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eliotquillon · 4 years ago

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mark walden and politics in h.i.v.e

as you probably all know by now (thanks to the j.k rowling fiasco), art and politics are inherently linked; whether it’s intentional or not, it’s difficult to extricate an author’s beliefs from the way they manifist in literature. and with that in mind, let’s talk about politics in h.i.v.e.

h.i.v.e is a series that has never exactly shied away from criticising the politics of the year each book was published in, and you can probably see this best in the character of matt ronson, who is the most obvious stand in for mitt romney that i’ve ever seen in my entire life. romney was running against obama in the 2012 election, and, coincidentally enough, matt ronson appears in deadlock, which was published in 2013 (and almost certainly written during 2012). in case you’ve repressed the events of deadlock (which i wouldn’t blame you for lmao), ronson’s a senior member of the disciples - he’s actually head of an entire cell - and is running for president in order to secure the disciples’ control over the united states. it’s not exactly subtle imagery. it’s definitely the boldest walden gets in terms of critiquing the state of late 00s-early 2010s politics, and is also the example that i think is easiest to pick up on, because of how similar ronson and romney’s names are, and how in-your-face the whole scene is. i mean, otto leaves ronson to die in a plane pre-programmed to crash in the middle of the ocean because when raven tells him that a bullet would’ve been quicker, his response is, quote, “too quick.” for further proof, if you check walden’s twitter, he’s pretty positive towards obama on the whole, which i imagine is why he decided to kill off obama’s presidential challenger.

but that’s not the first time politics gets infused in h.i.v.e. the first time - the one that actually serves as the catalyst for, well, everything - is otto deposing the prime minister by making him moon the nation on live television. book 1 was published in 2006; this was when tony blair was prime minister in the uk. if you’re unfamiliar with uk politics, blair is pretty harshly criticised on both sides of the political spectrum for his role in the iraq war/the 2008 financial crash (although he resigned and appointed gordon brown as his successor in 2007), and the fact that he created ‘new labour’, a movement which pushed the predominantly working class, leftist labour party further towards the ‘moderate centre’ in an attempt to capture more of the middle class vote as opposed to labour’s traditional post-industrial ‘northern heartlands’. the prime minister that otto deposes is blair, or at least a stand in for him; i’ll give proof below.

the important thing is that otto decides to get rid of the prime minister because st. sebastian’s is closing down, and st. sebastian’s is closing down because of the prime minister’s childcare reforms that result in, quote, “the restructuring of local childcare provision.” whether or not st. sebastian being closed would’ve been an overal net positive or not is debatable (otto mentions that the building was starting to become “genuinely unsafe”), but if you don’t know much about blair, he was BIG on restructuring, especially in london, where st sebastian’s is located, and something in particular that blair was fond of was giving more powers to local councils (essentially, shifting the uk to more of a federal system than a centralised one). you’ve probably already guessed, but yep, the letter that announces st. sebastian’s is closing comes from the local council. it’s also mentioned that the childcare reforms have “the prime minister’s personal backing”, and, yep, childcare budgets and early years spending increased exponentially under blair (he even renamed the department of education to the department of children, schools, and families, which was promptly renamed AGAIN once labour left office, but that’s a rant for another day). there’s also the fact that otto goes to brighton for the prime minister’s party conference - this is where the labour party conference is held, whereas the conservative party conference alternates between birmingham and manchester. finally, in zero hour (published in 2010) it’s mentioned that the prime minister resigned and that his party lost in the next general election - this is exactly what happened to blair and new labour after the financial crash. of course, this evidence is very circumstantial, but i don’t think that this is a coincidence, and, anyway, i struggle to see how walden could’ve been more explicit in implying that this is blair without facing parental backlash.

now onto the political commentary; i’ve already mentioned how everyone hates blair, and walden is no exception. the statement that otto makes the prime minister is absolutely damning. it’s too long for me to copy and paste the entire thing (i say, when this post is going to be ridiculously long anyway), but here are some highlights: “we hold you and your families in nothing but the deepest contempt”, “i don’t think that we get enough credit for having to put up with your constant whining”, “half of you can barely read or write, and the way the education system’s going, that’s not going to change any time soon”, “we don’t care” “all we care about is power and money”, “shut your mouths and cut the moaning, because we don’t give a monkey’s.” i think it’s pretty safe to say that this is not exactly positive. personally, i think that the “moaning” and “whining” walden refers to here is a reference to the anti-war protests about the us/uk invasion of iraq, and there were complaints about the scrapping of grammar schools/“dumbing down” of the GCSE qualifications (regardless of whether or not that was intentional) across the board for years both before and after blair got into power. but whichever way you look at it, this is not a glowing representation of blair. and if you look on walden’s twitter (again), he tends to retweet a lot from michael rosen and owen jones, both prominent labour members who are very staunchly anti blair and anti ‘new labour’.

also, while searching walden’s twitter for blair references, i also came across this 2019 tweet:

where, as you can see, he shares an anecdote about how his old house used to be next to an army range and that his neighbour told him that military helicopters were often “flown by a 21 year old with a hangover”. and, like, i’m not saying that that’s the inspiration for 13 year old laura being able to hack a military base so she could spy on her classmates, but i’m totally saying that.

anyway, there’s one more political figure i want to cover here, and that’s duncan cavendish, aka the prime minister in zero hour. anyway: duncan cavendish is former conservative prime minister david cameron (notice the identical initials). i did actually ask walden about this on twitter, and he said he ‘couldn’t possibly comment’, which imo most likely means that he’s unable to confirm because of contractual reasons. but anyway: zero hour was published in 2010, the year of the election which put the conservatives (for clarity’s sake, i’m going to be referring to them as tories for the rest of this post) back into power for the first time in 13 years (albeit in a coalition with the centrist libdem party), meaning that it was written in 2009 when cameron was party leader, and after the 2008 crash. i don’t think walden knew for sure that cameron would come to power (after all, in zero hour it’s stated that cavendish’s party won by a landslide, whereas the actual 2010 election resulted in ‘hung parliament’), but it wasn’t exactly a hard guess to make that labour would lose after the events of 2007/8 and their record in iraq.

something that particularly sticks out to me is cavendish thanking nero for switching him from the polfi stream to the alpha stream - in real life, cameron has an a level in economics, and studied philosophy, politics, and economics at oxford and his father is also a stockbroker, all aspects which certainly scream polfi to me. personally, i think this was a dig at cameron’s fairly elitist background, and the fact that he’s historically been seen as an opportunist rather than a real leader. also, cameron was once approached in the former soviet union by two men he suspected were KGB agents trying to recruit him, and i’m not saying that walden used this connection when linking cavendish to pietor furan and the disciples, but....yeah. there’s also the fact that nero references cavendish’s academic record of going to an elite boys’ school being fudged, and, yeah, cameron attended eton (he also got suspended for smoking cannabis, which is just. a lot to think about for a man who helped push through legislation that further penalised cannabis users). again, on twitter walden has been extremely outspoken against the tories in general, specifically about brexit, the referendum for which occurred under cameron’s government. also walden kind of predicted the future: in zero hour, cavendish is blackmailed by nero into resigning. in real life, cameron resigned the whip (left both his post and the tory party as an MP) in 2016 after the uk voted to leave the eu. obviously that’s not proof of anything but it just makes me laugh.

those are the specific figures - now let’s talk more about walden’s general ideologies. he’s very anti-gun on twitter, and this obviously links to wing and his refusal to wield guns/shoot people; wing’s arguably the most staunchly moral character in the series, which i don’t think is a coincidence. walden bashed mass surveillance by having otto abhor (and later destroy) echelon; echelon is actually a real international government project that was originally designed for military surveillance but later branched out into greater mass surveillance (also, fun fact! i only live about an hour’s drive from an echelon radome base, so i hope my mi5 agent is enjoying this post). we see walden criticise mass surveillance again with the existence of the artemis project (and also the disciples’ use of facial recognition software), and while i have no idea whether or not that’s real, i think everyone knows that there are multiple international coalitions devoted to gathering and sharing data on world citizens (google the nine eyes partnership if you want to give yourself a bit of a crisis). walden has reposted a picture that says ‘make orwell fiction again’ on twitter, so it’s pretty clear where he stands on that. in general, walden is left wing, and that shows in his books - while i’ve corroborated all of my assumptions here with evidence i found on walden’s twitter, i came to most of these conclusions on my own just from reading the source material.

and this is why i’m only 90% joking when i talk about walden lagging behind on book 9 because there’s so many different things he needs to satirize. the global stage has changed dramatically since deadlock’s publication, and if walden’s passionate about critiquing those in power, he’s got a lot of content to choose from - trump, obviously, but also boris johnson and theresa may over on this side of the pond (and he really, really hates johnson). h.i.v.e as a story is inherently political, and not just because of the more obvious “morally grey villains” trope. walden uses his fictional world to critique the real-life authority figures in control, and does so while keeping it subtle enough so as to not tip off most casual readers. overall, it’s pretty impressive.

#h.i.v.e #mark walden #meta #long post

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alliswell21 · 5 years ago

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A fic for @historywriter2007, @lovely-tothe-bone, @mega-aulover and @arbyeatscheesebuns from a Prompt about a professor on tinder... hope this one is to your liking!

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I come into my bedroom to find Johanna lounging on my bed, messing with my cellphone, like she owns the place.

“What are you doing?” I demand feeling all my nerve ends spike in warning.

“Nothing,” She drawls nonchalantly, looking up from my phone with those brown, wide set eyes of hers, too innocently to be true.

“What are you doing with my phone? And how the hell did you figure out my password?” I grunt.

Johanna flips the phone next to her on the mattress, stretching like a cat, and then sits up taking her sweet time.

“You know, Brainless, if you use the same password for everything, from your bank account, to your Facebook, and also your email, and the password is just your sister’s birth date and initials everytime, you deserve to get hacked.” She scoots off the bed lazily, “I’m done anyways. I took the liberty to check on your tinder for you. You’re welcome!” She smiles devilishly, sauntering out of the bedroom.

“Tinder?” I ask in confusion, diving for my phone to check it myself, because I’ve never signed up for a Tinder account. That’s just… not me!

A couple of swipes, and sure enough, there’s an icon for an app I would never download myself.

“How the…?! Fudge! Now I really need to change all my passwords! Lousy Johanna!” I mutter angrily under my breath.

“Jo! What did you do?” I run after her waving my phone. “Why did you signed me up for a tinder account?”

She rolls her eyes while raspberrying obnoxiously. “Katniss, we had this discussion Saturday, after Madge’s party. I said you needed to get laid before your lady parts became dusty, and you said it was cool when I suggested tinder.”

“I was drunk!” I screech.

“No you weren’t! You only had two beers.”

“Plus all the shots of tequila you practically force fed me!” I groan. “Johanna, I don’t want a tinder!”

“Kitty cat, it’s done. Plus there are some hotties there I already took the liberty to swipe right for you. Now you’ll be on their feeds and if the swipe right too when they see your profile picture, then you’ll be matched and you’ll be on your way to orgasmic bliss!”

I scrub my face with both hands, questioning my life choices, especially the one where I actually begged Johanna Mason to move in after my last roommate left the apartment.

Finally I say with resolve, “I’m deleting the account. I don’t want it and definitely don’t need it!”

“After all the time I devoted to create the perfect profile that made you look like a total bombshell?!” She’s glaring at me. “Do you know how many guys are showing in your feed? That means they’re interested in you, Brainless! Give it a try and live a little for once! YOLO and all that jazz, you’re no spring chicken anymore, you know.”

“Can it, Jo! I don’t have time for this!” I say hunching all over, “Thank you for the effort, but... this isn’t for me, Jo.” I say a little defeated.

“You’ll be fine, brainless, stop being so dramatic.” Johanna sighs behind me before I shut myself into my room.

My love life is nonexistent, just as I want it to be… at least while I’m sober it seems.

I flop on the bed, cell phone in hand, ready to delete the tinder app when I see there’s a message. Out of curiosity, I tap the icon and almost flat line at the name displayed in the header.

I scream. Loudly. I scream Johanna’s name like is a cuss word and stomp menacingly down the hall to scream at her some more, but I’m freaking out with anxiety to the point that my anger gets buried under other unpleasant emotions that make my stomach roil.

“What’s wrong?!” My roommate asks jumping off the couch, her eyes wide with concern. “Did something happened?”

I start stuttering and flailing my arms like a person drowning in the middle of the sea; it takes a shake from Jo to finally sputter, “My teacher!” I stare at Johanna with wild eyes and finally feel the anger return. “You matched me with my freaking Teacher!”

It feels good to lash out in complete control of my feelings.

“I did not!” Johanna shoves me away rolling her eyes and going back to plant her butt in front of the TV. “I wouldn’t have match you with some old fart looking for young tail on tinder.” She says dismissively. “I have my limits.”

I groan in aggravation. “He’s not an old fart. He’s only a few years older than me. He teaches my stupid Social Scienses class... the one I told you about.”

Johanna’s interest piqued, “Go on…” she prompts.

I sink into the couch next to her, afraid of my phone.

Getting my college education has been my very own personal Odyssey. What should have taken a normal student four years, has taken me seven, since at first I had to work full time to help my mother support our little family, while my younger sister finished high school. I would’ve kept supporting us if my sister hadn’t insisted I got into higher education as well; so at the age of twenty six and a half, a diploma is within my grasp. I don’t mind doing grunt work, but my sister was right to push me for more. I’m ready to move on to a higher bracket in the salary ladder, and to do that, I’m required a college degree.

I neglected the needed Social Science credits for my degree until this year. I had to scramble to get all my credits for graduation, and I needed a Social Science class to round up the requirements.

I decided to go with American Ethnich Studies because the odds were in my favor, since it’s a very sought after course and a spot magically opened while I was picking my schedule and was able to snatch it up. The class is not really an elective, but it fills pretty quickly, and for good reason: the curriculum is fresh, the material is interesting, the level of compelling information is outstanding, and I also rationalize that since my late dad was from Native American descent, it would be a great opportunity to acquire academic knowledge of my heritage and all the other cultures that make America a rich tapestry that go beyond race, gender and tradition.

But the man teaching the class is a whole other compelling reason on its own… not that I was aware of that tiny detail until I set foot in the classroom.

“So, are you gonna show me this professor that’s got your panties all twisted and damped?” Jo challenges.

I only glare at her for a second, before slumping my shoulders. “He messaged me.”

“What did he say?” Johanna is now on her knees on the couch, facing me, the mischief glinting in her eyes annoys me to no end.

“I haven’t read it yet…” I sigh staring at my phone like it’s a poisonous snake.

“Why not?” Jo demands.

“Because it’s my freaking teacher, Johanna!” I say at the edge of a panic attack.

American Ethnic Studies is the class I’ve done worse in my whole schooling career. I blame it all solely on the professor, Mr. Mellark, who’s name is flashing on my screen.

I don’t mean Mr. Mellark is a bad or even mediocre teacher; on the contrary, he is in fact very knowledgeable, kind, open, friendly and approachable. But the man is ridiculously handsome; his voice is deep and smooth like warm dark melted chocolate, his eyes are as blue and deep as a summer sky under an unruly mop of ashy blonde waves, and his smile nearly made my heart stop the first time I saw it aimed at me. Then is the rest of his body: ass round and firm scrumptiously encased in pressed slacks, and shoulders so broad I wonder how can he find the right size shirts to cover them?

In other words, professor Mellark is what I believe a modern Greek god would look like nowadays, which brings me back to my original statement, I never took into account how the looks of a man could affect my concentration in class, resulting in the awful marks I’ve been getting in the course all year.

Johanna snatches my phone from my fingers, and I scramble after her to retrieve it.

“Johanna!”

“Hush, Brainless!”

She sticks out her hand to stop me from grabbing back my phone. I see with horror she’s already unlocked the screen.

“Give it back!” I demand stretching beyond Johanna’s shoulder and finally wrapping my hand around my device. “Don’t read my message! It’s private!” I snap.

“Oh please! I already told you, nothing is private until you change passwords. Now… read the thing! Stop being a coward!”

I glare at Jo for a second, but ultimately turn my eyes to the small bubble with a great deal of anxiety, because now there’s not just one, but two messages from Professor Mellark waiting for me. I steel myself and finally let the words take meaning as I read.

Peeta Mellark: Hey Katniss, I saw you in my feed and grappled with the questionable propriety of my choices: a) acknowledge you, saying hello since we got matched and passing for creepy; or b) ignoring you by swiping left and passing for rude.

I guess I managed to answer that question already.

Peeta Mellark: I’ll take this slightly awkward opportunity to tell you your final grade: B

I say the words in a monotone, not really knowing how to feel. I want to laugh and bawl at the same time. This man is so witty even in writing.

“Well? Are you going to answer or what?” Johanna presses bluntly, practically breathing down my nape.

I push her away a fraction, and mutter, “Shut up, Jo. I’m thinking!”

“You gotta answer! Stop thinking!”

“What am I supposed to say back?” I ask her harshly.

“Tell him you can handle the D if he swaps that B for an A!” Johanna wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, as if I would ever say something as crass or forward.

“Are you crazy?! I can tell my teacher that!” I balk.

“You gotta say something!”

“I know!” I sigh and start typing, carefully choosing my words.

Katniss Everdeen: Hello, Mr. Mellark. I would have never thought you rude for swiping left. I completely understand. Believe me, tinder wasn’t my idea, but my best friend decided I needed to socialize more… so… here we are...

I cringe.

Katniss Everdeen: Thanks for the grades. I’m relieved to know I’ve passed the class, it means I’m officially a graduate! No longer a student!

For the first time I let the news sink in and bask in the knowledge that I am graduating and can’t help but smile and say a tiny “Yay, Me!” Under my breath at the same time I’m pumping the air with my fist.

Johanna shoves me aside to read what I wrote, and then makes a disgruntled noise. “I thought something sexy was finally said when you reacted so excited.”

I’m about to tell her that getting my diploma is exciting but a chime goes off, announcing another message.

We both peer down at the phone and I gasp. Mr. Mellark has responded, and there’s a smiley face and a question; Johanna is yakking about none stop next to me, trying to tell me what to say or how to phrase it, but I’m speechless and elated because the few lines my ex-professor has written are so unexpected but so welcome, is not even funny.

Peeta Mellark: Congratulations! I knew you could do it!

Peeta Mellark: By the way, call me Peeta, I’m not your professor anymore, and given the circumstances, I believe is kosher to be informal… friendlier.

Peeta Mellark: Also, I was wondering, since we got matched up and everything, would you like to have a cup of coffee or tea with me… since you're officially not my student anymore?

My fingers fly over the screen typing my answer in a flash. I don’t even have to think what I want to say.

Katniss Everdeen: Make it a cup of hot chocolate, and you have a date… Peeta.

His answer is practically immediate.

Peeta Mellark: It's a date then! Meet me tomorrow at my brother’s bakery? Corner of Twelve and Capitol? They have the best cheese buns to pair with that hot chocolate… and I’ll get the privilege to show you off as my date. My brother set me up on tinder too.

I’m not sure if the smile I’m wearing is for what I’m reading, or because I’m now free to fantasize about my teacher, but when I see the rest of his reply, I know this would’ve happened anyway some way or another...

Peeta Mellark: Full disclosure at the risk of still sounding creepy, but I think it was lucky our profiles got matched together. It gave me the chance to ask you out, and I sorely wanted to approach you, but didn’t know how. This is the perfect excuse. Thank you for swiping right.

“See, Brainless?! You’re welcome!” Says Johanna breaking the nice little bubble I was in.

I roll my eyes not even trying to stop my smile, “Fine, Johanna, thank you for swiping right… now get out of my phone, and don’t even try to crack the new password! Also, I’m definitely deleting Tinder!”

#everlark fanfiction #my fics #prompt #professor tinder

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swanning-around · 4 years ago

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Possibly the best thing written on current UK politics, from Rex Varro, British Intelligence magazine - www.british-intelligence.co.uk

PRESSGANGED : BORIS JOHNSON AND THE BRITISH MEDIA

REX VARRO

1st September

It seems that people on the Right in Britain are broadly split into two camps: those who say Boris Johnson is a bullshitting waste of space, and those who think the prime minister will come good if we can just get past coronavirus.

I can see both sides of this. Yes, coronavirus dropped from a clear sky onto a government fondling an 80-seat majority and a country collectively sighing with relief at having avoided a Labour Party captured by communism and also having voted in a prime minister who promised an end to Tory lies about Brexit. Just like the moments in movies when someone asks what could possibly go wrong now, everything went pear-shaped very quickly.

Readers of British Intelligence being clever and well informed sorts, I do not need to recapitulate the sorry story of the past six months. True, Johnson became very ill – and some say he has yet to fully recover – but his absence made it all the more clear that the cabinet is like a giant rock band with a great front man: once he goes it is fatally reduced. I know that people pay good money to see Queen and The Blockheads, but as far as I am concerned, without Freddie and Ian it is a complete waste of time. True, you still have Priti Patel on bass as it were but it’s not enough.

Then there is the media’s obsessive hatred of Johnson. Back in the Eighties when I held left-wing views about society I often heard people moaning about Tory control of the media. It is hard to credit how strong and aggressive newspapers were in those days, yet even then I was sceptical about the supposed control papers such as the Sun held over public thought. The public’s innate conservativism was reflected by newspapers, not the other way round. It is typical that the Left got this arse about face, and still does. I still have Labour-supporting friends who rant about ‘Tory hate comics’, imagining that dying publications such as the Sun, the Daily Express and the Daily Telegraph are all that stands between them and a socialist Britain.

In any case, the ‘serious’ media, including many ‘broadsheets’, the BBC, Sky News, Channel 4 and ITV news, is now largely controlled by what is best described as a Blairite worldview. This means they hate Johnson. That they cannot see him as one of their own is indicative of how ignorant, unimaginative and saturated in received wisdom these institutions are. For Johnson is very close to the kind of politician they want: a social liberal, a can-kicker on debt, a wildly enthusiastic burner of public money and very much pro mass immigration. What, as they would say, is not to like?

Well, what they don’t like is that he’s posh – though that is OK if you are in the Labour Party – went to Eton and above all has at times described women and certain minorities in jocular and pejorative terms. Yes, in his journalism he deployed a sub-Wodehousian style which while threadbare is not, to any sane grown-up, an indication of fascism.

The man deployed levity! He joked. He mentioned piccaninnies, bumboys and made mild fun of burkas. This is the most serious heresy for the media left. They know perfectly well that what Orwell said is true: every joke is a tiny revolution. The Left’s power increasingly resides in the controlling and policing of social attitudes. Real jokes, jokes that reflected events and behaviour in the world, were effectively banned a long time ago in the comedy revolutions of the Eighties and Nineties. The Left rejoices in snide sarcasm and social satire aimed at white people but jokes that kick against the fortress of identity politics can never be tolerated or forgotten, because if political correctness falls then the whole leftist project falls with it. Johnson’s crime is that he has never taken it seriously enough. That and also having the cheek to say he would stand by the result of the Brexit referendum.

Compare Johnson with the ultimate cuckservative Theresa May, with her capitulation to the Left on identity politics, policing and, don’t forget, her Frida Kahlo bracelet. What an easy ride she got from television news reporters (the most aggressively Blairite operators in the media)! She bought in to all their wrong ideas, accepted their premises and above all was committed to emasculating Brexit in broad daylight while promising the electorate that she was doing the opposite – a good old fashioned member of the political class in other words. If the media elite was not so fanatical and lost in a hammock-spin of fury over Brexit and Trump etc, it would realise that Johnson is not so far from May as his grassroots fans think: he has the primary Tory vice of seeking to work round issues caused by left-wing mischief making and wrongheadedness rather than openly confronting and fighting them. Much of this will be due to entrenched public relations micromanagement inside Number Ten. Nevertheless, if Boris was the kind of freebooting maverick he is often sold as then he would have gone off-piste long ago. He hasn’t. The Conservative Party believes that it is easier and more electorally advantageous to ride the tiger of cultural Marxism rather than fight it, despite it being obvious that making war on PC is a vote-winner and, in the long game, the only way liberty, free trade and the rule of law – in short the centre right’s vision of society – will survive.

It must be recognised that revolution is being propagated in the West but Johnson is yet to show he is taking a different line to the Cameron/May governments. Cameron, a weapons-grade bullshitter, made speeches about social justice as did Theresa May, who in 2017 even instituted the pure socialism of a ‘race audit’ to tackle ‘burning injustices’. Johnson has been more practical with his talk of levelling up, but now Covid-19 has offered the Left the chance of perhaps its biggest power grab since 1945. It doesn’t want the crisis to end, at least not until it has seen society permanently changed, essentially a vast expansion of state power, state spending and interference in private life along with a new drive towards supranational relations to militate against the Brexit revolt. Worryingly, this is the agenda for the global elites. See what the World Economic Forum is doing with its ‘Great Reset’ initiative. Johnson fans often ask me how this can be achieved if there is no Labour government in Britain. Even asking the question reveals naivety: media campaigns, a left-leaning civil service, PR, forums, think-tanks, green papers and the like are the methods employed to chivvy ministers along, rather as a sheepdog herds its charges into an enclosure.

This all means that Johnson’s in-tray is massive and ominously fateful. This is not a time for standard soaking wet Tory tactics: fudging, ‘British compromise’ and managed decline. If this government gets the Covid fallout wrong the consequences will be far reaching.

What should Johnson do? Until it gets the sort of echt centre-left leader it craves, the media likes to present Britain as a pandemonium of dissent and protest. It is true that the revolutionary urge is growing, but race and environmental activists are comparatively small in number yet Johnson’s media handlers evidently live in fear of them or rather in fear of the media’s constant propaganda in their favour. Johnson should get all this in perspective and realise that the ‘silent majority’ does not want to live in the future the Left are dragging us all to. Therefore he is a lot safer than he thinks he is. In any case he is years from a general election so can afford to take gambles, be radical and forthright across the fields of education, law and order, sexual politics and international relations.

The lingering popularity of Margaret Thatcher, which was quite out of proportion to her actual achievements in office, was based on her straight talking and unqualified patriotism. Every prime minister since her time in office has more or less spoken with a forked tongue, aided and abetted by the media. Most reasonable intelligent ordinary people over the age of about 40 know the public have been lied to for years across a range of issues, the biggest one being immigration. Johnson must break the mould and set a precedent. Otherwise, and rather sooner than you think, this country will be truly ungovernable.

Rex Varro is a national newspaper journalist

Online Magazine of Ideas | British Intelligence | The Life of the Mind | Politics and Arts

#british intelligence magazine #rex varro #uk politics #uk media #boris johnson #tories #conservative party

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queen-mabs-revenge · 5 years ago

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With all of the blatant attempts at election fixing going on in Iowa, I think it’s important for people from the US to understand how different the voting and counting process can be. I’ve been living in Ireland for 6 years now, and last year I participated as a tallyperson at our local elections. Essentially, I was an independent vote checker as our ballot boxes were opened and sorted.

Ireland votes by Ranked Voting -- every contest on the ballot has its own individual list of running candidates. Every candidate is listed alphabetically with their party, name, and photo on clear display:

An Irish voter can then rank their votes from 1 - as many candidates are listed (they can stop at their #1, or can as in the ballots above just rank the candidates they feel they want to vote for). This is a good rundown of the system of RCV and how Ireland sorts through its votes.

But for me the biggest culture shock was the tallying. Every district has a box containing all of their ballots. During the tallying, boxes are opened and essentially dumped into a pile onto separate tables to have the individual motions sorted through.

Tallypeople are there with clipboards to watch it all go down. The table sorter will open and lay out each ballot into its respective pile, and the tallyperson will call out the #1 to their fellow tallier next to them. Every district gets a running count of how many ballots and where the #1s went to. Because there are so many tables being counted at once, different parties will have talliers at different tables, but will all share the results at the end. These are unofficial counts, but they’re outrageously accurate, and are so reliable that they function as a quick count that can be put out into the media.

The whole process is as transparent as it possibly can be. While the talliers are usually members of political parties, there’s no incentive to fudge numbers because they’re not the official counts, but public accountability of what will be the official count. The one I participated in was a long day, but an efficient one. Everyone knew what to do, where to go, and the process was clear and simple enough for a first-timer like me to immediately understand what to do.

The public accountability of this system blew my mind. The caucuses in Iowa are more publicly accountable than most states voting systems, and yet it’s still resulting in DNC obfuscation and corruption as they try to put more and more barriers between the public and the vote count. States with primaries won’t have any public accountability. No system is perfect, but a publicly observed, untamperable physical ballot goes a long way to ensure a verifiable result backed and affirmed by the people.

#election 2020 #election2020 #bernie sanders #iowa caucus #ireland

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tiggymalvern · 5 years ago

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The Current Status of Brexit

In January of this year, the UK Parliament voted down the withdrawal agreement from the EU. This was in line with legal advice from the British Attorney General, who said that the Northern Irish backstop part of the agreement wasn’t a good thing to sign. It risked the UK being half-in and half-out of the EU and tied to the EU’s customs and tax policies indefinitely. Two weeks after that, Parliament passed the Brady amendment, which stated that if the problems with the backstop were addressed, they would support the withdrawal agreement. Nine months later, the withdrawal agreement has been amended and the indefinite backstop has been replaced with a 14 month transition period, after which the UK can go its own way on customs and taxes. There’s something of a messy fudge regarding Northern Ireland, which will continue to follow EU rules on customs in some areas while remaining aligned with the UK in others. It’s not perfect – compromises rarely are – but given the complexities of Irish politics, it seems like a pretty reasonable middle ground. Based on the voting in January, this new agreement would be expected to pass. Ah. Well. No. The Ulster Unionist MPs don’t think the changes to the backstop go far enough. Northern Ireland is their priority, and they wanted to have a veto over any future changes made to the arrangements. They didn’t get one, so they withdrew their support. Polling says that if the Tories pass the withdrawal agreement and finalise Brexit after three years of multi-way political fighting and back-stabbing, they will win the next election. On top of any ideological thoughts they might have about leaving the EU (and many Labour MPs are in favour of staying in), Labour have a political interest in stopping the agreement and postponing Brexit. The Labour leader (who personally favours Brexit) has instructed his MPs to vote against the withdrawal agreement. There are a few sticky points with this: 1. Labour fought the last election in 2017 with a manifesto pledge to respect the referendum result and make Brexit happen. They are against a bill that would fulfil their own election pledge. 2. If they fall in with the party line, the Labour MPs who voted for the Brady amendment in January are left to explain why they’ve changed their minds. The Labour leadership have addressed 1 by explaining that they won’t vote for the Brexit agreement as it stands because it would be bad for their constituents. They would support some form of withdrawal from the EU, but not this particular one. The withdrawal agreement hasn’t changed since January except regarding Northern Ireland and the backstop, so 2 remains hanging. 3. A not insignificant number of Labour MPs represent constituencies in the north of England, where voting in the referendum was heavily in favour of leaving the EU. Polling says that those people want to see the current withdrawal agreement pass. Whether or not the withdrawal agreement passes will depend entirely on how many Labour MPs decide to ignore their party leaders and vote for the wishes of their constituents instead. If they defy their leadership, they will be side-lined within the party and sabotage their own political careers. If they vote against the withdrawal agreement, they risk losing their seats at the next election because they annoyed their voters. Some of those Labour MPs are personally against Brexit, even while their constituents voted for it. Their choice is a messy one.

#brexit #oct 2019

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westcountrywriter · 6 years ago

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Should We Stay or Go?

Britain is stumbling towards a deadline that has divided our country in and increasingly has lowered our standing on the world’s stage.

When asked should we stay or leave the European Union in what was ill thought out and badly planned referendum like many others I truly didn’t know which way to vote. Simply there was not enough information available. Being dyslexic I’m blessed with self-doubt, aside from when I’m driving, experience has taught me that too much confidence will result in a facepalm. The implications of this are that I try to have an understanding of something, even at a basic level before I can make an informed choice.

Since the events in 2016, any shred of respect that I held for those who do represent us in parliament has gone. Basic planning, well how I do it, is to work backward from the deadline, say a date in March, a couple of years in the future to the present time. Try to clearly understand what the objective is, look for major things that want to be achieved and secondary ones. Then look for anything that may disrupt those and how might affect the time table. Perhaps a shared boundary which due to his historic nature is a very delicate issue.

After taken all this into account then with pragmatic approach complex negotiations could go ahead with all party’s concerned. Sadly, any result would be fudge but it comes down to trying to get the best one for all concerned.

If those elected had even attempted to do this and there were tangible results then despite my very real misgivings, I’d support us leaving the European Union. Sadly we live in a time of mediocrity in regard to those elected to represent us. After the referendum, our then Prime minister stood down, his ex-public school chum decided not to risk the very likely approaching castrophy. So, after a little infighting our present PM was elected to hold the poison chalice. Very shortly after choosing to call an early election to hopefully give her the mandate to proceed. Of course, we know how well that went.

The major opposition party was doing it’s very best to match the tory party incompetence after electing a leader that did far better in 2015 than expected the grassroots party supported him yet the parliament one did not. The result being constant infighting, leadership battles etc and not presenting a clear choice to the party in power. In some ways the journey started in 1979 in the UK (Ha ha) and in 1980 in the US is entering it’s final stages, we have become an increasingly secular, self-centred society that the individual only cares about themselves or those groups to which they belong/ identify with.

I’m not sure the country will ever recover from the last 2 ½ years regardless if we leave or stay in the European Union. The damage has been done. It is not often that I’m pleased I don’t have children, but I’m glad I don’t. The present situation leaves me with a heavy heart that has dampened any hope held.

#briexit #britain #british politics #planning #eu #dyslexia

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

The fight over whether Democrats should choose Rep. Nancy Pelosi to be the speaker of the House again is really a fight over what Democrats should want in a speaker. Do they need someone skilled at the inside game — tucking small-but-significant provisions into appropriations bills or convincing other House Democrats to campaign on health care a lot and impeachment almost never? Or do they need a master of the outside game — an articulate, engaging spokesperson for the party who can appeal to the party’s liberal base as well as Obama-Trump voters in the Midwest?

Of course, that’s not what the Pelosi debate on Twitter and in op-ed columns has revolved around; instead, Pelosi’s advocates and critics are going around and around about her age and gender. But that debate is different than the one taking place on Capitol Hill, where this decision will actually be made. There, the Pelosi fight is not really about gender — some of Pelosi’s critics are women, and virtually all of them, I think, would accept a female speaker not named Pelosi. It’s not really about ideology either — some of Pelosi’s critics are pretty liberal, as are some of her supporters; opinion about her also seems to be mixed among more conservative Democrats. It’s also not solely about age — Pelosi’s critics are suggesting that the party needs a new generation of leaders, but some were recently touting 66-year-old Marcia Fudge of Ohio for speaker. Fudge is 12 years younger than Pelosi but hardly represents a generational shift. (Fudge on Tuesday announced that she was backing Pelosi and ending her own brief flirtation with running for speaker.)

Instead, based on my conversations on Capital Hill, the case Pelosi’s critics are making is that Democrats, particularly those in competitive districts, would be better off electorally without her as their leader. Yes, other congressional leaders, such as Sen. Mitch McConnell, are unpopular. But there has been an organized push by Republicans to press Democratic House candidates into either aligning themselves with or distancing themselves from Pelosi. The media usually plays along, asking Democratic candidates if they will back her for Democratic leader or speaker. And Pelosi is controversial enough and sufficiently well-known that some House Democratic candidates think it helps to say they won’t back her.1 Not many Senate Republicans felt the need to distance themselves from McConnell during the midterm campaign.

The case Pelosi’s defenders are making on Capitol Hill is that the California Democrat is skilled legislatively — when she was speaker from 2007 to 2011, Democrats pushed through a ton of legislation, most notably the Affordable Care Act. Her defenders make an electoral argument too: Democrats just won the House by a huge margin, with a political strategy (talking about pre-existing conditions, not impeachment) that Pelosi helped craft.

I would argue that both sides are overstating their cases. The strongest argument about Pelosi’s electoral effect is that she is not having much of one — positive or negative. The Democrats won the House under Pelosi’s leadership the three times there was an unpopular Republican president in the White House (2006, 2008, 2018) and lost it the rest of the time. Structural forces like the economy and the president’s popularity exert far, far more influence over election results than the speaker of the House.

“It is likely that any Democratic leader would have won seats in 2006, 2008 and 2018 while losing seats in 2010 and 2014,” said Gregory Koger, a University of Miami political science professor who studies Congress.

He added, “Yes, Pelosi raises a lot of money. But here the key question is, how much money would a different person with the same position raise? Quite likely a similar amount.”

Could Democrats have won more with another leader? Hard to say.

“There’s not much evidence that minority leaders in the House can change election outcomes,” said Matthew Green, a political science professor at Catholic University and author of a 2010 book on House speakers. “In this past election, Republicans ran more anti-Pelosi campaign ads than ads about almost anything else, and it didn’t protect their majority.”

“On the other hand, it’s unclear whether a party leader’s reputation is irrelevant to election outcomes, especially in individual races,” he added. “Yes, House Democrats did well on Election Day, but it’s simply impossible to know whether Pelosi’s negative image kept some Democrats from winning close elections in conservative districts.”

What about Pelosi’s effect in terms of legislation? It’s true, Democrats passed a lot of major legislation in 2009 and 2010. But by far the most important factor in that success was that Democrats had total control of government — they had the presidency, a clear majority in the House and either 59 or 60 seats in the Senate. Pelosi is considered a liberal hero for one specific move: imploring Democrats to keep trying to push through the Affordable Care Act, even after the election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts in early 2010 opened the door to GOP filibusters and was viewed as a signal that voters might be leery of the health care proposal. But Barack Obama, the sitting president, was also in favor of the pushing-ahead strategy. And so was much of the Democratic Party.

Was Pelosi a central figure in stopping the repeal of Obamacare once Republicans won the House (and eventually the Senate and presidency)? Maybe. But remember that repeal actually passed the House, because ultimately, it was a party-line vote and Republicans had the majority. Pelosi couldn’t stop them.

Pelosi kept her party unified while it was in the minority, said Green. “I also think her role in passing the ACA was truly significant, and it would have been difficult for others to replicate it.”

But, Green added, “while Pelosi did exercise some remarkable leadership on passing the ACA, she had a lot of help — and she was hardly the first speaker to accomplish significant legislative leadership.”

“She is a formidable legislator and negotiator, no question, but Steny Hoyer” — the No. 2 Democrat in the House — “would be too,” said Gisela Sin, a political science professor and congressional expert at the University of Illinois.

I’m not saying that Pelosi has been a bad speaker, or that the speaker doesn’t matter. I think the best way to think about this debate is that the speaker matters at the margins, and the question for Democrats is which margin they want to improve. At least for the next few months, Pelosi is probably their best potential speaker to negotiate budget bills with Trump — she’s been doing this for 16 years. She might also be the best at dealing with tensions between various factions within the party. She has already, in the Bush years, figured out how to placate liberal activists who want to see the president impeached without fully going down that road and potentially annoying swing voters.

At the same time, she will not be a fresh face for the party. She won’t become the kind of dynamic public speaker that, say, Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke are. She probably won’t get more popular in competitive congressional districts — and she could become even more toxic.

“Leaders in Congress are expected to excel at both their public and private responsibilities,” said Green. “Pelosi is a tough bargainer and excellent vote counter, but her communication skills are poor, and she does not appeal to many voters outside of Democratic circles.”

So my bottom line is this: Democrats, both in and out of Congress, and the media should probably depersonalize this process a tad. It’s not really about whether or not the party wants Nancy Pelosi, the 78-year-old Democrat from San Francisco. It’s about whether they want a master of the House or someone they can bring to their districts to campaign for them. There are few Democrats who can match her legislative experience — but she is not going to become a wildly popular public figure.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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terkelsenchapman61-blog · 6 years ago

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lucisevofficial · 7 years ago

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Good GOD this was a lot longer than I expected it to be Here, have this character analysis/defense of Corrin, drawn from plot, DLC, support conversations, the drama CD, and a couple headcanons thrown in for fun. Enjoy? @chikoriti @bitrockshooter @gyakusai

As a disclaimer, I think a lot of the reason Corrin resonated with me on a personal level is that I’m a chronically indecisive (to a nigh-harmful extent), transgender child of divorced parents with four siblings of varying ages, two of which are sisters and two of which are brothers (not to say that Corrin is trans [unless that’s your thing {which is is mine}] but I related to the sort of rift between two identities and the game-wide theming of whether identity is forged through birth or action).

So what I’m saying is that Corrin struck all the right notes to be incredibly relatable for me, personally, but I get that that’s pretty much a unique position that I’m in. So bear in mind that I came into Fates with a positive, open position on Corrin already, and that probably informed how I felt about them throughout the game. Okay? Okay.

[Actual confirmed canon is gonna be standard text, strongly implied story/subtext will be italicized]

EARLY LIFE

So let’s start at the beginning. Corrin was born in Valla to Mikoto and Anankos shortly before Anankos’ insane form ravaged the country. When Valla was destroyed, Mikoto and the infant Corrin fled, eventually making their way to Hoshido where Mikoto became Sumeragi’s queen consort (an important distinction because while she held the title, she held no actual power).

So right off the bat Corrin’s starting off on a rough foot – a displaced refugee from a ruined kingdom who was lied to from day one – only his mother, Sumeragi, and Ryoma knew he wasn’t blood-related and for some reason they elected to keep this a secret (likely because of the heavy Hoshidan focus on bloodlines and station of birth – no better way to reject a prince than to reveal he’s actually just some random kid. Corrin wasn’t a prince in Valla, he was the son of a commoner and the queen’s sister. And besides, Valla is in ruins – there’s nothing left to be a prince of.

As tensions between Nohr and Hoshido escalate, the pivotal event happens, where Garon murders Sumeragi and kidnaps Corrin. Corrin’s memory of anything prior to the attack is erased and Corrin is sealed away, locked in a tower in the Northern Fortress. Corrin was convinced that Garon is his true father and that the Nohrians are his true family. Even now, Corrin is consistently lied to – not just about his heritage, but about why he is imprisoned in the fortress – Garon claims it’s to protect him – that he’s too weak, and to venture outside the “magical barrier” of the fortress would invite certain death. This is a common abuse tactic – to insist that any limitations or manipulations are done for the victim’s own good, and that the abuser has their best interests in mind.

THE NORTHERN FORTRESS

And so Corrin begins life at the Northern Fortress – a life of isolation, suffering, and abuse at the hands of his so-called ‘family’. Supports with Gunter reveal how he is treated there, with particular attention being drawn to being starved and being physically abused (being whipped is the example given). On top of that he spends most of his time there alone, with only occasional visits from siblings.

Corrin’s only constant companions are his ‘retainers’, an entourage which includes two prisoners-of-war-turned-practically-slaves. Flora and Felicia were taken in as children to essentially be used as tokens to ensure the Ice Tribe’s submission to Garon’s rule. Flora clearly shows outright disdain not just for Corrin and the Nohrians, but even for her sister for treating Corrin kindly – Flora views any concessions to any Nohrians as turning traitor, despite the fact that they are in similar positions to Corrin themselves. All three are prisoners, not for their own acts but as bargaining chips in a grander political scheme.

Jakob, on the other hand, is pretty much the opposite of Felicia. He’s rude, unsociable, and often blunt to the point of needless cruelty (often making Felicia cry). According to supports, the only reason he softened his heart at all is because of the kindness Corrin showed him.

So these are Corrin’s companions for the majority of his life. (Doing a bit of number fudging, my guess is that Corrin lives in the Northern Fortress for around fifteen years? He’s kidnapped when Hinoka is seven, meaning he’s probably around five, and during the plot of Fates I’d guess he’s in the 17-20 age range). Other occasional visitors included Xander who trained him in swordplay; and Silas, who was very nearly executed for the crime of simply taking Corrin out of the fortress a single time, only being spared by Corrin’s own opposition to the execution. Silas was forbidden from ever returning and Corrin forgot entirely about him – about the only outsider who genuinely tried to be friends without being there by force.

Because it’s important to remember that Jakob, Flora, and Felicia were all there by force – they had no say in who they served. I’d have to imagine that wears on your social skills a bit, right? Like, your only friends are people who are FORCED to be your friends. How can you really get a sense for how people feel or act in a situation like that? Flora despises Corrin yet puts on a happy face and serves him with the utmost care and attention. Felicia does the same but truly loves him. Same results, vastly different motivations.

Some of the supports are kind of startling if you think about them – often they’re played as jokes, but they’re really telling of the sort of childhood Corrin had. Corrin’s life goals were to see things like “a town plaza”, a “street food stall”, and “bugs”. Imagine spending your entire adolescence in a single building, with only a handful of friends trapped there with you. It’s entirely likely Corrin’s missing a whole subset of normal skills and knowledge. Does he know what the ocean looks like? A forest? All he can see is the desolation of northern Nohr, so he only knows about the beauty in the world through stories and pictures.

ACTION ANALYSIS

And I think that childhood informs a lot of the rationale behind Corrin’s foolishness. It’s not just naïveté; I don’t think that’s a strong enough word. It’s aggressive ignorance. It’s the result of a childhood of abuse, manipulation, and isolation; of just as many lies from loved ones as from enemies. It’s the culmination of years of social deprivation and a fundamental lack of understanding of how humans interact, of the true nature of what humans do.

(I like to headcanon this is why Corrin is so quick to fall in love – anyone showing him genuine kindness and love without prompting is a marriage candidate in his mind, so unused to such affection is he.)

If I’m allowed to touch on some slightly-outside-game-canon stuff, remember that during this time the Concubine Wars were in full swing – Garon’s children were literally murdering each other while vying for power, to the point where the pool of candidates narrowed down to just four. Did Corrin have other siblings that visited him? Did those siblings just stop coming one day, vanishing forever without explanation? Did those siblings die at the hands of Xander or Camilla, both fearsome warriors with unmatched skill? It’s never really answered in canon, but it’s an easy assumption to make.

So you get a Corrin’s who’s just a fucking dumbass. An unapologetic, unreasonably ignorant fool who constantly thinks that every single person in the world has light and goodness in them. And in that sense, I fucking adore Corrin. I love him so much. I love that he’s a character who has endured all the worst the world has to offer – going from refugee to political prisoner, suffering abuse, starvation, all manner of intense cruelty, and yet he still believes in the good in everyone. Everyone has a chance for redemption, everyone has a shred of good in their soul that can be brought out through peaceful dialogue – even unrepentant bastards like Hans and Iago.

And I love that the game throws it back in his face. His belief in good gets him into a heap of trouble time and time and time again, but he refuses to stop believing people are good. And I love that so much. So many (male, especially) FE lords are characters whose arcs are essentially them learning that strength needs to be tempered with compassion – look at characters like Chrom, Ephraim, Hector, and Ike. Their characters usually start off as these rough-and-tumble rowdy boys, and they must slowly learn responsibility and kindness over the course of the game.

Corrin’s character arc is the opposite – he starts off believing in the good in everyone, showing compassion for everything from wounded animals to enemy soldiers to fucking monsters. It’s an attitude only a sheltered Disney prince could possibly have. He’s an avid reader, so he likely spent his childhood reading about grand heroes who solve problems neatly, who always save the day and get the girl. It’s not until he leaves the Northern Fortress that he learns that war is real, painful, violent, and never, ever happy. There are no happy endings to be found in Fates – each victory is a loss for someone else. Whichever route he chooses means a single, straight march of blood and death and violence that culminates in the murder of his siblings and the death of his father, the only father he has ever known.

Literally the first thing that happens when he leaves the fortress is that Garon hands him a sword and tells him to kill two unarmed prisoners. He of course chooses to spare them, leading to the plot of the game, where he is forced to confront the foolishness of his idealism time and time again – The death of his mother, Hans attacking the Hoshidan soldiers, the execution of the Chevois rebels, Iago slaughtering the townspeople in Shirasagi, etc.

One important note is the Zola subplot in Birthright – even after Zola tries to kill him, Corrin still believes Zola’s lies about wanting to assist him. And he’s betrayed, stabbed in the back again. But it doesn’t stop him from believing that people are good! No matter how many times it comes back to bite him. Essentially half the plot is “sheltered dumbass doesn’t understand how war works, majorly fucks things up for everyone else”.

And remember that Corrin’s loyalty to his “father” isn’t unreasonable – even despite the cruelty he endures, he’s forever in pursuit of the praise and love of this man who he believes to be his father. This is fed into by Xander, who insists that “Garon wasn’t always like this.” Again, a common thread for abuse victims is for them to insist that it hasn’t always been that bad. In this case, Garon used to be a good man – the transition from man to monster was so gradual that it’s entirely understandable that Xander went along with it. Where is the line between strict king and tyrant? Nohr is a hard land, and austerity is necessary for survival. At what point did that austerity become cruelty?

So Corrin can scarcely even see the manipulation he endures – he sees Garon’s wickedness but is assured that it’s necessary. That father knows best. Nohr is strong, even if its people suffer, so Garon knows what it takes to rule. And Corrin accepts that – he hears his siblings talk Garon up so much, so Garon’s disdain for him must be a personal failure on his part. And he works desperately to rectify that and make his father proud.

META-GAME STUFF

I get people not relating to Corrin’s decisions, but I think Corrin isn’t meant to be as relatable as people think. I never really understood Corrin to be a self-insert as much as his own character, with thoughts, ideas, and motivations separate from the player. And I can see that being grating for people who are used to controlling an avatar, not a character. Even Robin is more of a mix of the two – think about all the decisions you make in Awakening compared to the single, all-important decision you make in Fates.

As for how incredibly Corrin-centric the game is, I do think that’s a bit of a misstep, but I think I get what they were going for. Take the Nohrian characters – even at their relatively young age, the older siblings are stained with blood: they are perpetrators of murders both on the battlefield and off. I think the obsession with Corrin comes from a view that Corrin is Nohr’s light – the last hope of goodness in a royal family wracked with pain, misery, and treachery.

Corrin was in the Northern Fortress, free from the concubine wars and being trained as a soldier, so Corrin reached adulthood without getting blood on his hands – likely the only Nohrian royal other than Elise who did. Nohr is a dark land, ruled by dark, hateful people. It’s a land of famine and plagues, of bandits and monsters and murderers. Almost every single Nohrian character has a bloodstained past – except Corrin. Except this naïve little prince with his heart of solid fucking gold.

So I get everyone being obsessed with him – Xander seeing Corrin as a chance for Nohr’s rebirth into a kinder, gentler kingdom, and Camilla seeing Corrin as a precious treasure to be protected at all costs.

As for the Hoshidans, I think the drive comes from the honor-and-duty-bound nature of Hoshidan royalty. It’s heavily modeled on feudal Japan, and I think the loss of Corrin was seen as an immense, irredeemable failure. I love Hinoka with my whole heart, so let’s take a look at her – Corrin’s loss drove her into spiraling depression and then reckless, selfless heroism. She became a soldier at age seven, vowing to never again fail to the extent to which she failed Corrin.

Seven years old! And already such a strict, unbreakable sense of honor and pride. An entire life lived in pursuit of fixing a single mistake. And you see that elsewhere – Ryoma’s ritual suicide and Takumi’s possession being the result of his unending grief and abysmal self-image.

And again to touch on my own life experiences, I don’t think that’s unreasonable – having four siblings creates this sort of mob-mentality protectiveness. Any slight against a sibling is a slight against the whole family. Corrin is not just himself, but a symbol, and the focal point of the conflict between both the two nations and the two royal families (which are two separate but interlinked conflicts).

DRAGON BLOOD

The last thing I’m going to touch on is Corrin’s dragon heritage, because I think that’s an important facet that isn’t explicitly touched on a lot in the game.

Corrin is the first manakete lord in the series (which is fucking AWESOME I love shapeshifters and manaketes most of all), and is also the first time we really get to see a manakete’s early life unfold. Characters like Nowi, Tiki, Xane, Myrrh, etc, are all thousands of years old, despite their appearances. Corrin isn’t – he’s like twenty. He’s young and foolish – exhibiting the same foolish childishness as dragons like Xane, Nowi, and Young Tiki. Despite the burden of war on his shoulders, he likes to read books and play games and learn new things. Half of his my room dialogues are him inviting people into his treehouse to play games with him, after all!

But he’s also not human – there’s a disconnect between him and others, even if he doesn’t fully understand it. Everything, even his character design (pointed ears, reptile eyes, fangs, bare feet) puts him apart from “normal” humans, and with no explanation given to him, he’s likely left to assume that’s his own fault. That he’s a freak and a monster. Does he notice that when he’s in the Northern Fortress? Does he think that he was locked away because of his monstrous nature?

If we take Corrin to be a half-breed in the same sense of characters like Nah, then it’s likely he suffers the same problems that all manaketes do. The softly advancing madness, the uncontrollable destructive urges that he needs to balance with his own internal desire to be compassionate and kind. A desire to do good despite the ever-present sensation that he is not normal, nor is he even human.

Honestly I just think making him a dragon was an interesting narrative choice, but the details were all lost in the grand scope of the rest of the plot.

CONCLUSION

Okay this is finally wrapping up and I hope any of that made a goddamn lick of sense. I adore Corrin not just for what he is (his fantastic character design, his viability as a unit regardless of chosen class, etc) but for what he looks like in the grand scheme of the series. He’s a pretty unique lord, all things considered (not just because he’s a manakete) – he has a character arc that runs counter to many of the popular lords and in fact has more in common with characters like Eirika and Lyn, and I think we need that. This series in particular needs that.

At the risk of using a term like “softboy”, I adore that we have a both soft and monstrous protagonist – a half-breed, vicious monster who is defined chiefly by traditionally “feminine” traits (at least in the series history) – staunch pacifism, compassion to all, a belief that diplomacy comes before action.

I love that we have a character who overcomes a childhood of abuse and manipulation to be a fundamentally good person. We can see that Nohr twisted the royal siblings into monsters (again, barring Elise, who is Small) – Leo, Camilla, and Xander all say and do despicable things if you choose Birthright. And if you choose Conquest, they sit by and watch atrocities happen without intervening.

Corrin doesn’t stand for that. For him, everyone deserves happiness. Everyone deserves a second chance, and a third chance, and a fourth chance, and he would willingly let himself die rather than stop letting people try to be something better. And I just love this fucking idiot dragon so fucking much sajhfdkjasdf

Sorry this was so fucking long I have a lot of thoughts about Fates and when people trash Corrin I just *knife emoji*

Anyway I was listening to Mechanical Minds by Nordic Giants as I wrote this so I’m gonna drop in a relevant section of lyrics as my parting words:

More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

#im sorry this is so long #fire emblem fates #character analysis #fire emblem corrin #mel writes a gosh darn essay because she loves a dumb dragon #fef #its.....3000 words #ive gotten a few questions so yes this is okay to rb!

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tommyoboe · 4 years ago

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MANCHESTER - PART SIXTEEN.

Things are on the up!

Ever since arriving back in Manchester last Monday, oboe circumstances have improved tremendously.

I do apologise to my Monday student, however, as I spent a good half of our session looking at takeaways to go for, with nothing springing out at me from the slim fridge and cupboard selection I had. Oops!

It was half worth it. No aioli for the calamari but instead some paprika spiced fusilli shaped crisps.

(Snob.)

I reunited with my oboe properly the day after, and I was not convinced of its improvements at first, but as the days went on and I scraped little bits of reed here and there, the sound came into its own.

First I had to deliver in a wind sectional for a repertoire session on Haydn's Symphony No. 104. The first half of the section was pretty embarrassing, even though this did not phase me. I was breathing every other beat and not coming through with the usual standards I uphold myself to. With some adjustments results dramatically improved!

At short notice I decided to complete my deferred formative assessment on the Friday. I can't say I was that happy with how I played, but the feedback I received was lovely and constructive so I'm highly grateful for that. It's reassuring that often I am my biggest critic.

I completed some self-recording later that day and it was at this point I heard my abilities properly return. More importantly I was able to see why this was and take measures that would ensure maintenance of this over the coming days.

What a great feeling as I headed back to Birmingham (absolutely cannot get enough) for the weekend. There a wonderful turkey burger, Galaxy and salted caramel mousse awaited me. What treats.

The weekend was full of indulgence, as it should be. The majority of these were obtained at the King's Heath farmers market, including a steak and ale pie, dark salted caramel chocolate and a chocolate and hazelnut bun.

Then came the usual Sunday visit to our favourite Early Bird Bakery: this time the choices were a chocolate fudge brownie croissant and banoffee cruffin. These were obviously life-changing, and put us in a relaxing food coma, just in time for the much anticipated finale of Line of Duty. Now, I don't know if anyone else thought the same as us, but we were left shouting at the TV as the final credits came round. So many questions still to be answered.

I was greeted on my return to Manchester in the only suitable way: rain. Lots of it. I was soaked upon my return from playing in oboe class, but it was worth it, because I really enjoyed performing well again. I played the whole first movement a Bach sonata with accompaniment, which, after weeks of problems with the instrument and not getting past a bar of Haydn the week before, felt liberating. It's these little things that remind me that I love it. I love playing and performing and the thrill it brings. Ah, yes.

Tuesday was the full orchestra session for Haydn's Symphony No. 104 with Mark Elder, chief conductor of the Hallé Orchestra. It was a morning of mixed energy music wise, naturally so as dinner was approaching at 1pm. However, there was a buzz of excitement to be back in a large space playing music together, with the most players I have experienced since beginning my tenure here in September.

My lesson on Wednesday was superb. I enjoyed engaging with the new music I was playing; taking on great suggestions from my teacher for detail, and having an instrument I had full control of. More of this, please.

Challenging but productive practice has dominated the rest of the week, as well as voting in another election and seeing the fallout down in Birmingham during another weekend with my boy Cameron. That fallout was pretty shit, let's be honest, so all the more reason to indulge once again. Friday teatime we enjoyed fish and chips from the local chippy, and I have to say, it was some of the best fish I have ever had! My contribution was a salted caramel brownie I brought down from one of my favourite Manc coffee shops, Takk. It was the least I could do.

These last couple of days have been more subdued because of the gloomy weather, but we still made the most of our time, grabbing fruity and chocolately coffee from Stirchley's Pause, along with a blueberry cinnabuffin to share. This came before pasta bake for tea; a cute film with cookies and ice cream, and looking at flats in our dream home of Berlin. One day.

Today was yet another Early Bird visit, in which we went for a biscoff cruffin and banana and salted caramel cake. One of the lovely members of staff said 'see you next weekend' as we were on our way out, so looks like we'll have to head back next weekend!

In summary, being back on form when it comes to playing and having heaps of sweet treats has made me a happy boy over these last two weeks. I feel very lucky to be in the existence I am at the moment, so long may this feeling continue.

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theevenprime · 4 years ago

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I got dipshits in the notes trying to drag me because they can't understand the difference between "vote someone with blatant authoritarian designs out of office by overwhelming enough margins that they can't fudge the results, and do so now, before they've accumulated the power to decisively interfere in future elections" and "cast a protest vote against someone who already has the power to rig an election or overturn its results."

I know everyone on Tumblr is a teenager/twenty-something, but that is an impressive amount of stupid/willful misunderstanding.

You know, you're probably a single-issue voter on way more issues than you'd think, if they were on the ballot.

Like, before 2020, I never thought I'd say something like, "I'm not fond of his running mate, but I really like how I can count on him to support the peaceful transfer of power following an election." That's my one issue now. That's how I'll be voting.

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joshuajacksonlyblog · 6 years ago

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Decentralized Exchange Hodl Hodl Is Launching a Bitcoin-Based Prediction Market

Hodl Hodl, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that it is launching a prediction market on Bitcoin. Slated for launch in the spring of 2019, it would be the first Bitcoin-based prediction market to go live on Bitcoin’s mainnet.

A prediction market is a novel application of blockchain technology. The betting platforms allow users to secure odds, futures and outcomes with smart contracts. Two users place funds (traditionally, ether) into a smart contract to bet on futures for any given outcome; when the outcome arrives, the smart contract automatically pays out to the winner.

Most prediction markets are built on blockchains with a more flexible smart contract language, like Ethereum. Augur, for example, pioneered the model when it launched in July 2018 as the first decentralized prediction market to make use of Ethereum’s ERC-20 token contract. Other prediction markets have followed suit, including Gnosis on Ethereum and Bhodi on QTUM.

Despite Augur’s frontrunning status, Hodl Hodl believes that it can improve on aspects of the platform’s operations — specifically, in its solution to the “oracle problem:” How, for example, does the smart contract know who wins the World Cup, if bitcoin closed above $3,850 by midnight on March 8, or who won an election?

You need software and people (oracles) to feed this data to the smart contract. The inherent counterparty risk becomes an issue of trust and accuracy: How do you keep oracles honest and how do you verify their inputs? To mitigate this risk, Augur leverages decentralized oracles. Multiple users are in charge of inputting data/results to make sure that the reported results of an outcome are accurate and that the smart contract pays out to the winning prediction.

Decentralizing the sources of inputs, in theory, should ensure that every prediction market’s payout is consistent with real-world outcomes, but some opponents argue that there aren’t enough participants on these decentralized platform to prevent bad actors from gaming the system.

“We're approaching this slightly differently,” Roman Ditko, Hodl Hodl’s chief technology officer, told Bitcoin Magazine. “The oracle [is] the two parties participating in a contract. In case of a dispute, Hodl Hodl steps in with its third key and is able to influence the decision.” It is the company’s belief that, whereas a decentralized system for judging bet outcomes can be influenced by bad actors, a peer-to-peer contract might be more ironclad.

To contrast with the established model of prediction markets, on February 27, 2019, Hodl Hodl announced their own prediction market, the first to be built on the Bitcoin blockchain. Additionally, their oracle system, according to Ditko, “is not decentralized — we have a central server. But we're non-custodial. In the case of a prediction contract, both parties lock bitcoins in a 2-of-3 [key] escrow. Both of their keys are required to send the locked funds somewhere — unless they both sign the release transaction, bitcoins cannot be moved from there.”

Under this system, there is no incentive to try and dispute the outcome of a bet, as the funds will not be released if the two parties disagree. If someone fudges the results of an outcome and both parties claim the coins, a tiebreaker ensues.

“In case of a dispute,” said Ditko, “both parties may actually never come to a decision to unlock the funds, in which case Hodl Hodl can step in and use its third key along with one of the parties keys to unlock funds in their favor. Hodl Hodl cannot unilaterally move bitcoins to wherever it wishes to because we still need one of the user's keys (which we don't have) to sign the release transaction.” The company warns, however, that forcing the impartial mediator to step in may negatively impact a user’s ability to convince other users to enter new contracts.

One solution to this problem could be having a third party mediator who, unlike Hodl Hodl, is not a stakeholder in the situation in any regard. Ditko is entertaining the idea, telling Bitcoin Magazine that “in the future we might have a user group called ‘mediators’ who would take on the role Hodl Hodl currently performs in case of a dispute — with a third key.” He added, however, “it's probably wrong to call that party an oracle, as the decision is not made by that single party.”

“At launch,” he said, “we want to keep it as simple as possible and then see what needs to be improved.”

Bitcoin Magazine asked Hodl Hodl to explain how its reputation system works but has not yet received a response.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

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#IFTTT #Cryptocracken Tumblr

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heedra · 4 years ago

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I know I already replied in the comments but let me elaborate on this: by fudging, I don’t necessarily mean actual vote tampering; I also am including stuff like deliberately weird reporting of voting results in a way that either emphasized or detracted from candidate’s actual successes in the primaries depending on whether or not they were the favored racehorse of the hour. I’m talking about stuff like the utter disaster that was the Iowa caucus, and the sweet time that was taken to amend it. Maybe Bernie wouldn’t have won even if the fucking clowns hadn’t been cavorting in full force, but the fact that there was so much needling and running around in circles over what should have been pretty straightforwards demonstrates an active disregard for fairly hearing out the votes and interests of the actual voting masses. That’s still untrustworthy, even if it isn’t active tampering, and it absolutely doesn’t paint them as actively interested in working for the good of the people- they weren’t even willing to give a candidate with a lot public of momentum a fair shake at the podium. I, personally, think that its pretty undemocratic to jump through hoops to try and make sure the guy you want wins, even if the hoops you jump through aren’t technically unconstitutional, and I don’t trust people who do it. This is the reason that the choice to vote or not is so difficult for people right now: because as important as it is to get Trump out, voting Blue unquestioningly no matter who they fucking strongarm onto the platform just teaches them they can keep behaving that poorly and still receive widescale public support. I can totally understand this frustration, and also how frustrating it would be to *have* this frustration and then get talked down to like you’re an idiot for having it. I think continuing to make it the center of political conversation is unproductive. Voting, for me, even in a situation right now where I do feel obligated to do so, is never enough on its own. It’s certainly not enough in a situation where we may not be able to even trust the results of the upcoming election, let alone vote at all in some places. Absolutely vote if you can but like, I’m sick and tired of people putting it on a pedestal when it’s literally never going to be enough to just have a democrat in office when it’s our entire two-party system that needs an overhaul. These are all valid criticisms for me to have, I think. These are all valid misgivings for other people to have. I think that it’s going to be a lot more productive for everyone right now to focus less on pushing the point of whether or not to vote in this election and to focus more on making sure that voting, and the election process, becomes fair and protected again, which is not something that’s going to happen through voting alone, because both parties have proven they have their own methods of exploiting the system as it stands.

like my personal opinion right now is that people should vote AND then raise absolute hell immediately after no matter who gets elected. but like there are extremely fair reasons to choose not to vote for Biden, it's an extremely difficult decision either way, and I really don't care for it when those critical concerns abt the Dems get glossed over. Also like...not to be a pessimist but there is every chance that this election is going to be impossibly crooked. I think there is every likelihood that that will be the case. So it irks me when people fixate on the voting part as if that will stop fascism on the rise when rising dictatorial regimes are kinda famous for uh, disregarding the sanctity of the electoral system. Like, donating food to food banks is important and people should absolutely do it, but if you learn that your local food bank is taking all of its donations and throwing them into a volcano instead of distributing them, you should probably prioritize stopping your food banks shitty misconduct over donations until you are sure your donations are no longer being deposited straight into a lake of fire. weird analogy but I hope it makes sense

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