#i hate family-centered societies and in particular my family can you tell

[autismmydearwatson]

I hate Chiss naming customs. Who was the genius who said "hey what if your family determined irrevocably how your name, THE CORNERSTONE OF YOUR IDENTITY, was formed, and the only way to change it was to go to another family and you cant be free of it unless you reach a certain rank in the military! And what if your social status was determined by whether you're adopted!" Shut the fuck up I am going to kill you in real life

[sylvielauffeydottir]

Hello, it is I, your friendly neighborhood historian. I am ready to lose followers for this post, but I have two masters degrees in history and one of my focuses has been middle eastern area studies. Furthermore, I’ve been tired of watching the world be reduced to pithy little infographics, and I believe there is no point to my education if I don’t put it to good use. Finally, I am ethnically Asheknazi Jewish. This does not color my opinion in this post — I am in support of either a one or two state solution for Israel and Palestine, depending on the factors determined by the Palestinian Authority, and the Israeli Government does not speak for me. I hate Netanyahu. A lot. With that said, my family was slaughtered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have stood in front of that memorial wall at the Holocaust memorial in DC for my great uncle Simon and my great uncle Louis and cried as I lit a candle. Louis was a rabbi, and he preached mitzvot and tolerance. He died anyway. 

There’s a great many things I want to say about what is happening in the Middle East right now, but let’s start with some facts. 

In early May, there were talks of a coalition government that might have put together (among other parties, the Knesset is absolutely gigantic and usually has about 11-13 political parties at once) the Yesh Atid, a center-left party, and the United Arab List, a Palestinian party. For the first time, Palestinians would have been members of the Israeli government in their own right. And what happened, all of the sudden? A war broke out. A war that, amazingly, seemed to shield Benjamin Netanyahu from criminal prosecution, despite the fact that he has been under investigation for corruption for some time now and the only thing that is stopping a real investigation is the fact that he is Prime Minister.

Funny how that happened. 

There’s a second thing people ought to know, and it is about Hamas. I’ve found it really disturbing to see people defending Hamas on a world stage because, whether or not people want to believe it, Hamas is a terrorist organization. I’m sorry, but it is. Those are the facts. I’m not being a right wing extremist or even a Republican or whatever else or want to lob at me here. I’m a liberal historian with some facts. They are a terrorist organization, and they don’t care if their people die. 

Here’s what you need to know: 

There are two governments for the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. In April 2021, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas postponed planned elections. He said it was because of a dispute amid Israeli-annexed East Jerusalum. He is 85 years old, and his Fatah Party is losing power to Hamas. Everyone knows that. Palestinians know that. 

Here’s the thing about Hamas: they might be terrorists, but aren’t idiots. They understand that they have a frustrated population filled with people who have been brutalized by their neighbors. And they also understand that Israel has something called the iron dome defense system, which means that if you throw a rocket at it, it probably won’t kill anyone (though there have been people in Israel who died, including Holocaust survivors). Israel will, however, retaliate, and when they do, they will kill Palestinian civilians. On a world stage, this looks horrible. The death toll, because Palestinians don’t have the same defense system, is always skewed. Should the Israeli government do that? No. It’s morally repugnant. It’s wrong. It’s unfair. It’s hurting people without the capability to defend themselves. But is Hamas counting on them to for the propaganda? Yeah. Absolutely. They’re literally willing to kill their other people for it.

You know why this works for Hamas? They know that Israel will respond anyway, despite the moral concerns. And if you’re curious why, you can read some books on the matter (Six Days of War by Michael Oren; The Yom Kippur War by Abraham Rabinovich; Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergmen; Antisemitism by Deborah Lipstadt; and Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis). The TL;DR, if you aren’t interested in homework, is that Israel believes they have no choice but to defend themselves against what they consider ‘hostile powers.’ And it’s almost entirely to do with the Holocaust. It’s a little David v Goliath. It is, dare I say, complicated.

I’m barely scratching the surface here. 

(We won’t get into this in this post, though if you want to DM me for details, it might be worth knowing that Iran funds Hamas and basically supplies them with all of their weapons, and part of the reason the United States has been so reluctant to engage with this conflict is that Iran is currently in Vienna trying to restore its nuclear deal with western powers. The USA cannot afford to piss off Iran right now, and therefore cannot afford to aggravative Hamas and also needs to rely on Israel to destroy Irani nuclear facilities if the deal goes south. So, you know, there is that).

There are some people who will tell you that criticism of the Israel government is antisemitic. They are almost entirely members of the right wing, evangelical community, and they don’t speak for the Jewish community. The majority of Jewish people and Jewish Americans in particular are criticizing the Israeli government right now. The majority of Jewish people in the diaspora and in Israel support Palestinian rights and are speaking out about it. And actually, when they talk about it, they are putting themselves in great danger to do so. Because it really isn’t safe to be visibly Jewish right now. People may not want to listen to Jews when they speak about antisemitism or may want to believe that antisemitism ‘isn’t real’ because ‘the Holocaust is over’ but that is absolutely untrue. In 2019, antisemitic hate crimes in the United States reached a high we have never seen before. I remember that, because I was living in London, and I was super scared for my family at the time. Since then, that number has increased by nearly 400% in the last ten days. If you don’t believe me, have some articles about it (one, two, three, four, and five, to name a few). 

I live in New York City, where a man was beaten in Time Square while attending a Free Palestine rally and wearing a kippah. I’m sorry, but being visibly Jewish near a pro-Palestine rally? That was enough to have a bunch of people just start beating on him? I made a previous post detailing how there are Jews being attacked all over the world, and there is a very good timeline of recent hate crimes against Jews that you can find right here. These are Jews, by the way, who have nothing to do with Israel or Palestine. They are Americans or Europeans or Canadians who are living their lives. In some cases, they are at pro-Palestine rallies and they are trying to help, but they just look visibly Jewish.  God Forbid we are the wrong ethnicity for your rally, even if we agree.

This is really serious. There are people calling for the death of all Jews. There are people calling for another Holocaust. 

There are 14 million Jews in the world. 14 million. Of 7.6 billion. And you think it isn’t a problem the way people treat us?

Anyway (aside from, you know, compassion), why does this matter? This matters because stuff like this deters Jews who want to be part of the pro-Palestine movement because they are literally scared for their safety. I said this before, and I will say it again: Zionism was, historically speaking, a very unpopular opinion. It was only widespread antisemitic violence (you know, the Holocaust) that made Jews believe there was a necessity for a Jewish state. Honestly, it wasn’t until the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that I supported it the abstract idea too.

I grew up in New York City, I am a liberal Jew, and I believe in the rights of marginalized and oppressed people to self-determine worldwide. Growing up, I also fit the profile of what many scholars describe as the self hating Jew, because I believed that, in order to justify myself in American liberal society, I had to hate Israel, and I had to be anti-Zionist by default, even if I didn’t always understand what ‘Zionism’ meant in abstract. Well, I am 27 years old now with two masters degrees in history, and here is what Zionism means to me: I hate the Israeli government. They do not speak for me. But I am not anti-Zionist. I believe in the necessity for a Jewish state — a state where all Jews are welcome, regardless of their background, regardless of their nationality. 

There needs to be a place where Jews, an ethnic minority who are unwelcome in nearly every state in the world, have a place where they are free from persecution — a place where they feel protected. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that place being the place where Jews are ethnically indigenous to. Because believe it or not, whether it is inconvenient, Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. I’ve addressed this in this post.

With that said, that doesn’t mean you can kick the Palestinian people out. They are also indigenous to that land, which is addressed in the same post, if you don’t trust me. 

What is incredible to me is that Zionism is defined, by the Oxford English Dixtionary, as “A movement [that called originally for] the reestablishment of a Jewish nationhood in Palestine, and [since 1948] the development of the State of Israel.” Whether we agree with this or not, there were early disagreements about the location of a ‘Jewish state,’ and some, like Maurice de Hirsch, believed it ought to be located in South America, for example. Others believed it should be located in Africa. The point is that the original plans for the Jewish state were about safety. The plan changed because Jews wanted to return to their homeland, the largest project of decolonization and indigenous reclamation ever to be undertaken by an indigenous group. Whether you want to hear that or not, it is true. Read a book or two. Then you might know what I mean.

When people say this is a complicated issue, they aren’t being facetious. They aren’t trying to obfuscate the point. They often aren’t even trying to defend the Israeli government, because I certainly am not — I think they are abhorrent. But there is no future in the Middle East if the Israelis and Palestinians don’t form a state that has an equal right of return and recognizes both of their indigenousness, and that will never happen if people can’t stop throwing vitriolic rhetoric around.  Is the Israeli Government bad? Yes. Are Israeli citizens bad? Largely, no. They want to defend their families, and they want to defend their people. This is basically the same as the fact that Palestinian people aren’t bad, though Hamas often is. And for the love of god, stop defending terrorist organizations. Just stop. They kill their own people for their own power and for their own benefit. 

And yes, one more time, the Israeli government is so, so, so wrong. But god, think about your words, and think about how you are enabling Nazis. The rhetoric the left is using is hurting Jews. I am afraid to leave my house. I’m afraid to identify as Jewish on tumblr. I’m afraid for my family, afraid for my friends. People I know are afraid for me. 

It’s 2021. I am not my great uncle. I cried for him, but I shouldn’t have to die like him. 

Words have consequences. Language has consequences. And genuinely, I do not think everyone is a bad person, so think about what you are putting into the world, because you’d be surprised how often you are doing a Nazi a favor or two. 

Is that really what you want? To do a Nazi a favor or two? I don’t think that you do. I hope you don’t, at least.

That’s all. You know, five thousand words later. But uh, think a little. Please. 

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Hi! I hope you’ll answer this question bc it bothers me quite a lot.. https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-mean-now-that-BTS-are-partial-owners-of-Big-Hit-Entertainment do you think it is true what the second person (Christine Herman) said? After reading this, i started to wonder…what if BTS does really have only profit in mind while doing new projects these days? Maybe they don’t really care anymore about creative and meaningful lyrics and sound? With Butter and PTD…all this generic music sung in English. Of course they say “we wanted to make fans feel good”, “butter and ptd represent who we are” and all these things fans want to hear but.. do you really think it’s true? moreover, don’t get me wrong, i don’t find product placement in their reality shows as something terrible, i believe this is a normal thing, however, nowadays the members really film ads and do marketing a lot. so yeah, for some reason i began to question their integrity dhsjjss i hope you will understand from where my concerns come from and won’t find this ask stupid sjdjjdjd

After reading that persons answer I can immediately tell you that I basically don't agree with an overwhelming majority of what she said (even more so since a lot of it just makes her sound like a manti that hates the company and basically would want them to make music for free or something). Generally I don’t agree with most of the opinions this person holds, and also Quora really isn’t a good source for info or good opinions, most of it is written by mantis, haters, and toxic shippers with an agenda so most ARMY will tell you to stay as far away from that website as possible.

Anyway, her focus in that answer was on money, since BTS are shareholders (and how that’s a conflict of interest despite other artists doing the exact thing but no one really cares or ever thinks about it), but what she failed to consider and note was that Big Hit Music, so BTS' label, isn't part of HYBE in the sense that shareholding has no baring on it since BHM is private. So while BTS profit off of HYBE doing well, and have a small percentage of a voice as shareholders, that has nothing to do with BHM in the classical sense, even if BHM's earnings reflect well on HYBE numbers and the shareholder money. 

BHM was made private to ensure their artistry would remain untouched, that was the whole point of that.

Even if they weren't HYBE shareholders, take Namjoon as example. He has more than 170 KOMCA credits, is among the top 3 Korean artists with the most credits and is also the youngest of them all. It is said that his earnings from that alone can sustain his family for 3 generations over. Look at Hobi and Chicken Noodle Soup, that song was a hit and he paid the original creator of that song 2 million dollars upfront and earned a lot back due to how successful it was. Same goes for Hope World which, again, was and is still immensely successful. Look at Yoongi and his work both as prod. SUGA, featuring artist SUGA, and as Agust D, as well as the credits he holds for his work on BTS songs (giving him as well a total of over 100 KOMCA credits, just like Hobi). Bangtan have worked and continue to work extremely hard for their music, put their heart and souls into it, and it shows even if their style changed as they grew older and more mature.

Yes, money is a major motivator, but looking at the above paragraph, do you really peg the members as these corrupt money hungry sellouts with no music related integrity? Who would need to sign major deals and would throw away their passion to just release empty shells of music for the sole reason of money? Am I naive enough to believe that they don't care about money? Of course not, we live in a capitalist society and even if BTS wouldn't care about money anymore at this point, HYBE very much does, and yet still I can't find it in me to agree with any of what was said in that answer that person wrote.

More below the cut:

And that point about how Hyundai cars were sold out because of BTS, isn't that the point why literally any company ever hires celebrities to advertise and endorse their product? And sure, again, I'm certain they earned a lot on these deals, they aren't the first or last or only ones in the history of ever to do so. Besides, look at JK and what he's done for small companies, or Tae who wore a brooch made my a small creator at the airport which catapulted that creator into the eyes of millions of ARMYs enough so that they could move to a proper studio and earn money with their work. Or the modern hanboks JK wore which led to the brand being able to move into actual stores in malls because of their sudden new popularity and demand. Or him wearing a bracelet that helps whales with a percentage of the money from the sales of said bracelet. And for all of that JK and Tae didn't earn any money at all. JK himself said that he's more conscious of the brand he wears now because he wants to help smaller businesses in these trying times, not because they pay him to do so (especially since they would never be able to afford that), but because he's aware of the influence he has and how he can use it to help others. Sound very much like a capitalistic villain, right?

As for the product placement bit, have you been on YouTube recently? Have you noticed that many, if not most, YouTube videos by ��bigger” creators (and by that I mean even people who are around the 100k subscriber mark) begin with them thanking whoever sponsored that particular video and give you a scripted minute to two minute long ad before getting into the actual topic of the video? And In The SOOP featuring Chilsung Cider, FILA clothes and the random mention of how good Samsung phones are isn’t much different from it, though really, if you’re not someone interested in fashion much, would you really notice or care that they wore FILA? It’s just...clothes? If it weren’t a BTS related show, would you even notice it much? And it’s not even like they mentioned those brands every five minutes or anything, just a few times, which sure sounded a bit out of place at times, but personally I thought it was easy to look past. That’s just how things work nowadays and it’s odd for people to behave like somehow BTS are the first and only ones to use product placements despite literally every movie and show doing it in subtle and less so manners.

The answer by that person you sent also mentioned the Hyundai song for their car IONIQ and, unsurprisingly, that person wrote it off as just some commercial jingle but I’d actually disagree with that. Not to sound like a Hyundai and Samsung stan, which I am neither of, but I actually think those two knew best how to utilize the artist they have spent millions on signing a deal with. Hyundai didn’t just write them off as pretty faces with a millions strong fan army behind them and that’s it, they remembered that they are musicians so they gave them a song and made a whole music video for it as well. And say what you will, it is a good song. Then, just a few days ago, Samsung stepped up their game and we were given Over The Horizon Prod by SUGA of BTS. For those who aren’t Samsung users, Over The Horizon is their signature ringtone and basically their company sound, and over the years different artists were asked to make their own version of it. And this time they reached out to Yoongi and asked if he’d like to do it as well. It’s kind of a big deal. Sure, Butter is used in one of their commercials much the way Dynamite was last year, but that’s beside the point. Would that person make the same claim about Imagine Dragons whose song Believer is also part of the ads for the new Samsung phones? I have my doubts.

Furthermore, and I don't want this to come across as mean toward you but, I think it is uncalled for to question their artistic integrity based on a total of 3 (three) English songs when last year alone we received 50+ songs, most of which were in Korean, among them the entirety of BE which was, according to the members, the album they were most involved in ever when it comes to both music and everything around it.

You can dislike their English songs, that’s more than fine, they have a very extensive discography you can listen to instead, but questioning their integrity based on them doing something that most, if not every, artist on their level does (as in sign ad deals with brands etc) is a bit much if you ask me. Does that mean indie artists whose songs get picked up for commercials (or for Netflix shows or movies) and thus it catapults them into the mainstream are also just money hungry people with no integrity and ones who don’t care about their music? Or is that, again, just a standard Bangtan is held to (as in that their integrity is questioned based on everything, even the most trivial/normal things) that only applies to them and no one else?

In the recent Weverse Magazine article about how Permission to Dance came to be there is a lot of talk about not only that song but also Butter and Dynamite, among the things being discussed and talked about they mentioned how the original lyrics for Butter were much more materialistic but that the members didn't like that so they asked for that to be changed. Likewise the original lyrics for Permission to Dance, as you'd expect from the penmanship of Ed Sheeran, were much more romantic, almost proposal like, which wasn't what the members wanted either so it was, again, adjusted in a way that would fit what they, as well as the A&R team, wanted. While you may not like these songs, they still had a say in them to a certain degree, could say yes or no and ask for adjustments. Why else would PTD take eight months?

While they might outsource their English songs, their main focus, so their Korean (as well as Japanese) discography is still centered around them, their lyrics, their songs, their sound. Of course you’ll also find outside producers and some lyricists on those as well, because that’s how music works these days, as in collaboratively, that doesn’t change anything at large. Their integrity is still very much there, their hearts are still in it, what other reason would any of them have to say that they want to continue for a long time, for Yoongi to say they want to figure out how to make their career last as long as possible, for JK to say that he wants to sing forever?

Admin 2 also wanted me to add that in their opinion, to a certain degree (though not fully of course), their English songs are like a way to laugh at and expose how shallow the English-centric music industry is. As in, while they made music in Korean with deep and meaningful lyrics, the US industry didn’t care but once they switched to easy to listen to sound with easy to understand English lyrics, they suddenly paid attention, are played on the radio, and even received a Grammy nomination which they wouldn’t have gotten for a Korean song ( A1: regardless how much Black Swan or Spring Day really would’ve deserved it...). 

[kurokoros]

Oh I absolutely want to know more about how much you hate hero society. I tried to argue w my fiancé about it yesterday bc I hate it so much too like they depend on children, CHILDREN, to fight most of their battles. Pls tell me ur thoughts 👉🏻👈🏻

where's the rest of the essay queen I've been having the same thoughts about hero society but I'm sure you'd put it way better than I could <3

I’m very surprised I got two asks about this lmao okay, so this might be a little all over the place, but it’s like 1am when I’m writing this and I have a lot of thoughts at the moment ANYWAY

Basically, Hero Society is based entirely on the morality being black and white, which it obviously isn’t. The series heavily relies on the terms “Hero” and “Villain”, which are extremely outdated when it comes to fiction as characters have been written with more depth and morality in fiction has shifted away from a very rigid dichotomy. The heroes are heroes because obviously they’re good, and the villains do bad things so obviously they’re villains. Obviously this isn’t actually the case, but that’s the basis for society in bnha.

This is shown from the very beginning by the protagonist. Midoriya is an unreliable narrator from the start because he worships Heroes and Hero Society. He has the utmost faith in All Might, the symbol of Hero Society, and never calls anything into question.

And then we learn about the Todoroki family. This is where my thoughts are going to get a little jumbled. I’ve been thinking a lot about them since spoilers for 290 came out, but they really are at the center of the grey morality debate, even more so than Midoriya and Shigaraki, in my opinion. Endeavor in particular is the first character that really challenges the moral greyness of Hero Society. He’s a Hero occupationally, but there’s no denying that he abused his children and his spouse. (I find it really interesting that Endeavor and Shouto weren’t really involved with the Overhaul Arc, considering the blatant parallels between Edneavor’s relationship with Shouto and Overhaul’s relationship with Eri. I’m not going to get into this right now though.)

SPOILERS FOR 290

Watching the reactions to the Dabi is Touya reveal has been really frustrating, because I think a lot of people are really falling into the trap of looking at things through bnha’s black and white morality lens, and they really shouldn’t be. But this is really where I’ve started thinking more about Hero Society itself and getting really frustrated with morality in the series.

The "Villains" in the series are made out to be monsters before they've committed any truly irredeemable crimes. Most of the Villains are victims of Society that were never saved as children, and are now considered too old to be saved or rehabilitated. The Heroes never try to help them, and somehow it's surprising when they become exactly what they've been told they are.

And this flaw in Hero Society and Heroes in general stems from their schooling. The Hero classes revolve entirely around fighting and overpowering/incapacitating their opponents. The students aren’t taught to diffuse a situation nonviolently. They aren’t taught how to talk someone down down and deescalate a situation before it gets violent. They’re taught to beat the shit out of each other because that’s what sells in the society they live in.

Hero Society perpetuates the violence they're supposed to prevent, because Heroes need Villains to exist in order to keep their jobs. Any grey morality becomes black morality because otherwise the system can’t sustain itself. 

As for Touya and Enji, people can think what they want about the recent chapter and Touya’s very public address, but it was necessary. Not only is it problematic to say that he should have kept quiet for the sake of his family (and their growth as characters), it sets up a turning point in the series. Society is going to be forced to change because it won’t be able to uphold it’s view on morality as black and white.

[nikibogwater]

Halloween is coming to a close, but I don’t have any candy. So instead, I shall Treat myself to one (1) unsolicited personal gush-post. 

Buckle up.

Niki Rambles: The Magical Siblings and Me (Or: Why My Blog/Ao3 Suddenly Became a Tales of Arcadia/Douxie Stanning Disaster)

So I’m knee deep in my latest Tales of Arcadia fic (it’s a doozy, as a couple of you might have figured out lol) and very much kind of wanted to talk a bit about the Immortal Bonds series as a whole. Tales of Arcadia is a series that’s been dear to my heart since mid-2017 when I saw the first season of Trollhunters, but it wasn’t until Wizards dropped this past August that I began to take an active interest in the fandom, especially in regards to fanfiction. I think I just always felt like ToA had a very neat, thorough story that explored every aspect of the characters/relationships that I personally wanted to see. But Wizards being crunched down to only 10 episodes by the filthy artistic oppressors at Netflix was (much as I hate to say it) one of the best things to happen to me as a fandom creator, because it meant that suddenly I had a story with characters that I absolutely loved that was just brimming with unexplored potential--it was a fic-author’s empty playground, and add in the fact that Douxie has easily settled quite comfortably at the very top of my Favorite Fictional Characters Ever list, and I was more than ready to play. 

But it got even better for yours truly, thanks to this precious bean:

If I have any sort of presence in the ToA fandom, it is as the Mother of the Magical Siblings. While I definitely write plenty of interaction between all three of them (Douxie, Nari, and Archie), it’s the relationship between the Punk Wizard and this Bean Goddess that really ignited the passion that would one day result in a 5-part (soon to be 6 and still counting!) series centered entirely around the family dynamic these three share. It’s one of the biggest and longest-running projects I’ve ever worked on, and also the one that has seen the most improvement to my writing skills. 

The reason Douxie’s relationship with Nari is so absurdly appealing/important to me is because I am a younger sibling--the youngest of five, actually, and I have been blessed with an absolutely STELLAR family, especially my older brothers, who have embodied every ideal associated with their position. I said a while back that Douxie shares traits with all three of my older brothers, and I think that’s why I latched onto his relationship with Nari so strongly. Of all the interactions he has with other characters, it’s his very brief exchanges with Nari that most closely resemble the relationship I had with my brothers when I was also a small bean who needed protecting from this big scary world. (Now I am what’s scary in this world. 😈 Jk, I’m actually a very nice person). Also insane amount of Kudos to the writers/animators working on the show for somehow managing to communicate such a specific feeling in like, 25 seconds?! You guys are insanely talented.

Obviously there’s a lot of differences, and Nari is a vastly different personality than my own, but the core of the interactions, the feelings they sparked within me, is very familiar and close to my heart. So you can imagine my absolute DELIGHT when the series ended with these two quite literally riding off into the sunrise together, embarking on a joint venture that we as the audience are not allowed to see (at least, not yet), the two giving each other a soft, affectionate glance before the camera cuts away. (I have no idea what face Archie is making here lol).

(I could also write an entire essay on the significance of the expression on Douxie’s face right now--homeboy doesn’t look that soft for just ANYONE, but I do need to sleep at some point, so that’s not happening tonight). 

So there’s the first reason I became borderline obsessed with these two. What few interactions they had struck me as being very sibling-esque, in such a way that hearkened back to my own experiences and made me feel wonderfully nostalgic. The second reason is perhaps a bit less soft and sweet. 

I really want to push back against a particular idea that has become rooted in media, and especially in fandom: the idea that intense emotional intimacy is exclusive to romantic relationships. Modern society is almost feral with its obsession over romance (more specifically sex, but this is a PG blog and I don’t want to even go there), and while I will be the first in line to tell you that a good old-fashioned romantic love story (when done well and appropriately) is a joy to read/watch, I will never stop screaming into the void that platonic/familial relationships are just as important, just as dramatic, just as wonderful as romantic ones (albeit in a very different way). Douxie and Nari have given me an opportunity to write for a relationship dynamic that I know inside and out, for characters who I absolutely adore. And they’ve given me an outlet to celebrate something that I think is too-often forgotten in our modern world: the importance and intensity of familial/platonic love. The warm feeling that nestles in my chest when my mom asks me if I’d like a cup of tea while I’m writing, when my dad squeezes my shoulder, when my brother sends me into hysteric fits of laughter with the stupidest joke possible, when my best friend randomly texts me “Vibe check! How are you?” in the middle of the day without warning--that’s what I want to celebrate with The Immortal Bonds. And it’s you guys, my beautiful, beautiful followers/readers, who have made this venture so much more than just me hurling my opinions into the nether. You’ve all been so incredibly supportive, with your comments, your Kudos, even just your silent stalking of my Tumblr page, quietly leaving likes on all of my Magical Siblings content. You guys have been celebrating these things WITH me, and I can say with great certainty that my experience in this fandom has been the absolute best that I have ever had. 

Nobody asked for this post, and I can only think of one or two people who would actually care to read the whole thing, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while. Just to put these words somewhere safe, where they can sit on display for those few who are interested. Also, huge thank you to the entire Tales of Arcadia team (who will probably never see this) for telling such a fantastic story and crafting such beloved characters that sparked the imaginations of so many of us. You guys make content that makes this cold dark world feel a little warmer and brighter. ✨

[giftofshewbread]

Is The Time at Hand?

One can almost physically feel evil’s powerful pull at the godly restraints imposed by Heaven’s Love and wisdom. Wickedness exerts its mesmerizing influence on this generation from its high places, inducing an insanity that can only be defined as the reprobate mind given in Romans 1:28.

Those of us fifty years of age or older can but blink and wonder at the upside-down world as it continues to descend into a madness of sorts. Those younger, for the most part, don’t seem to notice the deliberate deconstruction of all we of the 50-plus generation recognize and by which we are vexed.

I refer to such developments in America as the following.

* Disdain for human life in the form of abortion.

* The slaughter of babies in their mother’s wombs doesn’t seem to matter to more than half of our numbers. The younger generation –the baby-producing ages—especially don’t seem to notice and care. (And I realize that there are those who do care about the unborn among this age. But they are in the minority, and a significant minority at that.)    

* Disregard for formerly moral principles.

* Marital status means nothing to a growing percentage of America’s population. Statistics bear it out. Sexual activity outside of the marriage bond is as common as any other entertaining, social activity.

* Embrace of homosexuality as more normal than heterosexuality is now the “enlightened” view.

* The norming of same-gender sexual relations has over powered today’s culture in a brief time. If one doesn’t embrace the social construct that biblical      prohibitions are no longer relevant and that it is perfectly normal for men to have sex with men and women with women, then it is the one holding such an outmoded view who is the great sinner, not those who are “enlightened.”

* Welcome of new thought in adult-children sexual relations is a growing reality within progressive ideology. –Thus although there is no realization that such thought is not new at all, but is as ancient as every civilization that has lived and died.

* Such organizations as the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which was not too long ago seen as among the most disgusting and perverted of groups, now are considered acceptable under growingly lenient circumstances. It all depends upon whether such relationships as adults and children being sexually involved are “consensual”–which in itself is as reprobate a concept as any that could be devised, in this writer’s view.

Thankfully there are Christian and other groups organized against this pedophile movement to normalize such filthy and evil activity. But it is a satanically driven trend that will not be stopped as mankind devolves ever deeper into total depravity.

Even public libraries and schools are becoming ever more involved in this movement to bring adults and children together in this unholy way.

Dolly Madison Library in Fairfax, Virginia has invited preschoolers, babies and toddlers to attend ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ to celebrate ‘Pride Month.’

“Celebrate Pride Month by attending Drag Storybook Hour cosponsored by Fairfax County Public Library and The McLean Community Center. Registration required. All Ages.”…

The event will take place on Saturday, June 26 from 10:30 am to 11:15 am.

Event planners invited “babies, toddlers, preschoolers and school age children.”…

The Fairfax Republican party slammed the library for inviting young children to Drag Story Hour in celebration of pride month.

***[Ang, Source: Virginia Library Invites Preschoolers, Babies and Toddlers to Drag Queen Story Hour to Celebrate Pride Month, by Cristina Laila, Gateway Pundit, June 25, 2021]***

And the powerful tug of that luciferian hand, pulling this generation farther from godly restraint, manifests in the arena of commerce. All who want to live under a more moral society and culture are increasingly marginalized by the wicked forces of earthly, financial power.

Amazon, which is on track to be America’s largest retailer next year, launched its charity program Amazon Smile in 2013. The company has banned multiple conservative organizations since then, because it relies on the anti-conservative Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to decide what groups qualify for the program.

WORLD News Group reported in 2020 that “Liberty Counsel, Family Research Council (FRC) and the American College of Pediatricians” are not allowed on Amazon Smile. Alliance Defending Freedom was reportedly removed from the site as well. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood, Black Lives Matter, and The Satanic Temple are all free to collect donations from the program.

The AmazonSmile program is fairly simple. “Shop at smile.amazon.com and we’ll donate 0.5% of eligible purchases to your favorite charitable organization—no fees, no extra cost,” the website explained. However, Amazon will not let just any charity into the program. “Organizations that engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities are not eligible to participate. Amazon relies on the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which registered charities fall into these groups,” AmazonSmile’s about page said.

***[Source: From Planned Parenthood to Satanism, AmazonSmile encourages shoppers to donate to some extreme charities — at least 216 different groups. But multiple prominent conservative groups aren’t even allowed to participate, by Kayla Sargent, NewsBusters.org]***

We know, of course, who are the “intolerant” in today’s definition of the term. Christian organizations, in particular, are not allowed to participate in the charitable largesse of the beneficent Amazon money masters.

The transgender  curriculum is becoming ubiquitous throughout the nation’s public school systems. Children in grade school are taught that God’s Word, the Bible, is wrong. That they can be whatsoever gender they wish.

And as parents begin to catch on to this type of hellish inculcation and attend school board meetings to protest, the school officials in some cases are contriving ways to obfuscate their nefarious doings.

The following news link brief on Rapture Ready News frames this attempt to deceive.

Teachers told to give fake curriculum to parents who complain of ‘indoctrination’ Amid complaints from parents that their children are being “indoctrinated,” a Missouri school district official is advising English teachers to create a fake curriculum and keep the real one hidden.

Another such brief on a link further emphasizes the satanic tug at the knot teeing this generation to the last vestiges of its moral moorings.

Planned Parenthood sex-ed flyer telling 11-year-olds they could have sex, as long as the partner isn’t older than 13, distributed in WA public school A flyer telling 11-year-olds that they can have sex, as long as the person isn’t older than 13, was distributed earlier this week to students at Stewart Middle School in Tacoma, WA.

All of this means that the stench of these end times must be singeing the nostrils of a Holy God. It is more than appropriate to ask if this is not that time He forewarned of in the one book we are promised His blessing if we read and heed. Is that time at hand?  

“And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” (Rev. 22: 10-21)

–Terry

[mermaidsirennikita]

books (in the time of corona)

PART I: ADULT EDITION

Let’s get real--we’re all going fucking insane.  

Therefore, I’m recommending some books with which you can kill time.  I’m breaking them into categories--the romance category including several subgenres but by and large covering books that focus more heavily on the romance than anything else.  These will all be adult books; I’m doing a separate page for YA recommendations.

I’ll be adding to this list as I finish books that I feel belong here.

ROMANCE

A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux.  A young woman is abandoned by her scoundrel of a boyfriend, only to find a literal medieval knight in shining armor.  Pure 80′s cheese, a classic in the time travel subgenre long before Outlander ever happened.

The Circle Trilogy by Nora Roberts.  Six sexy people, three men and three women in Roberts fashion, travel across time and parallel dimensions to fight an evil vampire and her undead army.  Come for three fun romances, stay in particular for the “virgin bookworm queen captures the heart of the formerly evil 1,000 Irish vampire” ship.

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne.  Rival coworkers who’ve always hated each other compete for the same job--until maybe?  They start?  Hooking up?

From Lukov with Love by Mariana Zapata.  A down on her luck singles figure skater pairs up with the pairs champion she’s always despised... Unless they in fact, in a STUNNING TWIST, do not hate each other?

Pestilence by Laura Thalassa.  A BIT ON THE NOSE RIGHT NOW, but I promise that this tale of a hot virgin Horseman of the Apocalypse spreading his plague and the one woman brave enough to fuck him is WORTH IT.  As is the sequel, War.

My Lady’s Choosing by Kitty Curran.  A literal choose your own adventure novel, but the adventures bodice ripping Regency romance plots!!!

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang.  A sweet and smart woman on the autism spectrum hires a male escort to teach her to be good at sex.  Shit goes DOWN from there.

The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary.  She works days; he works nights.  She needs a cheap place to stay, and he needs a roommate.  So they share a flat and even a bed (sleeping on opposite sides and never at the same time) only communicating through post-it notes throughout the apartment.  What could go wrong?

Marriage for One by Ella Maise.  She can only get her inheritance if she’s married.  Good thing a glacial attorney has offered to marry her out of nowhere, only for paper purposes.  What could go wrong???

The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa.  Lina is a wedding planner who was left at the altar.  Max is the younger brother of the man who left her, and apparently convinced him to do the leaving.  What happens when they work together?

Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert.  Chloe suffers from a chronic illness, which means that she’s never had a life--and so she compiles a list that will help her get one.  On the list?  Meaningless sex.  Which she won’t have with her building’s superintendent, even though he’s really down to help her cross off all the other items, riiiight?

HISTORICAL FICTION

Passion by Jude Morgan.  The dramatic and intense height of Romantic England, told from the perspectives of Caroline Lamb, mistress of Lord Byron; August Leigh, his sister and lover; Mary Shelley; and Fanny Brawne, fiancee of John Keats.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier.  Impoverished Griet becomes a maid in the household of the painter Vermeer, becoming his muse after he realizes that she has a natural eye--much to the dismay of his wife.

Snow Flower and The Secret Fan by Lisa See. In nineteenth century China, best friends Lily and Snow Flower follow each other through emotional and cultural revolutions, communicating through the secret language of fans.

The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George.  Cleopatra recounts her life story, from her earliest memory, through her affairs with Caesar and Antony, and her end.

Mistress of Rome by Kate Quinn.  In Domitian’s Rome, a Jewish girl rises from the position of lady’s slave to the emperor’s mistress through wiles and scheming.

The Tiger Queens by Stephanie Thornton.  The rise and fall of Genghis Khan’s empire, as told through the women of his family--from his favorite wife to a clever daughter-in-law.

At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen.  A socialite follows her incompetent to Scotland as he struggles to find the Loch Ness Monster and redeem his ancestor’s name--finding herself and questioning her life in the process.

A Year of Ravens.  A collection of short stories by different authors, all centering on Boudica’s rebellion through the eyes of her countrymen and her enemies.

Feast of Sorrow by Crystal King.  A slave becomes a chef in the treacherous household of a social climber struggling to gain the favor or Caesar August.

Fatal Throne.  Six authors tell the stories of Henry VIII’s wives, all from their differing perspectives.

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.  The rise and fall of a 1970s rock band is charted through the recollections of its members--as they recall what drove them apart, and in particular the intense relationship between the leader singers.

THRILLERS

The Girl in 6E by A.R. Torre.  A woman with murderous impulses locks herself in her apartment to keep the public safe, making a living as a camgirl.  She’s left torn between morals and impulse when she begins to suspect that one of her “fans” is dangerous.

Little Deaths by Emma Flint.  In 1960s America, a single mother finds her personal life and image called into question when she’s accused of murdering her two young children.

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.  A nurse covers up her beautiful sister’s murders, only to be caught between loyalties when the doctor she loves falls for said sister.

The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine.  A plain “nobody” transforms herself in order to steal a high society housewife’s husband, only to deal with more than she bargained for.

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen.  A woman obsesses over her ex-husband’s new fiancee, leading her to disturbing lengths.

The Other Woman by Sandie Jones.  After meeting her ideal man, a woman must contend with his possessive mother, who will do anything to maintain her hold over him.

Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman.  A couple on their dream honeymoon find something in the water that will change the course of their life together.

The Au Pair by Emma Rous.  The day Seraphine and her twin brother were born, their mother flung herself off a cliff and their nanny disappeared.  Decades later, Seraphine discovers a photo taken of her parents just before her mother’s death--with only one baby.  The only person who holds the key to the mystery?  The au pair.

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing.  A couple keeps the spark alive through murder.

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager.  A young woman takes a job apartment-sitting in a high-end Manhattan building.  Shortly after she befriends another sitter, the girl goes missing--with everyone else acting like nothing is amiss.

The Wives by Tarryn Fisher.  Thursday is one of her husband’s three wives, though she’s never met the other two.  When she finally does meet the third wife, she discovers a woman far different from what she expected--and covered in bruises.

FANTASY/SUPERNATURAL/HORROR

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier.  Sorcha is the youngest of seven children in medieval Ireland.  When her stepmother curses her six older brothers to live as swans, Sorcha agrees to weave them shirts of painful thistles, all the while remaining silent, to break the spell.

Black Pearls by Louise Hawes.  A collection of dark fairy tale retellings.

The Incarnations by Susan Barker.  A man receives letters from an anonymous source, detailing his supposed past lives throughout historical China.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust.  A dark Snow White retelling, with a stepmother whose goals extend far beyond the princess.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.  Alex Stern is discovered as the sole survivor of a brutal multiple murder, and is promptly scooped up by a group charged with monitoring the occult societies at Yale.  Now disguised as a university student, Alex must figure out who’s been murdering locals, while also hiding what happened the night she lived.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell.  A young widow in Victorian England is sent to her husband’s country estate to wait out her pregnancy, and is not alarmed to discover a “silent companion” (a painted wooden figure) in the house.  But when the figure’s eyes begin following her, she is sucked into a history beyond her imagination.

Circe by Madeline Miller.  The story of the woman who would seduce Odysseus, from her beginnings as a plain witch born of Helios and a mother who couldn’t care less.  A classic rise to power story.

CONTEMPORARY LIT

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal.  Down on her luck Nikki takes up a job as a creative writing class instructor for the Punjabi widows in her West London neighborhood.  It turns out that the widows thought she was there to teach them to write in English--which leads to the class becoming a place for them to share their stories orally instead.  And it turns out that they’re a bit... erotic.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.  Upwardly mobile newlyweds Celestina and Roy have their lives upended when Roy is falsely accused of a terrible crime and sent to prison for twelve years.  When he’s released early after five, he returns home to find that Celestina has changed completely, and their marriage is entirely unknown.

Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo.  A young Nigerian couple has always been against polygamy; but after the wife fails to get pregnant, her in-laws show up on their doorstep with a second wife.

NON-FICTION/MEMOIR

Harem: The World Behind The Veil by Alev Lytle Croutier.  An examination of the Ottoman Empire’s harem culture, focusing on the women within.

Love For Sale: A World History of Prostitution by Nils Johan Ringal.  Not really a GLOBAL history of prostitution, but a good introduction starting with ancient times and going into the cases of more recent madams in America, with a strong case for legalization worldwide.

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman.  A readable biography of the famously scandalous and tragic duchess, to be read while you kill time rewatching “The Duchess” starring Keira Knightley.

Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy by Sarah Bradford.  A fair but none-too-precious assessment of one of Renaissance Italy’s most controversial women, and an analysis of her relationships with her father and brother.

The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn by Eric Ives.  While you’re quarantining, you might as well read the definitive Anne Boleyn biography, yes?  This one is responsible for much of the modern attitude on Anne.

Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber.  A fascinating analysis of Marie Antoinette’s political life through her clothes.

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi.  An analysis of the infamous, unsolved “Monster of Florence” case.  One of the most gruesome serial killers in Italy’s history, the monster’s crimes were pinned on several different men, and even investigated by the prosecutor who botched the Amanda Knox case.

The Forger’s Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick.  An examination of the case of Han van Meegeren, a painter who forged and sold many Dutch master fakes, and the pretentious art world that let him get away with it for years.

The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire by Jack Weatherford.  A study of the women in Genghis Khan’s family, and in particular those that kept his empire from falling to ruin after his death.  A good companion read with Stephanie Thornton’s fiction novel Tiger Queens mentioned above.

Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum by Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino.  How did the Getty Museum end up with so many stolen artifacts?  This book aims to find out.

The Creation of Anne Boleyn by Susan Bordo.  A different kind of Anne Boleyn book, studying her portrayal in culture and fiction--complete with input from Natalie Dormer following her portrayal of Anne Boleyn on The Tudors.

Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses by Sarah Gristwood.  An examination of the women of the houses of Lancaster and York during their famous, long-running conflict--and how these women had an impact on battles and politics alike.

The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish by Emily Voigt.  The author delves into why people are so obsessed with the arowana, a rare and exotic fish, to the point that they’ll commit murder--and becomes wrapped up in the fascination herself.

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy.  Over the course of a month, Ariel Levy watches everything she held true in her life--her financial security, her career, her marriage, and her pregnancy--fall apart.  Levy must confront what it means to live an “unconventional” and “free” life, only for that to become meaningless, and pick up the pieces.

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to find The Good Death by Caitlin Doughty.  Doughty recounts her global travels to observe and study different funerary and death rituals, recounting and analyzing her experiences with respect and personality.

Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer.  A collection of female serial killers, analyzing why they did what they did and the cultural legacy they left behind.

Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson.  A history of decapitated human heads, and what different cultures have done with them.

From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke.  Tembi Locke was never truly accepted by her husband’s Sicilian family, as a black American woman.  But when Saro dies young of cancer, she finds herself more deeply entwined her in-laws, as she works to pick up the pieces.  (Warning: one of the most achingly romantic books I’ve ever read; but it will destroy you.)

[arcticdementor]

In Chapter 5 of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli describes three options for how a conquering power might best treat those it has defeated in war. The first is to ruin them; the second is to rule directly; the third is to create “therein a state of the few which might keep it friendly to you.”

The example Machiavelli gives of the last is the friendly government Sparta established in Athens upon defeating it after 27 years of war in 404 BCE. For the upper caste of an Athenian elite already contemptuous of democracy, the city’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War confirmed that Sparta’s system was preferable. It was a high-spirited military aristocracy ruling over a permanent servant class, the helots, who were periodically slaughtered to condition them to accept their subhuman status. Athenian democracy by contrast gave too much power to the low-born. The pro-Sparta oligarchy used their patrons’ victory to undo the rights of citizens, and settle scores with their domestic rivals, exiling and executing them and confiscating their wealth.

The Athenian government disloyal to Athens’ laws and contemptuous of its traditions was known as the Thirty Tyrants, and understanding its role and function helps explain what is happening in America today.

For my last column I spoke with The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman about an article he wrote more than a decade ago, during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. His important piece documents the exact moment when the American elite decided that democracy wasn’t working for them. Blaming the Republican Party for preventing them from running roughshod over the American public, they migrated to the Democratic Party in the hopes of strengthening the relationships that were making them rich.

A trade consultant told Friedman: “The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the Eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.”

In the more than 10 years since Friedman’s column was published, the disenchanted elite that the Times columnist identified has further impoverished American workers while enriching themselves. The one-word motto they came to live by was globalism—that is, the freedom to structure commercial relationships and social enterprises without reference to the well-being of the particular society in which they happened to make their livings and raise their children.

Undergirding the globalist enterprise was China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. For decades, American policymakers and the corporate class said they saw China as a rival, but the elite that Friedman described saw enlightened Chinese autocracy as a friend and even as a model—which was not surprising, given that the Chinese Communist Party became their source of power, wealth, and prestige. Why did they trade with an authoritarian regime and send millions of American manufacturing jobs off to China thereby impoverish working Americans? Because it made them rich. They salved their consciences by telling themselves they had no choice but to deal with China: It was big, productive, and efficient and its rise was inevitable. And besides, the American workers hurt by the deal deserved to be punished—who could defend a class of reactionary and racist ideological naysayers standing in the way of what was best for progress?

…

A decade ago, no one would’ve put NBA superstar LeBron James and Apple CEO Tim Cook in the same family album, but here they are now, linked by their fantastic wealth owing to cheap Chinese manufacturing (Nike sneakers, iPhones, etc.) and a growing Chinese consumer market. The NBA’s $1.5 billion contract with digital service provider Tencent made the Chinese firm the league’s biggest partner outside America. In gratitude, these two-way ambassadors shared the wisdom of the Chinese Communist Party with their ignorant countrymen. After an an NBA executive tweeted in defense of Hong Kong dissidents, social justice activist King LeBron told Americans to watch their tongues. “Even though yes, we do have freedom of speech,” said James, “it can be a lot of negative that comes with it.”

Because of Trump’s pressure on the Americans who benefited extravagantly from the U.S.-China relationship, these strange bedfellows acquired what Marxists call class consciousness—and joined together to fight back, further cementing their relationships with their Chinese patrons. United now, these disparate American institutions lost any sense of circumspection or shame about cashing checks from the Chinese Communist Party, no matter what horrors the CCP visited on the prisoners of its slave labor camps and no matter what threat China’s spy services and the People’s Liberation Army might pose to national security. Think tanks and research institutions like the Atlantic Council, the Center for American Progress, the EastWest Institute, the Carter Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and others gorged themselves on Chinese money. The world-famous Brookings Institution had no scruples about publishing a report funded by Chinese telecom company Huawei that praised Huawei technology.

…

But if Donald Trump saw decoupling the United States from China as a way to dismantle the oligarchy that hated him and sent American jobs abroad, he couldn’t follow through on the vision. After correctly identifying the sources of corruption in our elite, the reasons for the impoverishment of the middle classes, and the threats foreign and domestic to our peace, he failed to staff and prepare to win the war he asked Americans to elect him to fight.

And because it was true that China was the source of the China Class’ power, the novel coronavirus coming out of Wuhan became the platform for its coup de grace. So Americans became prey to an anti-democratic elite that used the coronavirus to demoralize them; lay waste to small businesses; leave them vulnerable to rioters who are free to steal, burn, and kill; keep their children from school and the dying from the last embrace of their loved ones; and desecrate American history, culture, and society; and defame the country as systemically racist in order to furnish the predicate for why ordinary Americans in fact deserved the hell that the elite’s private and public sector proxies had already prepared for them.

For nearly a year, American officials have purposefully laid waste to our economy and society for the sole purpose of arrogating more power to themselves while the Chinese economy has gained on America’s. China’s lockdowns had nothing to do with the difference in outcomes. Lockdowns are not public health measures to reduce the spread of a virus. They are political instruments, which is why Democratic Party officials who put their constituents under repeated lengthy lockdowns, like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, are signaling publicly that it is imperative they be allowed to reopen immediately now that Trump is safely gone.

That Democratic officials intentionally destroyed lives and ended thousands of them by sending the ill to infect the elderly in nursing homes is irrelevant to America’s version of the Thirty Tyrants. The job was to boost coronavirus casualties in order to defeat Trump and they succeeded. As with Athens’ anti-democratic faction, America’s best and brightest long ago lost its way. At the head of the Thirty Tyrants was Critias, one of Socrates’ best students, a poet and dramatist. He may have helped save Socrates from the regime’s wrath, and yet the philosopher appears to have regretted that his method, to question everything, fed Critias’ sweeping disdain for tradition. Once in power, Critias turned his nihilism on Athens and destroyed the city.

…

The chief publicist of the post-Cold War order was Francis Fukuyama, who in his 1992 book The End of History argued that with the fall of the Berlin Wall Western liberal democracy represented the final form of government. What Fukuyama got wrong after the fall of the Berlin Wall wasn’t his assessment of the strength of political forms; rather it was the depth of his philosophical model. He believed that with the end of the nearly half-century-long superpower standoff, the historical dialectic pitting conflicting political models against each other had been resolved. In fact, the dialectic just took another turn.

Just after defeating communism in the Soviet Union, America breathed new life into the communist party that survived. And instead of Western democratic principles transforming the CCP, the American establishment acquired a taste for Eastern techno-autocracy. Tech became the anchor of the U.S.-China relationship, with CCP funding driving Silicon Valley startups, thanks largely to the efforts of Dianne Feinstein, who, after Kissinger, became the second-most influential official driving the U.S.-CCP relationship for the next 20 years.

…

Nearly every major American industry has a stake in China. From Wall Street—Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley— to hospitality. A Marriott Hotel employee was fired when Chinese officials objected to his liking a tweet about Tibet. They all learned to play by CCP rules.

“It’s so pervasive, it’s better to ask who’s not tied into China,” says former Trump administration official Gen. (Ret.) Robert Spalding.

Unsurprisingly, the once-reliably Republican U.S. Chamber of Commerce was in the forefront of opposition to Trump’s China policies—against not only proposed tariffs but also his call for American companies to start moving critical supply chains elsewhere, even in the wake of a pandemic. The National Defense Industrial Association recently complained of a law forbidding defense contractors from using certain Chinese technologies. “Just about all contractors doing work with the federal government,” said a spokesman for the trade group, “would have to stop.”

…

Apple, Nike, and Coca Cola even lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. On Trump’s penultimate day in office, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States has “determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, targeting Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.” That makes a number of major American brands that use forced Uyghur labor—including, according to a 2020 Australian study, Nike, Adidas, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and General Motors—complicit in genocide.

The idea that countries that scorn basic human and democratic rights should not be directly funded by American industry and given privileged access to the fruits of U.S. government-funded research and technology that properly belongs to the American people is hardly a partisan idea—and has, or should have, little to do with Donald Trump. But the historical record will show that the melding of the American and Chinese elites reached its apogee during Trump’s administration, as the president made himself a focal point for the China Class, which had adopted the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle. That’s not to say establishment Republicans are cut out of the pro-China oligarchy—Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s shipbuilder billionaire father-in-law James Chao has benefited greatly from his relationship with the CCP, including college classmate Jiang Zemin. Gifts from the Chao family have catapulted McConnell to only a few slots below Feinstein in the list of wealthiest senators.

Riding the media tsunami of Trump hatred, the China Class cemented its power within state institutions and security bureaucracies that have long been Democratic preserves—and whose salary-class inhabitants were eager not to be labeled as “collaborators” with the president they ostensibly served. Accommodation with even the worst and most threatening aspects of the Chinese communist regime, ongoing since the late 1990s, was put on fast-forward. Talk about how Nike made its sneakers in Chinese slave labor camps was no longer fashionable. News that China was stealing American scientific and military secrets, running large spy rings in Silicon Valley and compromising congressmen like Eric Swalwell, paying large retainers to top Ivy League professors in a well-organized program of intellectual theft, or in any way posed a danger to its own people or to its neighbors, let alone to the American way of life, were muted and dismissed as pro-Trump propaganda.

…

There is a good reason why lockdowns—quarantining those who are not sick—had never been previously employed as a public health measure. The leading members of a city, state, or nation do not imprison its own unless they mean to signal that they are imposing collective punishment on the population at large. It had never been used before as a public health measure because it is a widely recognized instrument of political repression.

…

China had cultivated many friends in the American press, which is why the media relays Chinese government statistics with a straight face—for instance that China, four times the size of the United States, has suffered 1/100th the number of COVID-19 fatalities. But the key fact is this: In legitimizing CCP narratives, the media covers not primarily for China but for the American class that draws its power, wealth, and prestige from China. No, Beijing isn’t the bad guy here—it’s a responsible international stakeholder. In fact, we should follow China’s lead. And by March, with Trump’s initial acquiescence, American officials imposed the same repressive measures on Americans used by dictatorial powers throughout history to silence their own people.

Eventually, the pro-China oligarchy would come to see the full range of benefits the lockdowns afforded. Lockdowns made leading oligarchs richer—$85 billion richer in the case of Bezos alone—while impoverishing Trump’s small-business base. In imposing unconstitutional regulations by fiat, city and state authorities normalized autocracy. And not least, lockdowns gave the American establishment a plausible reason to give its chosen candidate the nomination after barely one-third of the delegates had chosen, and then keep him stashed away in his basement for the duration of the Presidential campaign. And yet in a sense, Joe Biden really did represent a return to normalcy in the decadeslong course of U.S.-China relations.

…

What seems clear is that Biden’s inauguration marks the hegemony of an American oligarchy that sees its relationship with China as a shield and sword against their own countrymen. Like Athens’ Thirty Tyrants, they are not simply contemptuous of a political system that recognizes the natural rights of all its citizens that are endowed by our creator; they despise in particular the notion that those they rule have the same rights they do. Witness their newfound respect for the idea that speech should only be free for the enlightened few who know how to use it properly. Like Critias and the pro-Sparta faction, the new American oligarchy believes that democracy’s failures are proof of their own exclusive right to power—and they are happy to rule in partnership with a foreign power that will help them destroy their own countrymen.

What does history teach us about this moment? The bad news is that the Thirty Tyrants exiled notable Athenian democrats and confiscated their property while murdering an estimated 5% of the Athenian population. The good news is that their rule lasted less than a year.

[kanralovesu]

I Loved Beastars But Not Its Metaphor

Right out of the gate let me say I enjoyed watching Beastars. I think it has some of the best written characters out there and its world is very interesting. However, based on just season 1 of the anime I don’t fully understand or like what its trying to say. Held up against other media that use animals as a metaphor I 100% went into this trying to figure out what it was using animal nature as a metaphor for, but I left feeling like the vision was cloggy at best, downright destructive at worst. Lets take a look at some of the themes going on here. 

The divide between Herbivore and Carnivore is front and center in the show and so naturally that’s where I first looked for meaning. Instantly, however, I ran into a problem: Carnivores being biologically geared towards violence surely means whatever Carnivore is analogous to causes violence. Lets be honest, saying certain people in our world are biologically more violent isn’t the best message to be sending. There is certainly a school of thought in the “nature vs nurture” debate which says most if not all our personality is based on our birth, not on the environment we grow up in. At best this ideology can be wielded to say all humans have an equal chance of violence and at worst this can be straight up racism. I don’t think its entirely impossible to discount this potential racist undertone from Beastars as certain animal species are literally more violent than others. I hate to say it, but lines like “I’m glad I was born a wolf” which Legosi says as he fights off the lions to save Haru lend weight to this interpretation. Being a Carnivore is something you’re born with. I think the best interpretation here is that being born a Carnivore is akin to being born into a wealthy family, giving you natural advantages from birth. I don’t think this lines up as neatly as any metaphor where being a Carnivore is based on something biological though, but like I said I really don’t want to dislike the metaphors in this show so I’m trying the best I can to find something here. I also think it can be argued that the Carnivore is a representation of the dominant male and the Herbivore is the more traditional submissive women. 

Compare this to how Zootopia handles the idea of Herbivore vs Carnivore. For most of the movie we’re lead to believe that being a Carnivore makes you inherently more dangerous, but later we realize this is just a lie spread by Herbivores. In case the racism message wasn’t obvious enough, the Herbivore government officials also distributed drugs to the Carnivores just like what really happened in lower income neighborhoods in the US. Beastars uses this metaphor correctly once when Haru says the police will arrest any Carnivore who remotely looks like they’re harassing a Herbivore. 

“Devouring” is also a desire that Legosi much fight against in the first bit of the show. It then seemed very tonally confusing to me when he declared “I’m glad I was born a wolf” and proceeded to rip his opponent’s to shreds. Sure within the context of the narrative his actions are completely justifiable, but lest we remember that ever fight he’s gotten in previously because of his instincts has been widely regarded by everyone as a bad move. Of course “devouring” is also a sex thing as we can clearly interpret from the very first time Haru and Legosi meet and he almost eats her. To give them some credit, this actually helps the idea that Legosi’s arc is to eventually give into his desires just a little to eventually find love. It would explain why there was a character shift that allowed Legosi to take such violent actions even if I don’t think it was quite well explained enough. My one gripe with this, and this is going to sound weird so hear me out, is that if this was his arc then why didn’t they have sex? Yeah, I know but isn’t that just the natural completion to his arc at that point? I mean the real answer is the manga still needs to go on and that’s clearly the “one piece” at the end of it all. The somewhat reasonable answer is that Haru still has an arc to go on where she accepts the relationship. 

This leads me to one of the other big problems I have with Beastars which is that its not content to keep this as a metaphor and decides to have Haru be sexually assaulted anyway. In my option this shows that the writer didn’t trust or understand his use of metaphors enough in this arc. One great bonus of using a metaphor is you can touch tough subjects like this from a distance without coming right and saying what’s happening. Instead of doing this, Beastars gets far too literal and potentially turns some viewers off from being able to enjoy it.

I think there’s one final metaphor I should touch on, the one I think is the laziest and which I hope did not inform the majority of the reason animals were used: “People are animals” in that they are cruel, and driven by desires and human nature. I think this is a bad kind of edgy and I really hope this isn’t the message. If you’re just out to say “the world is fucked” but provide no context to why its fucked that’s just edgy and lazy writing. Its especially crazy when writers will write terrible worlds that really have nothing analogous to our own and say “see look! Look at how screwed up society is!” Well yeah, if half humans were born natural cannibals our society would be pretty fucked up too, but that’s not the case is it? So what part of that fucked up society actually reflects an element of our world?

I hope you can tell how hard I’m trying to write a world where this world presents a solid and well meaning metaphor. I really want to hear what I’m missing here. I am more than willing to write another piece on this show if any number of things (one of them being season 2) changes my views. 

Edit: Okay lets go down the proverbial rabbit hole and apply the theme of “accepting who you are” / “accepting your desires” to the work as a whole. I won’t doubt this is a good arc for Legosi in particular as he learns to accept his feelings and his violent impulses when they are placed correctly, but isn’t he still feeling this way because he’s biologically wired to? With Legosi in particular I definitely feel the Man / Women metaphor for Carnivore / Herbivore makes the most sense as we can interpret everything he’s doing as growing up with puberty and the like. The problem is this doesn’t work for other parts of the show and ruins the metaphor for even more parts. I always found it weird that Haru’s nature of “wanting to be eaten” ruined their night together. By Legosi’s metaphor of being eaten being sex and giving into your desires sometimes being good this shouldn’t have stopped their encounter (quite the opposite). I think this could be rectified with more information on Haru’s situation but currently the metaphors seem backwards. This also creates the problem that all the objectively bad Carnivores in the show are just acting on male instincts which, if you remember if you remember what happened with the lions, turns everything from a racist message to a sexist one by implying that males just naturally have the desire to do that. So basically, while that theme works for Legosi it doesn’t work in the grander theme of the narrative. 

[jancmalandra]

Moominpapa Steps Up

On living an adventurous city life

On Tuesday night, Moominpapa, Moomintroll, Snufkin, Tayberry and Moomin gathered in the parlor of Moominhouse after dinner once again. Moomin had made tea and Moomintroll had made sugar cookies. When everyone was comfortable, Moominpapa resumed his story.

"Aunt Jane began my training in the family business by making me a junior sales clerk in her huge clothing store in the heart of Times Square. The store, which she had named 'Moomin's Finest Clothing' (not at all exciting or original, I thought), had three floors, each of which catered to a different class of customer. The main floor was for the general public and featured affordable everyday clothing and work uniforms. The second floor was for the business people and politicians of the city and high end business attire was sold there. The third floor was where the finest in custom fitted designer fashion and formal wear was sold to the cream of high society. Aunt Jane left my training to her husband, Frederick, who managed the store on a day-to-day basis."

"Frederick took me very much by surprise. He was the only person in Aunt Jane's world who didn't live in constant fear of her. He genuinely loved her fierce nature and she genuinely loved his charming, calm, elegant demeanor. She was like a storm who moved through other's lives, forcing them to bend to her will to stay in her good graces. Frederick was like the calm at the center of the storm, helping those who worked for her find more reasonable ways to make her business work. He seemed to delight in subtly redirecting her energy in more positive directions by constantly pointing out some crusade or other for the betterment of the city that needed her leadership. He chose to confide in me that he had helped Emily hide her pregnancy and helped her find the Moomin Foundling Home. He took our reunion as an opportunity to make things up to me. He became an invaluable ally over the four years that I spent in Manhattan."

"I never could get the hang of wearing the sales clerk uniform. I always ended up looking worse than when I started. Frederick came up with the brilliant idea of putting me in charge of the hat department on all three floors, since I look so dashing in just a hat. I wore a different hat at work every day and thanks to me being a walking advertisement for them sales of hats went up steadily all year. Thanks to Frederick introducing me so warmly, and my own charm and willingness to help and learn from others, I quickly became friends with the other sales clerks. Frederick showed me the world of Times Square during the weekdays, and on Fridays I became acquainted with the city's legendary night life."

"My guide on my weekly Friday night excursions was a confident, friendly, and highly knowledgeable Fuzzy named Charlie who was the sales clerk in charge of the work uniforms department. I am a little embarrassed to say that I very much enjoyed getting rather drunk with him at wild parties together with his many friends in a different night club, bar or restaurant every time. I don't regret any of it, but it's also why I stopped drinking altogether when I made my way back to the Autarch's estate four years later."

"Aunt Jane would take full charge of me every weekend. She would take me to art museums and galleries and to classical music concerts and high society social events. Although the opulence of these events dazzled me at first, they quickly became deathly dull and tremendously perilous to me at the same time. Aunt Jane kept trying to introduce me to some young Moomin girl or other from some prestigious family or other, clearly in an attempt to get me married and settled down as soon as possible. It was almost fortunate that I spent the better part of each weekend nursing a tremendous hangover, so I consistently made a very bad first impression on every girl she tried to force on me."

"It's hard to describe New York City adequately to anyone who hasn't been there. It's a wondrous, dazzling place that's filled to the brim with every adventurous possibility that you can think of. The city never stops moving at a breathtaking pace. But, it's also full of dangerous and tragic possibilities, as I would soon learn in my second year of living there."

"My introduction to the underworld of New York City began on the night of my first New Year's celebration. Aunt Jane hated all the undignified goings-on that typified this citywide party. But, she was too important a figure in the city to avoid attending. Every square meter of Times Square was packed by ten o'clock with every kind of beast, most of whom were already drunk. She and Frederick waited with the other important figures in the city on the grand stage below the gigantic glowing ball that would be dropped at midnight. I watched her discomfort with great amusement with the other employees of her store from the middle of the crowd."

"Suddenly, there was someone pulling on my arm. I turned around to find that it was Charlie. He was looking uncharacteristically sheepish and was accompanied by two female Mumriks.", at this Snufkin gasped involuntarily, "I was just as surprised as you are, Snufkin. From my friendship with your father, The Joxter, I knew Mumriks as solitary souls who prefer freely wandering in the great outdoors alone and the occasional company of a select, small group of friends, and dislike cities and their rules and regulations and noise and crowds. But, I also know that your people tend to be contrarians who refuse to do what people expect of them. Gail and Emmaline, for those were their names, led a gang of city dwelling Mumriks who were the most contrary beasts imaginable. Charlie had told them of me and my close connections with Moomin's Finest Clothing, which they very much wanted to take advantage of, and they had a proposal for me. Charlie had also told them of my desire for grand adventures and they offered to help me see much more of the city than I would just staying with Aunt Jane in exchange for me delivering irregular and damaged clothing from her store to them on a regular basis. I eagerly agreed and followed them out of Times Square and into the depths of the city, where I would soon become acquainted with their operations."

Moominpapa paused once more and saw to his great delight that his audience was hanging on his every word in breathless anticipation.

"I will tell you of my adventures in the criminal underworld of New York City tomorrow night, but now it's time for us all to go to bed and get a good night's sleep.", he concluded.

Once again, Moomintroll, Snufkin, Tayberry, and Moomin all let out groans of disappointment and reluctantly headed off to bed. Moominpapa took particular pleasure in tucking his grandchildren into their beds and kissing them goodnight before he headed off to bed himself. They were all very much looking forward to Wednesday night.

To Be Continued

[berniesrevolution]

Americans believe a lot of lies about the police. In fact, most people can agree on this. They just disagree about what those lies are. Is the typical cop a cold-eyed executioner with a brutal disregard for human rights, or a selfless hero who risks his life to protect the community? Depending on who you are, you probably think one of those descriptions sounds utterly ridiculous. And you’re right. You recognize an obvious caricature when you see it. Just as the average Trump voter is neither a cross-burning Klansman nor an amiable unemployed plumber who just wants his job back, the average police officer is also a more complicated creature, a “sausage of angel and beast,” in the words of poet Nicanor Parra.

But “complicated” does not necessarily mean “good,” or “righteous,” or even “defensible.” After a certain number of rapes and murders by police, it becomes much more difficult to believe that “a few bad apples” are responsible for the flood of dead bodies and terrible headlines. The cases come from every part of the country—huge East Coast metropolises, laid-back liberal enclaves on the Pacific seaside, and even the sleepy small towns of the Midwest. Isolated incidents stop being isolated when they happen every week. Something is clearly wrong with America’s law enforcement.

Is this because cruel people become cops, or because becoming a cop makes people cruel? I used to think the answer was obvious, until I watched my friend kill a man on Facebook Live.

Jeronimo Yanez, better known as the cop who shot Philando Castile, was one of my best friends in high school. We played on the same baseball team and hung out in the same Chipotle parking lot. We went to senior prom together. On graduation day, we rolled our eyes and laughed while our parents took ten thousand pictures.

We drifted apart in the years that followed, as high school friends usually do, though once in a while he’d pop up in my newsfeed. My eyes would linger for a second over this CliffsNotes version of his life. Went on a fishing trip—cool. Got married—good for him. Graduated from the police academy—wait, he’s a cop now?

Huh. Weird. What else?

Oh, here’s a photo of Jeronimo holding his baby daughter. Here’s one of him with a classroom full of smiling third-graders. Here are a dozen generic snapshots of an ordinary human enjoying some small and unremarkable pleasure. Five minutes with Photoshop, and that could be your face blowing out birthday candles.

Then, one day, my feed became an endless stream of articles saying that Jeronimo was a murderer.

The people who shared these stories were outraged and heartbroken. Some of them said that Jeronimo was a heartless racist who killed a man and deserved to burn in hell. Many agreed that his acquittal on all charges was yet another mockery of justice in an America that has become a brutal police state where government-sanctioned killers are all but immune from legal consequences, even when they execute an old man eating chicken in his own backyard.

To these people, I would say one thing:

You’re right about the police, and you’re wrong about Jeronimo.

Before we continue, I have to make an apology of sorts. There are inherent problems in telling a story like this one, not the least of which is: why spend thousands of words talking about a cop who killed a human being and then walked free? Don’t “writers of conscience” have a moral obligation to elevate the stories of the oppressed above those of the oppressors? Isn’t Philando Castile, the man who was killed, the person whose story we really ought to be telling? Isn’t profiling his killer a waste of time, at best, and an implicit rationalization of police brutality, at worst?

These are all valid points, but they’re not the only valid points. Our first duty is to mourn the death—and celebrate the life—of Philando Castile. But we should seek to understand why Jeronimo Yanez pulled the trigger. We need to do the difficult and uncomfortable work of exploring how this particular “sausage of angel and beast” was made. Was Jeronimo rotten from the start, or did he become contaminated by a toxic environment? We can’t respond to this tragedy, or the broader tragedy of police violence in America, without a good answer to the question. Understanding what made Jeronimo shoot Philando  Castile is not an act of indulgence. It’s a tactic for preventing future violence.

Although I never met him, I have to think that’s something Philando Castile would want. Before his life was snatched away, he made a reputation as a man of incredible kindness and compassion. His family and friends have spoken about him far more eloquently than I could. His pastor, Danny Givens, said, “you felt seen by him…. you felt like you mattered, like you meant something to him at that moment.” His friend and co-worker, John Thompson, recalls that “if kids couldn’t afford lunch, he would pay for their lunch out of his own pocket. And that was against school policy. And I mean kids can’t afford lunch right now. They miss Mr. Phil at that school. They miss him. I miss my friend.” Another colleague, Joan Edman, put it simply: “this man mattered.”

I believe that Castile’s death was a violation of the fundamental agreement that underpins any society—namely, that its members agree to not slaughter each other—and therefore that it is what most people would consider “a crime.” By definition, that makes Jeronimo Yanez a criminal. Critics of the criminal justice system are fierce and convincing in their call for criminals to be treated as human beings. I draw certain conclusions from that, but I understand that others will draw their own. You’d have a point if you said, “but Yanez isn’t actually a criminal—he’s already been humanized by a system that literally let him get away with murder because he was scared.” This is true, and it is terrible. Yet even if you believe that he’s an inhuman monster, and you hate everything that he represents, it’s still generally a good idea to know your enemy, if only to fight him more effectively.

It is neither my intention nor desire to portray Jeronimo as a sympathetic figure. I just want to give a truthful description of the person I knew, because I believe that his story can help us understand why America’s police problems cannot be solved by “smarter” or “nicer” cops. This is the most dangerous lie about the police. If they could turn my friend into a killer, there is a deeper evil at work.

I met Jeronimo Yanez on the first day of our sophomore year. It was September 2004 and I had just transferred to South St. Paul, proud home of the South St. Paul Packers. The school took its name from the historic Union Stockyards just down the street. Its slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants were slowly being replaced by respectably bland business centers, but a faint odor of boiling fat still wafted up from the riverside when the wind blew just right.

South St. Paul was the kind of blue-collar town that inspires entire Bruce Springsteen albums. Many families had lived there for over a hundred years. They traced their roots from the Eastern European immigrants who came to work in the stockyards, and who had built venerable social institutions (i.e. drinking establishments) with names like “Croatian Hall” and “Polish National Association.” Polka music was enjoyed, meat raffles were held, bowling leagues were well-attended.

(Continue Reading)

[bbq-hawks-wings]

King of the Roost

Mediocrity had odd places of hiding itself at times. Anything or and category always had its own “average” which never truly managed to stick out from the rest. There would always be the best of the best, the worst of the worst, the best of the best, etc.; but rarely did anyone ever notice how mundane the center of the bell curve was. Usually, if you didn’t notice it was probably because you weren’t the average of whatever you were observing at the time. If you were, though, you noticed how you were glossed over, never talked to, and never even talked about save in passing comments. Anyone could be the average anywhere, and for you it was being a lone daughter of a Marquis at the royal palace at the summer ball.

Actually, it wasn’t like you received no attention at all. You were young and single, so naturally anyone seeking an advantageous marriage pestered you as suitors; but you couldn’t help but note how all who approached you were men and families below your station seeking to climb up the ladder, inadvertently pulling you down. In this society where station was everything it was suicide on one’s reputation to marry below your own station less you be talked down upon because you were foolish enough to be swayed by “the first suitor” or “had exhausted better option and had to settle.” The fact that women were often seen more as bargaining chips for their families instead of people also made the ordeal all the worse.

Yet, here you stood, alone along the edge of the ballroom, fan in hand as you watched the cliches mingle amongst themselves. There were decent characters among them, but overwhelmingly were there simply psychological and political warfare to be had among these occasions. It could be fun if you were able to find at least someone to talk to or dance with, but alas, there was always someone to talk down about or to brownnose to; and you were stuck somewhere in the middle. All this melodramatic moping only served to bring to mind how the maids had tightened your corset too tightly in attempts to get you into that too small dress in attempts to turn heads and your feet hurt from the newly cobbled shoes on marble. What a bore!

The only upside to these events was watching the procession of the commissioned officers from the army presented and decorated before the nobility. Sometimes there was one or two characters that really caught everyone’s attention. One in particular stood out.

Most officers were noble-born, given station as a right of birth over merit. Over time a soldier could manage to work his way up the ranks, but so much politics on top of hard work had to be played in order to win any sort of title that it often took years to garner any respect, and by then their most eligible years had passed them by making them targets for some of the most desperate or infatuated women in the court. This year, though, among the grizzled veterans and the widely-known young officers was a fresh, young face no one had ever seen before. He was fair and not a particularly imposing figure; but there was an aura about his person that radiated an earned confidence and his golden eyes showed a fire burning up from the depths of his young, wild heart. He was born a commoner among the fishing villages to the south, but at eighteen he had joined the ranks of the royal army and left waves of astonishment in his wake.

He was knighted and decorated this summer in front of the entire nobility for the speed and skill he showed in mounted combat, his leadership in some of the more desperate battles, his bravery in the face of danger, and his overall outstanding contributions to the campaign; and he earned the nickname “Hawk” for the deathly speed and accuracy of his wartime accomplishments. Impressed “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” echoed throughout the hall at the exhaustive list of achievements as well as several stiff and glassy-eyed applauds from members who turned up their nose at his station who so dared upstage their own lackluster merits. This man was exceptional and anything but ordinary, so far removed from the concept of average - an exact opposite to you, born to nobility with not a single notable merit to your name. You deeply admired his tenacity, but something in your heart ached at feeling like at this rate you were only a few years away from falling into obscurity and forgotten amongst the surge of emboldened youths sure to follow his lead.

You tried not to look too bored or glum as you stood there fanning yourself thinking about it. It was simply too depressing and your energy was better spent wallowing in the privacy of your own estate later.

“Pardon me, my Lady.”

The foreign voice startled you, and you turned to find none other than the source of your intrigue and current misery, bowing to your general direction with an unassuming smile.

“Y-yes,” you managed to compose yourself quickly “How may I help you, Sir Hawks?”

He straightened out and held himself at a respectful distance. “Forgive me for startling you, my lady. I merely approached you in hope there might be room on your dance card for me.”

There were no names on your card which was an embarrassment as that meant not a single gentleman had approached you so far to reserve a dance. Perhaps that was partially your fault as you could always be a little more forward, but then again you wondered about your reputation and didn’t wish to be seen as overbearing.

“Ah, please forgive me.Where are my manners? I haven’t even properly introduced myself.” Some part of his complexion actually seemed nervous though he hid it well. “I am Sir Astor O’Seighin, knight to the crown.”

Despite feeling like he may already know who you were, you were obliged to introduce yourself in kind. “Miss (Y/N) Clark, eldest daughter of The Most Honorable Marquis Clark.”

“Miss Clark, I am most happy to make your acquaintance. Again, please forgive my lapse in decorum. I would still very much wish to dance with you.”

You pondered a moment and offered him your dance book and pencil. He graciously took the book from you and didn’t say a word as he perused the dance list and penciled his name on his choice.

“Thank you, my lady. I hate to flit by and leave you so soon but I believe I’m being called away, though I’ll be sure to find you in time to dance.”

You nodded, but your heart sank. Was that all there would be to this interaction? You thanked him and let him be on his way. He was charming, all things considered - perhaps well in over his head. That was quite the slip-up, but you weren’t willing to let that completely spoil your impression of him. You continued to tell yourself that you weren’t just saying that because you couldn’t help but find him handsome.

You hadn’t long to wait for the dance he’d penciled in - you took note that he had claimed the next one on the roster, and all too soon he was making his way towards you again this time making sure to follow every proper step. He was a good dancer it turned out. His posture and form were excellent, and he knew the steps better than you did. He always kept eye contact and a smile, but these were considerably more comfortable than some other past partners you’d had the unfortunate pleasure of dancing with. It felt like a shared moment, something intimate but unobtrusive and fun between two in a room full of people; and when he offered you a refreshment afterwards you couldn’t help but accept.

“Thank you for the dance, my lady, you were a pleasure!”

You noticed yourself smiling considerably more openly than you were used to at these events which was a welcome, albeit disarming change.

“As were you, sir. Thank you for approaching me.”

“I’d like to come back for more, but unfortunately as this is my debut I feel like I should make a point to continue to introduce myself. Perhaps I’m being too forward after only just meeting you, but I hope I’ll at least have the honor to dance with you again at another occasion.”

“I’ll be sure to leave a slot open for you.” You offered beneath your eyelashes. He was doing well if he was a commoner, but you decided to test him. “I hope the other guests are treating you well?”

“Besides you?” Good aside, sir. “I’ve only just begun making rounds, but I hope I can make the best impression upon them in my pitiably short time here.”

He was clever. He avoided putting anyone down or singling anyone out. If he could really navigate the shaky court politics he might actually stand a chance.

“Well, then let me introduce you to my father. I’m sure he’d be more than happy to introduce you to more people than I presently can.”

“I’d be delighted, but more so if you’d be willing to accompany me.”

You led him across the crowd as you’d promised and he kept you in close enough company for a large portion of the night though you’d ended up separated eventually. You didn’t know what became of him, but you couldn’t help but hope you might see him again soon and that he might ask for another dance.

[ghostmartyr]

Historia’s Position as a Queer Character

This is... not a post I thought I was going to write. This is also not the introduction it had when I first started typing, adding to my hesitance.

There’s a lot of bitterness to it I couldn’t remove while keeping the honesty I felt I needed. Also personal Feelings that, obviously, no one has time for (politeness really was attempted).

However, I wanted to talk about how Historia Reiss’ queerness should have an impact on how her portion of the story is being received. In doing that, I walk through a lot of personal frustrations that I do understand are personal, not universal, to get to some concerns with the story that I feel should be more widespread than they are.

...Y-yay?

On a strictly personal level, the progression of the Attack on Titan fandom has sucked for me. Which is entirely my problem, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes the way you like a thing is not the popular way to like a thing, and you’re just out of luck.

I got into it because two girls were in love.

...Yeah, that’s already a tell that it’s not going to be a pleasure cruise.

The girl I cared about wasn’t the more popular half of the ship, but they were acknowledged and loved (except for the every other week commentary about how the relationship was abusive or one-sided or [insert invalid complaint here]), and even recognized as an essential part of the story.

Several years later, everyone in that fandom is too angry to really be invested in the series at large. Everyone so pissed that half the gay ship is said to have been killed off-screen that if they are still involved in the fandom, it’s a bitter edge that keeps coming back.

While the half of the ship I love that I care about, the pretty blonde one, is in the center of pregnancy drama.

Again, this is a personal relationship with a fandom I have said, repeatedly, that I hate. Because I am a dramatic brat about some things. But I’ve come to notice, over and over again, how when someone nowadays shows interest in Historia, I immediately want to run away. I avoid everyone, of course, but there’s a special urgency when I see people expressing perfectly normal, honest interest in her character.

Because at this point, my association with the fandom’s image of Historia is that if you still care, you don’t care that her only canon love interest is female.

Is that fair? Proooobably not. Do I care? I probably should, and should probably do better, but my relationship with fandom at this point is destroyed beyond recovery for personal reasons of being emotionally irresponsible. This is just about me and my sad feelings. Followed by things that actually matter.

The thing that began my love for this character is a thing that I haven’t felt defines her fandom in years. Even when Ymir fans weren’t furious and gone, Historia was the tagalong member of the ship (every ship has this problem; one is always getting top billing over the other, and Ymir’s a butchy bad girl, so... you know).

What continues to frustrate me is that Historia is queer.

Canonically.

Her love interest is a girl.

Ship what you want.

I will continue to say that, and I will continue to mean that.

But certain things canon has done, and fandom’s reaction to those things, have been somewhat alienating for someone who really wants to enjoy her queerness.

Let me put, as plainly as I can, my complete frustration with this.

A canonically queer female character

in the aftermath of her female love interest being fed to Nazi analogues off-screen

is convinced to procreate with a man for the good of her people’s future.

Now I’ll take a breath for a second.

Because of how flagrantly offensive and infuriating I find all of the above, and because the author of this work in general has treated his characters’ internal characterization well, I do not often bring up how fucking fucked it is for this story to perhaps be going this route. I bring up how that numbered list doesn’t have to go through steps 2 and 3. I choose to have trust, and optimism, and not spend every single day I write about this manga on fury.

What that has come to mean is that I’m not spending a lot of time discussing how completely fucked up this is.

I will talk about how I think the writing going this route is badly set up. I will talk about how the perspectives of this route are in the wrong place. I will talk about how that suggests to me that things aren’t as bad as they seem.

Here’s the thing, though.

Here’s the thing that made me retreat to my cave.

As presented, it is bad.

I personally believe it’s a red herring in many respects. I believe the story is lying to us, because I believe there are holes in the writing the support it being intentionally misleading. I believe that the story has more going on than it’s willing to tell us at the moment.

That isn’t a popular fandom theory.

One popular theory is that the male protagonist impregnated our breathing, canonically queer character.

This will get sighs and eye-rolls from some people, impassioned theorizing from others, shrugs and we’ll sees from further others--but as someone who has done everything I possibly can to steer clear of anyone talking about this series besides myself, it’s still one I’ve seen.

So here. Let’s redo the list.

A canonically queer female character

after her female love interest is fed to Nazi analogues off-screen

pursues a sexual relationship with the male main character off-screen.

Writing, writing, writing. Hell, it feels like all I’ve done for the past year has involved shouting over my mental screams about writing.

That’s not the part of this series that gets me, though. And I don’t think that’s the part that turned a fandom space I used to love into one that’s at its most vocal when it’s dissing another ship instead of throwing praise on ours.

I can be a relatively neutral audience member. I can be someone who wants to be told a good story. I can be that, and only that, and let the repressed emotions of everything else eat away at me. I don’t want to let the emotional side show on the internet, because that’s only going to be used to eat me alive. I don’t want to get into the heart of what really pisses everyone who cares about this off.

I don’t want to talk about this stuff.

This stuff I keep putting numbers in front of like it will protect me from all the angry messages this is going to get.

I have not, and still don’t, have the nerve required to look at the vast space this fandom still covers, point to Historia’s arc, and say that any critical discussion of what’s happening to her that doesn’t bring up her queerness is fundamentally failing to appreciate the magnitude of wrongness in her arc.

I am not a person who knows how to stand my ground on that.

I believe too much in people taking from fiction different things, and absorbing it different ways. I’m too insecure to ever strongly believe that my way of looking at things could ever be the Right way.

So I outside of a few barbed posts, I’ve kept my mouth shut on the social ramifications of this arc. What’s the point? What’s the point in getting a bunch of angry posts and people yelling at me? What’s the point in inviting that into my life?

What is the point of getting into this?

Everyone in this fandom is familiar with the many popular posts from outside the fandom that paint our series as Nazi propaganda. They are familiar with the concern the Korean fandom has about certain language. They are familiar with the concern the Jewish members of the fandom have about how certain things are being handled.

They are familiar with the concept that certain things touch the real world, and they should be handled with care.

Unless it has to do with queer people.

We can understand wars between countries leaving certain topics taboo. We can understand using the shorthand of an atrocity everyone recognizes might step on people’s toes.

We might not agree with the intensity of the feelings the manga’s content generates, but in general, we get it. The world is a big place, and these are big topics, and big topics are going to have in them a lot of hurt that is more personal than perhaps the story intends.

War and genocide are not easy things to bring up in any medium.

Stories do them, though. This story is doing that. Not delicately, in some regards, but it is endeavoring to have a discussion of all this horror in its plot.

Now here’s the one piece that I, personally, have needed to be acknowledged.

Historia Reiss is of royal blood.

As a story figure, many people took it for granted that she would one day be forced to bear an heir. That’s just what royals do, personal taste aside.

That’s a whole... separate thing I don’t want to get into, but that was always the casually accepted idea. The kinkmeme probably had multiple prompts for just that floating around. We’re fandom. It’s what we do.

But here we go.

Historia is queer.

A queer female character is coerced into having a child for the future of her people.

I don’t care where under the queer umbrella you headcanon her. It doesn’t much matter. Queer is queer is fucking queer.

In every gayngsty story you’ve ever read, probably, the idea of children has come up. The idea of being normal, having a normal family, procreating. Gay men marrying women and having children isn’t a strange story even a little. It’s even encouraged; if you can hide who you are well enough, you can still fit into society.

Societal obligation forcing you into a relationship you do not personally want is a story that resonates very deeply with queer experiences.

A canonically queer character is being put through this storyline.

It is a queer storyline.

Maybe the narrative won’t be woke enough to notice that. I don’t know. Many things are up in the air surrounding this particular piece of the plot.

Historia is a queer character, and given the larger view of her plot by the general fandom, she is a queer character who has been coerced into pregnancy. That is the story most of the fandom is interacting with.

Being critical of problematic material means something different than it used to. Tumblr has made everyone rather twitchy about how harsh to be about media. You don’t want to agree with the people losing their temper at every little thing, so you chill out and maybe let things slide and maybe just focus on the things you can speak good words about.

I’ve personally done a lot of twitchy, ranty posts about the topic that mostly end with me saying that I’m done with the manga emotionally if it’s doing this, and etc.

But here is a plot thread that I think it’s very worthy to be critical of.

If Eren being the father is considered a legitimate theory, the writer creating a story where the only breathing female queer character fucks the main male character after her female love interest dies off-screen is a legitimate thing to criticize.

Being less specifically mean about that, let’s just roll back to the initial thing.

Queer female character’s love interest commits suicide and gives the Nazi analogues a new weapon. In the aftermath, breathing queer female character is coerced into bearing a child.

Forget what I think about writing quality.

As a queer member of the audience, I get to be pissed.

It is an enraging storyline as it’s provided.

Even if you drop the coercion, we get to talk about how of two queer female characters, it’s the one who makes good breeding stock that gets to survive and prove it. Which is another queer tale as old as time: you only get to live if you can go back to fucking guys.

I always talk about the writing.

Most posts I’ve accidentally seen talking about this in the past year have been about the writing. The story. How different the many shades of tragic shine. Everyone wants to talk about the story. This is escapism, not reality.

Then shreds of reality make their way through to decorate the background.

The big ones get mentioned.

The one where a queer girl is made to get pregnant for the good of society continuing the way it always has been?

As far as I know, the only people angry about that have been too angry to say it.

And it’s frustrating.

I don’t care if you want Historia to be bi or pan or some queer identity that leaves room for her to enjoy a relationship with a man. She is still queer, and being personally amenable to multiple sexes of partners doesn’t change the fact that society is constantly pushing for the straight option. That loss of choice because society doesn’t want to hear about the parts of you that don’t fit its idea of normal is a universal queer experience.

This part of the story has writing problems.

It is also a queer story, worth being considered through a queer lens.

I would like the manga to realize that. I hope it does.

What killed me after 107 came out was that the parts of fandom I saw didn’t.

So then, you know. I stopped talking to everyone and locked myself as deep within my corner as I could, never to step out and even try to explain myself. Because that would make it all better.

Okay. One last thing before I go.

The last time I brushed close to this, I got some responses I couldn’t deal with. I’m fragile. I can’t deal with most things. I’m aware that people hated me before I made this post, and more will hate me after. Because internet.

There’s a decent chance I might ignore responses to this. Too much of it has been boiling away in my head to have a graceful release valve, and there’s honestly a limit to how much I trust myself with things I believe should be handled with care. This was my best attempt at making myself heard on this point. I’m sure it falls short. In the future, I might be able to do better.

But even though, yes, internet, I still want to say that this isn’t written with the intent of winning any arguments. Just with the intent of making a pain I don’t think has been well represented in this fandom a little more heard.

Though I’m sure it’s not perfect (and likely unfairly bitter and paranoid in places), I hope it managed a piece of that.

[prorevenge]

Bragging about being rich? Enjoy hell at home!

This may be a bit of an unusual post as I am the target of this particular pro revenge! Now this story brings us back into my high school years. Now I was kind of a dick in high school. I went to a small high school in the town my family lived in for only few years, I remember moving while I was in kindergarten. We were part of a first influx of "big city" people coming there. Just so you can get an idea this was a 10,000 town compared to the 1,000,000 city we moved from.

To get people into the town a whole new area of new houses was build and, as you can expect by the title, we moved into the biggest one. Now don't imagine a $1,000,000 mansion. It was a large house, but nothing crazy. Our neighbors were usually old people "running away" from the commotion of a huge city.

Elementary school was fine, I was the "rich-kid" having the newest toys, but the others didn't really care for the most part. Now I have to admit that made me furious. My parents and I have a complicated relationship due to the way they look at "poor" people. I'd like to say that they taught me to be that way, but they never explicitly said anything regarding the subject until years after the incident took place.

This town had one major high school. The best, but still nothing to write home about. It was strict and the teachers cared very little about the student's parent's wealth (and that is good!). Since my first day I wanted to be the big dog, the alpha. Hormones were playing and I wanted to get girls and be the center of attention.

I showed up with a new phone, expensive brand of clothing, I even convinced my dad to buy me somewhat of an expensive watch. And since then I bragged and bragged about how rich I am. I had the 360, the PS3, an expensive bike and all that!

And now we meet the mastermind of the pro revenge. Let's call him Ryan. Ryan was the "poor kid". The reality was that his parents didn't want to spoil him thus they refused to buy him game consoles, they were not poor poor. Then in my second year the dark hour came. Until then nobody really knew or cared about Ryan, especially me, he was in a different class (same year though). That day we found out he was "poor" (I hate writing that word so much!).

Since then, every day I did my best to rip him a new one. Jokes, laughs, I can see myself as Eric fucking Cartman right now. By then I have solidified my position as the top dog and nobody dared to stand up for poor Ryan.

About a week later one of my friends, "friends", hosted a party. Nearly everyone from our year was there, including Ryan! Now I was asked to not say anything, "friend's" mom asked for him to be there, supposedly out of pity. I know that wasn't true and "friend" was protecting him. I agreed and left him alone. The party was crazy. A lot of alcohol in hands of teenagers without supervision. We watched porn on a big screen, played games, including spin the bottle/truth or dare (not sure how it's called in English).

After many rounds and drinks I was close to becoming a champion. Pretty much those who refused to do a dare dropped out. I showed "friend" my dick, I threw my naked butt in the snow, I did everything. That's how pathetic I was, I thought that if I dropped out I wouldn't be the top dog anymore.

Then the DARE happened. Ryan was still in the game, alongside three others. Even though I was drunk I didn't target Ryan, I liked my "friend" so I wanted to be nice. One of the others dared my to kiss him, sensually. Now obviously Ryan would have to agree, with a smug look I expected him to do that, but he jumped to me and was ready to go.

All eyes on me, I had to do this! So I did. I wrapped my arms around him and started making out. It was gross (alcohol and I think Ryan vomited before that). Finally I did become the champion after the other person forced Ryan out and I forced them both out, because fuck them I was the one with the biggest schlong!

Weekend passes and I come back to school. "Friend" has the picture of me and Ryan. I don't care because what could happen. Well that day I come home and my parents are fucking furious. It turned out that they are deeply homophobic and Ryan's financial situation didn't help.

-----

Now you are thinking he just sent them the photo right? Oh if it was just that.

That sly motherfucker dressed up looking worse then a hobo. He not only wear smelly, dirty clothes. That was not enough. He put bits of oil in his hair and even smeared "shit" on his sweatpants. That was supposedly just brown from our art classes. And yes, he did pretend to be sick and didn't go to school because of that.

Dressed like that he wandered the neighborhood. When he saw my parents' car he slowly began heading near our house. And he bumped right into them. He asked them for money. And now my parents love being treated like "higher society" (because they're not) so they started talking to him. And then his phone rang. He had an old samsung, good enough and more than good enough at showing picture.

He hanged up. Obviously my parents inclined where he got the phone, it wasn't that cheap! Quickly he retorted it was for his birthday and wanted to show my parents a photo. His entire family gathered with a single present. I saw the photo and everyone is dressed normally, hoodies, sweatshirts, t-shirts and so on. My parents thought that was the best they could do.

And then he swiped to "show more" and accidentally came the photo of me and him. He was good and made sure my parents knew it was me there, before hiding it and looking embarrassed. Furious they demanded the photo and how I know him.

He told them I was his secret boyfriend and begged them not to tell anyone. They forced him to send the photo to them and then left.

-----

Obviously my parents didn't believe a single word. I made sure over the past 2 years that they think I am a well behaved boy who'd never touch alcohol. And believe me it looked real in that photo.

My life was hell, I stopped getting free stuff and my position dropped. I was never bullied, which I would only deserve anyway.

(source) (story by michaeltakai)

[paytonsportfolio]

Get Movin’

How should the progress of physical literacy be observed and recorded under the conditions of our new, unhealthy societal habits? Due to the constant changes in our society, physical literacy is becoming a popular, yet complex concept to live by. People across the globe are becoming more aware of physical literacy, specifically because of the current obesity crisis. Our society is finally realizing the lack of physical activity in the average human’s everyday life; however, it is not just physical activity that we are lacking. Our society is unaware of how important it is to take care of yourself, whether it’s your mental or physical health. Working at my university’s recreation center, I, along with my colleagues and patrons, are very familiar with the concept of physical literacy and deal with health and wellness every day. I think that everyone should be as educated about physical literacy as the people that I work with. Considering the social changes our society has been through over the past couple of decades, we need to be more knowledgeable about and perform physical literacy.  

About two years ago I started educating myself on physical literacy. I have always been active, participating in multiple sports year-round, but I never really took it upon myself to look further into health and fitness. My first step was asking my parents for a gym membership. Walking into the gym for the first time was extremely intimidating. I was surrounded by toned and muscular adults, drinking their fruit punch flavored pre-workout in shake BlenderBottle®’s, but instead of backing out, I learned my way around the gym. I tested new machinery that I have never seen before. I watched videos of fitness enthusiasts to help me familiarize myself with the strange equipment and movements. After many trial and errors, I finally found a workout routine that worked for my body. Before the gym, I absolutely hated running; however, after planning my new routine, I discovered different ways to implement cardio into my workout without having to run a mile or two. Having these different movements and routines made me enjoy taking care of my body. Throughout this process, I started to feel more positive about myself and life in general. I was much happier and less stressed than before I started my journey. What made me love the gym even more was seeing results. Running at soccer practice felt completely different. I was able to push myself much harder. I no longer dreaded going to practice, partially because I didn’t eat a box of pizza rolls doused in hot sauce right before practice. Even my coaches recognized my hard work and faster speed.  I think other students need to hear that change is possible. If you dedicate yourself to taking the time to get to know, push, and discipline yourself, changes, for the better, will happen.

There are many different definitions of physical literacy, but they all have the same concept. Overall, physical literacy is the foundation of a healthy life. The development of physical literacy starts at a young age. Children start to learn and develop physical literacy once they start attending school, as early as preschool and or kindergarten. PE majors and teachers, exercise science majors, like health and fitness instructors, and other health and wellness academic fields must be very knowledgeable about the concept. In this case, we are talking about the fundamental movements of your body, and concepts like having confidence within yourself. In the article, “Physical literacy in the field of physical education – A challenge and a possibility,” Lundvall mentions Whitehead’s first definition of physical literacy discusses the idea of “physical performance aspects of movement that enable a particular goal to be achieved, or elements of movement that need attention” (114). Part of physical literacy is understanding that your body has limits and acknowledging those limits. Physical literacy helps humans, not just athletes, recognize their body’s boundaries. As you get older, your body starts to not work as well. Everyday activities, like walking up and down stairs, can become difficult, so it is very important to know your body’s limits.

Along with physical literacy, eating habits are developed during one’s childhood. According to the authors of the first cited article, “A multilevel intervention...,” a little over a quarter (29% to be exact) of preschool students in Canada eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables and only 23% eat the recommended amount of grains (2). Children not intaking the right source of food will cause them to not be as physically strong and less fit. The lack of greens and grains could also lead to obesity, which could cause them to be insecure and less confident with the pressures that come from social media. This snowball affect issue all starts with the parents and guardians of the children. After all, they are the ones that provide their child with the food they take in. If parents are providing their children with food that is not nutritional for their child, they are inheriting these bad habits from their parents. Sure, eating some candy or out at a restaurant occasionally, is fine, but is it taking over your child’s diet?

Our society’s younger generations have established different values and habits than those that are older. Children don’t have play dates in the backyard with their best friend from school. Nowadays, children will spend their entire day inside, their eyes glued to a screen, playing video games, eating Doritos. Sometimes I think back to my childhood and compare my everyday live to children today. On occasion, I will babysit my five-year-old cousin, Jonah. He is constantly on his iPad, watching YouTube videos or playing games. I’ll give him some credit, every so often he’ll ask to go outside and jump on the trampoline, but it’s not the same. When I was Jonah’s age, my friends and I would go in the backyard, run around on the swing set, and play hide and seek. If we spent time inside, we didn’t spend much time with technology. We’d watch an episode of SpongeBob or two, then go play “house” or Polly Pockets. Our world revolves around technology and it’s effecting our children.  

The unhealthy habits and routines that our younger generations are developing will take over for the rest of their lives and can even cause them to become obese or overweight. According to A Healthier America, 17 percent of children in the United States struggle with obesity and “one in three children are either overweight or have obesity” (“Facts About Child Obesity,” 2019). These statistics are at an all-time high.  

As I’ve grown up, I noticed that throughout my own childhood, I myself developed unhealthy eating habits. As I explained before, almost every day after school, I would come home and make a plate of pizza rolls or nachos. This then transitioned over to my freshman and sophomore year of high school. It was even worse in high school because right after I had my afterschool heart attack snack, I would go straight to soccer practice, where I would then run a mile, huffing and puffing. In middle school, I would sneak bags of chips or pieces of candy to my room and go to town for the night. These awful habits were obviously in my hands; however, it was all developed from my family. Even though I was very active as a child, I still had these influences of eating unhealthy amounts of and types of food. My parents, along with my aunts and uncles, have always been big eaters and not so active. It just goes to show you that parents should take a step back, look at their diet, and take their child into consideration. Would you want your child to be eating what you’re eating? Or thinking back to physical activity. Would you want your child to have the same habits that you have?  

Social media has placed an enormous amount of pressure on children, teenagers, and young adults. Once a celebrity is photographed, the photo is uploaded to the internet, where everyone can see, and makes young adults feel the need to look like this celebrity because they have the ‘perfect body.’ What these young adults don’t know is that most, if not all, of these pictures are photoshopped. Most people looking at their favorite celebrities through social media feel insecure and less confident about their own bodies. Social media doesn’t just influence the everyday person to change themselves due to seeing others uploading edited photos. Social media encourages viewers and peers to interact with you on your post, like and comment. Your friends can tell you how good you look in that trendy outfit in the city, giving you that extra boost of confidence, or they can tell you that “you look terrible.” The obvious negative about social media is bullying. What physical literacy is made to do is to prevent things like this. You should have the confidence to post pictures of yourself, not delving too deep into the hate comments or changing yourself because Kylie Kardashian got lip injections. People endorsing physical literacy want their peers to be confident and comfortable in their own body and how their body works. In order to prevent our young people comparing themselves to celebrities and social media influencers, they need some type of reassurance that you are your own person. You can’t look at someone else an expect to look the same way. Parents should establish their children with confidence. If a child is confident within themselves, they are following the concept of physical literacy and have a lower chance of thinking less of themselves.

Although sport isn’t what physical literacy is all about, having a child that participates in sports can give them that extra boost of confidence. Of course, it also keeps them physically active and fit. When associating sport with physical literacy, it must be known that there are steps that lead to sport participation. In order for someone to participate in sports, they must learn the fundamental movements of physical literacy. A few examples of fundamental physical literacy movements are running, jumping, throwing, and catching. Once a child had learned the fundamentals, they then learn the more complex movements that are involved in sports, leading to the participation in sports. Playing sports like soccer and baseball will give students the opportunity to be physically active outside of the classroom and will generally lead them to a healthier lifestyle; however, it’s not about creating the ultimate athlete. The concept of physical literacy thinks less about competition and more about the overall wellbeing and health of a person, which supports the fact that physical literacy doesn’t necessarily focus on sport.  

Physical Education teachers are the people that first introduce physical literacy to a child. Physical Education courses should be a diverse course to give the children plenty of opportunities to find something that they feel comfortable with. Giving students the opportunity to work inside and outside is a good example of diversity in the classroom. Allowing students to have different opportunities, like working in a different environment or doing nonstandard activities, gives students the chance to find an activity that they enjoy. Once a child has found an activity that they enjoy, they will start to develop confidence, which is exactly what PE teachers are trying to achieve. This development of confidence and comfortability with a certain activity, and within themselves, makes it more likely for the child to continue being physically active for the rest of their life.  

Physical Education teachers live and teach by the means of physical literacy. They want students to be confident and motivated to be physically active, but it is hard for a child to be confident when the curriculum requires teachers to categorize students based on their performance. This makes students feel insecure and uncomfortable, exactly what teachers don’t want them feeling like.  Lundvall believes that physical education teachers should stop assessing students “based on how fast, high, or strong a student’s performance is” (116). PE teachers must think back to the idea physical literacy focusing on the development of a child and not how well or poor they perform.  PE educators want their students to develop the fundamentals movements of physical literacy and beyond. They don’t want their students to stop their growth because of a silly test in gym class telling them they aren’t fast enough.

Although Physical Education teachers have a huge impact on a child’s physical literacy, a child’s biggest influence is always a parent or guardian; furthermore, it is very likely for a child to develop habits that their parents have inherited. In order to incorporate physical literacy into a child’s life and to prevent the ongoing obesity crisis, parents should make sure that, along with themselves, their child is staying active, eating healthy foods and amounts, and having self-confidence. Doing all of these things makes it a lot easier for a family to live by the concept of physical literacy and increasing the chance that your child will live a long, happy and healthy life.  

[aroworlds]

Seeing the character I identify with having his canon ship fic event hurts me so much , to me it’s not a headcanon , he’s supposed to be Aro ace and the writers caved to shipper demand. To me watching these shipppers do a fiction secret Santa centered on that forced canon ship hurts me so badly but I feel obligated to follow it because I want friends x.x but they all hate me

I’m feeling that this is Riverdale, and I’ll talk as though it is Riverdale, but honestly, much of it applies to most well-known aro-ace/aro-ace-coded characters in fandom.

Jughead in particular is a well-established character, and long before the word was in regular use in LGBTQIA+ spaces, Jughead was shown as aro-ace–in fact, as a romance-repulsed aro-ace. He’s a rare aro-spec who is not evil, a character to whom we can point in explaining our lives to alloromantics and non-a-specs. There are indie writers providing aro-spec representation (let me promote our aro-spec artist profiles again) but they don’t have the accompanying fandom experience or the ability to easily demonstrate our lives to the mainstream.

Aro-ace Jughead isn’t headcanon; I see it as coding, in the earlier comics, at least. In the case of the modern run, I see it as asexual-without-use-of-the-split-attraction-model or aro-ace written by authors who don’t know enough about a-spec identities. I adore the way Jughead is treated as unquestioningly aro-ace in aro-spec spaces, because it is so obvious we don’t even have to talk about it. There’s no “is it headcanon, is it canon” discussion here; he’s aro-ace. It’s jarring to move out of the aro-spec community and realise that what is obvious to us isn’t obvious to everyone else, that suddenly our evident truth needs to be defended, and I think that adds to our distress.

I’m sure you realise that by reducing aro-ace Jughead to headcanon status, anyone who wants to ship him now has free rein to do so without any nagging guilt. (In other words, you can proclaim your social justice virtues all you like and still get your ship on.) I suspect there’s–consciously or unconsciously–a motivation to toss aside erasure by ignoring the fact that in the case of Jughead, asexual clearly means aro-ace. If it’s not said in flashing capital letters, even though it is said in the comic canon and clearly enough that aro-specs don’t waste time debating it, then people claim “headcanon” and do as they like because amatonormativity and aro erasure.

(The comic canon is not a rarely-discussed obscurity lost to the mists of time. It should be kept in mind in fandom conversations about an adaptation that has engaged in such flagrant erasure in Jughead’s character.)

Shipping culture, in a world where shipping is near-universally read as romance, is amatonormativity in a nutshell, and that unaddressed amatonormativity means it doesn’t and can’t respect aro characters and coding the way it has begun to respect other LGBTQIA+ identities. To see the show and fandom completely ignore the aro-ace is a hurtful and upsetting thing. You should feel hurt and upset–please don’t think you’re overreacting. The walls of aro-spec and aro-ace spaces are paved with people making angry, frustrated comments–honestly, it’d be easier to find an aro-spec blog where someone hasn’t raged over Riverdale.

I know it’s hard to feel so divorced from a character and fandom you love, to feel like you have to endure the erasure in a given space just to keep on having a community and connection. In the past, I’ve decided to bite my lip and endure, and at the time it felt like something I can and should do because friends, but it just poisons my relationship with the other fans, with the fandom and with the source material. The resentment is there, bubbling away under everything, and before too long it devours your joy for a character you love.

I heartily recommend backing away from this ship event. Blacklist any and every ship-related tag. Unfollow anyone who doesn’t tag and block anyone who will toss ship-related content into general tags. Unfollow people who post about the event and don’t tag it, because you should blacklist event-related tags as well. Do not stint on the block button if you can apply it! Do whatever you can to make sure your online spaces are not shoving ship-related fanworks and meta into your face, and do it unashamedly and unapologetically. Don’t put up explanatory posts or tell people why you’re doing it–just quietly do it and go about the rest of your life.

This relates to my comment about worth in followers from the other day, but when I consider the things that make me happier, one friend who understands me and listens to me is worth a whole lot more than ten friends who erase the aromanticism of a character who represents me in the name of their favourite ship (and in doing erase me). Western society in particular tells a narrative that more friends and more followers gives us value, which encourages the idea that we need to put up with awful just to have those kinds of interactions. But you don’t. You just don’t.

I’ll posit that the idea that the narrative of putting up with erasure and dismissal just to have more friends (or be connected to family, because this narrative is toxic in many directions) forces us to permit said erasure and dismissal. It means people can get away with hurting you. Why give them space? Why stand there being a willing audience? If you can’t stop them–and most of us can’t, because that’s the nature of lacking privilege–shut the door and go back to building spaces where they can’t talk. Go back to building spaces where you can have discussions and create the stories you need and deserve to see.

I’m not going to say that this sort of community building is easy. It isn’t. You’ve got to spend time and spoons on carving your own path, and it isn’t at all right that we have to build these spaces from the floor up with only a few people to help us while everyone else gets to tell stories around a roaring fire in a mansion over the road. Those people who walk past, see what you’re doing and stop to pass up the nails while you hammer, though? They’re the friends you want and they’re the friends that are worth having. Even if there’s fewer of them.

Don’t follow this fic event. Don’t engage with it. Shut it right out of your life. You don’t need this constant erasure. You don’t need the constant pressure of feeling you have to fight it or that you can’t fight it. You deserve so much better, so please, value your right to exist in a world where aro and aro-ace aren’t dismissed as headcanon and do everything you can to get this event blacklisted and unfollowed.

I’m going to finish by asking: can folks recommend me some deliciously aro-ace celebratory fanworks for Jughead and Riverdale? (Or Shadowhunters with regards Raphael, while we’re on the subject of aro erasure in the adaptation?) I refuse to believe annoyed fandom aro-specs haven’t stepped up here, and I think we can all use a dose of good media that does what the writers and the larger fandom won’t.