#for a very small value of a revolution

[scarlettgauthor]

As someone who just published an audiobook, this is extremely on my mind. I actively chose not to do Audible exclusive because I hate Amazon and I hate what they're trying to do, and I did that knowing that I would get $5 each time someone pays TWENTY FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS for my audiobook through that service.

The audiobook that I paid $3600 to produce out of my own pocket.

The audiobook that I do all of the marketing for, that I made every creative choice on, that I agonized over for six months.

Audible gets to take $20 of that $25 and leave me $5 when they didn't do anything, which is why I'm also selling it on my website DRM free and not locked into any specific app, because I am composed primarily of spite and fury.

The revolution begins with me!

[massivementalitynut]

My Connection Lost Comm of White Fang Members by @ogariane

[mays-random-fandom-reblogs]

One of my favorite things about fma is that you don't have to be a big person to matter, and no I'm not talking about size lol. I'm taking about characters with extraordinary talents, skills, personalities, influence. Of course those characters are essential to the story, but they aren't the only ones that matter. Look at Rose, she's just a heartbroken girl doing her best, but she isn't dismissed or forgotten - she's able to help her community and give Winry a much needed break and connection. Maria Ross is a competent soldier, but she doesn't particularly stand out among the cast of giants around her - and she matters so much.

Even big characters aren't treated like they have to be big to matter. Izumi Curtis is a master combatant and a skilled alchemist, essential to Father's plan... and she's a housewife. By choice! Winry is a genius mechanic who's biggest goal in life is to help her patients stay mobile. She's not a fighter, she's not the stuff of revolutions... she's just a girl who works hard and cares about people. And she's so important just for being that.

I think the characters that show this the most concisely are the miners from Youswell. They're literally coal miners. Working folk. They grow up, they mine coal, they have kids, their kids mine coal, they die. What's the point of respecting their lives when they're all so insignificant, Yoki implies. These are our homes, and our graves, Halling says. Our lives are here, our families are here, our history is here, and it may be nothing to you but it's everything to us, he doesn't. Yoki is wrong, Ed thinks. You matter.

As a small town grocery stocker I appreciate Arakawa so much for this. You don't have to be big, to have talent or skill or charisma or influence or power or looks or exist on any sort of big scale to matter. Hell, in the end the very protagonist himself, alchemy genius extraordinaire, makes the choice to exit the big stage. You'll give up what makes you special? Truth asks. Who needs to be special? Ed shoots back, and wins, and lives his life happy being just a little guy.

Arakawa said there's just as much value in going home as there is in going big, and I think that matters.

[animatedglittergraphics-n-more]

RIP, AIM: Remembering how we used to talk on the internet

A eulogy for AOL Instant Messenger, and how it changed the way we talk about games and everything else By Luke Winkie published December 15, 2017

Do you remember all the souls you've lost to the internet? Those incidental friendships, forged in IRC clients, Newgrounds forums, 40-man Ragnaros wipes, scattered across the globe when the web was young? They came into your life and played Fall Out Boy over Ventrilo. They came into your life and disappeared forever. Do you remember when snapping a selfie required a frustrating tangle of mechanical coercion, but it was worth it to show them your face? When real-life names were rarefied information shared exclusively through digital blood pacts? AIM shut down today, and the only thing I can think about is how all of those people still exist somewhere, perhaps exploring the same pit in their stomach that I am.

AIM belongs to all of us. As a pioneering force of internet communication, anyone born in the early '90s or late '80s has spent some time on the platform. As a 26-year old, I'm crucially aware that my appreciation for the prodigal instant messenger is colored by a nostalgia that has nothing to do with the service itself. It was simply the medium of choice to grouse about homework, The Decemberists, girls I liked, and the rest of my random bullshit. 

But I do believe that there's a special union between AIM and people who grew up playing games, or at least came of age on the internet with people who played games. The early millennium revolutions in online multiplayer pitted us together and asked us to collaborate, so of course we carried those early internet accords to their logical extremes—talking all night in lonely chat boxes about what's cool, what sucks, and how easy it is to relate. In 2017, the web feels less like something I approach for those connections, and more like an overwhelming ennui that I'm constantly trying to outrun. Boston's Kyle Seeley nailed that feeling perfectly with 2015's Emily is Away, and this year's sequel Emily is Away Too—both of which transport you back to the spongy leather office chairs of your parents' computer room.

"AIM was primarily for one-on-one conversations between teenagers. That's how I used AIM, to have a very intimate conversation with another person. Now we have texting and Facebook messenger, but you can use those wherever you are," he says. "You can use those at a concert or while driving. But when you were using AIM, you were sitting down at a computer to talk to people. You had their undivided attention." 

Emily is Away tributes AIM in the only way anyone can—spinning a yarn of disentranced high-school drama that eventually mounts into something deeply sad. The way Seeley presents an old Windows XP desktop, with the hilariously temperamental tastes of your idiot friends revealing themselves in their bios and away messages (until one day they stop logging on entirely) is immediately resonant. We've all had our Emilys. "When you have a conversation on the phone, you spend 10 minutes making small talk," says Seeley. "On AIM you talk to someone for hours. Like eight hours, 10 hours straight. You get all the small talk out of the way in the first hour, and then you're talking about these big teenager questions. Who am I? Who do I want to be? I think AIM was really good at that."

It was always difficult for me to articulate the intimacy I felt with my internet friends to my parents. There were the obvious, mechanical mistranslations; I begged my mother for early exits from countless family dinners that consistently managed to interfere with my guild's crucial Molten Core attempts. But beyond that, there was a certain shame in feeling loved and valued by people I only knew by username. A latent fear that those who did not understand might consider that affection to be false, or even sinister. That's different now, as social media has flattened out our offline/online dichotomy, but if you were on AIM, you probably remember how once upon a time those bonds felt illegal.

Years ago Nina Freeman, level designer at Fullbright and one of the foremost thinkers on love and technology, launched a flat-out covert campaign to get close with one of those friends. She spent months locked in the holy matrimony of Final Fantasy XI and nightly AIM treatises with a boy named Glenn from New York City. Eventually they met, but not before Freeman satisfied her aunt, (who she was staying with) with a fabricated narrative—Glenn was no longer a dude from the internet, now he was just an old family friend who happened to move east. "I was still in high school," says Freeman. "We made up that whole story."

That secrecy is immediately familiar to me. AIM was surreptitious, clandestine. A service that belonged to teenagers, sequestered from leering ears and concerned authority figures. As Freeman notes, a screen name was one of the few commodities a young person could fully own. A domain, an aesthetic, a communication channel you could control. It was rare to feel fully untethered from your parents, so you guarded that sliver of liberty with your life.

"I wouldn't hand out [my username] lightly," explains Freeman. "I'd only really do it with people I felt close enough with. It seems sort intimate. It was a 'thing' to add someone on AIM. The expectation would be that if we're adding each other, we're going to chat regularly.… It had a weight to it."

Cecilia D'Anastasio, senior reporter at Kotaku (and a friend of mine) went a step further. As an 11-year-old, she was already griefing in the multiplayer Flash games she shared with her friends over AIM. I don't think anything sums up the juvenile euphoria of instant messaging quite like using that power to cheat in stakes-free freeware.

"One of the Flash games I discovered was basically Pictionary, but online and with a chat room. One player would etch out an image in a Microsoft Paint-like interface while the chat would dutifully guess at what it could possibly be. It was very wholesome," says D'Anastasio. "That's why my friend June and I were passionate about cheating. We'd join a game on the same team. Over AIM, we'd tell each other what we were assigned to draw, instructing whoever was guessing to wait a solid ten seconds before revealing the answer. It was a riot. We always won."

Over the past decade or so AIM has slowly been replaced with services that de-emphasize traditional internet patois. Gchat and Twitter are all full of real names and faces instead of coded handles and custom-colored text, and logging in to most platforms scarcely takes more than a click on a Facebook icon. For the most part, this is a good thing. Anonymity is one of the scourges of online culture—a de facto institution that continues to cause a lot of people pain. Personally though, I can't help but feel like we've lost something along the way. There was a certain sublimity in typing from behind the guise of a username. It gave way to a feeling that your AIM conversations existed in some sort of permissive, alternative reality, the ideal spot to work up the nerve for swollen 3 am confessions. In 2017 there is no such thing as "IRL" anymore; your internet presence is permanently married to your day-to-day existence. Everyone on earth spends their waking hours waging wars and making peace with strangers they will never meet. It is overwhelming and insoluble, and there are moments where I wish I could get outside again.

I'm not the only person that feels this way, and there are some people working to restore the parts of the mid-aughts internet that worked. When I interviewed Jason Citron, CEO of Discord, earlier this year, he affirmed a deep appreciation for AIM, and believed that perhaps the online infrastructure might soon swing back in that direction. "When you zoom out and think about the internet and how communication is trending, there's definitely a trend to more live experiences," he said. "The internet has done so much to connect people asynchronously, so I think there's something more macro happening that Discord is taking part in. It's like we're bringing it back to how it used to be."

He's right. One of the things that's made Discord successful is how separated it feels from the rest of the internet. When you join an ultra-specific channel—for niche Hearthstone formats or fan-favorite Persona characters—it's like you're uncovering a league of obsessives that are ready to welcome you with open arms. The true solidarity of dorkiness. It's funny, but by holding back on cosmopolitan design choices (like Facebook integration or a required photo-reel), Cintron stumbled into a scheme that evokes the furtive splendor that made AIM special. This is something Nina Freeman found when she started up a Discord channel to support her growing Twitch following. "It quickly became a community, and now I have a bunch of newer online friends. I'm already cracking up at myself as I'm wondering what they look like, or what they do in real life," says Freeman. "It definitely has a similar appeal." 

If Discord doesn't quite meet your personal instant messaging standards, Citron tells me that, if enough people in the community request it, he'd consider implementing the low-res AIM chimes into the service. You know, door creak, door slam, those disruptive MIDI twinkles. "To this day, that sound still triggers my desire to hop online," he says.  

Kyle Seeley is doing something similar. Yesterday he released a piece of DLC for Emily is Away Too that reskins Steam Chat to look exactly like AIM circa 2006. He spared no expense; you can change your text color, drop in vintage, blocky emoticons, and create your own custom profile so you can tell the world that Warped Tour will never die. "It's a farewell to AIM," he says. As one gaming's foremost nostalgia artists, it'd be wrong if he didn't say goodbye.

Now the AIM generation is old enough to both intellectualize their wistfulness, and use the lessons they learned from the service to create for the today's teenagers. To facilitate affection and respect on the internet, to show them what it looks like. We were the first to taste love on the web, at a time when those feelings had no context or guidance, and I hope that AIM helped create a baseline for young people and the midnight communion with those across the screen. The liberation that comes with knowing that the internet friendships you cherish are just as valid and wonderful as you think they are—these stories matter, because they help light that path. Lord knows I needed it, and I'm sure you did too.

Luke Winkie

Contributing Writer

Luke Winkie is a freelance journalist and contributor to many publications, including PC Gamer, The New York Times, Gawker, Slate, and Mel Magazine. In between bouts of writing about Hearthstone, World of Warcraft and Twitch culture here on PC Gamer, Luke also publishes the newsletter On Posting. As a self-described "chronic poster," Luke has "spent hours deep-scrolling through surreptitious Likes tabs to uncover the root of intra-publication beef and broken down quote-tweet animosity like it’s Super Bowl tape." When he graduated from journalism school, he had no idea how bad it was going to get.

[entropicbias]

do you think people need to be at least naturally good at something to ever become great at it or to ever create something of worth. like even if they work hard at it forever they just cant do it

here's some doodles of jade before i answer this question. uh, no. this is a shitty way to think! i mean, sure people can be naturally good at things and it gives you a leg up, but thinking you can't achieve something because you weren't born perfectly good at it is not a good mindset.

i mentioned how i am a practicing cardist, but i have quite small hands. now, if you don't know, that's like a huge genetic disadvantage when it comes to cardistry, cause i have a lot of struggles performing one hand shuffles like the thumb cut or the revolution cut. basic moves that i just struggle so hard to execute. but, and if you're in the cardistry space you'd know that people are very heavy on the fact that you can overcome the issue with practice and determination.

unless you're being judged competitively at magic olympics, cardistry and magic isn't all about how "correct" you execute a trick, it's about the performance! so if you can find workarounds, and there are always gonna be some workarounds, then you can totally shit out a decent trick! magic is a spectacle, the value comes in how you present it, and the attitude you have presenting it. you don't have to be on houdini's level, sometimes just being a shitty ladbible skit is honestly good enough. there's a beauty to being crap at things as much as there is being good at things. or being just decently good. and it's similar to comedy in a way too.

there are so many people in this world that will hate you or love you no matter how good or bad you are at something. as long as you have the can-do attitude, you can do whatever you want. i saw this image earlier about progress, and how progress is different for everybody. you can have slow progress, quick progress, or it can vary from slow to quick. and the rate at which you progress can also be different for everybody or different things you try to learn. but it can never halt completely unless you give up in yourself.

so, don't! when i was growing up, i saw this one video of a girl three years younger than me painting beautiful intricate anatomically correct portraits of jesus from age 3 and i looked at my shitty undertale art and thought "holy shit i'm fucking ass" but did that ever stop me from drawing? no! and honestly, i have not improved much since! but i love to draw, and even though my friends are better and much faster than it than me, i still love to do it!

anyways, thanks for the ask, even if it might be a spam ask cause i've been getting those quite a lot.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The World Food Summit of 1996 approached food security through the principles of ensuring there is enough safe and nutritious food that can be accessed daily to meet healthy dietary needs and food preferences. By definition, this is a desirable and worthy goal. However, in the years since, food security has developed into a paradigm which does not question the underlying power dynamics and the reproduction of material conditions that make food insecurity a permanent feature of the global order. At its core, the food security paradigm deals only with access to food, without challenging the political and economic structures that determine and control access, as well as distribution.  By failing to address the root causes of hunger and famine, the food security paradigm makes it impossible to end hunger globally. Of course, many people worldwide possess food security, but this is restricted to increasingly limited geographic pockets. In terms of the people localised in one area, food vulnerability is influenced and determined by class, race, gender and, of course, citizenship status. Globally, “underdevelopment” and “de-development” lead to widespread food insecurity across areas. Another problem with the food security paradigm is that it is easily co-opted to generate partial answers that pose no threat to the corporate food system, or worse, that even open up new profit opportunities. Accelerated by other crises, the food security paradigm becomes ever more dependent on aid, be it through direct food delivery, cash transfers or small development projects that cannot compete with the food giants and their price-setting powers. In practice, a “science of food security” emerges, one which takes as its focus calories and the output that is compatible with precision agriculture having the aim to increase crop yields and to assist management decisions using high technology sensor and analysis tools. This model tends to be reliant on “Green Revolution” technologies that rely on chemical fertilisers and pesticides and that are tied to colonial projects and corporations, in order to optimise resources in aid response and/or development projects.  In this rationale, food insecurity can be addressed by reaching optimum yields of certain crops that should meet the demand for fats, fibres and protein. All of this is carefully managed and data-driven. Precision farming is advocated by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the objective of optimising, “agricultural value chains […] critical in advancing food and nutrition sufficiency without increasing the size of land under cultivation.” The framing of food that reduces it only to “optimal input” relegates vital elements of food production and the culture of eating, like territory ownership, taste, heritage, care, well-being and connection as secondary. This reductionist approach has, though, proved useful to corporate agriculture, since it reinforces the case for genetically modified crops (GMOs), more efficient fertilisers, and the standardisation of food production for market purposes. Advocates of plant breeding technologies (including GMOs and hybrid seeds) argue that government overregulation is an obstacle to achieving food security. Overregulation, as the argument goes, denies populations the opportunity to grow crops that have increased nutrient use efficiency and are more resilient to climate shocks. 

[...]

The paradigm of food security is about optimising productivity. It’s true that productivity matters – after all, feeding the world requires enormous quantities of food. But if productivity is approached solely as a technological problem, it reinforces the tendency to fragment the quantitative and qualitative aspects of food production and consumption. On the quantitative side, production for food security is viewed as a challenge of multiplication. Whereas division, that is, distribution of food, is left to logistical planning. This ignores what Raj Patel identified in his influential 2007 book Stuffed and Starved, as the bottleneck of power that concentrates international food distribution among a small set of corporations. This bottleneck excludes the poor and small-scale food producers from decision-making. It also normalises worrying tendencies, such as an overreliance on industrial animal exploitation as a protein source, which has direct health implications, as well as longer term consequences like the proliferation of new viruses, greenhouse gas emissions and inefficient use of water and soil.

28 May 2024

[modelsof-color]

Photographers Mar + Vin ( Marcos & Kelvin )

Mar+Vin is a duo, formed by Marcos Florentino and Kelvin Yule. With backgrounds in Graphic Design and Journalism

MAR+VIN has contributed to a revolution in the way images are made in Brazil, adding artistic refinement to their photography to create stories that go beyond, while also playing an important role in the inclusion within the industry. Marcos and Kelvin often say that they are always looking for the "fantastic element" in the ordinary, creating powerful images with deep meaning and valuing their Brazilian roots.

Mar+Vin’s visual style is influenced by classical art with sculptural silhouettes and nods to symbolism, but they’re keen to incorporate local references from their Brazillian hometowns through locations and colour palettes.

 Marcos was born in the state of Piauí, in a small village in the northeast part of Brazil. He started experimenting with drawing at a very young age and tried other medias as he grew up. Living his childhood in such a remote place, he found in the fine arts and in the books a way of dreaming with different and fantastic realities, helping him to accurate his vision, while watching his mother sew his sisters’ dresses for traditional Brazilian celebrations and graduations, which may have been his first contact with fashion. At 18, he moved to São Paulo and got a degree in graphic design through a scholarship. There he began to use photography as a form of expression and also expanded his art through experimenting with sculpture, ceramics, textiles, drawing and oil painting,

 Kelvin is from the coast of Bahia, also in the northeast region of Brazil. He developed an inquisitive personality, mainly during his childhood as a queer kid growing up in a small town with a religious familly. At the age of 17, he went to university to study Social Communication and Journalism, where he directed his first short film and did some exhibitions exploring photojournalism, which led him to develop his interest in storytelling, bringing it to his photography as a way to reimagine things. Fashion appeared to Kelvin as a world of possibilities where he could express himself in multiple ways, telling untold stories through his own eyes. After meeting Marcos in 2016, he moved to São Paulo to develop his work in fashion, at which point they decided to unite their visions and creating the duo

( Informations took from their official website )

[stan-rabelais-et-diderot]

Small thoughts on the Netflix Three Body Problem adaptation

1) We are making it international" they said. They replaced all the international collaboration, the counsel of world leaders that we see throughout the books with... two British dudes deciding everything by themselves, not accountable to anyone. They managed to make it less international than the book. But more than that, they perverted the very themes Liu Cixin wove into his books, the very ideas the books revolve on: group mentality & collaboration versus the individual, banal or exceptional. The Netflix show removed the very notion of collective, of group mentality, without which there is nothing to contrast individuality against.

2) They made Ye Wenjie an unrecognizable shell of herself. Her back is not held up straight. An old Ye Wenjie, cursing, sloushing, moving to England. Is it really Ye Wenjie? It bothers me so much that they could get away with saying this is Ye Wenjie. This is not her.

3) They "simplified" the science to a point where nothing is explained, nothing can survive through any kind of analysis of the logic of the things shown & the actions taken. Just one example, because I’ve seen the headset being praised for looking “cool”. It’s not cool if it’s at the expense of a logical plot. The futurist headsets we are shown imply that either 1° the Trisolarians are able to send sizable physical objects [which they physically can't, the limit to what they could send through space is clearly explained, it is the two protons they did send Earth] or 2° the Trisolarians shared schematics of advanced technology with the ETO, letting them to develop the headsets. But that is the one thing the Trisolarians would never do, as their entire plan rely on humans’ technology not being able to develop any further than it already has.

4) I thought it was gonna be lesser than the Tencent show. I didn't expect it to be so utterly lacking on all front. If there was one point of worthy comparison, one point where I expected Netflix to do a good job, if only to show they had a bigger budget, it was “the” boat scene. Tencent spent 25% of their budget on that scene, so I expected Netflix would try to make their boat scene more spectacular, better on a technical level, to show that the US special effects are undefeated or something. I would have never expected that they wouldn’t even try to compete. That scene happened in the episode 5 of the Netflix show & it’s underwhelming. It has no gravitas, but of course it can’t have any gravitas, it’s not the culmination of the collaboration of humans across the globe, demonstrating that they can fight back & achieve greatness when they are united, of course it can’t be the same when it’s just 10 British people working in isolation. They didn’t just do something underwhelming on a technical level, they did something underwhelming on a narrative level. Just like the scene with the insects, the culmination of the Tencent show had no weigh & no impact when done by Netflix.

5) The misguided belief that somehow an American show could show Chinese history (the cultural revolution) to an international audience better & with more accuracy than a Chinese show to a Chinese audience because of the censorship in China is laughable. An international audience would need more context to understand a historical time that they or their parents didn’t live through, but that’s not what Netflix did. What they showed was mildly violent & shocking to be sure, but not very accurate to the content of the book. They cut out a lot of plot, but they could have done that, simplified it without stripping it of context or changing the story so much it resonates wrong. I'll just give small examples:

on the stage when they condemn Ye Wenjie's father (with microphones in front of a huge audience???) they keep saying "lies", which makes no sense, that's not the logic, the charge is propagating western propaganda, upholding western values & a capitalist way of thinking, not lying (see the end of page note on that point).

they call Ye Wenjie comrade during her time at the Red Coast (in the book [& in the Tencent show] her status as a political dissident & therefore NOT a comrade is emphasized, stated explicitly. If you don't understand the social implication, let's simplify & say that being a comrade is like being a citizen, not a comrade, not part of the group, not trusted).

Netflix Ye Wenjie unironically says: "how awesome would it be if China was the first [country to make contact with aliens]". She says it, mind you, not in front of the political commissioner because she is asking for something & need to butter him up, no, she is just enthusiastically patriotic? She is shown to be enthousiastically patriotic toward China & LATER she sells out the planets to the Trisolarians.

The inconsistencies are not only baffling deviations from the source materials that display a complete lack of comprehension of Ye Wenjie as a character, as well as an astonishing disregard for the accuracy of the ideology of (Mao-area) communism & the history of Maoist China. They didn't show a lot of content, so they could have easily avoided making such basis mistakes.

What really pisses me off is that I keep seeing press pieces saying that the Netflix version “doesn’t shy away from showing”, “won't censor” the part of the story taking place during the Cultural Revolution, sometimes outright saying it as a reason to watch the Netflix version over the Tencent one, implying to the readers the Tencent version is heavily censored, when in reality the Tencent version spend a lot more time than on it than the Netflix one, showing how bad it was, in an accurate way, very close to the content of the book. The political rhetoric fallacies, the bureaucracy, the hypocrisy, how miserable everything is, is shown very well.

[Disclaimer, I'm not Chinese, it's not my culture, it’s not the country I live in. But in France there are Maoists, so I’ve learned just enough about the history of Mao & the Cultural Revolution to hold very negative views about it. In reverse, in a very racist, sinophobic way, many Westerners think Chinese people can’t think for themselves if they don’t hate every single thing about China & they lump in the country, the people & the Xi Jinping administration. It’s absurd to ask other people to hate their country, to have no pride in anything from their country. What hypocrisy, in every country, nationalism is taught to us from the time we first attend school. Patriotism is a requirement, it’s ingrained, internalized in all of us. We can be critical of our country’s history, of our government, or many things & still find pride & love for some things. I know that’s the way I feel about France.]

Censorship does exist in China, it’s exist materially in a way that differs from the Hays Code in the US in both the scope of its autority & its function. It is enacted by a governement agency called the NRTA & everything that airs on tv has to be clear by the NRTA first. A clear guideline is not provided, we know what passed it, creators know what didn’t, so to a lesser extent we know what doesn’t passes NRTA censorship: graphic violence, nudity, sex, ghosts (or BL since 2021...) et caetera. It would be dishonest to pretend that the topic of Cultural Revolution is a taboo that cannot be spoken about, as if the current administration has a positive view on it & would therefore not allow it to be criticized. What is censored (as far as we know, what is different from the book) in the Tencent show is the opening scene, a very graphic violent scene. That’s it. It’s censored, probably more for the violence than anything else. Some people find it disappointing, but the symbolic meaning of that violence in not hidden in the narrative & the event are instead visually & auditory implied in a short flashback at the end of one episode.

NB) In the opening scene of the Netflix show (the same one that was cut on Tencent), the political tribunal has someone accusing: "Lies, all lies!". But lying is not a political charge. It sounds ridiculous. They just had to follow the book, they didn’t have to understand communism, but no, they had to come up with things themselves... My best guess it that the creators didn’t realized that "lying is bad" is a cultural value that is not universal.

I don't know if "lying" is a big deal in China, but I know it's not a big deal in my culture & in a Marxist/communist political context, lying is just not "a thing". They are a lot of charges you can get in a political tribunal:

-individualist behavior,

-liberalism/imperialistic thinking,

- lack of self-criticism (Maoism famously has the three principles, one of which being the practice of self-criticism so you/we can do better).

-deceiving the masses with xx propaganda [so they don't revolt when they would if they knew the truth], that’s as close to lying is a political charge can get,

-aspiring to bourgeois comfort [that can mean profiting of other people's labor, not doing enough or not wanting to sacrifice your life for the cause],

- treason & of course

- being counterrevolutionary / working against the revolution, are the two big ones !

Can you see what is not on that list ? Lying is not on that list.

[txttletale]

So I'm a leftist because I can plainly see that capitalism sucks, but I have a really hard time pinning down what I think we should replace it with because I have "agrees with the last theory I read" disease. (Or, more embarrassingly, "agrees with the last Post I read.")

Something I've been wondering about recently is what's the point of planning and arguing over what happens after the revolution anyway? The chances of a successful worker's revolution in my lifetime, let alone the next few decades, feels vanishingly small. The preconditions just feel so far away.

Is there really value in committing to a specific ideology right now, or is it sufficient to say the anarchist future and the ML future (and even, like, the DemSoc future) sound better than what we have now, and require many of the same preconditions, so let's work towards those shared goals now and figure out what comes after in a few decades when the groundwork is actually laid?

i agree with you that i don't think a genuine revolutionary situation will arise (at least, not in the imperial core) within our lifetimes. i also agree that there is a meaningful degree to which the theoretical differences between marxist-leninists & anarchists are far enough from being present and pressing concerns that they should in almost all cases be working together and employing similar tactics and action.

however, i do think there is a value to having an ideological framework: it keeps you consistent. if your ideology is vague and empty, you're liable to (intentional or unintentional) opportunism--you will fill in the gaps or approach new ideas with the default positions, the ones that require the least divergence from hegemonic cultural norms and values.

that sounds a bit ideological-jargony so i'll phrase it another way: if you grow up in a [joker voice] society, you're going to grow up with a lot of assumptions! like, 'cops reduce crime', for example. and if you don't have an underlying theory of capitalist society and how it functions, then it's entirely possible to realize (through experience or analysis) that capitalism is bad and that our society is inherently unjust, but continue thinking 'cops reduce crime' because that's just the default cultural position you grew up with. these two things are pretty impossible to reconcile, right--because of course the actual purpose of cops is to enforce private property rights and maintain the capitalist system of economic relations--but if you don't have a full theoretical framework of capitalism & society that you can use to analyse things, that incoherence is very easy to let slip by!

i also want to say that while i think that anarchists & marxist-leninists (and all other revolutionary) communists share common goals and functionally very similar political projects for our forseeable lifetime, there is a meaningful difference between these two and the 'demsocs' you mentioned. not an uncrossable gulf by any means in terms of working together and forging political alliances--but the steps one takes to agitate and organize the working class in anticipation of a future revolutionary situation, however distant, are imo very functionally different to the steps one takes to advocate for social reform within liberal legislatures. rosa luxemburg put it well when she said there is nothing reformist about supporting trade unions, welfare legislation, as a vehicle for revolutionary class struggle--but when you take these things as ends themselves, i.e., as viable methods for resolving the contradictions of capitalism, you become unable to use them as such a vehicle.

but, yeah. tldr; i think it is far from the most important thing (the most important thing is to be a principled anti-capitalist & anti-imperialist--these are the two litmus tests for whom i can consider a political ally), but it is useful to have an underlying political framework rather than a collection of individual positions, because the latter can lead to contradictory and self-defeating worldviews and political programs

[fishtomale]

okay so there is this piece of media i really like, essentially changed me for the better. the story has been told more than one way so there are definitely varying interpretations. it has a lot to do with repetition and failed revolutions and the apocalypse and what it means to be an adult and misconstructions of the past and memory and power dynamics and systems of oppression including but not limited to violence against women and suppression of homosexuality and gender deviance. no, the main characters aren’t directly stated to be gay but based on how their dialogue with more explicitly gay characters goes it’s pretty obvious something is going on and that they probably have feelings for someone close to them. to be fair it can be really imperfect and lacking tact with how it approaches race and the primary relationship between two characters of a different races but also it was progressive in many ways for its’ time and in many ways still is.

the setting really defines the series, it’s somewhat small but it has a lot going on. it’s a bit of microcosm of the rest of the world and definitely might be cursed.

it has this jock protagonist who comes off as not very smart to be honest but it’s definitely a coping mechanism for a lot of mental anguish and confusion and suicidal ideation in the face of loss. yeah, the main character is arguably the only one who makes any real change in the world at the end of the day.

there is this other character the protagonist is really close to, literally always by each other’s sides, honestly this supporting character is the heart of the series and one of the most well written characters i’ve ever seen, but a lot of people misinterpret them. you see there is an unequal power dynamic between the supporting character and the protagonist despite their genuine affection for each other but the fact that the protagonist wants this character to come out of their shell in order to experience some sort of personal heroism kind of indicates their lack of respect of the autonomy of this supporting character. a lot of people who engage with this piece of media on a surface level see this supporting character as lacking agency but that view really misses the nuance of how said character is repeatedly expressing their self, sense of values, and boundaries in subtle ways over and over again. the protagonist is lovable and relatable for sure, but you can’t help but have empathy for how this supporting character also kind of resents them.

yeah there are weirdly metaphorical and verbose moments that make it sort of hard to interact with and take seriously for some people but there is also plenty of goofy humor and soul crushing drama. it’s nearly impossible to correctly convey the tone to people to others and if i had to make a trigger list of triggering content in this media it’d be a mile long

yes there is a loud car.

[forestdeath1]

Classes in the Wizarding World. Why don't wizards have an "upper class" linked to wealth? And where do the wealth of the Malfoys and the Blacks come from, and how could wizards become rich?

Alright, this will be controversial, as there seems to be a widely accepted HC that wizards have exactly the same class divisions as Muggles, and I see a lot of metas where poor wizards are referred to as the "working class." I respect all opinions, but I want to express mine :) I disagree with this because the Wizarding world does not imply a replication of the Muggle social structure. The main argument about why there are no classes tied to wealth is that purebloods don’t have any exclusive access to means of production. The wizarding world isn’t like the muggle world, and their class structures are different. Magic fundamentally changes the entire structure of society.

In the muggle world, classes were primarily divided based on their access to wealth, economic resources, and means of production. If one part of society monopolises all the land, then you have classes of landlords and peasants. If one part of society owns factories and plants, holds stocks and capital, while another works at these factories, you have classes of capitalists and proletarians. Wizards don't have such classes. Strictly speaking, if we divide wizards into wealth-based "upper" and "lower" classes, we need to show where exactly the upper class has or ever had exclusive access to means of production that gave them the "privilege" to be called the "upper class". This is impossible to show because it doesn’t exist in the Wizarding world.

However, they do have a clear different way of dividing society.

But let's take it step by step.

In its time, the muggle upper class of the feudal society was too tied to "land" and the idea of land, which evolved into snobbery towards commerce and business because commerce allowed wealth beyond the nobility. This upper class felt their exceptional privilege. Their position was given to them at birth. But the emerging middle class... They were simply "mercantile" merchants. Many held beliefs in the superiority of feudal values and considered trade and business less honourable pursuits. Some nobles could also manage various enterprises related to agriculture, including mills, wineries, and sawmills. (Pure-blood wizards look much the same, but they don't have titles or lands, they have their blood. Your wealth doesn't matter if you're a pure-blood wizard. Take a look at the Black family tree. It's clear that not all of them were wealthy. I'm sure that many of these wizards had quite modest means. The Malfoys were an exception, but more on that later.)

When the English Revolution occurred, followed by the Industrial Revolution, and capitalists began to get very rich, while nobles unexpectedly started getting poorer, there was even stronger prejudice against "flaunting money," as it became associated with the newly wealthy lower class. Because true upper-class status isn't just about gold, and a capitalist will never have what they do – their family names and status given by God himself. Yes, among the nobles, there could also be entrepreneurs engaged in trade or investing in various projects, mining development, but the trend still leaned towards the impoverishment of aristocrats.

The Industrial Revolution happened after the imposition of the Statute, but the English Revolution came before. Obviously, wizards didn't have an industrial revolution. It's unclear how their production worked at all. Much of their production relied simply on craft workers. There are businesses like potion-making, Sleekeazy's Hair Potion production, broomstick manufacturing, although these "businesses" might look more like artisanal enterprises. Additionally, there's definitely a black market, but it's quite small. And let's not forget, in the world of Harry Potter, there's "slave labor."

Moreover, their main means of production is magic. And everyone has magic. Their production primarily requires knowledge and skills and doesn't require any significant physical infrastructure. Meanwhile, Hogwarts is free and accessible to all by birthright. Yes, access to raw materials may be limited, and these materials may indeed be owned by wealthy families, but for the most part, we don't see resources that are impossible to obtain independently. Another point is that students don't invent anything themselves over the seven years... Where's the theory of magic?! How to create spells?! Perhaps this needs to be self-taught.

Well, it's entirely obvious that they don't have peasants either, so there's no exclusive access to wealth for pure-bloods based on the feudal system either.

So, no classes based on wealth can exist for them simply because pure-bloods don't have any exclusive access to resources or means of production.  A wizard born pureblood doesn't get anything at all for their blood, except connections.

Essentially, connections and blood itself are their exclusive resources, which they try to increase. Pure-bloods find it easier to get the right jobs, to get a job at the Ministry, and so on. Also Muggle-borns who became a part of the WW, presumably, could encounter difficulties getting hired or be paid less. But they could always start their own craft production of something. They had the main means of production – magic. But they lacked connections and social capital. Over time in the Wizarding World, Muggle-borns or half-bloods, judging from canon, could also get a job at the Ministry and even become Minister of Magic. Moreover, they created their own small craft-based enterprises or worked for other craftsmen and traders.

The Malfoys are likely those from former "Muggle aristocrats" who always kept a finger on the pulse and were well-connected in the Muggle world. They quickly figured out how to make even more money rather than just relying on income from land, although they also expanded their lands (they have managed to add to their lands in Wiltshire by annexing those of neighbouring Muggles). We know they keep a Rolls-Royce in their garage and have a collection of Muggle art (the favour they curried with royalty added Muggle treasures and works of art to an ever-expanding collection). It's not surprising if they invested in some muggle businesses. Essentially, the Malfoys are blood traitors, considering they had half-bloods in the family, but the family is too cunning and clever, so they maintain their position over the centuries. The Malfoys have always had a reputation as a slippery family, striving for power and wealth wherever they are.

The result is that they are one of the richest wizarding families in Britain, and it has been rumoured for many years (though never proven) that over the centuries the family has dabbled successfully in Muggle currency and assets.

Some other families were probably also Muggle aristocrats before the imposition of the Statute and owned some lands, but even if they still had these lands after the Statute was imposed, what good are these lands without peasants? Land doesn't monetise itself. The Statute assumes complete disappearance from the Muggle world, meaning these lands became invisible to Muggles and were either used for wizards and their internal agriculture or simply remained dead weight, as there is no demand for land in the WW as a resource. Considering magical means of production, cultivating land was very simple and efficient, so there were never any problems with food in the Wizarding world. And they didn't even need much land to provide all wizards with the agricultural products they needed. Additionally, house-elves could work on it. Furthermore, over time, many wizards owned their own gardens in different parts of the country and could grow food for themselves (for example, the Weasleys actually have their own farm, and Hogwarts definitely has pumpkins and poultry).

Moreover, strictly according to canon, food can be duplicated... Perhaps it's incredibly complex magic, so ordinary wizards can’t do it, but there are special wizard craftsmen who trade in duplicated food. Perhaps this food isn't as tasty.

Also, I headcanon that not all families agreed to hide precisely because they didn't want to lose their statuses and potential wealth.

The Malfoys also resisted to the imposition of the Statute, although they later denied it.

Historically, the Malfoys drew a sharp distinction between poor Muggles and those with wealth and authority. Until the imposition of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692, the Malfoy family was active within high-born Muggle circles, and it is said that their fervent opposition to the imposition of the Statute was due, in part, to the fact that they would have to withdraw from this enjoyable sphere of social life.

Likely, families like the Blacks and the Lestranges originally supported the imposition of the Statute.

Overall, the Malfoys' wealth was colossal; obviously, they were and remain the wealthiest in the WW. Perhaps the wealth of the Blacks and the Lestranges also persisted from the time when they were Muggle aristocrats. The Malfoys invested in the Muggle sector of the economy. The Blacks and the Lestranges might have invested their money in building Diagon Alley or  income properties in Hogsmeade, or they could have been involved in the gray and black markets of the Wizarding World. They could also own magical mines, but it's unknown if this was allowed in the Wizarding world. Other families might have started some small businesses–broomsticks, wand production, potions, cauldrons, and so on. The Potters invented a potion and sold it and became "very rich." Well, suppose they exported their potion to other countries because they couldn't become "very rich" on the domestic market alone. The market is tiny. Or their "very great wealth" is greatly exaggerated.

We know that some pure-blood families pass down their trades from generation to generation, but that doesn't make them really wealthy. Still, they're considered noble. And the Gaunts are "noble" but very poor. Nobility can't be earned, but it can be lost quickly – like becoming a blood traitor. Take the Weasleys, for instance, who were considered noble even in the 1900s.

Families like the Umbridge have no connection to "nobility," but they really want it. They're desperate to belong: "I am related to the Selwyns... Indeed, there are few pure-blood families to whom I am not related. A pity... that the same cannot be said for you. 'Parents profession: greengrocers.'"

In a mockingly imitation of a Black: 'Typical half-blood. She doesn’t even understand our society!'

When a true Slytherin heir appears, even the Malfoys are willing to tone down their arrogance. The first Death Eaters followed Tom for this reason–he's the heir of Slytherin. It's a very high status among their society.

But the Malfoys' arrogance about money is probably because they had many connections with the Muggle world, the Muggle economy, and their personal views on money. They also continued to adopt the ways of Muggle capitalist society.

Sure, wizards wanted to get rich, but the wealth of individual families like the Lestranges, Blacks, and Malfoys wasn't class-based for the wizarding society. Firstly, a class of three families can't exist, and they don't have anything specifically exclusive that would set these three families apart in their access to wealth. What they possibly retained from pre-Statute life can't be the basis for forming a new class in the wizarding society. It just doesn't work like that.

Moreover, it seems that significant wealth could only be attained through innovations, as they also didn't have an internal investment market, financial instruments were absent, and Gringotts simply stored their gold. Okay, gold itself increased in value, but they constantly withdrew money for their living expenses, so capital must have been leaking out too. I suppose many families that were wealthy before the Statute quickly spent their large fortunes if they didn't adapt to the new conditions.

[reddest-flower]

Lenin warned that if the communists did build the confidence of the people, then they would only weaken any popular unity against imperialist intervention. In the anti-colonial struggles, the communists had to be with the people. That was paramount. But to be with the people did not mean to adopt a populist politics – to be the ventriloquists’ dummy that says whatever social views the people hold. The communists must both hold to their values, but must not allow these values to be too far from the common sense of the people. This was a tricky business and required deftness and tact. It was why Lenin warned the Mongolian People’s Party – in November 1921 – to desist from changing their name to a communist party. The Party, he said, could not be ahead of the general consciousness of the people. When the proletariat develops its confidence and begins to shape the popular movement, only then should the People’s Party become a Communist Party. ‘A mere change of signboards is harmful and dangerous’, Lenin told a Mongolian delegation. The Mongolians had already made their revolution in July of that year. Three years later, in 1924, the newly named Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party would join the Comintern. The use of the word revolutionary substituted for the word communist.

The Mongolians wanted space to produce their own revolutionary theory and policies. But their reliance on the Soviets for material aid was entangled with their reliance upon Soviet policy for their own development – all in fear of the intervention of imperialism, which was not unfounded (as the invasion by Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg in 1921 was to show). Ulaanbaatar’s reliance upon the Kremlin seriously narrowed the ability of its revolutionary movement to build on its own history and to build its own capacity for socialist theory and practice. Narrow views of development led to a distortion of the pastoral economy, which undermined the ability of the herders to tend to their animals. Mass migration to China, as well as a revolt in 1931-32, was the obvious outcome. Another was the centralization of rule under Khorloogiin Choibalsan, who took his lead from Moscow and not from Mongolian history.

Just a handful of years after the Mongolians had come to see Lenin, Tan Malaka wrote bitterly about the Comintern’s too firm hand on the levers of revolutionary politics in China and in the Dutch East Indies,

«The Moscow leadership is good only for Russia. With examples from Germany, Italy and Bulgaria, it is demonstrated that the Moscow leadership has failed for other countries. The entire Third International [Comintern] is built up in the Russian interest, and young Eastern leaders, in particular, will be inclined to go over to blind worship or lose their independence, with the result that they will lack contact with their own masses, who have different impulses from the Russian people.»

When Tan Malaka was asked if this criticism of Moscow would bring him and the Indonesian communists towards the Fourth International of Leon Trotsky, then in the middle of a struggle against Joseph Stalin, he responded, ‘The people of the Indies have enough to do without waiting around for the conclusion of the fight between Stalin and Trotsky.’ This was the attitude in most of the anti-colonial countries.

Individuals certainly admired Trotsky for his role in the October Revolution and for his work building the Red Army, and some even agreed with his criticism of the USSR’s tendency towards bureaucracy. However, this was not enough for them to break with the USSR, which provided an important inspiration and necessary resources for their own movements. Trotskyism had very little impact on the Third World – except in Sri Lanka, in Bolivia and Argentina as well as amongst small numbers of intellectuals. Trotskyism’s denunciation of the anti-colonial national states (those who formed the Non-Aligned Movement) and then the Cuban Revolution alienated it from the communists in the Third World.

Anti-colonial nationalism could not easily be denounced. Lenin recognized that it was a ‘difficult task’ to navigate the shoals of anti-colonial nationalism. Such a problem had to be dealt with carefully. There was ‘no communist booklet’ that had the answers for the radicals in the anti-colonial movements. They would have to throw themselves into the struggle and find their answers there. Sometimes movements did. At other times, they looked for impossible formulas.

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad, 2019

[failchild]

the thing about kim is that he's kind of boring in an average middle-aged guy way. he looks forward to his daily crossword puzzle. he smoked weed over two decades ago and thinks that's cool. he likes cars. he likes machines. he probably eats plain oatmeal every day. he likes being perceived as "normal" ("regular, garden variety revacholiere") and "boring" ("unrepentant spoilsport"). a lot of this has to do with the perpetual foreigner stereotype he's faced his entire life and his moralist beliefs—he also just has very dad-like interests

on the flip side he gets a kick out of being "cool" ("were he to quit [smoking], he would lose the cool factor. this man relishes his cool quite a bit") and rebellious ("this minor act of rebellion is important to the lieutenant's self-construction"). he spends the week in martinaise wandering around in communist revolutionary cosplay, which is kind of an insane thing to do when he's employed by the occupying force that destroyed the revolution. he loves his obnoxious loud ass car and his obnoxious loud ass music.

he highly values both his "normalcy" and his "coolness". his adherence to the rules he makes for himself is important to him. what he considers his acts of rebellion are small but are also important to him. this is a man whose infancy is defined by the stamping out of revolution, who grew up in its graveyard and was raised by the indifferent benevolence of those who killed it.

[jacksoldsideblog]

On the loss of the worker class and the lack of hypocrisy in Project Mayhem

"What," he says, "what will you wish you'd done before you died?"

...

My job, I say. I wish I'd quit my job.

...

The mechanic starts talking, and it's pure Tyler Durden. 

"I see the strongest and the smartest men who have ever lived," he says, his face outlined against the stars in the driver's window, "and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables." 

The drop of his forehead, his brow, the slope of his nose, his eyelashes and the curve of his eyes, the plastic profile of his mouth, talking, these are all outlined in black against the stars. 

"If we could put these men in training camps and finish raising them. 

"All a gun does is focus an explosion in one direction. 

"You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need. 

"We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression. 

"We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them. 

"Napoleon bragged that he could train men to sacrifice their lives for a scrap of ribbon. 

"Imagine, when we call a strike and everyone refuses to work until we redistribute the wealth of the world. 

"Imagine hunting elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center.

"What you said about your job," the mechanic says, "did you really mean it?"

.

Chapters 18-19, Fight Club.

Well known, probably, for the facetious nature of stating there’s no war in the generation in the 90s as having no war when the Gulf war ‘ended’ in ‘91, and in ‘03 we’d be back in Iraq. Also known well for its inclusion in the movie. 

But like, what’s actually being said there, when you get past that?

You have: The working class of America was emaciated as jobs flew overseas and were rerouted to prison ‘labor’, rapidly deindustrializing the country and leaving those left behind to be shoved into bullshit jobs to create a consumer managerial class, a fangless servile underclass without real power to affect the day to day of society, and a very, very small remaining working class. People who once would have been integral to the function of society are now further alienated and reduced to consumers in a deindustrialized feedlot. All that’s left is the hopelessness, which everyone can see is a cataclysmic disease. A problem that has to be solved. You have such a severe loss of power, such strong alienation that fight club develops as a way to grasp even a sense of control and purpose.

You have: Men especially have been promised war and hard times as the catalyst for their own purpose, but now this generation has seen war, has seen hard times, and none of those promises are stacking up. The poisoning and bombing of civilians in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, doesn’t quite match with the image of righteously dying to end nazism. There is no sudden government program buying up the labor of the beleaguered man down on his luck, to create massive publics works projects and revitalize the surrounding world and economy, a la the New Deal. The propagandized images of the past have been tarnished. There is an acute sense of lack of purpose, lack of value. There is an acute sense of something needing to shift, something massive.

You have: a manufactured rejection of the working class, a debridement of labor, a world in which salary has no relation to the importance or effort of the work you do; there is no value.

He says, imagine; the American people revitalized to the power and importance of before. Strong and undistracted, no longer pacified by petty admittance to jobs with no purpose, no longer accepting of their devaluation, no longer allowing their importance in the world the predicted value of their ad-influenceable leanings. 

Imagine; you’re afraid of history, you cannot imagine crafting a better world, anyone with a concrete plan has been gunned down and removed from power and all you’re left with is limpdicked fools who sit around waiting for a miracle to happen. Imagine you can only see destroying this one and hoping what rises from the ashes will be better as the answer. 

He's an accelerationist; make everything worse, so bad, hit bottom so all you can do is rise. 

So: accelerate. Take the average wage slave, already stripped of true individuality in favor of corporate signage, already stripped of power, and push them farther. Imagine, you think, only will everyone be strong if they finally accept that they are weak. Become the opposite of free. Join a cult. Become nothing and no one. Manifest the death cult already intrinsic in society. Become the nexus of all of society’s ills. Push people into such inhumanity that they will inevitably revolt against you and learn the true value of themselves in the world. 

And try to collapse society. Accelerate the fall of finance. Hasten the destruction of society so it can blossom again.

So yeah, it’s like… I think Project Mayhem’s hypocrisies are on purpose, really. Self improvement is masturbation if you’re never going to actually make a difference. Self destruction is the only thing that will allow you to reach even a moment of perfection. Destroy what you were, let go, fucking take action for once, unfreeze, DO something. Project Mayhem is an advanced version of fight club; it promises actualization through destruction. It isn’t like, some happenstance thing that results in Tyler making the space monkeys what they are. 

I think it’s moreso simply the manifestation of the accelerationist aspect of Tyler’s anarchist, nihilist ideals. And like those two, it’s also a criticism. The monkeys do not drag themselves free. They still await orders. It is a failed, ill planned philosophy of a rabid dog.

[saucylittlesmile]

I only started watching ice dance after the move to the +5 GOE system - can you share what you mean (I know it was tongue in cheek!) by tech used to mean something?

Oh boy, let’s see if I’ve got it in me to give the kind of long and in-depth answer that I used to without getting too sidetracked lol.

To start off, let me say I think that the ISU is very happy with this turn of events - it’s a return to the shady dealings of the 6.0 with the aura of legitimacy of CoP.

Naturally, my expertise mostly comes from the VM era, which was entirely before the +5/-5 era. While the current shenanigans in ice dance cannot be completely attributed to the change in GOE, it is probably the most obvious and egregious component.

The ISU started the process of dumbing down the tech with slowly removing the compulsory dance, lessening the number of difficult steps and turns in some step sequences, reducing the number of lifts, and increasing the number of ‘choreographic’ elements (which have some basic rules and requirements but overall are based on the judge’s decisions as to what they like).

They also reduced the worth of earning a level - not the literal value, as that can change from season to season and does not matter when comparing across competitions, but between teams at the same competition, whose results could be determined by small increments. For example, a level 4 step sequence used to have a base value of 8.00, and a level 3 was a base value of 6.50 - 1.50 points difference. Now (using Worlds 2023), a base value level 4 step sequence is 8.96 and a true level 3 is 8.20 - only 0.76 points!

Not only has that important earned level been reduced in points, it used to be that both members of the team had to achieve a level 4 to get rewarded a level 4. Now, with each skater being evaluated individually, the point differential can be lessened even more if one of them achieves a higher level.

A 1.5 point base value difference between teams used to be a death knell, if they were considered to be teams fairly equal otherwise in a competition. There was simply no way to make up that deficit, and so it was crucial to be achieving the highest level on every element, to be technically impeccable.

Watching the slow motion fall of the technical side of ice dance was difficult. Watching the ISU create the +5/-5 GOE for the sport on the whole, with no regard for how it would affect ice dance, was downright painful.

In theory, singles and pairs can increase their difficulty to achieve a higher score. Of course, they are still at the mercy of what points their element is worth, but they still have the option. Ice dance, on the other hand is limited by levels - no matter how difficult an element is, they cannot increase their scores beyond a level 4. The GOE descriptions do not give extra for ‘hey that was so hard!’. Teams can get the same, or even more points for elements that just barely fulfill the requirements but are pretty and smooth and fast, as teams that stretch the imagination of what can happen while still following the rules, with great feats of strength or balance or flexibility or edges. It really does not make any difference in the points earned. Twizzles do not earn more points if they do a different edge or more revolutions - they simply fulfill level 4 requirements, or they don’t.

Being hemmed in by technical point restrictions and in which even the difference between levels is minimal, means that the judges’ GOE and PCS is almost the sole deciding factor in any event. The judges may have bullet points for the categories as to what is acceptable, but they also have an incredible amount of leeway and face little to no repercussions to hiking up their points for whatever team or country they want, and the +5/-5 GOE makes it achievable.

One of the reasons I answered this now was the results of the GPF 2023. With the understanding that I have not watched the competition and can’t speak to the details, the points speak for themselves. In particular, the top two teams were deemed to have the same technical content in the free dance. But, the sixth place team was also said to have that same technical content. The base value was the same. And yet, on the basis of GOE and PCS, all from the judges, rather than being in contention for a medal, the sixth place team was deemed to be more than 11 points behind silver. Even taking out PCS (which here was significant) there was still 6.34 points between silver and sixth place - that is over six points in GOE alone and rendered their technical accomplishments moot

To give some comparison, look at Skate Canada 2016. VM lost the FD to Chock/Bates, and almost entirely on lost levels. They had identical levels except for one step sequence and their twizzles. Overall, the judges gave the GOE edge to VM - they beat CB in every element for GOE except for one choreographic element in which they tied, and in the twizzles. (They even had higher GOE on their lower level step sequence, though factoring the level and GOE together gave them fewer points.) VM beat CB soundly in PCS (+2 points!). The overall GOE was simply not enough to make up for amount of points they lost by losing those levels.

VM had the advantage in almost every way. And they still lost the FD, because they had a twizzle error, and a single missed edge or turn in one step sequence.

And that is what I mean by tech used to mean something.

tl;dr - the ISU has created an ice dance world in which the Chosen Team will do very well and it doesn’t matter if they can’t skate.

[dynared]

“I'd also argue that the IDW style writing in Earthspark is extra-insular because it's not just a mandate to keep with evergreen concepts, it's also now a moral issue as it was with many of those writers, to keep the franchise away from "chuds" and undesirables that probably bought Energon Universe comics like crazy.” Sorry if I sound overly nosy, but would you mind expanding on this??? I only recently got back into TF (with my only previous experiences being YEARS ago when I was a kid and didn’t even know who Shockwave was) so I’m a little out of the loop

Let's describe this so that it doesn't come across as a GriftTube rant or an apology for other writers.

IDW's comic writing was very insular, in that it was written almost like fanfic was. In fact, many of the writers, most infamously James Roberts, got their start in fanfic (Roberts having written the notoriously weird, tryhard novella Eugenesis), and were more than willing to import their characterizations from fanfics to the official comics, most infamously Star Saber, who was reimagined from a standard Autobot leader/single dad with an adopted kid into a religious fundamentalist of the worst kind, because that was the characterization Roberts used. Most of the IDW writers did not have a high opinion of the Japanese Transformers material (the hows and whys are their own articles, but the short version is - the fan wiki had a hate-on for the Japanese material and those fanfic writers were in that same circle). Most comic companies flat-out say this is a bad idea. Marvel Comics, in their submission guidelines for Epic Comics, call the phenomenon "Writing a comic about a comic", namely that your work is only of value to a specific section of fans who are already engaged with the material, and who want to see the material altered in such a way that it appeals to their biases (in this case, the writer's big anti-Japan, anti-super robot sentiments, and the desire to deconstruct Cybertronian society as Simon Furman laid out in Marvel).

This also included a lot, a LOT of gay romance. Roberts and other writers were clear why, they wanted to write romance, the character line was mostly male, so you were getting gay romance. This spiraled into a lot of issues with a focus on gender identity (after a very, VERY poorly received Arcee comic where she was essentially driven insane by a transition from male to female), and sexuality.

These comics sold horribly but built a very dedicated audience, the sort of audience that would probably have read fanfics breathlessly. So much so the writing started to leave a lot of openings, poorly described items, and loose plot threads that fanfic writers could build off of and write their own interpretations of, as a fanfic writer will often do when they want to get their audience more involved. But in terms of selling comics, they were poor sellers, to the point that an attempt at a combined shared Hasbro Universe, via the comic crossover Revolution, tanked, icing Hasbro's plan for one for nearly 7 years (with the Energon Universe trying again with a much more measured, controlled attempt and the film producers promising a GI Joe/Transformers crossover film).

The problem is that a lot of the criticism of the stories (we don't want to read about Transformers romance endlessly, you treat characters poorly, these crossovers make no sense) was often interpreted by the writers and the fans as "We hate gay people and trans people, we want stuff blowing up", and the writers who were supportive of such issues, doubled down, dismissing their critics as a small number of prejudiced malcontents. Some of the writers and fans of the writing of IDW also went on to help with other animated shows like Cyberverse, the War for Cybertron Trilogy, and Earthspark, most notably Nick Roche and Mae Catt. Both have been adamant about how important representation and life lessons are to their writing, with Catt out-and-out bragging on Twitter that she had two female characters kiss because she knew it would annoy people.

"I AM THE GAY AGENDA!"

Catt discussing her goals for EarthSpark on Twitter/X

All the shows I have just mentioned were also commercial failures. Cyberverse toys still clog toy shelves in discount retailers, the War for Cybertron series did so poorly that when the same writing team proposed a sequel based on the Legacy toy line, Netflix turned them down, and the Q4 reports show Earthspark was a commercial failure with many theorizing the only reason it's getting a Season 2 is because Hasbro wanted something on the air for their 40th anniversary, instead of having nothing in media besides comics until Transformers One comes out in the fall of 2024.

This leads to the final part of this explanation. The new comics from Skybound have seen fit to ignore most, if not all of IDW's contributions to the franchise, more focused on lots of action and basic but effective and strong characterizations serving to re-introduce the characters to people who have never read a Transformers comic or haven't watched Transformers media for decades. This is quite the opposite of Earthspark's focus on identity and life-lessons that were designed for the more insular fandom. And the criticisms of Skybound from the internet tend to focus on that, that they're appealing to an audience that didn't want what IDW was giving, so they're prejudiced. The thing is that the sales numbers don't lie, with many retailers pointing out that Skybound's take on the Transformers outsold comparable IDW releases 10 to 1.

I really hope all that helps clarify things. Like I said, I think that the writing being done essentially by fanfic writers, for fanfic writers created something that casual or non-fans were not going to engage with, but the fear that their critics were prejudiced in some way caused many of the writers to double down on those same habits, even when it's clear that the back-to-basics storytelling of Skybound is attracting far more readers.