#era: binary code

[dontbotheraziraphale]

I dont want david tennant to ever abandon his current fashion era. Fuzzy stripes and non-binary pin during the day, Crowley-coded genderless fuckery by night. Need to be able to count on this for years to come

[orphiclovers]

I was going to say something like "Singshong must really want Yoo Joonghyuk to be a silver fox since he gets old and sexy grey hairs TWO whole seperate times - 0th round and astronout, as opposed to Kim Dokja ,who visibly ages ZERO times" but that got me thinking about other characters and I realized you could create a binary of if a character is childcoded or oldcoded in Singshong's mind, regardless of actual age. So I did.

Old-coded Adults (adults in an older body OR aged due to outside circumstances)

Yoo Joonghyuk - complete silver fox as Zero, aged like fine wine as an astronout.

Han Sooyoung - 50+ years old in Kaizenix, "still looks as young as ever" - Kim Dokja says this about actual grandpa Zero too, let's just say he's a MILF hunter. I'm still counting this.

Jung Heewon - 37 years old as Erich Striker which is not THAT old but I'm adding it for the fact she's a guy (need to make a list with what genders SS associate with kimcom too...)

Lee Hyunsung - 47yo as Bilston Farmer

Yoo Sangah - reincarnated as Tang Sanzang. Don't know how old he was but probably middle aged or young adult?

Child-coded Adults (adults in a younger body)

Kim Dokja - 51% has an adult mind but body shrinks to a kid

Secretive Plotter - looks like a kid when runs out of probability, still mentally an adult

that one fist guy on reincarnation island, mentally adult, physically kid.

1863 Han Sooyoung - posseses a 13 year old in her 30s.

Old but (more or less) physically AND mentally a child

Oldest Dream - old but mentally and physically a kid

ABFD - same thing

41st/Disaster of Floods - gets reincarnated as a (dokkaebi) baby without memories for a while.

Dokkaebi King - Goes from ancient with middle aged appearance to mentally childish and childlike body.

Eternal teenagers

Shin Yoosung -Yoo Mia side story/1865th era, looks like a teen but mentally is older due to regression shenanigans.

Biyoo - is old as balls even not counting pre-reincarnation years but human form looks like a teen regardless.

Jang Hayoung - in a 15 yo body, is in her twenties

Disaster of Questions - 127 years old, looks 17.

This is just off the top of my head, there is probably more. Jesus I did not expect this list to get so long

[vax-official]

Back in an era when computers were the size of a room and only government agencies and large companies could afford to have one, IBM was king of the mainframes. But they had a lineup of several incompatible computers, some intended for scientific uses (the IBM 7090/7094), others were for commercial uses (the IBM 7080 and IBM 7010). IBM wanted to have a single unified architecture so that software could be exchanged between them and customers could upgrade from cheaper, lower powered machines to more higher powered ones.

What came out of it was the IBM System/360 line of mainframes (referring to the concept of "360 degrees" making up a circle) that ended up being the dominant mainframe computer for decades to come, it got cloned by competitors, and its descendants are still being produced to this day.

The IBM System/360 had many features that since then became foundational for modern computing.

An entirely binary number system. While some computers (such as the IBM 7090) used a binary system, others operated exclusively in decimal mode, encoded using binary coded decimals using 4 bits for each digit (such as the IBM 7080 and IBM 7010). Others went a step further and were only capable of storing decimal digits 0 to 9 (like the IBM 7070).

To store textual information, each character was stored in 8 bits, establishing the dominance of 8 bit bytes. Previous systems would typically use 6 bits to store text, and would usually only enable a single case of letters. The IBM 7070 didn't provide access to bits and characters were stored in 2 decimal digits. It was also one of the first machines to support the then new ASCII standard, although notably it provided much better support for IBM's proprietary EBCDIC encodings which came to dominate mainframe computing.

Even though it was a 32-bit system, memory was byte addressed. Previous systems would access memory one word at a time (for the IBM 7090, this was 36 bits per word, for the IBM 7010, this was 10 digits plus a sign), or had variable length words and accessed them through their last digits (IBM 7080 and IBM 7010). The IBM System/360 however accessed 32-bit words as 4 bytes by their lowest address byte.

Two's complement arithmetic. Previous machines (even the binary IBM 7090) would encode numbers as sign/magnitude pairs, so for example -3 would be encoded identically to 3 except for the sign bit. Two's complement encoding, now the standard in modern computers, makes it much easier to handle signed arithmetic, by storing -3 as a large power of 2 minus 3.

[pleasantmsp]

Initial Thoughts on Downfall

I think it's fair to assume the following so far: Trist = Sarenrae. Ayden = Pelor. Emhira = Raven Queen. Asha = Melora. S.I.L.A.H.A. = Corellon. The Emissary = Erathis (except not exactly like the others)

The gods literally putting themselves (or parts of themselves) into mortal bodies so they could infiltrate Aeor is so incredibly interesting. I love their art and I love the binary code that clued us all in to each of their true identities.

Erathis not actually showing up is sooooo interesting. Tal is playing a yearning gay so well too. We love the gay drama of it all.

Literally posted on Twitter how I was hoping and begging for a mention, a crumb of Ioun and then literally 10 mins later, we got Arcadia AKA Ioun, goddess of knowledge, my beloved. I love a goddess of knowledge and I love Ioun so much! I could go on and on about Ioun but I'll save it. I'll just say that Brennan is playing Ioun exactly how I'd want, how I'd imagine she would be in this situation. Being so knowledgeable, wanting the knowledge she doesn't have, being a voice of reason. I love it so much!

Laura is playing the Raven Queen so fucking well holy shit. She is literally a child of this era and her knowledge of Aeor and the mages of this time is like no other god's. All the times she's mentioned knowing about the mortals here, every time she talks about death, man it is exactly how I'd think the Raven Queen would be here and I'm living for it.

I have one more thing but I decided to give it its own post. It's about Tal's portrayal of Melora. I have Thoughts™

[familyabolisher]

Young’s protocol banked on a naturally available plasticity in the growing body that would induce phenotypic changes during childhood growth. Yet sex was not given by plasticity—it had to be grown. If it was plastic, then there were no guarantees that the originally mixed character of an embryo or infant would inevitably reach a binary form. This instability was precisely what drew researchers to experiments on intersex bodies in the first place, for in displacing the gonadocentric paradigm they cast serious doubt on whether humans were really sexually dimorphic, even as medicine promised to capitalize on their plasticity to produce a binary. To resolve this instability, the plasticity of sex was coded in this clinical research as an abstracted form of whiteness, a latent capacity to be reformed and transformed into something new. That most of Young’s intersex patients were white indexes how the “abnormal” body of a child diagnosed with hermaphroditism could be made valuable through its plasticity, the promise of alteration and normalization through medical intervention. That the few black intersex children and families who spent time at the Institute were regarded by its staff as more “difficult,” combative, irrational, and ultimately disposable points to the racialization of plasticity in this era. Young saw an abstract sense of alterability in white children, while he projected a fungibility onto black children that has a genealogy in American medicine stretching back to slavery. As was the case more broadly at Hopkins, doctors like Young regarded black children as suitable experimental subjects because of presumed access and disposability, whereas white children who were subject to similar procedures were framed as exhibiting the potential for a normative cure or at least improved normality.

Jules Gill-Peterson, Histories of the Transgender Child

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

AsOTD - in Columbus, Ohio yesterday...

the comfort level that rises when power is given to certain parties... I sure hope we survive this next era... 🙏

(Mary Elaine LeBey)

* * * *

Don’t fall for “the red mirage”

November 18, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

The outcome of the election has been difficult to absorb because of the deliberate distortion of the scale and severity of the losses suffered by Democrats. We were warned before Election Day that there would be a “red mirage” that would create the illusion of a Republican victory in the early hours of Election Night. The hope was that Democrats would overtake Republicans as early leads from “same day” votes were offset by mail ballots and early voting tallies. Because Kamala Harris did not overtake Trump on Election Night, discussion of the “red mirage” was dislodged from the news cycle by insufferable articles that fall into two broad categories: “Scold the Democrats” and “Who’s to Blame?”.

But the red mirage was real—and it persists, distorting the true outcome of the 2024 election and deepening the disappointment of Democrats. The red mirage persists because of a disinformation campaign to create the illusion of a “mandate” that Trump did not earn on Election Day. It also persists because of the laziness, imprecision, and lack of perspective in the legacy media.

Over the weekend, Trump's share of the popular vote slipped below 50%--to 49.96%. It will continue to decline as California completes its tally over the next week. Kamala Harris currently has 48.24% of the popular vote. See Cook Political Report, 2024 National Popular Vote Tracker.

Failing to garner a majority of the election day vote does not constitute a mandate (no matter how many times Trumpworld repeats that lie). Moreover, Kamala Harris’s current 1.7% deficit in the popular vote qualifies as the third narrowest loss in the last 136 years! See Meidas Touch, Resistance HQ Bulletin 6 - by Ron Filipkowski.

Trump's alleged “landslide” in electoral college ballots is also a mirage. As noted in the Meidas Touch article above, Kamala Harris could have won the electoral college if she had garnered an additional 238,000 votes in three swing states.

The tales of a “mandate” or “landslide” are fiction. The election was extraordinarily close—as predicted all along. But elections are binary and being “extraordinarily close” does not convert a loss into a win.

Still, being “extraordinarily close” should help us put the 2024 election into perspective. Many readers are understandably bewildered by the (incorrect) notion that the “majority” of Americans voted for Trump. As I explained in an earlier newsletter, 93 million Americans eligible to vote did not do so. Those 93 million eligible voters dwarf the 76.5 million vote total currently held by Trump.

Of course, we do not know how those 93 million eligible voters would have voted, but we do know—as a matter of fact—that they did not vote for Trump in 2024. So, let’s excise from our narrative that the “majority of Americans” voted for Trump. That is not true—not by a long shot!

Finally, the red/blue maps that depict Trump's electoral college victory are grossly misleading. Land does not vote. People do. So, the traditional “winner take all” color-coding as depicted in the Cook Political Report map creates a distorted image of scale of Trump's victory in 2024. A state that Trump won by several thousand votes is solidly red—effectively erasing the millions of Democrats who supported Kamala Harris.

Don’t be misled or fooled. Don’t allow yourself to be lied to by bad actors who seek to use the “red mirage” to create the illusion that Trump has a mandate to trample the rule of law or ignore the Constitution. He does not. About one-third of eligible voters cast their ballots in favor of Trump. That is not a mandate. It is a narrow victory that is being contorted into a red mirage.

Most importantly, do not allow the red mirage to deepen your disappointment or undermine your faith in our ability to recover from the 2024 electoral outcome. Victory is tantalizingly close at hand. We must keep the faith and stay the course, despite our understandable disappointment.

GOP margin in the House continues to shrink

To place an exclamation point on the above story, determined Democrats are curing ballots in federal and state races to great success. Rather than giving up, these brave souls have thrown themselves into the fight even though they are as disappointed as the rest of us.

The House currently has 218 GOP seats and 212 Democratic seats—with five seats to be called. Democrats currently lead in two of the five still contested races, suggesting that Democrats will have at least 215 votes—with the possibility of 216. Those margins would give Republicans only a two or three seat margin of control in the House—a weak position that will require Republicans to rely on Democratic cooperation on many issues. See NYTimes, Tracking the Remaining House Races. Accessible to all.

And because Trump has nominated three GOP House members to his cabinet, it is possible that Republicans will have a one-vote margin for the early months of the 119th Congress. (Vacant seats in the House must be filled by special election, not by gubernatorial appointment. See Ballotpedia, Filling vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives.)

Democrats have fought their way back to a narrow margin because of the incredible vote curing efforts on behalf of Derek Tran (CA 45) who was losing by 3,000 votes but now leads by 36 votes. Those efforts continue—as do efforts for other candidates, including Adam Gray (CA-13), who is trailing by 2,004 votes. And I hope that there is an all-hands-on-deck ballot curing effort for Christina Bohannan (IA-1), who currently trails by only 801 votes!

While the failure of Democrats to gain control of the House is a bitter pill, we must remember that Speaker Mike Johnson was required to rely on Democrats multiple times in the 118th Congress to pass legislation. That same phenomenon will be in effect in the 119th Congress.

Moreover, eight House Republicans won races by less than 10,000 votes. Trump's lurch to the right with this cabinet nominations should cause those Republicans to consider whether they are vulnerable in 2026 if they support the extremist agenda implied by his cabinet nominations.

Watch Professor Laurence Tribe explain why he believes that democratic institutions will prevail

During the 2024 campaign, commentators frequently referred to “the end of democracy” if Trump won. That phrasing was meant to evoke the urgent threat posed by a second Trump presidency. But it should not have been understood to suggest that democracy would literally end if Trump won. The only way that could happen is if hundreds of millions of Americans rolled over and refused to battle for democracy. That isn’t going to happen—because you and I are not going to let it happen.

Professor Laurence Tribe appeared on MSNBC to explain why he believes that democratic institutions will survive the stress test of second Trump presidency. See MSNBC, Laurence Tribe: It’s not over. The resistance is about to ignite.

If you are worried about democracy—and you should be—you should listen to Professor Tribe explain why he believes that our democracy will endure and prevail. As Professor Tribe explains, the United States benefits from a decentralized government that can serve as a strong counterweight to Trump’s authoritarian ambitions. It’s within this space — the system of checks and balances — that the resistance will emerge.

Watch Professor’s Tribe’s explanation. It will renew your confidence—as it did for me! Most importantly, Professor Tribe reminds us that everyone has a role in the resistance to Trump's plans to circumvent and weaken the Constitution and rule of law!

President Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use US missiles to strike Russia.

Legacy media is reporting that President Biden has authorized Ukraine to use US missiles to strike “within Russia.” That description confused me. After reading several articles, it is clear that the authorization is to allow Ukraine to use the missiles inside Russian territory that Ukraine has already captured from Russia—i.e., Kursk Oblast,  See The Guardian, Biden lifts ban on Ukraine using US weapons to strike deeper into Russia.

Per The Guardian,

US President Joe Biden has authorized Ukrainian forces to use US-provided ATACMS in limited strikes against Russian and North Korean military targets within Kursk Oblast. The NYT and Washington Post reported on November 17 that unspecified US officials expect Ukrainian forces to initially conduct strikes against Russian and North Korean forces within Kursk Oblast and that the Biden Administration could expand this authorization to use ATACMS against targets elsewhere in Russia in the future.

Notably, the US missiles in question have a range of only 190 miles. Russia apparently anticipated the US granting authorization to Ukraine to use the missiles. Russia reportedly withdrew all aircraft from the range of the US missiles several weeks ago.

Nonetheless, the expanded authorization is a clear attempt to help Ukraine gain a strategic advantage in advance any peace talks forced on Ukraine by Trump's withdrawal of support for Ukraine.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[spaceaces00]

Extended Languages Headcanons!

Lance: Cuban Spanish

Hunk: Samoan & bits of Tagalog from childhood friends (helped him learn Spanish faster w Lance bc a lot of the words/roots are similar)

Pidge: some Hebrew (& binary code, Morse code, fuckin Latin, etc.)

Keith: knows simple Korean & the swears (was learning as a kid but oops #deaddad)

Shiro: knows basic Japanese (I like to think that he, like Keith, had a rebellious era so he hated learning but as an adult tries to pick it up again) also some Korean bc tween Keith was feisty

Allura: Garla, Altean (maybe some other planets bc of trade, balls, royalty things idk)

Coran: weirdly a lot?? Apparently went like planet party hopping and picked up a bunch of

I think everyone learns Altean eventually bc it’s the ship and it’s like a dead language 🧍but Lance and Pidge learn the quickest ok the concept of shit talking in another language

They definitely pick up phrases from each other (especially bc they don’t have any one to practice it with and they don’t wanna forget :(

[seekers-who-are-lovers]

Some thoughts about things on Bang Bravern… (bit long, sorry)

Why do I clock the German major general Heidemarie as a lesbian?

So what if “ga-ga-pi” is some kind of a code, similar to Morse code or the binary code? Lulu has her “ga-ga-pi.” The other Deathdrive has its “ga-ga-ga. Pi-ga-ga-ga-pi. Pi-ga-ga-pi-ga.” The sequence is different in order to convey another meaning. The only solution is how to interpret it. Or perhaps, I am just overthinking.

So what are the Death Drives?

From the series’s glossary:

Death Drives : A mysterious mechanical life form that suddenly attacked the earth. Their goal is to achieve the best "death" that each of them wants. They came to this earth around all the galaxies in search of an existence that will fulfil their wishes.

Those drives sound like a part of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis’ theory, the theory of pleasure principle (Lustprinzip).

Did Masami Obari, the director, turn to the Austrian psychoanalyst to gather the blueprint for his latest work?

(I know that Freud doesn’t have many fans among the Tumblr folks. But he “is” my neighbour. After having seen “Freud’s Vanished Neighbors” and read an article that the Viennese didn’t accept him as part of the community because he was not born in Austria and had Jewish family, and was still referred to as “Zugeraster,” a derogatory term for an outsider, he earned my respect and like everyone who was born centuries ago had other mentality that was not at all fitting in the modern era.)

Deathdrives, or death drives, in Freudian psychoanalytical universe, mean Thanatos, Todestrieb in German, is a term that describes: the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness.

From Freud’s book, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” :

Our departure point was the great antithesis of life drives and death drives. Object-love itself shows us a second such polarity – that of love (affection) and hate (aggression). What if we succeeded in connecting these two polarities, what if we succeeded in tracing one back to the other! We have always acknowledged a sadistic component in the sexual drive; as we know, this component can develop a life of its own and turn into a perversion that dominates a person's entire sexual life. It also occurs as a dominant partial drive in one of those forms of organization of sexual life that I have termed ‘pre-genital’. But how could we possibly suppose that the sadistic drive, which aims to harm its object, derives from Eros, the preserver of life? Isn't it altogether plausible to suppose that this sadism is actually a death drive that has been ousted from the ego at the instance of the narcissistic libido, and as a result only becomes apparent in conjunction with the object?

So you have the enemies, the Death Drives, ready to destroy the humans, and Bravern on the other with the quality of being the Eros. The sentient robot’s ethos is to save the humanity first. All the while obsessing with his pilot, Ao Isami. Obsession and kindness overlapping.

@whypolar analysed their names, then doing some googling of the meanings of both Isami and Lewis’ names, it seems the two share the same description. Yours truly is not at all a Japanese language expert, this website suggests that Isami has 21 variations in kanji.

勇 means "bravery, courage."

Brave - Showing courage and strength in the face of danger or difficulty.

Daring - Willing to take risks and try new things.

Strong - Having great physical or mental power.

Courageous - Having or showing courage in the face of danger or difficulty.

Resolute - Firmly determined to do something.

Soldier - A person who serves in an army.

It describes Isami’s personality perfectly!

Lewis, on the other hand…

From the celebrated author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, to lauded actor Daniel-Day Lewis, a boy called Lewis is in good company! Lewis is of German origin and means "Renowned warrior." It has many variations in Latin, French, and Gaelic languages that all point to the same sentiment of “strength” and “courage”. With the name Lewis, you can hope to instill your baby boy with a fearless optimism for life.

All three of them—Bravern, Isami and Lewis—are “strong and courageous.”

[sophiaforevs]

Between the early cancellation of Discovery, Seven/Raffi and Mariner/Jenn being erased in their respective shows, and SNW having queer coded characters but not confirming anything on screen, I'm really afraid that we're entering another "No Gays in Trek" era.

For those who don't know, 90s era star trek featured so few queer characters b/c Rick Berman largely held a policy of not wanting any homosexuality in his shows. And yes, we all remember the handful of episodes that slipped through that addressed it but the fact remains that there were no canonically queer main cast members before Into Darkness in 2016 gave us a five second shot that could be cut when whoever was showing the movie found the idea of two men in a loving relationship disgusting.

Then we got Discovery with multiple queer characters that allowed people to feel seen. And people never stopped bitching about them. The amount of times that I've had to listen to people complain that Adira's only character trait is that they're non-binary despite that literally being a single thirty second scene and never brought up again makes me understand that they very likely don't want to like the queer characters in that show. And it's not that there aren't criticisms to be made about the queer representation in Disco: Discovery Buries it's Gays before the end of the first season. Making your trans characters aliens who already have a history of gender fuckery is problematic b/c it somewhat plays into the idea that queerness is unnatural for human beings. But I never hear those complaints. Only the pronouns. Only the "We get it you're gay but don't shove it down our throats." But I don't want to get too off topic.

Now Discovery is being canceled early. And by early I mean, the writers weren't given proper notice that their show was ending. They were halfway through production and allowed to adjust the end episodes of the season to try to give a satisfying ending.

In Picard and Lower Decks, we got two sapphic relationships ("sapphic" meaning a romantic or sexual relationship between two women who aren't necessarily strictly lesbians) and they were pretty good. People had been asking for Seven to be queer and Jeri Ryan had been playing her as such since her introduction (see again: Rick Berman) and to see her finally get to express that was really healing. Mariner got off to rocky feet when the creators tried to pull a "Dumbledore is gay" where they said she was bi but didn't commit to it, but they she actually got a fairly satisfying relationship in season 3.

But in their most recent seasons, both were completely written out. Seven/Raffi gave us no explanation beyond that they "broke up." They went out of their way to keep them from being on screen together for most of the season. Mattis said in a Reddit AMA that he wanted Seven to be captain and Raffi to be first officer at the end of the season and that Starfleet would have regulations against relationships between the two despite the biggest reason Seven was promoted to captain was that she was a rule breaker. We didn't even get that much for Mariner/Jennifer. Jenn just wasn't in this season except for two background appearances.

And in Strange New Worlds there's just… nothing. SNW is the most recent new show and there's no queer representation. They code Ortegas as gay but don't actually confirm it on screen. There's just… nothing.

And this is how you loose the culture war. The bigots make enough noise that the show that is supposed to be a beacon of diversity doesn't necessarily side with them but they just kinda bow out of the conversation. They decide that it's easier to not bother than to take a stand. And so I and many many queer star trek fans are left wondering:

Does the franchise even want us any more?

[pynkhues]

the desire to assign them both traditional gender roles by fandom feels very gender essentialist to me and veers into TERF talking points

I’m glad you pointed out the whiff of terfiness, because from what I could gather the main argument for the Louis=wife theory is his victimhood and frankly that IS terfy, like he can’t be a victim unless he’s ‘woman coded’ (not to mention the incredibly gender essentials points used to reinforce this idea, like his interest in art and literature or in having a family). I find it…galling that’s it’s framed as denying a black man softness and sensitivity when to me it has always felt like tying acknowledging his less stereotypically masculine traits with pushing him into a wife role is just reinforcing the same stereotypes that fuel the culture of toxic masculinity he has to contend with and he himself points out onscreen.

(x)

I completely agree with you, anon.

I also think people fail to consider the eras that any of these characters are from across the board, and particularly where the appreciation of things like literature and art were not only considered masculine traits, not feminine, but indications of class and privilege (and honestly, I don't know how ready this fandom is for the ugly, messy privilege conversation around Louis as a character who is highly literate and educated, and Lestat having been illiterate until relatively recently - a fact that the show's already leant into with Louis weaponising it against Lestat in an argument in s1, and all the spelling mistakes in his letter in s2). There are a lot of shifting balances of power that don't even consider gender in this context, and include at least race, class and wealth (which Lestat has an endless supply of in the NOLA era while Louis still has familial dependents!) and I think to reduce them to a gender binary is just really limiting across the board.

[sleepynegress]

HELLO! I'm sorry you've been getting idiotic anonymous people being rude about Uhura. I saw your lovely post about her and it made me happy to see that people appreciate her! She is so much more than lots of fandom pretends. Also I high-key agree that Karl Urban absolutely nailed his performance of Bones. It was so dead on!!! Zoe's Uhura was lovely too but as you say, sharper around the edges, and personally I felt her relationship with Spock was very sweet but difficult initially for me because I really get stressed when one person doesn't get the emotional needs of another. So their really gentle scenes made me SO happy when they finally happened. The warmth and gentleness shone through and won me over entirely. Zoe played sharp with just enough warmth. But I still love Nichelle's too. Uhura is great! Anyway didnt have a huge point here just happy that you also love her and call people out LOL

The main issue is the misogynoir and perhaps TERF leanings against the most recent player in the part, Celia Rose Gooding. She is non-binary and goes by she/they pronouns. She also has a short close-cropped style which beautifully frames her face. The troll is hyper-fixated on attacking that, disparaging her presentation of femininity using coded language to imply aggression or masculinity. This is extra backward because, of the three players who took on Uhura, she has the darkest skin tone, has the fullest lips and a wide nose bridge, and her hair is the only one not in a straightened or processed style (which is fine for an option BTW). All of these things together are rare aesthetics for a Black woman, and appropriate, especially for an sub-Saharan African woman's character presentation, especially in a futuristic sci-fi mainstream iconic franchise, like Star Trek and so important for young people to see as normalized femininity. I think of Lupita Nyong'o talking about the effect Alek Wek had on her...just being there as this South Sudanese supermodel, with very dark skin and short natural hair...

Celia Rose is the particular target this troll has framed as their "fanhood", with thinly veiled insults and backhanded "compliments" that keep dogwhistling in their posts with various account names.

As for Zoe's Uhura, that professionalism and sharpness, when it came to her abilities and focus on her studies was an obvious intentional writing choice to stave off the very criticisms *she still got* because of the misogynoir of that era...

People were accusing her of coercing Spock into her ship assignment and even assaulting him(!).

That mess never makes sense, but hating Black women for existing or having what we are perceived as not "deserving" is sadly an old tradition (see those who make a hobby out of hating Megan Markle). And now, I see people praising the OG Uhura, Nichelle, for aspects of her character that were actually forms of limitations on her because of production bigotry...i.e. the forced interracial kiss, that people constantly cite as some forward thing w/o the context that it was forced because the implication was that no one in her crew would willingly kiss a Black person. IOW, aliens assaulting them for their entertainment was the lesser evil and more palatable to white audiences than someone choosing to love on Uhura (and I would add *especially* someone white, because even showing Black affection and love in that time was a rare thing, and her episode showing some yearning towards an old love showed no physical affection between them either). Anyway, all that to bring it right back around to ALL the Uhuras are great. And the weird microaggressions, macroaggressions, hatred, and attempts to shove them into a particular box are misogynoir; a microcosm of the kind of bullshit too many Black women go through on the regular just for existing.

Celia is a Rose and I hope she shines, gets loved on, has friends (including some Black ones) who are genuinely concerned for her well-being and actually help her when she's in need.

P.S. I missed this reading way too fast before but this bit is sus IMO Zoe's Uhura was lovely too but as you say, sharper around the edges, and personally I felt her relationship with Spock was very sweet but difficult initially for me because I really get stressed when one person doesn't get the emotional needs of another. If you meant Spock not reading Uhura? Then yeah, I agree. If you mean Uhura not reading Spock?? I can't walk with you there because Spock literally almost hindered Uhura's career and got her on an exploded ship(!) because of his emotional bias and almost killed Kirk on the bridge because he was not managing his emotions well. Meanwhile Uhura read him well enough to provide some comfort after the loss of his mother.

[susie-dreemurr]

“Etoiles era o diabo dos código binário, matava 30 por dia, e agora tá conversando com eles?”

Isso se chama rivalidade de shonen, Pac <3

(Translation below)

“Etoiles was the devil of the binary codes, killing 30 of them per day, and now he’s chatting with them?”

That is called shonen rivalry, Pac <3

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

How do you feel about the representation ( or lack thereof) in TOH?

I'm not sure to which representation you're referring to but I will try to be comprehensive. Just a note: representation in media is highly subjective; one person may feel seen by a show's representation, another may not. For example, as an ace person, I don't feel like Lilith is good ace rep because it is never even mentioned in the show. It's only in supplemental materials. If your show is going to tout itself as being diverse then the bare minimum you should do is put that diversity front and center so that even the most casual fan can see it.

If you like Lilith's representation or any other character from the show, then I will not take that from you.

The rest will be under the cut.

The biggest draw the show has is its queer representation; we've come a long way from Korrasami, now we have our main character in a sapphic romance that forms a key part of both characters. We have pride flags as a casual part of the background, non-binary characters, and no one angsts over being queer, it's just a normal state of being. I feel like this is the strongest aspect of the show in terms of representation and I'm glad people are feeling seen as a result of it.

Where I feel the show needed more work on was racial/ethnic diversity. TOH is a rather white show; despite Luz being biracial and having poc friends, most other significant characters are white-coded. Eda, Lilith, Amity, Belos, and Hunter are all white or white-coded characters and they take up significant portions of the overall story while Gus, Willow, Raine, and Darius are in supporting roles. This is especially egregious with Gus and Willow since they're the first witches that Luz befriends but they don't have as much focus in the later seasons, especially once Hunter is introduced. It's also worth noting that any kind of character development the non-white characters have is nearly always in relation to white characters: Willow and Amity, Gus and Hunter, Raine and Eda, and Darius and Hunter/the previous Golden Guard.

Another thing that others have pointed out is that despite the number of poc in key roles, the overall aesthetic of the Boiling Isles is very Euro-centric, even in the Deadwardian Era (its name a pun on an English monarch). It's such a missed opportunity to not play around with the overall aesthetic of your show and have it be more unique looking, maybe take influence from real world cultures and apply that to how magic is used based on a character's background.

The show is also touted for its disability representation and neurodivergent characters; however the former is more of a metaphor and the latter wasn't intentional. Fans noticed that Luz displays signs of ADHD and Dana admitted that she wasn't written that way but approves of the interpretation. It's great that fans can project their own head canons and for the creator to be fine with it, but it would have been even better if she was written that way from the start; really show how people perceive her as different because of how she is. We got some of this with how she struggled in school and how she loves learning but not about what the boring topics in school but by then, it's rather late. I feel like the show had a missed opportunity showing how isolated Luz was in the human realm; we got her high jinks and school pranks but nothing really that would make her an outcast and thus want to leave Earth.

Eda's curse as a metaphor for disability has been well-received but it makes me wonder what a disabled witch would look like in the show? Someone who was born with weak magic (Willow doesn't count she was in the wrong track). How would they navigate the track system? What aid would they need to perform basic magic? What prejudice would they face?

We get that in the form of Hunter, who while technically not a witch, functions as a disabled witch. And we get how he had to work twice as hard to earn any decent respect but it's not really because he lacks magic, it's more due to the fact that the coven heads perceive favoritism as the emperor's nephew.

We get some more challenges a disabled witch would face when Eda loses her magic but it doesn't really go anywhere and she utilizes her harpy form and seems to get along fine.

When I think about how disabilities are usually represented as just metaphors in popular media, I think of Toph. In Avatar, Toph is literally blind, there's no metaphor here. But the show is extremely clever depicting how she navigates the world using earth bending and justifies why she is the master of her craft because she was taught by the original earth benders and uses it ALL the time.

TOH could have done something similar by having a character with a real world disability and think of a creative way to show how they utilize the magic in their universe.

Basically, the show is very good at depicting queerness, but could have been better in its disability representation, and definitely dropped the ball on its poc characters.

[satirates]

Now that the climax of Etoiles and the codes' lore is in a couple of hours, let's see what we know so far

When the first code arrived back in the beginning of May, he wasn't so much of a threat. He was just pushing the eggs around, trying to be scary. But everything changed when he managed to kill Bobby for the first time. Suddenly, his attack became more violent. He was clearly trying to get every eggs on the server to one life. He killed Ramon when nobody was watching. It killed Tallullah in one of the longest (at the time) and the most heart-wrenching fight on the Island, just in front of her dad. The day the French arrived, he tries to kill Dapper three times and, seeing that BBH was outsmarting him, trapped the egg on top of an antenna with way to much mobs. With Dapper's first death, the only egg on the island left with two lives was Pomme. It was her first day...

This was the binary entity terror era. It last from the second half of may up to about half of June. Everybody on the server was scare of the code. He seems unbeatable. No matter how many times you hit him, you can't make enough damages to down him. He was just made too strong. Players started to think he maybe in creative too (he wasn't, it was proved by him falling like a turd trying to kill Pomme the first time. X) .

But then Bobby perma-died. And Because of the pain, Forever created Ninho. The code tried to attack Pomme multiple times, but the islander knew she was next. They were prepared and the Ninho system was proven to be stronger than the code. Back then, TTT in the c hat were a common occurrence and were always meet with panic. But the code didn't reach his goal. Until he did. He killed Pomme, one shoting both her and Philza in a show of strength that was so brutal that it totally demoralized everybody at the time. Pomme got is soul repaired, she got her life back. But something change in the code that day. He changed tactic...

(I think the admins realized that giving the players fights they can't win was demoralizing them. They spend so much times trying to ensure the eggs safety, it seems unfair to just one-punch them all)

Since then, he hasn't attacked the eggs even once. This was the start of the code observator era. He disappeared for quite some time and when he reappeared at the beginning of July, he was seen taking pictures of the eggs and the Ninho. He continued to do so for the following weeks. But he was also doing something else. Something we still don't have an explanation for: Giving the eggs parents something that represent their child. Apple for Pomme, Scythe for Dapper, mushroom hat for Leo, Potato for Chayanne, etc.

Then, at the presidential dinner party, he did his first egg impersonnation. the two codes impersonated Tallullah and Chayanne. They then tried to kill Étoiles too. They tried to single him out several, only allowing Philza to fight too for the beauty of the Lore. It was clear that they were trying to kill the candidates with only 1 life left. Why? We don't know. Maybe to piss off the federation, maybe to scare the islanders even more?To make them remember how much of a threat it is? What is sure is that something change again. Étoiles and Philza became the first two islanders to defeat the codes in a fight. It was a victorious day and... something else too...

This was the start of Étoiles arc. The codes keep trying to fight him after that. Were they impressed by his ability to fight? Did they see in him a potential ally? They tried to kill him by impersonating Tallullah/Dapper. Then, they imprisoned him in the Nether. They gave him the drawing of an unbreakable shield and waited for him to find it. It was hidden under a skulker box. Was he meant to find it? Probably. Were the code's intentions to get it out of his cold body? Definitely. They then procided to test him in a fight. The most powerful sword against the most powerful shield. Which one will win?

Étoiles came out victorious again. Nothing seems to be able to beat him, especially with is brocken shield. But the codes continues to fight. And, with every fight with Étoiles, they grew stronger . The Frenchman is no longer teasing them. He was almost killed several times. He admitted that these fight started to feel more and more unwinnable (also, the admins told him hrp that the fight were arranged to be defeat for Étoiles so the codes could get the shield back. But they were so impressed by his resistance and endurance that they decided to change the story)

Now we are at the finally. The final battle, the Sasuke vs Naruto. But I have so much questions!!! Why Étoiles? What did the codes wanted from him? Were they using him to train? Is Étoiles really the last barrier that prevent the codes from attacking Islander? Will eggs die because the islanders as became too complacent with the codes, telling themselves that it's just" a Étoiles thing"? Will he win? Will he be the first canon death of the qsmp? What does the codes really want? Is it scaring the players out of the island, or is it working for the federation?

So many questions, I hope some of them are going to be answered tonight.

(also, I didn't mention the one time the code attacked Cellbit after he started working with the federation or the whole Maximus arc, but they could still be very important to that mystery too)

[wishful-bear]

Web1.0spinnic

Throwback to the earlier days of the world wide web with this neurogender for autistics who yearn for the old web, or just simply have a special interest in webcore, web1.0, or the internet itself.

This gender could feel like the comforting times when you'd be at the big old boxy monitor, playing a kids MMO or just screwing around in MSpaint. The nooks and crannies of Geocities call out to this gender, with it's non uniform design.. The opposite of what is often seen in today's era of the internet we call web2.0.

Hackspinnic

Please do not delete system.32 with this gender! Hackspinnic is a neurogender specific to autistics with a special interest in black hat hackers, white hat hackers, hacktivisim, or just computer coding overall.

Those who identify with this gender have jailbroken the binary settings, modifying their identity as they see fit. It could feel freeing and almost forbidden, or not.

FLAG IS NOT BY ME, ALL CREDITS FOR FLAG DESIGN GO TO @mizcd

[boyswanna-be-her]

So I recently have begun questioning/experimenting with my gender identity, and as a consequence have been (possibly over-) identifying with horror movies that I have decided are trans allegories, at least to me. Many of these movies were definitely not meant to be queer metaphors but that hasn’t stopped me lol. Anyway as you are also horror fan and trans/non binary individual, I was wondering if you ever went through a similar era. My most recent was Jacob’s Ladder, with the chemical being a metaphor for the gendered socialization we all go through growing up. Also, hope your life/day/etc is going well and full of joy!

I've been thinking about this ask for FOREVER and honestly don't have a great response, or a succinct one. I tend to find myself in characters who are on the fringe/isolated and usually autistic coded (thinking the anti-heroes of "Re-Animator" or "Possession" or "Fade to Black") -or- in the characters who have good intentions but get in too deep because of it ("They Look Like People" or "Resolution"). It's not about gender on its surface, but I think the through line in the first type of movie is that these are people who can function in society and even some relationships from day to day, but over the course of the film they're slipping and it's becoming more and more obvious that they're out of step with the world around them. Pretty similar to my relationship with gender, I think, and the fact that no matter what I did, my actual relationship with gender was inevitably going to manifest in some material way in my life.