her physio turned up- saved by the bell.

The physio held onto her and suggested that her grandfather supported her other side much to Riley’s annoyance. Walking through the corridor, she heard familiar voices in front of them. Her friends exchanged confused faces towards the mystery man- all wondering why he had returned.

“Guys this is my arsehole grandfather. Liam can you please inform Regina to not invite parasites to my bedside in future.”

“Er.... Riley.... we knew he was here. He was here when you was .... you know... asleep.... Drake told him to leave but he wouldn’t. Then he and Regina got talking about how you and Liam should have been married...” Maxwell couldn’t lie to his sister. Knowing that look she provided he knew they were all going to be picked out one by one and buried.

“Great another thing that I dreamt up... I must have overheard that conversation subconsciously. Where’s Drake?”

“I’m so sorry Riley. And he’s just gone to the shop. He will be here soon. Let’s sit you back down.” Olivia said softly, whilst giving Riley’s grandfather dirty looks.

*****

The friends all sat in an awkward silence- they had heard prior about Riley’s relationship with her grandfather. They were all annoyed at the man who could abandon his family. They heard the knock on the door, knowing it was Drake and decided to give them a bit of alone time.

“Hey Brooks.”

“Hey.” She sounded defeated.

“What’s up?”

“Oh you know, I’ve imagined half my life. My grandfather has rocked up. I just wish I didn’t come here in the first place.”

“I knew you’d be pissed seeing him- I told him to leave. But at the time the others didn’t want me to cause trouble whilst you was asleep. I’m so sorry. I’m glad you came- I know I was a jerk about it at first but I was happy to meet someone who finally understood me and loved me back.”

“How could you love me? My life is just one big fuck up. I aborted the heir of this country.”

“How can I not love you. We all love you. I wanted you to keep the baby. I know it wasn’t mine, but between us all it would have been loved. Liam wouldn’t have taken it off you because we were together.” Riley remained silent, as tears formed in her eyes. She hated the woman she had become, she was now unrecognisable.

“I love you Riley, I’m going to look after you. You mean the world to me and I’m not going to let anyone hurt you again.”

*****

The SUV pulled up outside a log cabin. Drakes log cabin. Riley wondered why they were there instead of the palace. Olivia had wanted to be the one to talk about sleeping arrangements with her but she never got the chance to.

“We all agreed, for you to stay here. The press are still stalking the palace and Valtoria. They don’t know about this place. I’ve set your room up.”

Riley nodded and remained silent again. Taking a deep breath as he opened the opened the door, he hoped she would be okay.

“It’s just how I imagined. In my dream we came here- I placed Liam Jr on the couch, you wrapped him up in blankets. You looked after him for me, he called you uncle grumpy. We had sex on the table. Funny really isn’t it.”

Drake held her tight, when she found out she was pregnant he had made a crib in the spare room. He didn’t want to show her as he was unsure what her intentions were regarding the pregnancy.

“Funny? I wouldn’t say that. Erm when you was pregnant I made a crib as a present to you and King Liam. It’s still here. It’ll stay there until someone has a baby- that craftsmanship won’t go to waste. Shit. Sorry I shouldn’t have told you. I just didn’t want you walking in and seeing it without an explanation.”

“Can I see it?”

Drake looked at her confused. He gulped, and led her into the spare room. She ran her fingers along it, admiring all the detail and work he had put into it.

“It’s amazing Drake. You really are talented.”

“Heh... with things like this I am. Your room is next door. I’ll let you get settled in. You’re probably tired.”

“Where are you staying?”

“On the couch.”

“Why? Why not just stay with me?”

“Riley. You need time to adjust. You’ve been in hospital.”

“Please Drake. Stay with me. If we were together I want you with me. I need to feel loved.”

“You are loved beyond words.”

“Take me to bed then.”

Drake crashed his lips on to hers, not wanting to rush things but she was too damn irresistible. She worked at his trousers which were tightening at every touch, he needed to resist her. Seeing the scar from the shot wound he kissed it tenderly, hoping to take any pain away. Falling into the bed, he laid beside her, holding her tight.

“Drake... I want you.”

“I can’t Brooks, no matter how much I love you, I can’t have sex with you.”

“Why the fuck not?”

Shit she’s angry.

“Because, I haven’t got any protection.”

“If you loved me, we wouldn’t need to use it.”

“Riley, NO! I can’t promise that I’d pull out in time- whenever I’m close to you I lose myself in you. And I’m not risking it. Not in your state of mind.”

“Fine. Night.” She rolled over, her body became tense.

“Riley please. Don’t be mad with me.” Trying to hug her, she brushed him away. Turning to face the other way, he was hoping her attitude would become more positive in the morning.

Riley thought back to the first time they had slept together in Vegas. She was sure they didn’t use protection then, but then again they were all intoxicated. Her eyes felt heavy and she eventually fell asleep.

***

Waking up the next morning, Drake wasn’t next to her. Shooting out of bed she wondered if he had left her in a strop. She didn’t want to argue with him. Walking into the kitchen, she saw him stood at the table in just his boxers. Smelling the pancake aroma that was spreading throughout the kitchen - I should have known.

“Morning beautiful.”

She ran upto him catching him off guard, kissing him.

“I’m sorry for last night. I was a bitch.”

“Heh, it’s fine. Here have some proper American food. I went to the shop before- there’s something in the bag.”

Riley opened the bag- condoms. Laughing at how he wanted to please her.

“How about neglecting the breakfast for now Walker?”

*****

Four weeks had gone by. The friends had visited Riley and Drake every so often. Even Riley’s grandfather visited, Riley updated him on her life and he did the same. She didn’t want him to leave without clearing the air. He was her only biological family that was left. Liam had made a statement regarding the attacks at the homecoming ball- the press had finally backed off. And Anton remained behind bars.

Riley had a check up appointment at the hospital. Drake was waiting for her outside, lost in thought.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“Nothing. Are you ready?” Drake held her hands contently. He had stuck to his promise about looking after her.

“Of course.” Riley kissed him on the lips, before sitting in the passenger seat.

*****

At the hospital, the doctor checked out Riley’s scar and was pleased with the healing.

“There’s something I would also like to discuss with you before you leave. When you were discharged, we had completed a blood test. After reviewing the results, it showed that you are pregnant Duchess Riley.”

“What?”

“We would like to do a scan. Just to confirm that these results are accurate.”

“I can’t be pregnant. I was shot. I was asleep. I’ve only slept with Drake and he went to the shop to buy condoms. We’ve been careful.”

“Ri... erm...” Drake’s mind finally clicked on, he didn’t know how to tell her? How she would react?

“What Drake?” She snapped, before apologising to the Doctor for her sudden outburst.

“The night you got shot. We snuck off to your room and.... we had unprotected sex... I walked you back to the ballroom, leaving you with Liam and Maxwell. Then I went back to my room to get something...”

#theroyalromance #choices trr #riley brooks #drakewalker #maxwell beaumont #hanalee #olivia nevrakis #bertrand beaumont #liam rhys #riley x drake #trr whattookyousolong

28 notes · View notes

mobius-prime · 5 years ago

Text

34. Special - Sonic & Knuckles

Previous / Table of Contents / Next

Is everyone ready for the Kenders-est issue yet? Not only did he have a hand in writing every story in this special, but he did the pencils for one of the stories for the first time. He's back to writing about his favorite character in the universe, Knuckles, and for the first time we're gonna be getting some backstory for him.

The issue begins with another intro page, characteristic of Penders-headed stories, which gives us a little more info on this canon's version of the Floating Island (not yet referred to as Angel Island). As mentioned before, the island is held aloft not by the Master Emerald but by a Chaos Emerald. The island is mentioned to be one of the very last places on Mobius to be untouched by the war raging below on the surface. The page also mentions that Knuckles' role as the island's guardian is passed down from generation to generation, a claim that I don't recall any other canons ever making (the games just refer to him as having this role with no knowledge of how he ended up with it), a detail which will be expanded upon later on, thanks to Kenders' neverending obsession with the echidnas.

Panic in the Sky!

Writers: Mike Kanterovich and Ken Penders Pencils: Art Mawhinney and Dave Manak Colors: Barry Grossman

The Floating Island, which apparently has always floated somewhere on the other side of the ocean, has started flying wildly off course, terrifying local Mobians and alerting the Freedom Fighters. No one has apparently ever heard of this thing before, but it's headed for Knothole, and considering all other massive things that head for Knothole tend to be deadly, that's not a good sign.

Of course, Sonic and Tails recognize this thing from their excursion onto it not that long ago, and fill everyone in, though why they didn't tell everyone all about their adventure and entanglement with Knuckles before now is beyond me (well, I know logically why - they needed an excuse to recap for the readers). Sonic and Tails decide to fly in to investigate, and thus we have our first showcase of Antoine being an accomplished pilot, which essentially makes half the entire cast pilots at this point. Also, the Floating Island has machine guns now!

Antoine flies them above the horizon line and out of danger, and they airdrop in only to immediately be attacked by several different bots, which the story is very unclear on whether they are from Robotnik or like, automated defense systems for the island or something. Sonic ends up going tumbling off a cliff, only for Knuckles to make his appearance and immediately try to murder him by stepping on his hand. What the hell, Knuckles?

Luckily, Tails is there to distract him, and after some brief fighting, Sonic is able to stop Knuckles from swinging his fists long enough to point out that the island has flown wildly off course, and that Knuckles is basically being a giant reactionary idiot. Seriously, Knuckles, how the hell did you somehow not notice your entire island being retrofitted into a giant fortress despite being its guardian? Talk about not doing your job.

Knuckles leads Sonic and Tails to the Chaos Chamber, where the Chaos Emerald sits. Interestingly, unlike the games where the Master Emerald need merely sit on the island to magically provide the lift to make it float, in the comics the Chaos Emerald actually provides literal power to a system that allows the island to defy gravity. However, an energy siphon has been installed to draw power towards Robotnik's guns and engines instead, so he can use the island as a method of obliterating Knothole. Again, despite being the island's guardian, Knuckles somehow noticed none of this. Robotnik's face appears and explains his plan to them over a screen, and then he makes an absolutely incredible facial expression on a backdrop of the ashes of civilization.

He doesn't even look like he's evilly laughing, he looks like he's taking an extremely painful dump or something. What the hell happened here, pencillers?

Anyway, Knuckles, ashamed by his failure, takes the emerald and shatters it, removing both Robotnik's power source and the source of the power keeping the island afloat. Robotnik chooses to abort rather than fall with it, thinking that he may still win the day after all.

I have to halt everything for a moment to discuss his claim right here, that the island is eight miles high. Now perhaps this is just a reference to the song Eight Miles High (I wasn't aware of it before now, but it popped up a lot while I was Googling information for this), but let's take him at his word and assume that the Floating Island really does hover at an altitude of eight miles (that's about thirteen kilometers for my non-American readers). That's approximately 42,000 feet in the air, which is the absolute maximum limit for modern commercial aircraft before the engines are no longer able to maintain lift. At that altitude, our planet's atmosphere is far too thin to breathe, and most people will suffer from hypoxia within seconds, and probably suffocate within a few minutes at most (for reference, Mt. Everest's peak is 29,000 feet above sea level, and even trained and prepared mountain climbers have to bring bottled oxygen and are at great risk of hypoxia and death at that kind of altitude). Now if we assume that Mobians have similar oxygen requirements to humans, and that Mobius' atmospheric conditions are similar to Earth's (two assumptions that are reasonable to make as later issues will reveal), absolutely no life should even exist on the Floating Island at all. Sonic and Tails would have suffocated within seconds of ever setting foot on it, and Knuckles wouldn't even be alive to watch them die, let alone attack them.

But whatever, it's a comic. We are dealing with a world where portals to alternate universes open and close on the regular, after all. Knuckles, once he's sure that Robotnik is gone, pulls out… another Chaos Emerald! Turns out he simply made a switch with a fake to fool Robotnik and then destroyed the fake, and thus replaces the real, unharmed emerald to halt the island's descent. Another quick bit of math - if we assume that the island's terminal velocity takes a little longer to reach than a human's (I have no idea how to calculate how fast something of that much mass would be able to fall, so I'm working on a lot of assumptions here) then we can say it would probably have taken nearly three and a half minutes to crash to earth had it been allowed to fall, yet the next panel shows it halting at what seems like a mere few hundred feet above the village - again, probably just for the dramatic effect, but I find it amusing that Knuckles might have waited almost three minutes playing chicken with Robotnik until he bailed, before replacing the real emerald.

With the day saved, Knuckles rejects Sonic's offer to join the Freedom Fighters, because he needs to pretend to be a lone wolf for a little while longer. Sonic and Tails return to tell the others what happened, and wonder what Knuckles will do in the future…

Fire Drill

Writer/Pencils: Ken Penders Colors: Freddy Mendez

…luckily, we don't need to wait long to find out, because every story in this issue is about Knuckles! This is the first story penciled by Penders himself, which is noteworthy, especially as he becomes a more frequent artist in later issues. Also to note is that Barry Grossman no longer has a monopoly on the coloring - we finally have someone new for the first time since the third freaking issue! Welcome to the party, Freddy!

While there's not a lot of plot to this story, it does contain some interesting tidbits. Knuckles is chilling on his island as normal, when a loud explosion startles him. He traces the explosion from the beach and follows footprints into the Sandopolis Zone ruins, believing the troublemaker to be Sonic and ready to throw hands once more. He faces several traps within the ruins, such as falling rocks, a tripwire-activated axe, and a sand trap, but things don't really get interesting until these few panels:

He mentions family for the first time - a father - which not even the games hint at. The way he speaks, we can assume his father hasn't been around for some time. However, this seems to follow what the intro page said about this duty being passed on between generations - clearly, his father was a guardian before him, but for whatever reason, he and the rest of the echidnas have disappeared…

Anyway, after facing a few more traps and trials, Knuckles emerges from the ruins to find that the footprints seem to lead off the edge of the island, and assumes that Sonic has had his fun and vacated the island. However, we the readers can see that that's not the case - a mysterious silhouette is the real troublemaker, and apparently, they were the one testing Knuckles… but why?

Lord of the Floating Island

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Harvey Mercadoocasio Colors: Freddy Mendez

This is really just a plot meant to establish what exactly Knuckles tends to do on an average day on his island. Knuckles is flying around - because he can just do that in the comics, I know he can usually glide in other media but he just straight up flies here - when the wind buffets him around and he spots a young kangaroo hopping around in fear. Unlike in other canons, the Floating Island is actually quite populated - Knuckles isn't alone there but acts as guardian of not only the Chaos Emerald, but all the island's Mobian inhabitants. He swoops down to pick the kangaroo up to protect it, and while they wait out the storm they spot what's causing it - a solar eclipse, because that's how eclipses work.

Interestingly, Knuckles refers to "the moon" rather than "one of the moons." I can't remember at this point whether Mobius having one hundred moons was retconned in later issues, but either this issue acts as the retcon, or else Knuckles is merely referring to only one moon that regularly causes the eclipse or something. In addition, we get to see the first appearance of the dingoes, which become regulars in later issues but for now are treated like some kind of mindless stampeding mob, despite them clearly being Mobians as well with shoes and gloves.

Anyway, in the end, the eclipse ends, the winds die down, and the kangaroo's mother finds him again, thanking Knuckles for his role as guardian. It really kind of acts like he's a one-man police force for the entire island, which I suppose isn't entirely inaccurate for this canon.

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #special - sonic and knuckles #era 1 the early years #writer: mike kanterovich #writer: ken penders #pencils: art mawhinney #pencils: dave manak #pencils: ken penders #pencils: harvey mercadoocasio #colors: barry grossman #colors: freddy mendez

2 notes · View notes

mingyaus · 6 years ago

Text

last min bf ch. 1

series ch 1 > ch 2 > ch 3 | last min bf series masterlist

summary the world’s bigger now. humanity has gone beyond earth and inhabited many other planets. earth has basically become this uninhabitable, over-studied wasteland, yet some people still have a dangerous curiosity for their home planet, including you and min yoongi.

paring reader x myg

genre humor, barely angst, reader insert, sci-fi!au

warnings drinking, partying, and almost some drug use

word count 4.2k

You’re not supposed to care so much about anything, about any of this, yet you still find yourself in a corner away from your dancing friends wallowing in a shallow tide of thought. There are just a lot of things going through your mind right now, like how you forgot to grab a change of clothes for tonight, about how you just ate too much and are probably going to have to take a dump in the bathroom, about how the rest of your life is quickly approaching, about how the end of a chapter in your life is coming to a close. You all have just graduated high school. High school. You can’t believe they still call it that after Earth’s first major power shift, which is when the United States was joined by a few other countries that joined the rank of “superpower—

Thoughts concerning your Earth History class shuffle around in your brain for a while. Eventually Min Yoongi slips into your mind. Well, actually he slips into the high school graduation party (this is the version without any parentals, all the official grad parties occurred days ago), a few hours late (approximately two hours after the 7 pm start of the party), but everyone knows parties at spoiled-rich-boy-party-host-prodigy-with-never-present-parents (literally the only reason people are friends with him) Jackson Wang’s house never really end until 24 hours after the start, so a few hours doesn’t make a huge difference.

Sitting at the end of the main hallway above the ground floor of the Wang’s many floored home offers many advantages. There’s a large window where you can see everything going on in the front yard, anyone who tries to enter the home cannot go in without your eyes scanning them. The main advantage is that you get to witness the not-surprisingly late entry of Min Yoongi, and for another, it allows you to keep an eye on your friends while avoiding any damaging activities. Your friends aren’t really doing anything damaging actually, no one has touched the alcohol or drugs subtly scattered about the house yet. They’re just talking about things you don’t want to think about right now—some other planet politics and music—and you have too much weighing on your mind to contribute or ask probing questions to entertain them.

Min Yoongi pops back outside again and makes a sprint past the portable space ships and other modes of transportation littering the Wang yard and the street across from the lawn. There actually aren’t that many houses in this neighborhood, so nothing blocks your view as you watch Min Yoongi sprint another block down to a nearby park and a wired fence where a space ship is parked. He pulls a handle and brings out his keys pulling just to see that it has already been locked. When he sprints back to the Wang’s front yard he looks upset, like he went all the way out there to make sure the door was locked when it already was. You didn’t see the purpose of locking the ship because the neighborhood is the among the nicest in this planet, maybe even this universe. Definitely in this country, but no one measures things by country anymore because space is just too big now to allow separate masses of land or archaic legal borders to make much of a difference. Even cultures do not create much tension, at least different cultures within one planet. Interplanetary relationships can cause the worst kind of trouble.

He disappears inside the home, and for a while you watch the stairs secretly hoping he would join you at this little look out spot. But why would he though? You two never talk. The only times he “would join you” were at podiums always receiving awards together. You are—or now were because you two just graduated—among the top 5% of students at your school. High achievers, top performers. You’re both in that group of kids who always win at everything. It feels good to be at the top, but still lonely. Your friends are a diverse bunch, mostly in grades. Kim Namjoon, the other 5%-er in your friend group is probably your most distant friend, always studying instead of hanging out, and you’re mostly just friends because your other friends are friends with both of you.

Mutual friends bring people together, and that’s what Yoongi is doing here. You feel an urge to go downstairs and find him, like this is your chance to finally get to know this person you’ve always wanted to get to know.

“Hey! Y/n, wanna play a game?” Kim Yerim yells at you from inside the bedroom where your friends have been spending their time at the party. “Stop being emo, and join the group! That or I’ll make you cry your eyes out then send you home after parading you around the living room!”

You sigh, still lost in thought about possibilities and anxieties for the future, not quite ready to let go of high school even though it’s already let go of you. Yeri gets out of the bedroom, and drags you in. A deck of Cards Against Humanity sits in the middle of a circle formed by your closest friends, and a few acquaintances. A few rounds pass, the game goes quickly due to some people’s lucky hands (you’re probably only saying that just because you suck at this game). Suddenly Yeri calls for a bathroom break, and she’s taking too long, so you leave to go find her. The second floor is quiet except for all the commotion coming from your room, and the bathroom is empty, so you go down the stairs to find your petite friend. When you find her, she’s chatting up a familiar figure: Min Yoongi.

“Oh, hey, Y/n! I was getting a drink, then ran into Yoongi, my friend.” She pats him on the chest, leaning oddly close to someone you’d describe as her acquaintance—they’re not that close, really they should not be talking to each other considering the fact that Yoongi is in Jeon Jungkook’s inner circle. It seems like Yeri’s already had a few drinks during her extended bathroom break. Yeri’s tipsy, and you know it. In her right mind, she would never even approach anyone with at least five degrees of separation from Jungkook. In some ways Jungkook and Yeri’s messy relationship could be blamed for why you and Yoongi are so distant.

You’ve always admired Yoongi for his brains. There were a few classes you shared, but your classes were always too big for you two even participate in group discussions with each other. Every so often, you two met at the podium receiving awards for academic feats. This is how you first took notice of him. There wasn’t a specific award giving function in which you remember becoming truly aware of who Min Yoongi is. You just became conscious of his presence. Sometimes you would even have the honor of standing next to him, parts of you brushing against his arms.

Man, Min Yoongi is such a fine guy.

You always wished you had gotten to know him better during high school. Your mind was just too occupied on other guys (a failed homecoming date, and a decent prom friend date) and school to get around to him. There was also the great divider between both of your friend groups. And that has to do with a former couple consisting of Jeon Jungkook and (as she likes to be called) Vampire Princess Yeri, Future Queen of Huth (a made up planet, she pretends to be from). The two were an inseparable pair during junior year. Though everything began and ended very quickly by the end of eleventh grade. A messy break-up having to do with abortion, broken CDs, and hair ties is what it took to break the two apart. Ever since even their friend groups have felt the angry tension that still lies between Jungkook and Yeri.

And that tension is what’s making this round of truth or dare so competitive. Somehow (truth be told, it’s the alcohol and nostalgia) Yeri and Jungkook have been pulled together in the Wang family’s second floor guestroom. In an effort to keep things civil both of their friend groups decided to join in on this reunion, and Min Yoongi is the genius who suggested the game of truth or dare. This game, which could risk bringing out old memories, could also quickly divert attention from one dramatic event to another. And with the ten or so people already playing lowers the odds of Yeri and Jungkook coming in direct contact with each other. Also, you could be imagining this, but Yoongi appears to be sitting the closest to the bottle you have all decided will determine the next victim in the game. Maybe it’s so he can quickly move the bottle in case it could cause Jungkook and Yeri to interact. You’re theorizing now, and decide to set those thoughts aside in order to better enjoy the game. All in all, you admire Yoongi’s quick thinking and continue to admire him, especially after you dare him to do twenty push ups, and he does thirty with the petite Yeri sitting on his back.

“Wow, man of the hour Min Yoongi seems to have been chosen by the bottle once again!” Jeon Jungkook shouts. Everyone’s relieved because Jungkook is seated right next to Yoongi, and the bottle was about to land on the younger man, but thank, God, it didn’t.

“Truth or dare?” Yeri asks. She’s smiling. It’s her turn to dish out the truth or dare, and she was almost faced with the pressure of talking to her ex. They haven’t talked in so long, and everything was such a mess. She should be shaken, but you quickly notice that your theory was right. The reason she’s smiling is because of the genius Min Yoongi, who was able to pull a sleight of the hand trick and force the bottle to move just a little towards him.

“Truth, sure.” He smiles back at her.

“Earth. What are your honest opinions about it?” You gulp, Yoongi gulps. Everyone is a bit shaken that she would ask such a question. Earth, everyone here’s home planet (“home” used lightly, no one was actually born there), has been hot in the news. The topic is essentially like what abortion was in 2018. Right now, Earth is essentially humanity’s dying grandmother. Ever since wildfires, and other climate change events have taken over the planet, scientists decided one of the major priorities is relocating humanity. This was also controversial. There are essentially two sides to this argument. One thought that the priority should be preserving Earth and protecting it. The other believed in getting out of Earth as soon as possible. Obviously the side that had more money on its side won, and that the was latter side. Businesses found a money making opportunity in spreading humanity throughout the universe. New land to buy, new industries to come, etc. So humanity survived through spreading itself throughout the universe and adapting to new places. In the present, no one lives on Earth. People who were there either were killed by the climate or moved out. The first people to move off Earth were the richest, those who could afford to escape Earth’s capitalism to the new capitalistic worlds beyond Earth. The final generations were among the lucky middle class, including your family, and many others who live on the planet that you reside. Fourth generation non-Earth born families like the Wangs are rare here, but they are the highest of society. Most people who live on this planet are children or grandchildren of Earth-born people. The preservation of Earth is still a controversial subject. Currently, the planet is in a state of environmental turmoil. It’s uninhabitable, and people are barred from going to it. Many people are against spending any new money made in space on Earth, including many people in this room.

“Uh,” Yoongi gulps. He’s an honest man, doesn’t want to lie. That and mostly because he’s had a few drinks and that makes him too honest, a fool. “I’d love to visit it. I think it’s a beautiful planet, and we should take care of it. Hm, like I’ve actually been thinking of sneaking over and visiting it. I have an extra long summer this year, why not?”

“What?!” The first shout comes from Kim Seokjin, another member of high society. His family made much money off of leaving Earth, so it makes sense as to why he wouldn’t care so much about the mother planet. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. There’s no reason to keep that garbage planet around anymore—”

And he’s cut off from all the other screams erupting and attacking Min Yoongi. The circle is closing around him, and the only thing preventing people from touching the man is Jeon Jungkook. The muscle pig fends off anyone that physically tries to attack Yoongi.

You decide that this shouting fest is a signal for you to leave the room. Yeri’s sitting next to you, and she’s not into all this vocal and almost physical violence, so she takes your hand and gets up so you two can get out. You guide her to the little nook you were sitting in before. You two are still close enough to hear the screaming, but it’s quiet enough for you two to talk.

“Well, that was wild.” Yeri says. “I thought Jungkook and I in the same room would cause conflict, but apparently Min Yoongi’s words are ten times as powerful.”

“Yeah,” You take a breath. Yoongi and Jungkook are slipping out of the room in front of you two, running downstairs or somewhere to somehow escape the mob that’s following them. You quickly turn around afraid they’ll read your thoughts. Your voice drops to a whisper, afraid the mob will hear you. “You know, I actually agree with Yoongi. I think Earth is great, and would wanna visit it. Like we wouldn’t have to worry about oxygen shortages or any oxygen-related problems for once.”

“Hm,” Yeri nods, taking in what you just admitted. You trust the girl enough with this somewhat secret opinion of yours. “I actually agree with you on some level, though I would never want to visit it myself. I just don’t think we should toss it to the side. Too much history. It feels wrong.”

“Yeah! You get me.” You squeeze her hand, you’re still clasping, a little tighter glad you’re not alone in your thoughts.

A few minutes after you and Yeri witness Yoongi’s escape, Jeon Jungkook comes rushing up the stairs. Alcohol heavy in his breath, he kneels down in front of you two and takes Yeri’s hand in his. Looking at her directly in the eye, he mutters, “We need to talk.”

She simply nods as he stands up and leads her into the now empty bedroom where the turmoil began, and some may begin again. You, worried about another messy fight starting, rush into the room, panic building in your stomach. “Hey, I don’t think you guys should be talking alone.”

“Psh, shhh, shh, Y/N. You know how calm alcohol makes me, same with Jungkookie. This is probably the most peaceful we’ll ever be with each other, don’t worry.” The words spill out of her mouth quickly, and her eyes stay trained on Jungkook’s as they sit down on the floor next to each other, their strangely positioned bodies facing you and still holding hands. They look dumb, but you’re still worried about them.

“Nah, Y/N, don’t be a worry wart. I just want to get some closure before we leave for university, it’s been such a mess, and I just want to get some last words in before we both never see each other again. You know how it’s like nowadays.” Jungkook says in a rushed manner. He’s right though. People stay in school longer, getting post-graduate degrees right after their undergraduate degrees in order to get halfway decent jobs. Science is most popular occupation, so after getting PhDs or whatever, people go on immersing themselves in long-term studies for the rest of their lives. You know that Yeri is going after this common career path, so you can understand why Jungkook would want some literal final words with Yeri.

“Okay, before I leave. How’s Yoongi?”

Jungkook finally takes his eyes off Yeri to respond to you, “Hiding out. He’s planning on leaving in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, bye. Don’t fight.” So you slip out, but kept the door open just in case the former couple begins causing some trouble.

You are once again stationed at your little window spot, looking out into all the vehicles parked. Yoongi’s shiny, silver spaceship catches your eye once again. After hearing his honesty about Earth, you suddenly feel more drawn to him. The urge to converse with him about his thoughts on Earth is so strong. You two have something significant in common. This attraction mixed with the strange feeling of listening to Jungkook and Yeri’s whispers of final goodbyes (as well as the few drinks Yeri peer pressured you into drinking earlier) is what motivates you to go outside and stand right next to Yoongi’s spaceship waiting for him to arrive.

In a few minutes, just like Jungkook said, Yoongi gets outside to his ship. He looks like a classic emo boy, with his hands in his pockets and hood up covering most of his face, most likely to mask his identity from the mob that he miraculously escaped from.

“Hey!” You wave at him. You’re smiling, looking more friendly than anyone else he’s seen at the party all day. He’s still worried about the mob, so looks around to make sure no one followed him out and you aren’t baiting him into some trap. “I swear, I come in peace.” You flash him a peace sign, and that makes his lips curve into a little smile.

“Okay, but step behind the ship with me. I don’t want to be caught next to her—”He points at his ship—“and get her hurt by the mob.”

“Uh, alright.” You trust him enough that he won’t harm you, so you get behind the ship with him, hidden from anyone exiting the Wang household. You two are quiet, staring out at the fenced in open field Yoongi parked in front of. “Hey, uh, I thought that it’s pretty cool that you want to go to Earth.”

The quiet boy, turns his head, finally looking at your face. “Really?”

“Yeah, I’d like to visit it too. It’s a thing I’ve been thinking about for a while.”

“Psh, no way.” He rolls his eyes in disbelief.

“I actually really love planets and space. I think all the planets should be respected and taken care of.”

“There are planets everywhere. With ‘scientist’ being the most popular career today, a lot of people like planets and space. What makes you special?”

“Okay, I did not expect to be attacked with such a specific question. I would have thought someone just mobbed by a bunch of Earth-haters would be more peaceful.”

“Fine, okay. I’ll chill. Sorry, I get like weirdly honest and attacky when I’m drunk.”

“It’s alright.” A silence envelopes your conversation again. “Do you like seriously, really want to go to Earth?”

“Mhm.” Yoongi nods, turning his head to look at you again wondering about the thoughts going through your mind.

It’s probably the exhilaration of finally getting to talk to this guy you’ve never really been able to talk to before that gives you the courage to suggest this dumb, fun idea. “I feel the same way. Well, I think we should go. Together.”

“Now?”

“Uh, I mean, shouldn’t we plan it or something?”

“I’m a really good pilot, and I keep a go-bag in my ship for emergencies. I actually have this whole plan made and prepared for going to Earth. I just never had enough courage to act on it. Though knowing someone else is into going to Earth, I’m really down now.”

“Wow, I didn’t think me wanting to go to Earth would motivate you that much.”

“You’re that cool, Y/N.” Now, you’re blushing a little and turn away humbled by his compliment. You never really go out that much, so actually going to Earth is really wild for you, but your adrenaline is running so hard that you actually agree to this foolish plan.

“Sure.” You nod, still avoiding his gaze. “I just need to pick up some things from my house.”

“Won’t your parents be weird about you coming home and then disappearing for an extended period of time?”

“Psh, no they’re off on a business trip. What about your parents?”

“I have no idea why, but they’re cool with this Earth trip, as long as I let them know.”

“What? Are they insane? This is illegal and dangerous.”

“They’re that cool too.” He giggles, thinking his repeated statement is somehow clever. Then he unlocks his ship. “Get in.”

“Alright.” You climb in and watch as he almost trips getting inside.

“Wait, are you still drunk?”

“Mhm.” He nods, putting his keys in the ignition.

“Uh no, no. No drunk piloting.”

“Okay, then you pilot.” He takes out the keys and hands them to you, almost getting out of his seat.

“I’ve never piloted before, and I’m a little drunk too.” You hand the keys back to him. He looks at you, a little shocked expression on his face.

“You took AP Mechanics, but you’ve never flown a spaceship before?”

“No,” A little smirk crawls onto your face remembering that one time during a quiz when Yoongi got called out for not knowing what a car was. “But at least I know what a car is.”

“Okay, okay.” His cheeks are red, you’re not sure if it’s the alcohol or him being embarrassed. You didn’t bother looking at his face for so long earlier, too shy after your proposal. “Lemme sober up, then we’ll go.”

It’s like two hours later, and your third time using your portable breathalyzer on Yoongi, and he’s still drunk. For most of the time, silence fills the ship. Yoongi lets out an aggressive exhale of frustration, then starts digging into his pocket for something. A few seconds later, a joint and a lighter appear in his hand.

“You want a hit?” He asks you more casually than he should be asking. Yoongi’s calm tone makes it sound like you smoke weed with Yoongi frequently, which you don’t.

“What the fuck, Yoongi? This planet is so strict on drugs, how did you even get that?”

“Shh, don’t worry about it. Also please stop attacking me with your words. I’m about to pilot us to Earth, I’m a lil’ stressed. I don’t need your bitchy voice stressing me out more.”

“Okay, fine. But you know this is an oxygen rich environment, so you shouldn’t have any open flames. Also, YOU’RE TRYING TO GET SOBER. Please don’t get high in the process of so-called sobering up, you idiot.”

He rolls his eyes, and puts the joint and lighter in the console between you two. “Noted for the next time I want to smoke in an oxygen pod.”

“How about we talk to pass the time?”

“Genius idea. What do you want to talk about?”

“What do you want to do? After this, after high school.”

“Study to be a nuke engineer. Blow things up, boom boom. I love the idea of destroying villages.”

You look at him, with a confused expression unsure if he’s being serious or sarcastic. “Really?”

He looks at you too, shrugging his shoulders. “I guess. I mean, like seriously I want to be a nuclear engineer, but I’m just all morally conflicted about it for the reasons I listed before. A lot nuclear engineers end up working in the war industry, and I don’t know if I want to deal with all the morality in that without being willing to put myself on the line or experiencing these things face first. I’d want to experience the war first.”

“Have you ever considered joining the military?”

“I’ve always wanted to be a nuclear engineer, but only recently I’ve been thinking about the military. I actually have an intent to register, like one of those physical contract things. Probably going to be shipped off to some basic training by the end of this summer.”

“Wow, that’s wild.” It really is. There’s a high likelihood of him dying while in the military, considering all the interplanetary wars going on right now, but there are also many benefits for joining—discounts on anything you can think of, free education, free healthcare that actually works.

“I’ll be studying while serving, then I’ll probably leave and do something with my degree. I don’t really want to die.”

“Good idea.”

“Yeah,” He chuckles, thinking about his fragile morality. “Speaking of good ideas, what good ideas do you have for your future?”

“Well, I’m going off to another planet for immersive university studies. Obviously, like everyone everywhere I’m going to be a scientist. Though, I’m lucky enough to have already scored a spot in a study, which I’ll probably end up dedicating my life to.”

“Not nearly as wild as my plans, but safe.”

“Yeah, but I really want to get out more, but I’m already kind of locked in to my future.”

“Well, good thing we’re going to Earth then.”

author’s note The chapters are relatively short, but I’m splitting them because each chapter has a corresponding song. Lmbf was inspired by “Youth” by Troye Sivan, “Secret” by WJSN, and “Run” by BTS. Parts of each song have inspired parts of each chapter, but each song has its own dedicated chapter. “Youth” is this chapter’s main song.

main masterlist

20 notes · View notes

straightedgecrf · 2 years ago

Text

Tudor Dixon HAS To Beat Gretchen Whitmer

If anybody was to tell me two years ago that I would be voting Republican instead of Democrat,I would say that they were crazy.Yet after seeing how bad things have gotten since the pandemic aka plandemic and during 2021,I started to see that voting Biden was a mistake and it caused me to look at the conservative seeing things through their eyes and it’s not a pretty sight.While watching YouTubers like Gothix,Modern Renascence Man,Officer Tatum,The Conservative Twins,Black Conservative Perspective,Liberal Hivemind,and many more,I started to see how Democrats act to where now everything is being referred to as racist if it doesn’t go their way.It’s gotten to where cops can’t do their jobs without being referred to as racists and now certain states are defunding the police.to where people in California have done damage to at least to a store on camera which is sad because I’ve always wanted to visit California in the past but it has gone from California Dreamin’ to a California Nightmare and Illinois is passing a law that will allow people to get away with everything to where they’d only get a ticket for trespassing that will allow the owner to do whatever they want to them and if they get locked up,the most they held for is 2 days.Wow what a great idea.Right? What’s scary is that those are blue states and I’m in Michigan which is currently a blue state is showing that it could lead to us becoming another state if Tudor Dixon doesn’t end up winning.I thought the lockdowns where people were forced to close down their businesses were bad,putting patients with CoVid in nursing homes along with having the lockdown go on longer than any other state to where people weren’t allowed to do certain activities outside although her husband was allowed on his boat was bad,things could get worse.I know there are critics out there about to saw that Tudor is anti-abortion with no exceptions and that she’s endorsed by Trump,but come on.There’s going to be a part on the ballot allowing abortions to where it’d be legal no matter who is our Governor.Plus with there being more things to worry about,I don’t think it should just about one subject only when there are many things to worry about Tudor has spoken about how she cares about children’s education,wanting to get pipelines open so gas won’t be as expensive,and wanting more police around to protect us.As for Tudor being endorsed by Trump,What does that have to do with anything when many people who don’t like him don’t even know why?They just go along with what people on the Democrat side says just like I used to while not caring that Biden has ended up being everything people assumed Trump was and not care that he’s a racist,a dictator,cult leader and a traitor to our country since there would be an uproar if Trump caused there to be high gas & food prices while giving money to other countries.Besides it’s quite a coincidence that Roe vs. Wade was overturned just around election time as if it was planned due to knowing at least most of the Republicans are pro-life and people who weren’t happy about the election all planned to vote red.If you don’t believe me,just wait for something to happen in 2024.Anyways I don’t want anything to happen to Michigan if it stays a blue state and I believe Tudor Dixon will keep everyone who buys cars happy since Jennifer Granholm loves California’s idea of having electric vehicles be the only new cars in the future and only old cars would be gas powered vehicles which could cause “Big Gretch” to go along with this idea since a Democrat Governor and it would cause us to pay more for a new car in the future if that happens.Also Tudor cares about children’s education by making a tutoring scholarship for kids who need tutoring as well as not wanting to the educational system to mess with their minds where kids are being referred to as they instead of boy or girl and wants moms to still be referred to as moms and not a female birth parent.Please Michigander makes sure you vote for Tudor Dixon for Governor so we don’t turn out to be like California or Illinois in the future!

#Tudor Dixon #gretchen whitmer #Election 2022 #governor #Michigan

1 note · View note

ais-n · 6 years ago

Note

So what ideas did you have for Boyd in Fade regarding human experimentation? What were you willing to put him through? Also, would you be willing to go into detail on what happened to Boyd while he was with by Janus? I always wonder about the details and I love reading your answers regarding them. Thanks ais!

Something of an answer is below but I might someday be more specific. I ended up rambling quite a lot on a bit of a tangent, so I’m putting this behind a cut.

WARNING! Some vague spoilers are below. But mostly I talk about some aspects of human experimentation from WWII. Don’t read this post if that will upset you or freak you out.

Hi! I’m so sorry, I was going to answer this like a month ago but then I lost my enthusiasm for the topic and then doubted myself on if I should talk in depth about things I had thought about... I’m still not sure right now on how much I actually should say. Not like it’s a big deal but I’m dumb. I do have the other ask still available so if I can get my weird mind and heart back on track for going at length on the topic in the future I can totally just answer off that.

Do you ever get this way, where you’re super excited about something and you can go on about it, but then if you don’t do everything RIGHT THEN while you’re inspired, even days or sometimes even seconds later, that inspiration and excitement just completely fades? It’s so obnoxiousssss D:

Anyway so what I’ll say for now is my INITIAL idea involved that super asshole bullshit thing Unit 731 did where they tied people to posts at varying lengths away from a biochemical bomb they detonated in the center to release diseases and see how long it took people to develop symptoms and, sadly usually, eventually die... if not by the disease, then lots of times by the vivisection they performed without anaesthesia, sometimes just straight up taking out organs.

But then I was like, man that’s going to be hard to come back from so I probably shouldn’t do that.

There were people who lived through these things and were subjected to them repeatedly until they couldn’t live through it again. The entire thing is just so goddamn horrific, it’s out of control. But I kind of wanted to show how the road to hell can be paved with good intentions... the idea that just because you think you represent something “good” doesn’t mean you can’t become the same person or group you purported to fight against. In ICoS, Janus was as ruthless, if not sometimes more, than the Agency, but believed themselves not to be. They justified every terrible act by claiming the other side was more terrible first.

I felt that the atrocities committed during WWII, particularly those done in secret by the Japanese government who can sometimes be overlooked now as much more innocuous than they were, were reflective of the levels to which a group would go to gain superiority over a system which they felt was denying them the power they deserved. I fucking LOVE Japan and I love so much about Japanese culture, I love the Japanese language, I’ve never been to Japan but I want to go because I know from images and videos I would absolutely love the country - but they definitely have done some really awful things that for a very long time, they absolutely refused to acknowledge. They just kept acting like these things didn’t happen because it wasn’t convenient to talk about and because of many other factors, I’m sure.

But Unit 731 was fucking AWFUL, like at least as bad as the shit happening in the actual concentration camps, and yet everyone knows about the Nazis and how absolutely horrific the camps were, yet I had no idea about Unit 731 until I was in college and my Japanese film class or something else random like that covered it. That, and the rape of Nanking, and so much else. When we think of WWII, we think of so much of what happened in and directly around Germany, and we absolutely should. But there were also horrible things happening elsewhere, which were able to go more under the radar because of various circumstances, and which are under-acknowledged globally to this day.

Essentially, because the Nazis and Germany were at the center of attention in this case, it allowed for Unit 731 and Japan to fly under the radar except to the countries and people they were directly causing massive trauma and impact. Unit 731, after all, fancied itself a scientific endeavor, in the same way that Janus fancied itself a revolution. It isn’t that science or necessarily even revolution can’t be important topics to focus on... it’s the way it was done.

That was what made me think of Janus initially... because there were all these other groups out there who kept taking the attention of the Agency, while in the background Janus was building an empire that was, ultimately, founded in pain. They also were both fine with collateral damage... victims of Unit 731 were a mixture of innocent victims kidnapped and coerced into their “cause” while others were prisoners of war at the mercy of a self-contained system that practiced no empathy. Not just a lack of empathy, a clinical dehumanization and disregard of the victim down to the aspect of not even labeling them as people, but instead calling them ‘logs’ in reference to the fact that their headquarters was an old logging facility.

Janus was against the Agency because of many reasons (some of which were very valid points), but they allowed for innocent victims to be caught in the crossfire, then turned to coercing them into their control, and began experimentation on prisoners of war and others who they ultimately saw as a project, not a person. For both Unit 731 and Janus, the end goal was far more important than the journey. This was business, and in business people get hurt. That’s fine to them, because their business outweighs the worth of the people they roll into their fold as fodder for the cause. Same as the Agency, really, but the Agency had the control whereas Janus wanted to take it. Which, therefore, made Janus believe they were even more justified in going to greater lengths to seize that control, so it would be in the “right hands.”

So the short answer is that I was initially thinking I’d have Janus basically be willing to do just about anything Unit 731 did, but of course not all to one person because they would never survive it. And some things would be unnecessary to “test” in a more modern setting because science already knows the answer which it did not know at the time of Unit 731.

The trouble is that Unit 731 was the fucking worst, and people did not leave their care intact very often, if at all. All my original ideas could potentially work if done in just the right way, but most of them would have such lasting damage realistically that it was going to make it difficult to have him roll right back into being an agent in any sort of reasonable time. And if he came back without even a possibility of being an agent, I knew he wouldn’t last long at all.

So that’s what got me into thinking of other things that might be a bit more realistic for recovery, while still being awful and representative of the lengths to which humans believe they are justified in going just because they can. Ultimately, that got me thinking it might have to be more about the mind than the body. But also ultimately, that could almost be worse.

So that was the thought process that led to what went into the book. Feel free to ask me again in the future if you want about what more maybe happened in the part I didn’t write out in the book. When my brain isn’t being weird as hell I will probably be able to explore that topic more. I’ll leave the original ask untouched just in case, too.

Oh also btw, relatively recently Japan disclosed the names of thousands of Unit 731 members, which is a massive fucking step since for decades they refused to properly acknowledge Unit 731 even was a thing. So that’s a step in the right direction, at least, and an update I hadn’t known about on this topic until I googled it just now to check something else. Although, that article is a little misleading because it suggests the only victims were Chinese civilians and that isn’t the case. It was them, and a lot of other people from other countries, which I mention not to dismiss or discount the Chinese victims, but rather to recognize them, and add recognition to the other victims as well.

Anyway I rambled enough on this and didn’t even answer your question, I’m sorry... but if you do want an idea of what I was thinking when I first went into planning that whole arc, and if you have a strong mind and stomach, you can read into Unit 731 and get a good idea of the vibe of my initial imaginings. They were not happy vibes. They were incredibly fucked up.

#ask ais #icos #in the company of shadows #Anonymous

5 notes · View notes

kindabraveandlittlestupid · 6 years ago

Photo

Try not to get caught up with the labels: Feminist, Equalist, or Humanist. The tag matters less than the larger goal society should set out to achieve. Equality for all and sometimes Equity to make small tips to the scale where needed. I am not afraid of embracing the concept of being a Male Feminist because my world is saturated by politics and I understand the players. I know the villains who wish to pit Feminist against Equalist or Humanist are doing so not because they believe any of the labels but because they benefit from the distraction between like-minded individuals who seek the same goals. Most men are not in the social position to be “The Patriarchy” but those men of wealth and power through industry, politics, or religion are the Patriarchy. An so long as they can make Men believe Women are a threat to them, that Black Lives Matter is a danger to White Americans or that Immigrants are taking the wealth of the country, these powerful men do very well so long as we keep fighting with the person next to us instead of realizing the real villains are often above us.

This is one reason why I like the idea of the Rise of Matriarchs in American Society. We can rattle these men’s cages and make them aware their power is suspect to change by a greater majority of society. This is not to say women cannot be corrupted by wealth and power as well but societies that have a more representative/diverse governments tend to be LESS corrupt and that is a step towards progress everyone benefits (except the extremely wealthy men who clutch power).

This post (despite the starter above) is not a political breakdown post though I plan to write on these subjects more in the future. Instead, it's more of clarification of my views and where I stand on various topics related to feminism. I realize there are topics that I might not touch base on and if you want me to add one you can shoot me a note. I also might hold opinions that do not take an absolutist view towards a topic and in today's politics that can be dangerous on the left and right because anyone who isn't falling in line 100% can be labeled a traitor to the cause or party.

Access to Birth Control and Planned Parenthood

I am always bewildered how nonsensical conservatives are in regards to these topics. The very best means of avoiding abortions is education, family planning, and birth control which prevent young women from having to make a difficult choice. Despite this, they believe in abstinence and try to remove birth control basically pushing more young women into the realm of motherhood because of a few minutes of passion that will ultimately decide the next 18+ years of their lives!

I believe Planned Parenthood should be available and welcome in each community to ensure that young women and men are protected, educated, and equipped with the proper means of avoiding unwanted pregnancies. I also believe condoms, IUDs, Birth Control Pills and Plan B’s should be available on the cheap and discreet to further protection. Lastly, Birth Control should be covered by insurance, even business insurance regardless of the employers personal/religious views. In other words, I am pretty damn liberal on this.

Abortion Rights (Link)

There are fewer choices a woman might face more difficult then deciding if she should or should not get an Abortion. I wrote in detail about this topic before so I will give you the short version. I believe NO ONE likes the idea of a abortion but those of us who understand the issue also know that forcing any woman regardless of age, race or social position to give birth also not ok. We in society should make this choice informative and safe. We do that by having comprehensive sexual education and birth control to be the ‘front line’ of avoiding this difficult choice. If she decides to take the next step or explore her options it shouldn't be done by bullshit church clinics attempting to use shame, guilt or false information to change her views but institutions that provide her all the options and information she could need to make the choice that's best for her. Everything should be her choice without influence from the community, the church, her parents or even the male involved. Aftercare programs should also be there to help her no matter what choice she chooses.

I think we should aim for the 20 weeks (Recent science article suggests this is possible when the babies consciousness kicks in. Open to changing if the article ends up being false) and under as the optimal time to make the choice. However, I am open to learning more on this topic and discussing if the “when” should be pushed further back. Lastly, if it comes down the choice between saving the mother or unborn fetus, I believe the mother's life is more important unless she deems otherwise. There are few political topics where I think men should shut up and let women decide... this is one of them.

Paid Family Leave

This isn't just a woman's issue but also a men's issue as well. I would actually argue this is a progressive issue as both the father and mother both deserve to take part in raising a child in those early stages. We need to consider this as a long-standing social program to allow career-oriented adults (both male and female) to continue their careers but also to support their family. We also need to ensure employers don't attempt to punish these women (and men) by skipping over them for promotions or refusing raises because they decided to have a child.

There is no argument from me that women deserve a longer leave of absence being the one who gave birth and breastfeeds the baby. I think both parents could benefit from this sort of social net and it's important we build it in such a way that it also covers two mothers or two fathers and even adoption.

Girls Education

With a better education for girls in the United States (and for the matter the world) has proven to improve economies, lower crime and even slow overpopulation because academic opportunity provides new options instead of simply being a wife/mother (nothing wrong with those if you choose that as part of your lifestyle). This is still a major issue as there are still countries that place girls education as secondary to boys education. Even if they are far away it is still our responsibility to ensure girls rights to an education is provided for them. Its pretty clear I believe in this topic wholeheartedly, however if you know me then you know there is more often then not a but around the corner.

The only caveat I can think to note is Female only education programs. An example of this is Girls Who Code that teaches programming to young girls. I love this program and I think its great they are trying to narrow the tech industry gap by pushing for more female coders. However, as someone who worked in a non-profit industry for a few years and created co-ed athletic leagues, there is value in having boys work with girls. These young women won't be working with only females forever, eventually, they will have to work with male coders and gender segregation robs them of that early experience. On a second point (and the real thing the operators of this program are missing out on) it is the fact if they have males in their class/program they can catch/alter/adjust the problematic behavior of male students to make them the new gold standard of how a male coder should act with their female coworkers. I suppose this is all just perception but I always believed its better to have both genders work together so they might view each other as equals rather embrace a gender segregation to achieve some corporate goal of having a bigger female workforce without address the issue of toxic male work environments.

MeToo Movement

I admit I am of mixed feelings about the MeToo Movement. I hesitate to support ANY movement that relies heavily on the court of public opinion. I worry about the history we all have and how sharp this social edge is at cutting down men (and women) who stand accused of any transgression. At the same time, I understand this is the reaction when sexual assault (verbal or physical) is simply swept under the rug for decades.

It scares me a little making me wonder if I ever pushed something too far. I think of jobs were I work with men and we goof off telling stories but having female coworkers nearby. They participated in the tales but I feel a dreadful concern that one or more of them simply played along trying not to make a fuss. Perhaps I made someone feel uncomfortable online at some point in the past.

Lord knows I was a victim myself to a young stalker who drove past my work taking pics and texting the line “LOL. I know where you work”. I was only able to make her stop harassment when she texted things like she was gonna lie to the police and send me to jail and I replied back with the screenshots of the whole conversation making her think how they (the police) might react when I share the text logs (clearly she didn't think her grand plan thru). I also endured a few indecent encounters with drunk women (usually on Saint Patricks Day) when I wear my kilt to the bar and they lift the edge to get a peek. I politely laughed it off and brush their hand away trying to ignore the fact they were we attempting to see if I was wearing the kilt authentically.

When you’re the victim of something like this you know it in your core that people were mistreating you. I know I never groped a woman, physically assaulted anyone or flashed myself but have I made improper jokes and I hope I never made anyone feel uncomfortable.

In the end, the MeTooMovement is a good thing. It needs to evolve into the next stage taking on a political form where it becomes not just a hashtag and social media post but evolve into real-world policy and social change that adjusts how men treat women in society (and the occasional female on male transgression). We can all do a little better and MeToo has the momentum to perhaps create a lasting social change by creating consent and decency program that could be taught both in schools and also in adult careers.

Women in Politics (Link)

I touched base with this topic before and I am pretty comfortable in my position. We don’t need more women in politics, we need more Smart Women in politics (and for that matter, we could do with some smarter men as well). Women make roughly between 20 to 30% of the leadership positions in government. Champions like Lee, Clinton, Warren, and Collins make up some of the smartest women in politics and bring a character with them that makes not only Washington better but the whole country better.

The reason why I make the distinction between “More Smart Women in Politics” and just “More Women in Politics” because of women like DeVos, Palin, Bachmann, and Sanders exist. Really just stupid stupid people who don’t know nor care about the long-term effect of their policies and their divisive rhetoric. We could do better than the likes of them and I hope this 2018 election brings a wave of strong/smart women who will balance out this government to something more representing of the country... 50/50.

NOTE: Preferably a BLUE wave of strong women.

Conclusion

I handpicked these topics because they relate to women's issues. By no means are these topics the only thing women care about but they connect deeply with feminism. As I said above if there is something you care for me to add to the list and hear my personal views/beliefs then shoot me a note. If we do not agree 100% on a topic I ask you to reflect on what I write before writing a hot worded post. If you have an opposing or slightly different view on a subject and think I could benefit from hearing a feminine take on a topic, by all means, share your post (and links to information). I am always evolving in my opinions and alternative views with thoughtful insight commonly shift my views. As always thanks for reading.

Regards Michael California

#Male Feminist #Supporting Women #Progressive #Liberal #Politics #GirlsWhoCode #Women in Politics #MeToo #Me Too Movement #Abortion #Abortion Rights #Pro Choice #Planned Parenthood #Paid Family Leave #Girls Education #Equality #Equity

3 notes · View notes

i-am-very-very-tired · 3 years ago

Text

Somewhere between Britney and Billie Eilish, liberated by social media and their direct relationship with fans, millennial and Gen Z women claimed the right to be complicated pop auteursRead all of the essays in the decade retrospective

📷 Laura Snapes Mon 25 Nov 2019 13.12 GMT 174

While Billie Eilish has reinvented pop with her hushed SoundCloud rap menace, creepy ASMR intimacy and chipper show tune melodies, there’s also something reassuringly comforting about her: as a teenage pop star, she has fulfilled her proper duty by confusing the hell out of adults. It’s largely down to her aesthetic: a funhouse Fred Durst; a one-woman model for the combined wares of Camden Market. Critics have tried to make sense of it, but when editorials praised Eilish’s “total lack of sexualisation”, she denounced them for “slut-shaming” her peers. “I don’t like that there’s this weird new world of supporting me by shaming people that may not want to dress like me.”To Gen Z’s Eilish, not yet 18, it is a weird new world. She and her millennial peers have grown up in a decade in which pop’s good girl/bad girl binary has collapsed into the moral void that once upheld it, resulting in a generation of young female stars savvy to how the expectation to be “respectable” and conform to adult ideas of how a role model for young fans should act – by an industry not known for its moral backbone – is a con. “It’s a lot harder to treat women the way they were treated in the 90s now, because you can get called out so easily on social media,” Fiona Apple – who knows about the simultaneous sexualisation and dismissal of young female musicians – said recently. “If somebody does something shitty nowadays, a 17-year-old singer can get on their social media and say, ‘Look what this fucker did! It’s fucked up.’”📷 Lunatics conquering the asylum ... the Spice Girls. Photograph: Tim Roney/Getty ImagesFemale musicians have been subject to conflicting moral standards for longer than Eilish has been alive. Madonna, Janet Jackson and TLC knew them well – but the concept of the pop “role model”, expected to set an example to kids, solidified when the Spice Girls became the first female act to be marketed at children. In the 70s and 80s, idols such as David Cassidy primed girls for a monogamous future. By comparison, the Spice Girls were lunatics conquering the asylum. But, given their fans’ youth – and the sponsors that used the band to reach them – they also had a duty of responsibility. Their real lives – the all-nighters and eating disorders – were hidden so effectively that Eilish, born in 2001, thought the band was made up, actors playing the roles of the group in Spiceworld: The Movie.In the late 90s, kid-pop became an industry unto itself: Smash Hits and Top of the Pops magazine pitched younger; CD:UK and America’s TRL aimed at Saturday-morning and after-school audiences; Simons Fuller and Cowell built empires. The scrappy Spice Girls preceded the cyborgian Britney, who was a far sleeker enterprise – until she wasn’t. She was pitched as a virgin: cruel branding that invited media prurience and set a time bomb counting down towards her inevitable downfall. Britney’s 2007 breakdown revealed the cost of living as a virtuous cypher and being expected to repress her womanhood to sell to American prudes. Her shaved head and aborted stints in rehab prompted industry handwringing, and so an illusion of the music business offering greater freedom and care for pop’s girls emerged in her wake. Advertisement Major labels abandoned the traditional two-albums-in bad-girl turn (a la Christina Aguilera’s Stripped). Social media-born artists such as Lily Allen and Kate Nash were swept into the system and framed as the gobby antithesis to their manicured pop peers – until their resistance to exactly the same kind of manipulation saw them cast aside. And if Kesha, Lady Gaga or Amy Winehouse burned out, their visible excesses would distract from any behind-the-scenes exploitation, inviting spectators to imagine that they brought it on themselves.📷 Reclaiming the hard-partying values of rock’s men ... Kesha. Photograph: PictureGroup / Rex FeaturesAt the dawn of the 2010s, social media surpassed its teen origins to become an adult concern, and an earnest fourth wave of activists brought feminism back to the mainstream. Like a rescued hatchling, it was in a

pathetic state to begin with – dominated by white voices that tediously wondered whether anything a woman did was automatically feminist. Is brushing your teeth with Jack Daniel’s feminist? Are meat dresses feminist? Is drunkenly stumbling through Camden feminist? Are butt implants feminist?Pop culture became the natural test site for these ideas – especially music, where a new wave of artists challenged this nascent, often misguided idealism. Kesha reclaimed the hard-partying values of rock’s men to embody a generation’s despair at seeing their futures obliterated by the recession. Lady Gaga questioned gender itself, as one writer in this paper put it, “re-queering a mainstream that had fallen back into heteronormative mundanity”. In a career-making verse on Kanye West’s Monster, Nicki Minaj annihilated her male peers and gloried in her sexualisation. MIA, infuriated by America’s hypocritical propriety, flipped off the Super Bowl and proved her point by incurring a $16.5m fine.📷 Infuriated by hypocritical propriety ... MIA gives America the middle finger during her Super Bowl performance in 2012. Photograph: Christopher Polk/Getty Images Advertisement As a former Disney star, Miley Cyrus stepped the furthest out of bounds. In 2008, aged 15, she had posed in a sheet for Vanity Fair. “MILEY’S SHAME,” screamed the New York Post. She apologised to her fans, “who I care so deeply about”. But in 2013, she torched her child-star image by writhing in her knickers on a wrecking ball, twerking against Robin Thicke, being flagrant about her drug use, appropriating African American culture while perpetuating racist stereotypes.Cyrus’s 2013 transformation bore the hallmarks of a breakdown – especially witnessed two years after the death of Amy Winehouse, who was then perceived as a victim of her own self-destruction. But Cyrus was largely intentional about her work (if, then, ignorant of her racism). She had waited until she was no longer employed by Disney to express herself. Earlier in her career, she said, she struggled to watch her peers. “I was so jealous of what everyone else got to do, because I didn’t get to truly be myself yet.” Despite apparently smoking massive amounts of weed herself, she didn’t want to tell kids to copy her. But she knew the power she offered her peers such as Ariana Grande, who that year left Nickelodeon to release her debut album. “I’m like, ‘Walk out with me right now and get this picture, and this will be the best thing that happens to you, because just you associating with me makes you a little less sweet.’”Pop did get a little less sweet. Sia and Tove Lo sang brazenly about using drugs to mask pain. Icona Pop’s I Love It reigned (“I crashed my car into a bridge / I watched and let it burn”) thanks to its inclusion on the soundtrack of Lena Dunham’s Girls. With its aimless characters and their ugly behaviour, the show mirrored pop’s retreat from aspirational sheen, and the culture’s growing obsession with “messy” women and “strong female characters”: flawed attempts to create new archetypes that rejected the expectation of girls behaving nicely.📷 An explicit rejection of role-model status ... Beyoncé performs at the Super Bowl in 2013. Photograph: Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesA new cohort of young female and non-binary critics shifted the discussion around music: in 2015, when the documentary Amy was released, they questioned how Winehouse was perceived in death compared to Kurt Cobain. They also pushed aside the virgin/whore rivalries of old. In an earlier era, Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey might have been fashioned into nemeses, one sexualised and powerful, the other gothic and demure. Instead, their respective mid-decade self-mythologising showed that female musicians could be pop’s auteurs, not just the men in the wings. Advertisement Beyoncé’s self-titled 2013 album was an explicit rejection of her role-model status. She was 15 when Destiny’s Child released their debut album. “But now I’m in my 30s and those children that grew up listening to me have grown up,” she said in a behind-the-scenes video.

The responsibility she felt to them “stifled” her. “I felt like ... I could not express everything … I feel like I’ve earned the right to be me and express any and every side of myself.”It was the first of her albums to reveal the breadth of her inner life – the coexisting kinks, triumphs and insecurities, showing the complexity of black womanhood. The critic Soraya Nadia McDonald wrote: “Mixed in with songs about insecurity, grief, protest and the love she has for her child, Beyoncé manages to present her sexuality as a normal part of her life that deserves celebration.” “It doesn’t make you a bad mother. It doesn’t make black people look bad, and it doesn’t make you a bad feminist, either.” When Beyoncé emblazoned “FEMINIST” on stage at the 2014 MTV VMAs, she helped reclaim the word from middle-class white discourse.Like Beyoncé, Del Rey countered the idea that female pop stars were major-label puppets. She had struggled to make it as an indie artist but found a home at Polydor – a detail that caused detractors to question her authenticity. Her shaky debut SNL performance revealed the flaw in their thinking: if she was manufactured, wouldn’t she have been better drilled? Her project was potent, but startlingly unrefined. More intriguingly, she opposed fast-calcifying ideas about how feminist art should look: Del Rey’s lyrics revelled in submission and violence, in thrall to bad guys and glamour. It wasn’t feminist to want these things; but nor was it feminist to insist on the suppression of desire in the name of shiny empowerment.📷 Exposing industry machinations ... Azealia Banks at the Reading festival in 2013. Photograph: Simone Joyner/Getty Images Advertisement Del Rey’s lusts and designs were her own – pure female gaze – a hallmark of the defiant female pop stars to come. Rihanna said she was “completely not” a role model, a point driven home by the viscerally violent video for Bitch Better Have My Money. Lauren Mayberry of Scottish trio Chvrches refused to be singled out from her male bandmates and wrote searingly about the misogyny she faced online. Janelle Monáe and Solange rubbished the idea that R&B was the only lane open to young black women.They started revealing their business conflicts. In 2013, 21-year-old Sky Ferreira finally released her debut, six years after signing a $1m record deal. She was transparent about her paradoxical treatment: “They worked me to death, but when I wanted to input anything, it was like, ‘You’re a child, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’” When Capitol pulled funding for the album, she financed its completion: it was widely named an album of the year. Facing similar frustrations, rapper Angel Haze leaked her 2013 album, Dirty Gold, and Azealia Banks wasted no opportunity to expose industry machinations.The rise of Tumblr and SoundCloud put young artists in control of their own artistic identities, forging authentic fan relationships that labels couldn’t afford to mess with. Lorde was signed age 12, but her manager knew he had to follow her lead because she knew her audience better than he did. Halsey was already Tumblr-famous for her covers, hair colours and candour about her bisexuality and bipolar diagnosis when she posted her first original song in 2014. It received so much attention that the 19-year-old – who described herself as an “inconvenient woman” for everything she represented – signed to major label Astralwerks the following evening.A new type of fan arrived with them. The illusion of intimacy led to greater emotional investment – and with it, an expectation of accountability. Social media was being used to arbitrate social justice issues, giving long overdue platforms to marginalised voices, and establishing far more complex moral standards for pop stars than the executives who shilled Britney’s virginity could ever have imagined. In 2013, Your Fav Is Problematic began to highlight stars’ missteps: among Halsey’s 11 infractions were “sexualising Japanese culture” and allegedly falsifying her story about being “homeless”.Musicians, particularly of an

older guard, were unprepared. Lily Allen’s comeback single Hard Out Here, released in late 2013, satirised the impossible aesthetic standards expected of female musicians – a bold message undermined by the racist stereotypes she invoked to make her point: “Don’t need to shake my arse for you ’cause I’ve got a brain,” she sang, while black and Asian leotard-clad dancers twerked around her in the video. The backlash was swift. There was the sense of a balance tipping.📷 Refused to let terrorists suppress girls’ joy ... Ariana Grande at One Love Manchester, 4 June 2017. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/One Love Manchester/Getty Images Advertisement Over the decade, female pop stars steadily self-determined beyond the old limited archetypes. But the most dramatic identity shifts were still a product of adversity, women battling for control.In 2015, Ariana Grande provoked mild outcry when she got caught licking a doughnut she hadn’t paid for and declaring: “I hate America.” Two years later, a suicide bomber attacked her concert at Manchester Arena, leaving 22 dead. She went home to Florida in the aftermath, then returned to stage benefit concert One Love Manchester. A victim’s mother asked Grande to perform her raunchiest hits after the Daily Mail implied that the bomber had targeted the concert because of her sexualised aesthetic. So she did. By prioritising her mental health and refusing to let terrorists suppress girls’ joy and sexuality, she set a powerful example for fans that ran counter to the moralising of commentators such as Piers Morgan.Grande appeared to emerge from this tragedy – and the death of ex-boyfriend Mac Miller – with a renewed sense of what was important, and what really was not. Her next album, Sweetener, defiantly reclaimed happiness from trauma; she swiftly released another, Thank U, Next, abandoning traditional pop release patterns to work with a rapper’s spontaneity. “I just want to fucking talk to my fans and sing and write music and drop it the way these boys do,” she said.Kesha had helped instigate this decade of greater freedom for female musicians – or so it seemed until October 2014, when she sued producer Dr Luke, making allegations including sexual assault. (In spring 2016, a judge dismissed the case; Luke denies all allegations and is suing Kesha for defamation.) She claimed she was told she had to be “fun”, an image that Luke’s label intended to capitalise on, revealing how revelry could be just as confining as its prim counterpart. In 2017, she released Rainbow, her first album in five years. Addressing her trauma, it got the best reviews of her career – a response that also seemed to reveal something about the most digestible way for a female artist to exist. But her forthcoming album, High Road, pointedly returns to the recklessness of her first two records. “I don’t feel as if I’m beholden to be a tragedy just because I’ve gone through something that was tragic,” she said.Taylor Swift’s refusal to endorse a candidate in the 2016 election, and the fallout from a spat with Kanye West, saw her shred her image of nice-girl relatability with her 2017 heel-turn, Reputation. But she rebelled more meaningfully when she leveraged her profile to expose the music industry, alerting the public to otherwise opaque matters of ownership and compensation. She joined independent labels in the fight to make Apple Music pay artists for the free trial period it offered consumers. Earlier this year, she despaired at her former label, Big Machine, being bought – and the master recordings to her first six albums with it – by nemesis Scooter Braun, an option she claimed she was denied. Now signed to Universal, and the owner of her masters going forward, she hoped young musicians might learn from her “about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation”, she wrote. “You deserve to own the art you make.” Advertisement Swift’s formative politesse came from country music, an industry that emphasises deference to power and traditional gender roles. In 2015, consultant Keith Hill – using a bizarre metaphor about

salad – admitted that radio sidelined female musicians: they were then subject to endless questions about tomatogate, as if they had the power to fix it. But that blatant industry disregard freed female country artists to shuck off obligation and make whatever music they wanted. In recent years, Miranda Lambert, Ashley McBryde, Brandy Clark, Kacey Musgraves, Ashley Monroe, Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile and Margo Price have all creatively outstripped their male peers.📷 ‘Just me existing is revolutionary’ ... Lizzo. Photograph: Owen Sweeney/Invision/APTheir situation resonates beyond country: greater personal freedoms for female musicians haven’t equated to greater commercial success. Just because a wave of female pop acts have refused old industry ideals, that doesn’t mean control is consigned to the past. There will be young women enduring coercive music industry situations right now – whether manipulation or more serious abuse. Some may never meet those impossible standards, and fail to launch. Others may quietly endure years of repression before potentially finding their voice. There are high-profile female pop acts working today who control their work yet are still subject to grinding suggestions that they change to meet market demands, and noisy women from this decade who have been sidelined. The tropes of the self-actualised female pop star are so established that labels know how to reverse engineer “real” pop girls beholden to a script.But the emergence of a more holistic female star will make it harder for labels to shill substitutes. Their emotional openness has destroyed the stigma around mental health that was used to diminish female musicians as “mad” divas. Charli XCX said she would never have betrayed her vulnerabilities when she was starting out in her teens. “If I’m emotionally vulnerable,” she thought, “people won’t take me seriously … Now I just don’t care.” Robyn spent eight years following up her most successful record because she needed time to grieve and unpick the impact of her own teen stardom. Britney – who in 1999 told Rolling Stone, “I have no feelings at all” – this year cancelled her Las Vegas residency to prioritise her mental health. 📷 More to the floor: the decade the dancefloor was decolonised Read more Advertisement They’ve relentlessly countered the male gaze. Chris refused to simplify queerness for the mainstream; Kim Petras stood for “trans joy”; Rihanna challenged the idea of skinny as aspirational by creating inclusive fashion lines and candidly discussing her own shape. “Just me existing is revolutionary”, Lizzo has said, while Cardi B refused to let anyone use her past as a stripper undermine her legitimacy as a powerful political voice.Where unthinking messiness was valorised at the start of the decade, now imperfection only gets a pass as long as nobody else is getting hurt. This summer, Miley, now 26, apologised for the racial insensitivity of her Wrecking Ball era. Soon after, she posted striking tweets in response to rumours of her cheating on her husband. She admitted to having been hedonistic and unprofessional in her youth. But she swore she hadn’t cheated in her marriage. “I’ve grown up in front of you, but the bottom line is, I HAVE GROWN UP,” she wrote. (To a degree – not long after, she found herself called out again when she implied that queerness is a choice.)In their fallibility and resistance to commodification, the women who have defined this decade in pop look a lot more like role models than the corporate innocents sold to girls in the early millennium. They’re still learning, working with what they’ve got rather than submitting to what they’re told. “I don’t know what it feels like not to be a teenager,” Billie Eilish said recently. “But kids know more than adults.” … as you’re joining us today from South Africa, we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s high-impact journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5

million readers, from 180 countries, have recently taken the step to support us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.With no shareholders or billionaire owner, we can set our own agenda and provide trustworthy journalism that’s free from commercial and political influence, offering a counterweight to the spread of misinformation. When it’s never mattered more, we can investigate and challenge without fear or favour.Unlike many others, Guardian journalism is available for everyone to read, regardless of what they can afford to pay. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of global events, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action.We aim to offer readers a comprehensive, international perspective on critical events shaping our world – from the Black Lives Matter movement, to the new American administration, Brexit, and the world's slow emergence from a global pandemic. We are committed to upholding our reputation for urgent, powerful reporting on the climate emergency, and made the decision to reject advertising from fossil fuel companies, divest from the oil and gas industries, and set a course to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

0 notes