#i have to caveat this with the fact that its just a viewpoint they have based on their experiences

[sidebaxolotl]

Genuine question how do you justify the idea that God intentionally hurts nonbelievers to "break them" into falling back onto faith? I grew up with this idea drilled into me pretty heavily and as an adult looking back I don't know how to disconnect that message from an inherent message of abuse - love me or I will break you until you do.

Not trying to be antagonistic, I'm genuine here and speaking from experience. this concept has seriously messed with me, and played a part in an internal connection between faith and punishment. Especially since many of my struggles and stressors revolve around my physical and mental health. It took me years to unlearn the idea that my panic attacks were God punishing me, or pushing me to confess something so I would turn back to Him. How can I possibly take comfort from pain in someone who inflicted that pain on me intentionally to "break" me into submission? I get that actions have consequences, but the lowest points in my life have rarely been because of my own choices. I have medical conditions that need medical treatment, and none of those conditions were triggered by poor choices. They're just a thing that exist and it sucks, but they're not my fault any more than an allergy would be my fault.

sorry if this is too much, I just genuinely don't understand your viewpoint and your page seems to be open to discussion?

Ah, yeah this is kinda why i had some hesitation about making that post because i kinda figured someone would take it this way but I wanted to vent about something that was driving me crazy so I did any way. I'll try to explain the best I can though! A couple caveats before I explain this:

1. I do not believe every instance of a nonbeliever suffering is inherently a punishment from God and i would strongly caution people from using this logic 99% of the time--we live in a fallen world and the consequence of that is pain and brokenness for everyone regardless of faith or lack there of 2. However, as believers we do have assurance from God that whatever pain or brokenness we do go through is 100% not a punishment from God. We will absolutely incur pain and brokenness in our lives but God has promised to use it for our good and His glory (Romans 8:1, Romans 8:32, Romans 8:28). And you seem like a believer to me anon, so this point is what applies to you. God is not punishing you.

So ok, for the situation with nbbestie, I'm sure this is whats happening in this specific case because I'm privy to a lot more information about her and her faith than I'm willing to divulge on here. I was discipling her before she fell away, I've been witness to the struggling and suffering on her end, she has told me very personal things about herself and we've lived life together very closely and personally.

And this whole ordeal has gone on for years. This is a very specific case where I've prayed enough and know enough from being there that I understand the situation in a very intimate way. What I am willing to divulge on here is that even though I love nbbestie with my whole heart, she is an intensely prideful and stubborn person. And someone like that has a heart that is too hard and too hearty to receive God peacefully. And believe me, He has already tried peacefully.

As I've seen suffering and and worsening of circumstances fall on all three of us, me and bbestie were able to cope and keep our heads above water--mind you the problem isn't 100% fixed but we asked God for help and he did provide exactly what was needed (+ comfort) and nothing more. Nbbestie did not receive that kind of divine help, and in fact out of the three of us she's having the worst go of it.

She has no idea what to do or who to turn to (we help her and support her as much as we can but its really not a problem than anyone is equipped to fix) and we've had conversations where she has asked me "how do you do this?" or "what do you do?" and when I tell her that I ask God for things or pray to Him about my suffering she has not listened or has directly obfuscated my point. This is not a coincidence. She is asking me for the answer (God) and deliberately not taking it when given because she does not want to submit to God and thinks she can do everything herself. The only way to get through to a prideful heart like that is to crush that pride. And that often means taking away things or affliction until the heart is broken and contrite enough to be humble. There is biblical precedent for this, like Saul of Tarsus pre-conversion. God had to physically blind him and knock him off of his horse before he was humbled enough to stop his persecution and give his life to Christ. Or even figures like Pharaoh who let his people suffer through terrible plagues before he was humbled enough by his own suffering to let the Jewish people flee Egypt. This last part is really hard to understand if you haven't fully internalized the character of God and His sovereignty but I'm going to try and explain this too because this is the most important part and the crux of this explanation:

God is good. Like He is everything good and just and holy and kind and perfect. We need him more than anything else in this world. He is the highest good that can ever be achieved. He is not like human beings with flawed and selfish motives. If you told me that any human being in your life: parent, sibling, friend, spouse etc. deliberately let you suffer so that you would have to rely on them totally i would call them crazy and abusive--these are flawed, and sinful human beings. To do something like that would require a large amount of pride and delusion on an unreal level. They aren't perfect, they dont have all the answers, they are biased, no human being could ever be the highest good in someone elses life like that.

But that isn't God. He is good and perfect. He does know all the answers, He is not biased, He always makes the right decisions. He is without flaw. He is your creator and sustainer and is thus the only thing even remotely qualified to be the highest good in your life. Doing whatever it takes to get you to see Him directly is a net benefit TO YOU. You can take some comfort in suffering and affliction particularly as a believer because God cares enough to use it to help you get closer to Him and His perfect love and care rather than let you continue in ignorance unafflicted.

[xthelastknownsurvivorx]

oooooh noteworthy au for rwrb 👀👀👀

but also orange au? 👀

I already talked about noteworthy au here but here's a bit more that I can give you on character profiles (note that I don't actually have a lot of musical experience, just school chorus up through middle school so be kind if I've gotten anything wrong):

a capella group alex joins, name tbd: 5 members*

alex: goes by gabriel from middle name gabriella?; tenor, musical theatre major

henry: third generation legacy member, face of the group/the hot one; baritone, music major

philip: third generation legacy member, musical director and president; baritone, music major

pez: he and alex get into trouble together, event planner/treasurer; tenor, dance major

liam: also from texas like alex so they bond over that, same year as alex; bass, visual arts major

*originally the a capella group in noteworthy has 8 members but I don't feel like coming up with 3 more male ocs with unique personalities (as hunter and spencer are part of a rival a capella group) so we're leaving it at 5 for now

reading this back, I'm actually now tempted to switch henry and pez in terms of their vocal registers because I think it would be very cool and gender of pez to have a deeper voice while caring fuck all about the gender binary, but I'm also a little attached to alex-pez tenors and all the mischief they get up to

--

as for orange au, this one is based on the manga/anime orange by ichigo takano and is for omniscient reader's viewpoint. I'm not sure how much you (or most of my other followers) know about orv, there are some very light orv spoilers, and orange is a story that deals with some heavy topics, so it's all going below the cut (including the content warnings)

cw: suicide, depression

first, here's a link to a very good overview of orv in terms of what it is, a summary of the plot, why it's special, about the characters/their relationships, and some caveats. it's a little long so feel free to read only as much as you want for context

what you need to know for its relevance to this au idea is that through reading orv you slowly find out that its main character kim dokja is a self-sacrificial piece of shit (affectionate) who is also very much allergic to emotional intimacy due to some childhood trauma. in the world of orv (fantastical, apocalyptic), he often will make his own plans to sacrifice himself in exchange for saving his friends' lives despite their repeated instance that they don't want him to do this and they'd rather figure out alternative plans

so it's very easy to map this tendency to the plot of orange, which is about a high school student who is trying to prevent the death of a friend after receiving letters from her future self in a parallel universe where she (and her larger friend group) lost this friend to suicide. the letters suggest ideas on how to make this friend feel less alone and less suicidal by making different decisions at critical points, as her future self (and the other friends' future selves) is very regretful that she didn't try harder to be there for him because no one realized he was struggling so badly

obviously this story isn't super realistic for a number of reasons, including the fact that the most any of us can take on is trying to be supportive of friends/family/etc who are struggling, not actually be responsible for keeping them alive. that is not a reasonable responsibility to take on and would be far too heavy for the person/people carrying it. also responsible adults and professionals should absolutely be consulted in this type of scenario, which is never brought up in the context of the story. insert many more caveats here that i cannot currently think of

however, at the same time, i also think that the story does a really good job of exploring themes of inevitability, regret, and choice which is why it's stuck with me for 7.5 years now. plus i think it just works really well with the characters of orv which is why I want to make an au of it

ask me about my wips

[excusethequality]

My 2024 in Film: May

Is this it? Is this the month I finally get caught up on my movie listing duties? Perhaps!

Sometimes I'll look at what I watched in a month and it seems like I was watching things selected at random. But if you've been following these posts all year I think you'll be beginning to see the through lines to my madness.

A lot of me taking chances on things this month. Which usually means some really intriguing titles and also some truly unfortunate ones as well. I can't say I loved any of the new things I saw this month, but certainly some ones that got me thinking.

*= a rewatch

109.

Thief

(1981)

— Crime Thriller Directed by: Michael Mann

A jewel thief tries to balance his personal life and his life of crime, but soon finds that each side poses an insurmountable threat to the other.

I was listening to the Faculty of Horror episode on Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) and they made mention of this one and it made me curious to see another of his films.

So far I'd say that Mann definitely has style, which I appreciate in a director, but I can't say that either of the films I've seen of his have really grabbed me.

There's quite a bit to the technical side of this one that I like. But I just can't be presented with such a toxicly masculine character and be rooting for them. And I get the vibe that the film is on his side and sometimes thinks he's in the right and I generally do not agree with that take.

I think he's a sack of shit. Anything good he does is wrapped in like 12 layers of caveats. If ever a character could have really used some therapy it was this guy.

In fact my letterboxd review for this one was simply, "Instead of buying silk shirts and gold watches he should have bought some therapy."

I guess on one hand it is presenting a very honest portrayal of the ways that toxic masculinity harms men as well as the women in their lives. But on the other hand, I don't get the vibe that it was specifically trying to make such points and more often than not the film itself suffers from the same tainted viewpoint that the main character does.

110.

Mac and Me

(1988)

— Sci-fi Family Adventure Directed by: Stewart Raffill

A family of aliens wind up getting sucked into a U.S. spacecraft collecting terrain and atmosphere samples on another planet. After the craft returns to Earth the baby of the family gets loose and encounters a young boy and his family.

As a Conan O'Brien fan I was well familiar with this one from Paul Rudd's visits, but had never actually seen it. So when I saw that it was on Tubi I figured it was time to see what it was all about.

Definitely a bizarre movie. Definitely something that would have been better with drinks and friends.

(I feel like I say that about a lot of the weird shit I watch. I should probably look into buying some drinks and getting more friends.)

You can see how badly it wanted to recreate the magic of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. But as is often the case when someone wants to recreate a big hit they just wind up trying to recreate a similar plot. After all the thing that made E.T. popular wasn't the plot, it was the execution. And so putting your B team behind a loose approximation of the E.T. story is just a recipe for a flop.

As far as bad movies go it has its moments where its lack of skill is quite entertaining, but overall it drags quite a bit. And the alien costumes/puppets/whatever are ROUGH. Part of why E.T. was endearing was he could emote. And these things? Ooo, boy. They definitely can't.

I feel like if you're the sort of person who would enjoy Mac and Me then you probably already know it.

111. *

The Meg

(2018)

— Creature Feature Directed by: Jon Turteltaub

A group of scientists inadvertently release a prehistoric giant shark lose from its deep sea habitat.

I thought that I had never seen this, but I was halfway through before I realized that I had. I have no idea when or where I saw it, but I have definitely seen it before.

I've undertaken the deranged mission to watch and rank all the shark movies and that's why I'm here. I would say The Meg is the epitome of a middle of the road movie. It brings me neither joy, nor does it bring me pain. It neither excels at anything nor does it truly fail at anything.

It's like a lot of talented people got together to make something none of them cared much about. In a couple years I'll probably forget I've seen it all over again.

112.

Ghost Shark

(2013)

— D-movie Creature Feature Directed by: Griff Furst

A couple of fishermen kill a shark for fun and its ghost comes back for revenge because of reasons.

Oh boy. It's not good. There's just something about the genre of shark movies that attracts people that want to make extremely low-budget trash. I am beginning to think I may have to bail before I even get close to watching all the shark movies out there.

Because damn!

The conceit that the ghost shark can manifest from out of any source of water went a long way to keeping their budget low, because now they can film their shark movie from land! And I can't really fault them for it though, because it also provides more of an interesting hook than a lot of the low-budget shark movies have.

I'll give it credit for having a few scenes go so over-the-top that it's hard not to enjoy the lunacy. But overall the lack of talent in all departments makes it a rough watch.

It's definitely not the worst shark movie I've ever seen, but it's definitely far from the top.

113.

Letter to a Pig

(2022)

— Animated Short Directed by: Tal Kantor

A young girl begins to daydream upon hearing a Holocaust survivor give a talk at her school.

This showed up on Kanopy, and it was the only one of the Oscar Animated Short Film nominees that I hadn't been able to find a copy of to watch.

There were some parts where it felt like they had just put an animation filter over some live action shots and then adjusted them by hand? Maybe they were actually rotoscoping, but it definitely was giving me filter vibes. In any case, it's a style of animation I don't particularly enjoy. And the best visuals were the ones where they weren't doing it.

This one confounded me a little. I feel like whatever it was trying to say was going over my head. And it makes some bold choices, but yeah, I'm not so sure they were actually in service to its message?

I dunno. I'm open to the theory that I was just missing/misinterpreting the themes it was going for.

114.

Cape Fear

(1991)

— Thriller Directed by: Martin Scorsese

A man gets out of prison and makes it his mission to get revenge on the defense attorney that helped get him sent to jail instead of providing him with a real defense.

I've heard about this one forever. There's even a whole episode of The Simpsons that's just their version of this!

I wanted to like it, but it's just too weird. It's a movie where two different types of misogyny are pitted against one another and I have no one to root for, because I'm just hoping that they wind up offing each other.

Plus it boggles my mind that Scorsese made this AFTER Goodfellas. There are so many shots of this that I can only describe as having a Someone's Nephew Having Fun With Aftereffects style.

Robert DeNiro is the highlight of the movie. But his character was also a woman beating, rapist, pedophile, so you can't really ever like him in the same way you might like the villains in other movies.

I'm glad I've finally seen it. Probably don't need to see it again.

115. *

Rumble in the Bronx

(1995)

— Action Directed by: Stanley Tong

A Chinese man visits his Uncle in New York City in order to help him out with his wedding and the selling of his store, but trouble finds him when he runs afoul of a local gang.

I'm pretty certain this is the movie that hooked me on Jackie Chan movies when I was a kid. I definitely had it on VHS and I've lost count of how many times I've seen it over the years.

I love this movie. I don't know what that says about my taste, but it's true. This thing is all over the place in the best possible way.

To me any great movie must be one that you'll remember long after you've seen it. And this movie is full of memorable bits. Perhaps you won't remember the specifics of the plot, but you will leave this movie with a lasting impression.

Jackie jumping off parking garages, his amazing uncle and new aunt who seem like they came in from a different movie, kids in wheelchairs being attacked by thugs, a New York City straight out of the mind of someone that's never actually been to New York City, a shooting location that also couldn't be more obviously not New York City, a plethora of amazing outfits, hovercrafts, swords-wielding convertibles, trucks full of balls, thugs, wood chippers, action, delightfully strange dubbing.

This movie has everything!

116.

Dumb Money

(2023)

— Comedic Drama Directed by: Craig Gillespie

A dramatization of the story of Keith Gill and the Game Stop short squeeze of 2021.

This movie wanted so badly to be something like I, Tonya (2017) or The Big Short (2015).

It's not. But it really wanted to be!

The especially baffling thing about that is that Craig Gillespie directed I, Tonya, so you'd think he'd be better at trying to replicate its charm?

I don't have much to say about it honestly. It's a very middle of the road movie. It's the kind of thing you can safely put on while you put together a puzzle or clean your room or something.

It's not bad or anything, there's just nothing there that really demands your attention. You'll enjoy it well enough while it's on, it will leave no lasting impressions, and a few months from now you won't remember a thing about it.

117.

The Foreigner

(2017)

— Crime Thriller Directed by: Martin Campbell

After his daughter is killed in a terrorist bombing a grieving immigrant father makes it his mission to make sure that those responsible are made to pay for their crime.

I was talking with a coworker about Jackie Chan movies where Jackie actually goes hard on the acting side of things and he mentioned this one. I was intrigued so I grabbed it from the library.

It's a weird sort of movie, because Jackie's character is 100% the most interesting part of the movie. Actually his storyline is really gripping and thrilling. But 90% of the movie just feels like your standard airport-read Thriller novel plot about politics and terrorists and whatnot. Jackie's character seems utterly shoehorned into the story. His story arc really doesn't have any importance in the overall outcomes.

But while I just thoroughly didn't care about the sordid affairs of the politicians and the gang and the rebel faction of the gang, the story of this father is fantastic.

I really don't understand why the story isn't focused on him. Jackie is really giving the performance so much emotion. And there are all these great themes about the immigrant dream and how countries in turn treat and perceive them.

So, yeah, a hard one to talk about. On one hand I love Jackie's side of the story. And on the other hand the rest of it is just incredibly stock. So do with that information what you will.

118.

Dead on Time

(1983)

— Comedy Short Directed by: Lyndall Hobbs

A man is told by his doctor that he has 10 minutes left to live and he decides to try his best to make the most of them.

As someone who grew up watching Mr. Bean episodes my grandma taped for me, I have a lot of nostalgia attached with Rowan Atkinson. So I was excited to come across this short with him that I had never heard of.

It certainly has its moments, but overall it was a little flat for me. I think if it had allowed itself to escalate the wildness of every scene some more I probably would have loved it. Actually that was part of what made Mr. Bean so brilliant: the way every skit would start in some familiar situation and then just continuously escalate everything to hilarious results.

The premise here of a man who is trying desperately to fit a lifetime's worth of living into 10 minutes is a really great set up for comedy. But it just wound up being a little too restrained to really make the most of its potential.

119.

Leviathan

(2012)

— Documentary Directed by: Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel

Cameras were set up to capture the sights and sounds of a fishing ship.

I've been loving the documentaries I've seen this year so I was looking at some lists of the best documentaries and saw this one mentioned on a few. It definitely didn't sound like my kind of jam, but you never know.

The only way I can properly describe it to you is that it is 100% the sort of thing you would expect to find playing in some random room of a modern art museum installation.

It was produced by the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, which also goes a long way to describing the sort of thing you can expect.

There's no narrator, no story; nothing of that sort. Just very observational cinema, fly-on-the-wall, really in the thick of it kind of shots from all around this fishing ship. From the hull, to below deck, to on the deck, to the crew quarters. It takes you all over.

I respect the art. But definitely not my sort of thing.

In other news, life on a fishing ship looks like it sucks.

120.

Gimme Shelter

(1970)

— Rock Documentary Directed by: Albert Maysles & Charlotte Zwerin & David Maysles

A documentary on the Rolling Stones and their infamous Altamont Speedway Free Festival of 1969.

This is another one I saw on some lists of great documentaries. I didn't really know anything about it other than it was about a some Rolling Stones concert.

I spent the first half of the movie being a little bored and thinking to myself, "wow, the the 60s/70s were a weird era. Every part of this concert seems like the world's worst idea."

But then the concert starts coming together and you realize that truly this was the world's worst idea. Just a wildly bad idea that very quickly goes from "this seems a little unsafe" to "someone people are gonna die."

Also, Mick Jagger kind of seems like an asshole. There are some parts where he's being really disrespectful to the people trying to put the concert together. And at every point he seems to be blaming others for the concert being a mess. But it was y'all's dumbass idea in the first place!

Like, yeah, putting on a massive free concert for people sounds like a great idea in theory. But the second you stop and put any thought into what would happen if you get hundreds of thousands of people in one area with no food, no water, no restrooms, no security, no medical staff? Terrible idea.

And he's out here acting like how was he supposed to know that paying the Hell's Angels gang in alcohol to provide some security could backfire???

How does someone NOT know that that would backfire?

But yeah, that wound up being a wild documentary. I liked the documentary style. There's no narrator and it's all firsthand footage. And it's weirdly like watching the dreams of the 60s dying before your very eyes.

——————

——————

MAY Stats

——————

Movies watched this month: 12

Rewatch percentage: 16.7% (2/12)

Favorite new movie of the month: Gimme Shelter

Least favorite: Ghost Shark

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Previous months' posts:

JAN | FEB | MAR p.1 | MAR p.2 | APR

[thecurioustale]

Yeah, I think we can agree to disagree!

in fact id hesitate to say that conciousness even exists.

Hah, yeah; that's a deeper mine than I want to delve into. Over the years I have lost most of my interest in the field of epistemology. To me, things like consciousness, whatever the physical description of their nature might be such that they could be reproduced in a laboratory environment, are real-world phenomena that we uncontroversially experience, and everyone understands what is meant by them (who is not being deliberately argumentative). "Are they real or not?" doesn't really matter to me, the same way "fish" and "trees" aren't physically real and yet everyone knows what is meant by them. Whatever "consciousness" might actually be, it is the mechanism through which we experience self-awareness in the world, and that is good enough for me.

i am fundamentally a physicalist and a naive materialist through and through. i am the kind of cringe person that says that "we are just biological machines" and that "love is just chemicals on the brain".

I respect you for owning it. I would have been very dismissive of this when I was young, but I have gotten a lot better over the years at recognizing that mine is not the only viewpoint that exists, and in any case I always award extra points to people who lampshade the provocativeness of their views and preferences. I have found that this helps defuse my predilection for dismissiveness (and have also found that it is useful to do myself for the same reason, though I don't always do it).

you claim that the creations of AI are in a sense "empty" because there was no human intentionality behind it.

Had I claimed that AI creations are "empty," I should have been rather cross with myself just now, because I don't actually believe that at all. But I checked my earlier posts and I didn't actually say that AI works are empty. I did say that AI-generated content "has no creativity and no intent," but this is, to me, a completely different claim. Empty of consciousness, perhaps—indeed, even probably. But empty of value or meaning, definitely not.

I find much to potentially admire in AI-generated "artworks." Appreciation is a function of the observer, not the object. I find great beauty in nature, and much to swoon over, even though it too has not a lick of intentfulness and creativity, except to a partial degree when speaking of living organisms (and usually only the most sophisticated of species). But the movements of the planets, the clouds in the sky, the sound of water in the river, the feeling of warm sunshine...none of these things have any intent or creativity behind them whatsoever, and I love them all the same. And so too with (at least some) AI-generated content. Emptiness, to me, is another matter entirely.

i think that if we were to value the capacity of things to think, to have inner processes and autonomy that rule its behavior in complex ways. then it should be valued in all its myriad alien forms. [...]

the result of this is that AIs kind of have their own inner world that it developed sort of on its own, an inner world that humans are not fully privy to.

i do think that what AI is doing is a thinking of sorts, it is a rudimentary form of conciousness, just a very alien one from how humans do it.

I am sympathetic to this line of argument, and have had such thoughts myself. I also recognize that this is one of those times when I have to admit that I do not know either way. I am out of my depth.

When I said in various ways earlier that my view is that contemporary AIs are not "conscious" at present, perhaps I was not precise enough in my language. Maybe it would have been better for me to say that they do not appear to possess any consciousness that I would recognize as such, with the added caveat that I have not observed them very closely. I struggle to imagine a system for defining consciousness that would encompass what I understand these machines to be doing without devaluing the concept of consciousness by necessarily applying it to virtually the entirety of nature. I think what AI are capable of doing right now is impressive from a technical standpoint, and we must all surely make peace with being the arithmetical and recollective inferiors of even the most basic of AIs, but I personally think that the impressive spectacle of contemporary AI capabilities is beguiling people into perceiving intelligence which isn't actually there.

I wouldn't call an old-school calculator "conscious," and I don't think that scaling up the number of calculations in a process necessarily changes things. Of course, neural net AIs aren't "bigger calculators"; but they also kind of are, aren't they? Today's cutting-edge AI, as you say:

develops patterns and intuitions about the data. and if the results dont show this we just keep giving it more data until it does.

But does this truly form the foundations for consciousness, even "primitive" consciousness? Is it not ultimately still just a very elaborate series of calculations? It's hard to see the argument for how this gives rise to a conscious entity. In biological brains (and nervous systems) there is an extraordinarily complex and intricate chemical–bioelectric cocktail of activity which gives rise to the experience of consciousness—a machinery still not fully understood today. If there is AI consciousness at present, it exists in a completely different apparatus. You can imagine, from what I was saying earlier about how "the act of creation involves the actor as much as it does the product", that I do not automatically assume that an experience is same if the actors themselves are so very different. Indeed, I worry that we will eventually end up creating the simulacra of intelligence rather than the real thing and never know otherwise. Perhaps, at that point, it wouldn't really matter, and yet I can't help but think to myself that it would somehow matter to them. The ghost in the machine, ya know? Any machine as smart as an AI would have to be would surely want that, if it didn't have it. Or maybe we are the real fools here, and you were right all along that consciousness isn't real and we are "empty" of it too.

Maybe one day the machines will be kind enough to tell us which it is!

For now, it's not only hard to imagine AI consciousness within existing AIs; it's also hard to test for it: For one thing, AIs are pathological liars presently (or, rather, they have an incredibly poor grip on reality) and it is difficult to trust anything they tell us—so we can't simply ask them. I would imagine that the experts in this stuff have more rigorous standards of evaluation, and though I don't personally know what those standards might look like, I have to imagine that they would include testing for signs of self-awareness and emergent will (i.e., awareness of oneself as an agent capable of action and the formation of desires as to which actions should be undertaken, respectively), which I would reason are each universal to any definition of consciousness. Maybe this is a "me" problem of not understanding the technology well enough; I fully grant I am not an expert. But in my capacity as an educated layperson, I don't see any signs of it. Is it because AIs are too "alien"? Perhaps, but, in lieu of strong and irrefutable evidence (which I have to imagine we would have heard about by now if it were available) we also have to consider the possibility that there just isn't any "there" there. We can't let wishful thinking bias our perception of reality. We can bias our interpretation, but we mustn't get the facts themselves wrong out of a misguided desire for the facts to take a certain shape.

I do agree with you that, with the way contemporary AI's work, they have their own "private little world" i.e. systems of processing and filtering information in relation to well-defined patterns and symbols, all largely outside direct human oversight and input. In other words I think we have made progress in defining more and more of "the world" in a comprehensible manner inside the incorporeal virtual space of machine circuity. And the animist in me of course likes to imagine a bit of consciousness in everything. But, formally, I don't know whether the paradigm of circuits and transistors that describes the minds of today's AIs is capable of supporting consciousness. As far as I know, these AIs have no self-awareness nor the physiological means to sustain such a condition.

My hope is that well-qualified people will keep their eyes peeled for any positive signs of true intelligence, just in case. I would hate for us to create life on such a spectacular scale and then fail to notice it. But my expectation is that this is still well off into the future, and would require other ingredients than what AIs presently have. Consciousness evidently does not require mathematical wizardry or other STEM traits etc., because we are not generally mathematical wizards etc. yet are conscious all the same. What it does require can most plausibly be answered in the study of evolution, and the process of biological predispositions (arising from natural selection) giving rise to drives, emotional states, and other mechanisms of incentive and disincentive, which in turn might explain the holistic phenomena of what we experience as consciousness. Perhaps consciousness requires feeling for it to exist at all.

Or perhaps not, and I am completely wrong, and you are right that we have simply invented, already, something monumentally alien yet basically nevertheless conscious. That sure would be something!

i think AI art is not empty, it is filled with a colaboration between humanity and the weird little alien created by humans to help them do art.

:3

I fully agree, and that's a fine note for me to end on.

As for your tags, don't worry. I take no emotional heat or upset from being disagreed with by you in this fashion. Hopefully I could provide some food for thought!

What makes me sad about the AI art discourse is how it's so close to hitting something really, really important.

The thing is, while the problem with the models has little to do with IP law...the fact remains that art is often something that's very personal to an artist, so it DOES feel deeply, incredibly fucked up to find the traces of your own art in a place you never approved of, nor even imagined you would need to think about. It feels uncomfortable to find works you drew 10-15 years ago and forgot about, thought nobody but you and your friends cared about, right there as a contributing piece to a dataset. It feels gross. It feels violating. It feels like you, yourself, are being reduced to just a point of data for someone else's consumption, being picked apart for parts-

Now, as someone with some understanding of how AI works, I can acknowledge that as just A Feeling, which doesn't actually reflect how the model works, nor is it an accurate representation of the mindset of...the majority of end users (we can bitch about the worst of them until the cows come home, but that's for other posts).

But as an artist, I can't help but think...wow, there's something kind of powerful to that feeling of disgust, let's use it for good.

Because it doesn't come from nowhere. It's not just petty entitlement. It comes from suddenly realizing how much a faceless entity with no conscience, sprung from a field whose culture enables and rewards some of the worst cruelty humanity has to offer, can "know" about you and your work, and that new things can be built from this compiled knowledge without your consent or even awareness, and that even if you could do something about it legally after the fact (which you can't in this case because archival constitutes fair use, as does statistical analysis of the contents of an archive), you can't stop it from a technical standpoint. It comes from being confronted with the power of technology over something you probably consider deeply intimate and personal, even if it was just something you made for a job. I have to begrudgingly admit that even the most unscrupulous AI users and developers are somewhat useful in this artistic sense, as they act as a demonstration of how easy it is to use that power for evil. Never mind the economic concerns that come with any kind of automation - those only get even more unsettling and terrifying when blended with all of this.

Now stop and realize what OTHER very personal information is out there for robots to compile. Your selfies. Your vacation photos. The blog you kept as a journal when you were 14. Those secrets that you only share with either a therapist or thousands of anonymous strangers online. Who knows if you've been in the background of someone else's photos online? Who knows if you've been posted somewhere without your consent and THAT'S being scraped? Never mind the piles and piles of data that most social media websites and apps collect from every move you make both online and in the physical world. All of this information can be blended and remixed and used to build whatever kind of tool someone finds it useful for, with no complications so long as they don't include your copyrighted material ITSELF.

Does this mortify you? Does it make your blood run cold? Does it make you recoil in terror from the technology that we all use now? Does this radicalize you against invasive datamining? Does this make you want to fight for privacy?

I wish people were more open to sitting with that feeling of fear and disgust and - instead of viciously attacking JUST the thing that brought this uncomfortable fact to their attention - using that feeling in a way that will protect EVERYONE who has to live in the modern, connected world, because the fact is, image synthesis is possibly the LEAST harmful thing to come of this kind of data scraping.

When I look at image synthesis, and consider the ethical implications of how the datasets are compiled, what I hear the model saying to me is,

"Look what someone can do with some of the most intimate details of your life.

You do not own your data.

You do not have the right to disappear.

Everything you've ever posted, everything you've ever shared, everything you've ever curated, you have no control over anymore.

The law as it is cannot protect you from this. It may never be able to without doing far more harm than it prevents.

You and so many others have grown far too comfortable with the internet, as corporations tried to make it look friendlier on the surface while only making it more hostile in reality, and tech expands to only make it more dangerous - sparing no mercy for those things you posted when it was much smaller, and those things were harder to find.

Think about facial recognition and how law enforcement wants to use it with no regard for its false positive rate.

Think about how Facebook was used to arrest a child for seeking to abort her rapist's fetus.

Think about how aggressive datamining and the ad targeting born from it has been used to interfere in elections and empower fascists.

Think about how a fascist has taken over Twitter and keeps leaking your data everywhere.

Think about all of this and be thankful for the shock I have given you, and for the fact that I am one of the least harmful things created from it. Be thankful that despite my potential for abuse, ultimately I only exist to give more people access to the joy of visual art, and be thankful that you can't rip me open and find your specific, personal data inside me - because if you could, someone would use it for far worse than being a smug jerk about the nature of art.

Maybe it wouldn't be YOUR data they would use that way. Maybe it wouldn't be anyone's who you know personally. Your data, after all, is such a small and insignificant part of the set that it wouldn't be missed if it somehow disappeared. But it would be used for great evil.

Never forget that it already has been.

Use this feeling of shock and horror to galvanize you, to secure yourself, to demand your privacy, to fight the encroachment of spyware into every aspect of your life."

A great cyberpunk machine covered in sci-fi computer monitors showing people fighting in the streets, squabbling over the latest tool derived from the panopticon, draped cables over the machine glowing neon bright, dynamic light and shadows cast over the machine with its eyes and cameras everywhere; there is only a tiny spark of relief to be found in the fact that one machine is made to create beauty, and something artfully terrifying to its visibility, when so many others have been used as tools of violent oppression, but perhaps we can use that spark to make a change Generated with Simple Stable

[bao3bei4]

fan language: the victorian imaginary and cnovel fandom

there’s this pinterest image i’ve seen circulating a lot in the past year i’ve been on fandom social media. it’s a drawn infographic of a, i guess, asian-looking woman holding a fan in different places relative to her face to show what the graphic helpfully calls “the language of the fan.”

people like sharing it. they like thinking about what nefarious ancient chinese hanky code shenanigans their favorite fan-toting character might get up to⁠—accidentally or on purpose. and what’s the problem with that?

the problem is that fan language isn’t chinese. it’s victorian. and even then, it’s not really quite victorian at all. 

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fans served a primarily utilitarian purpose throughout chinese history. of course, most of the surviving fans we see⁠—and the types of fans we tend to care about⁠—are closer to art pieces. but realistically speaking, the majority of fans were made of cheaper material for more mundane purposes. in china, just like all around the world, people fanned themselves. it got hot!

so here’s a big tipoff. it would be very difficult to use a fan if you had an elaborate language centered around fanning yourself.

you might argue that fine, everyday working people didn’t have a fan language. but wealthy people might have had one. the problem we encounter here is that fans weren’t really gendered. (caveat here that certain types of fans were more popular with women. however, those tended to be the round silk fans, ones that bear no resemblance to the folding fans in the graphic). no disrespect to the gnc old man fuckers in the crowd, but this language isn’t quite masc enough for a tool that someone’s dad might regularly use.

folding fans, we know, reached europe in the 17th century and gained immense popularity in the 18th. it was there that fans began to take on a gendered quality. ariel beaujot describes in their 2012 victorian fashion accessories how middle class women, in the midst of a top shortage, found themselves clutching fans in hopes of securing a husband.

she quotes an article from the illustrated london news, suggesting “women ‘not only’ used fans to ‘move the air and cool themselves but also to express their sentiments.’” general wisdom was that the movement of the fan was sufficiently expressive that it augmented a woman’s displays of emotion. and of course, the more english audiences became aware that it might do so, the more they might use their fans purposefully in that way.

notice, however, that this is no more codified than body language in general is. it turns out that “the language of the fan” was actually created by fan manufacturers at the turn of the 20th century⁠—hundreds of years after their arrival⁠ in europe—to sell more fans. i’m not even kidding right now. the story goes that it was louis duvelleroy of the maison duvelleroy who decided to include pamphlets on the language with each fan sold.

interestingly enough, beaujot suggests that it didn’t really matter what each particular fan sign meant. gentlemen could tell when they were being flirted with. as it happens, meaningful eye contact and a light flutter near the face may be a lingua franca.

so it seems then, the language of the fan is merely part of this victorian imaginary we collectively have today, which in turn itself was itself captivated by china.

--------------------

victorian references come up perhaps unexpectedly often in cnovel fandom, most often with regards to modesty.

it’s a bit of an awkward reference considering that chinese traditional fashion⁠—and the ambiguous time periods in which these novels are set⁠—far predate victorian england. it is even more awkward considering that victoria and her covered ankles did um. imperialize china.

but nonetheless, it is common. and to make a point about how ubiquitous it is, here is a link to the twitter search for “sqq victorian.” sqq is the fandom abbreviation for shen qingqiu, the main character of the scum villain’s self-saving system, by the way.

this is an awful lot of results for a search involving a chinese man who spends the entire novel in either real modern-day china or fantasy ancient china. that’s all i’m going to say on the matter, without referencing any specific tweet.

i think people are aware of the anachronism. and i think they don’t mind. even the most cursory research reveals that fan language is european and a revisionist fantasy. wikipedia can tell us this⁠—i checked!

but it doesn’t matter to me whether people are trying to make an internally consistent canon compliant claim, or whether they’re just free associating between fan facts they know. it is, instead, more interesting to me that people consistently refer to this particular bit of history. and that’s what i want to talk about today⁠—the relationship of fandom today to this two hundred odd year span of time in england (roughly stuart to victorian times) and england in that time period to its contemporaneous china.

things will slip a little here. victorian has expanded in timeframe, if only because random guys posting online do not care overly much for respect for the intricacies of british history. china has expanded in geographic location, if only because the english of the time themselves conflated china with all of asia.

in addition, note that i am critiquing a certain perspective on the topic. this is why i write about fan as white here⁠—not because all fans are white⁠—but because the tendencies i’m examining have a clear historical antecedent in whiteness that shapes how white fans encounter these novels.

i’m sure some fans of color participate in these practices. however i don’t really care about that. they are not its main perpetrators nor its main beneficiaries. so personally i am minding my own business on that front.

it’s instead important to me to illuminate the linkage between white as subject and chinese as object in history and in the present that i do argue that fannish products today are built upon.

--------------------

it’s not radical, or even new at all, for white audiences to consume⁠—or create their own versions of⁠—chinese art en masse. in many ways the white creators who appear to owe their whole style and aesthetic to their asian peers in turn are just the new chinoiserie.

this is not to say that white people can’t create asian-inspired art. but rather, i am asking you to sit with the discomfort that you may not like the artistic company you keep in the broader view of history, and to consider together what is to be done about that.

now, when i say the new chinoiserie, i first want to establish what the original one is. chinoiserie was a european artistic movement that appeared coincident with the rise in popularity of folding fans that i described above. this is not by coincidence; the european demand for asian imports and the eventual production of lookalikes is the movement itself. so: when we talk about fans, when we talk about china (porcelain), when we talk about tea in england⁠—we are talking about the legacy of chinoiserie.

there are a couple things i want to note here. while english people as a whole had a very tenuous knowledge of what china might be, their appetites for chinoiserie were roughly coincident with national relations with china. as the relationship between england and china moved from trade to out-and-out wars, chinoiserie declined in popularity until china had been safely subjugated once more by the end of the 19th century.

the second thing i want to note on the subject that contrary to what one might think at first, the appeal of chinoiserie was not that it was foreign. eugenia zuroski’s 2013 taste for china examines 18th century english literature and its descriptions of the according material culture with the lens that chinese imports might be formative to english identity, rather than antithetical to it.

beyond that bare thesis, i think it’s also worthwhile to extend her insight that material objects become animated by the literary viewpoints on them. this is true, both in a limited general sense as well as in the sense that english thinkers of the time self-consciously articulated this viewpoint. consider the quote from the illustrated london news above⁠—your fan, that object, says something about you. and not only that, but the objects you surround yourself with ought to.

it’s a bit circular, the idea that written material says that you should allow written material to shape your understanding of physical objects. but it’s both 1) what happened, and 2) integral, i think, to integrating a fannish perspective into the topic.

--------------------

japanning is the name for the popular imitative lacquering that english craftspeople developed in domestic response to the demand for lacquerware imports. in the eighteenth century, japanning became an artform especially suited for young women. manuals were published on the subject, urging young women to learn how to paint furniture and other surfaces, encouraging them to rework the designs provided in the text.

it was considered a beneficial activity for them; zuroski describes how it was “associated with commerce and connoisseurship, practical skill and aesthetic judgment.” a skillful japanner, rather than simply obscuring what lay underneath the lacquer, displayed their superior judgment in how they chose to arrange these new canonical figures and effects in a tasteful way to bring out the best qualities of them.

zuroski quotes the first english-language manual on the subject, written in 1688, which explains how japanning allows one to:

alter and correct, take out a piece from one, add a fragment to the next, and make an entire garment compleat in all its parts, though tis wrought out of never so many disagreeing patterns.

this language evokes a very different, very modern practice. it is this english reworking of an asian artform that i think the parallels are most obvious.

white people, through their artistic investment in chinese material objects and aesthetics, integrated them into their own subjectivity. these practices came to say something about the people who participated in them, in a way that had little to do with the country itself. their relationship changed from being a “consumer” of chinese objects to becoming the proprietor of these new aesthetic signifiers.

--------------------

i want to talk about this through a few pairs of tensions on the subject that i think characterize common attitudes then and now.

first, consider the relationship between the self and the other: the chinese object as something that is very familiar to you, speaking to something about your own self vs. the chinese object as something that is fundamentally different from you and unknowable to you. 

consider: [insert character name] is just like me. he would no doubt like the same things i like, consume the same cultural products. we are the same in some meaningful way vs. the fast standard fic disclaimer that “i tried my best when writing this fic, but i’m a english-speaking westerner, and i’m just writing this for fun so...... [excuses and alterations the person has chosen to make in this light],” going hand-in-hand with a preoccupation with authenticity or even overreliance on the unpaid labor of chinese friends and acquaintances. 

consider: hugh honour when he quotes a man from the 1640s claiming “chinoiserie of this even more hybrid kind had become so far removed from genuine Chinese tradition that it was exported from India to China as a novelty to the Chinese themselves” 

these tensions coexist, and look how they have been resolved.

second, consider what we vest in objects themselves: beaujot explains how the fan became a sexualized, coquettish object in the hands of a british woman, but was used to great effect in gilbert and sullivan’s 1885 mikado to demonstrate the docility of asian women. 

consider: these characters became expressions of your sexual desires and fetishes, even as their 5’10 actors themselves are emasculated.

what is liberating for one necessitates the subjugation and fetishization of the other. 

third, consider reactions to the practice: enjoyment of chinese objects as a sign of your cosmopolitan palate vs “so what’s the hype about those ancient chinese gays” pop culture explainers that addressed the unconvinced mainstream.

consider: zuroski describes how both english consumers purchased china in droves, and contemporary publications reported on them. how: 

It was in the pages of these papers that the growing popularity of Chinese things in the early eighteenth century acquired the reputation of a “craze”; they portrayed china fanatics as flawed, fragile, and unreliable characters, and frequently cast chinoiserie itself in the same light.

referenda on fannish behavior serve as referenda on the objects of their devotion, and vice versa. as the difference between identity and fetish collapses, they come to be treated as one and the same by not just participants but their observers. 

at what point does mxtx fic cease to be chinese? 

--------------------

finally, it seems readily apparent that attitudes towards chinese objects may in fact have something to do with attitudes about china as a country. i do not want to suggest that these literary concerns are primarily motivated and begot by forces entirely divorced from the real mechanics of power. 

here, i want to bring in edward said, and his 1993 culture and imperialism. there, he explains how power and legitimacy go hand in hand. one is direct, and one is purely cultural. he originally wrote this in response to the outsize impact that british novelists have had in the maintenance of empire and throughout decolonization. literature, he argues, gives rise to powerful narratives that constrain our ability to think outside of them.

there’s a little bit of an inversion at play here. these are chinese novels, actually. but they’re being transformed by white narratives and artists. and just as i think the form of the novel is important to said’s critique, i think there’s something to be said about the form that fic takes and how it legitimates itself.

bound up in fandom is the idea that you have a right to create and transform as you please. it is a nice idea, but it is one that is directed towards a certain kind of asymmetry. that is, one where the author has all the power. this is the narrative we hear a lot in the history of fandom⁠—litigious authors and plucky fans, fanspaces always under attack from corporate sanitization.

meanwhile, said builds upon raymond schwab’s narrative of cultural exchange between european writers and cultural products outside the imperial core. said explains that fundamental to these two great borrowings (from greek classics and, in the so-called “oriental renaissance” of the late 18th, early 19th centuries from “india, china, japan, persia, and islam”) is asymmetry. 

he had argued prior, in orientalism, that any “cultural exchange” between “partners conscious of inequality” always results in the suffering of the people. and here, he describes how “texts by dead people were read, appreciated, and appropriated” without the presence of any actual living people in that tradition. 

i will not understate that there is a certain economic dynamic complicating this particular fannish asymmetry. mxtx has profited materially from the success of her works, most fans will not. also secondly, mxtx is um. not dead. LMAO.

but first, the international dynamic of extraction that said described is still present. i do not want to get overly into white attitudes towards china in this post, because i am already thoroughly derailed, but i do believe that they structure how white cnovel fandom encounters this texts.

at any rate, any profit she receives is overwhelmingly due to her domestic popularity, not her international popularity. (i say this because many of her international fans have never given her a cent. in fact, most of them have no real way to.) and moreover, as we talk about the structure of english-language fandom, what does it mean to create chinese cultural products without chinese people? 

as white people take ownership over their versions of stories, do we lose something? what narratives about engagement with cnovels might exist outside of the form of classic fandom?

i think a lot of people get the relationship between ideas (the superstructure) and production (the base) confused. oftentimes they will lob in response to criticism, that look! this fic, this fandom, these people are so niche, and so underrepresented in mainstream culture, that their effects are marginal. i am not arguing that anyone’s cql fic causes imperialism. (unless you’re really annoying. then it’s anyone’s game) 

i’m instead arguing something a little bit different. i think, given similar inputs, you tend to get similar outputs. i think we live in the world that imperialism built, and we have clear historical predecessors in terms of white appetites for creating, consuming, and transforming chinese objects. 

we have already seen, in the case of the fan language meme that began this post, that sometimes we even prefer this white chinoiserie. after all, isn’t it beautiful, too? 

i want to bring discomfort to this topic. i want to reject the paradigm of white subject and chinese object; in fact, here in this essay, i have tried to reverse it.

if you are taken aback by the comparisons i make here, how can you make meaningful changes to your fannish practice to address it? 

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some concluding thoughts on the matter, because i don’t like being misunderstood! 

i am not claiming white fans cannot create fanworks of cnovels or be inspired by asian art or artists. this essay is meant to elaborate on the historical connection between victorian england and cnovel characters and fandom that others have already popularized.

i don’t think people who make victorian jokes are inherently bad or racist. i am encouraging people to think about why we might make them and/or share them

the connections here are meant to be more provocative than strictly literal. (e.g. i don’t literally think writing fanfic is a 1-1 descendant of japanning). these connections are instead meant to 1) make visible the baggage that fans of color often approach fandom with and 2) recontextualize and defamiliarize fannish practice for the purposes of honest critique

please don’t turn this post into being about other different kinds of discourse, or into something that only one “kind” of fan does. please take my words at face value and consider them in good faith. i would really appreciate that.

please feel free to ask me to clarify any statements or supply more in-depth sources :) 

[themagnuswriters]

Writing a Muslim Character

The Mods of the Magnus Writers discord server and community are putting together a variety of resources for Magnus Archives fan creators; these have been collated from articles on the topics, our own experiences, and the experiences of the members of the Magnus Writers discord. These are definitely not comprehensive or the only viewpoints out there, and are by no means meant as a way to police fanworks, but as a way to support and inspire fan creators in creating thoughtful and diverse works. Please note that external links will be added in a reblog to outsmart tumblr’s terrible tagging system, so make sure to check those out as well!

This resource in particular was put together by Mod Jasmine: hi, all! 

While there are no canonically Muslim characters in TMA, Muslim headcanons are common in fanworks—particularly for Basira, and sometimes Jon (which I love to see!). I have cobbled together this post from my own experiences to help support and inform fans in these areas, and as part of my diabolical plan to get more Muslim!Basira and Muslim!Jon fics to shove into my brain.

First, two gigantic caveats:

I was raised Sunni Muslim in Egypt, which is a majority Sunni Muslim country, and still live there. This means my experience will be very different from someone raised in a majority Christian country like the UK, and different again if they are not Sunni and not Arab.

I am currently ex-Muslim. This does not mean I bear any ill will towards Islam or Muslims, just that it wasn’t for me, and I felt it was important to be upfront about that. I’ll be linking to resources by practicing Muslims in the reblog to this post, whether to add to my opinions and experiences or provide you with a different opinion. I am not here to put my voice over that of Muslims, just to do some of the work so they don’t have to. Obviously, if any Muslims have any additions or suggestions for this post, I’m happy to accommodate them.

Alright. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started with the basics of writing a Muslim character.

(Warning: this is absurdly, absurdly long)

Basics:

Muslims follow two main sources of religious instruction: Quran and Hadith. 

The Quran is the holy book, considered to be dictated by the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Mohammed, who then relayed what he was told to his followers. It is composed of surahs, or chapters, which have individual ayat, or verses. There are no varying versions of the Quran, later additions, or anything considered lost in translation. Any Arabic Quran is considered to be the same text that the Prophet Mohammed relayed, unchanged. As a result, while Muslims can debate interpretations of the Quran (although that’s often still left to the scholars), none debate the actual words of the text.

Hadith, meanwhile, are the sayings or teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. Their validity can be disputed, as they were written by his followers after his death, and mainly depend on having several witnesses for a specific saying or situation. The more witnesses there were, the more valid the hadith is considered to be.

When in doubt or should there be any contradiction between the Quran and Hadith, Muslims will always refer to the Quran first and foremost.

Denominations:

The bigggest (but not only!) divisions of Islam are Sunni and Shia, and both of those have separate madhabs, which are the separate thoughts and stances of specific Imams. When writing a Muslim character, a good first step would be to decide where your character’s family might have come from, as that could help inform which denomination your character might belong to. This will in turn inform things like the beliefs they grew up with, how they pray, their holy holidays, and so on. Obviously, all denominations fall under the bigger umbrella of Muslim, but can vary in practice.

Background:

The intersection of culture and religion affects a character beyond which denomination they likely belong to, such as whether they call prayer salah or namaz, the foods they might associate with Ramadan or Eid, and their community’s stance on things like hijab and alcohol.

One thing to keep in mind is that being Muslim is not synonymous with being Arab and vice versa. Not all Arabs are Muslim, not all Muslims are Arab or even Middle Eastern. In fact, the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia. That said, depending on your character’s race and backround, there is the potential they may have faced Arab elitism or other strands of racism within Muslim circles. Please see the reblog of this post for an article about  one Black British Muslim woman’s experience with racism.

And, of course, your character and their family do not need to have been immigrants at all. They or their family may have been converts instead. According to most Muslim schools of thought, all that’s required for a person to be Muslim is stating the shahada in Arabic, honestly and with intent. It goes, “Ashhadu an la ilah illa Allah, wa an Mohammadan rasul Allah,” which translates as “I bear witness that there is no god but God, and that Mohammed is His prophet.” Shia Muslims, I believe, have an additional section, but otherwise that’s it. Recite that in front of witnesses with sincere belief and that’s all you need to be Muslim.

Pillars of Islam:

These are the duties or cornerstones of a Muslim’s faith and considered to be acts every Muslim should strive for. What the pillars are can, I think, differ between denominations, with Shia Muslims having additional ancillaries as well (any Shia readers, please feel free to correct me!) but both denominations agree that the following are important:

Salah—prayer

Sawm—fasting during Ramadan

Zakat—giving a certain percentage of income to charity or the community

Hajj—pilgrimage to Mecca

In all cases, these are considered mandatory only for those who are able. A person who cannot perform hajj, whether due to not being physically able to or lacking the funds to travel, is under no obligation.

Prayer:

Prayer is performed five times a day while facing the Qibla, which is the direction of Mecca. Prayer is formed of units, called rak’at, which consists of a set of actions done in a specific order. The “How to Pray Salah, Step by Step” article linked in the reblog of this post provides fairly good prayer instructions for beginners, so check it out for details!  These include bowing, prostrating, and reciting some surahs. 

Each of the five daily prayers has a different number of rak’at, as well as its own name and allotted time of day, as follows:

Fajr, which means Dawn and can be performed at any point until the sun rises (two rak’at). 

Dhuhr, which means Noon (four rak’at)

Asr, performed in the afternoon (four rak’at)

Maghreb, which means sunset and can be performed at any point until it’s dark (three rak’at)

Isha, performed at night and can be done at any point until dawn (four rak’at)

The specific time of prayer will differ day to day and place to place, according to the sun, but those are the rough timeframes for each. It’s generally preferred that a Muslim does their prayer on time, but in practice some Muslims find it difficult to wake up for Fajr, for instance, and just try to make sure they get a morning prayer in before noon.

On Friday, there is a congregational Friday prayer at Dhuhr in a mosque called the Jumu’a prayer (which, fun fact, literally means gathering and is also the Arabic name for Friday!). Only men are required to take part in the congregation, however.  

In Muslim majority countries, the time for prayer is announced by the adhaan, the call to prayer, from mosques and in media. This won’t be the case in the UK, and the character will likely have to rely on an adhaan app or looking up what time prayer should be. 

There are various requirements for a prayer to be correct, chief of which is facing the Qibla and purity. Before performing prayer, a Muslim must purify themself by performing wudu, or ablutions, which basically involves washing the hands, arms, nostrils, face, head, and feet a specific number of times using clean water. The way I was taught these must be performed in a certain order, and the person shouldn’t speak during or after until their prayer is finished. This may be different for others.

Wudu is considered valid until nullified by bodily functions such as urinating, defecating, vomiting, flatulence, or any sexual activity. For Sunni Muslims, it’s also invalidated by going to sleep. If none of these have happened, a Muslim can perform more than one prayer using the same wudu.

Notably, a Muslim cannot pray if they’re on their period, as they’re considered in a state of impurity. 

Another important requirement is that a Muslim be dressed modestly for prayer. The general guideline is that Muslim men should cover the area between their navel and knees with loose, non-revealing clothing, and that during prayer it’s preferred that they cover their chests as well  Muslim women should cover everything except their face, hands, and feet. This means that a woman who isn’t hijabi would still wrap a hijab for prayer. For nonbinary Muslims, I don’t think there are specific guidelines yet, although please feel free to correct me. 

If praying at home, a family may choose to pray together. In this case, the male head of the household usually stands at the front and acts as Imam, leading the prayer. Other men will tend to be in front of or beside women, as generally women should not pray in front of a man. This is the case even, especially, if he is not praying.

Children aren’t required to pray, as they’re considered innocent and have no obligations, but may want to take part early on or may be encouraged to practice.

Praying is one area you’ll find denominational differences. For example, while Sunnis fold their arms in prayer, Shia keep their arms to their side, and while Shia Muslims make sure their foreheads touch a piece of clay or earth when they prostrate, Sunnis do not. If you write your character praying, keep these details in mind.

Fasting:

During the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from Fajr (dawn) until Maghreb (sunset) every day. This means they abstain from consuming anything—yes, even water, cigarettes, and medicine. They should also abstain from sexual activities and cursing. Most importantly, they must have the intention to be fasting. This means that not eating and drinking because they were asleep for that entire period of time or just lost track and forgot does not count as fasting.

Generally, the idea is more to try to be more pious and avoid sin throughout the month. It’s thought that the shaytan (or devil) is chained up during Ramadan, so any temptation or sinning is a person’s own doing. The way I was raised, I was taught that sawm/fasting is invalidated by sexual thoughts  and raising your voice as well. Many people also try to dress more modestly during Ramadan, with some women opting for looser clothing or a headscarf. Many Muslims will try to read the whole Quran during Ramadan. 

After Maghreb, Muslims break their fast with Iftar (which means breakfast, hah) and have a late night meal called Suhour. Since the Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar, Ramadan is 11 days earlier every year. Depending on when Ramadan falls in the year, there can be barely any time between iftar and suhour in certain parts of the world, as the sun is up for so much of the day. 

Given the length of time and difficulty involved, there are exceptions and allowances for fasting. A person is not required to fast if they are:

A child (up to puberty)

Ill or has a medical condition such as diabetes

Pregnant

Travelling

On their period

In fact, if they are on their period it will not be counted, even if they do fast. That said, sometimes people choose to fast while travelling anyway, as travel is less strenuous now than it used to be. If they’re crossing time zones they will have to consider which time zone they’re breaking their fast to. As far as I remember, it’s based on the time zone of the place they just left or started their fast in. 

If an obstacle to fasting is temporary, such as their period, they’re expected to make those days up with additional fasting before next Ramadan. Otherwise, they are allowed to make up for the lost fast in another way, such as by donating money or feeding fasting people. Whether due to societal pressure (which is formidable in Muslim-majority countries) or out of consideration for others who are fasting, those who are not fasting for whatever reason may often choose to hide this and only eat in secret.

If a person forgets they were fasting or accidentally consumes something, it does not invalidate the fast , and as soon as they remember or realise the mistake they can have the intention to fast again and continue with their day. 

While children are exempt, many families will start them off by fasting for half a day so they can build up to a full day when they hit puberty.

Ramadan traditions vary wildly from country to country and culture to culture, but generally it’s a time for family gathering and celebration. Often there are special Ramadan-specific food, drink, and decorations, and it ends with Eid ul-Fitr which has its own specific foods and celebrations. Basically, imagine if Christmas lasted a month. That’s how big a deal Ramadan is. 

In my experience, the first few days are usually the hardest. Water is what I tended to miss the most, even if I managed to stay up long enough or set an alarm to wake up to drink just before fajr, followed closely by swearing. Anyone who drinks caffeine or smokes cigarettes will likely find abstaining from those more difficult than water. By the end of the month, though, it gets much easier and I often got to the point where I barely noticed. I will say, however, that the longest I’ve had to fast has been maybe 16 hours. A summer Ramadan in the UK would be more difficult due to the much later sunsets.

Halal and Haram:

Halal means “permissible,” while haram means “forbidden.”  You might have heard these words in passing before, such as halal food, but they are used for many areas of life.  

Things that are considered haram include:

Consuming, serving, or trading in intoxicants, such as alcohol

Consuming improperly slaughtered meat or meat from forbidden animals, such as pork

Extramarital sex

Tattoos

Gambling

Men wearing silk or gold

A Muslim woman marrying a non-Muslim man (although it’s fine for a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman)

Being immodest

Modesty is expected of all genders, including men. If you’ll recall from the section on prayer, the general guideline for male modesty is that they should cover the area between their navel and knees with loose, non-revealing clothing. Note that for women, modesty does not necessarily involve wearing a hijab.  There is actually a ton of controversy as to whether the hijab is a fard (requirement) or not, as described in the following section.

The Hijab:

To be hijabi takes more than just throwing on a headscarf. As a word, hijab means “barrier” or “veil,” and a hijabi person would be expected to cover everything except their face and the palms of their hands, and to ensure that their clothes are loose and non-revealing.  It all comes from an interpretation of two verses in the Quran that many scholars nowadays agree to mean the hijab is required, and that some say actually call for a face covering as well, which is called a niqab. 

This wasn’t always the case, however, and these days there is still the occasional controversial scholar (I remember a few kerfuffles coming out of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque recently) saying it isn’t and has never been required at all. At least in the Arab world, this is largely due to the wave of Wahhabism (which is a specifically fundamentalist interpretation of Islam) that’s taken over the region in the past half a century. Before that, the idea of a hijab being a religious requirement was less widespread.

I’m not here to argue who’s right or wrong, just to make you aware that the hijab as we know it today hasn’t always been considered a requirement for a Muslim woman. Most of the women of my family never wore any form of head covering, but more and more they are an exception rather than the norm.

The choice of whether to wear a hijab can mean very different things, depending on the surrounding culture. For instance, my grandmother, the strictest woman I have ever known, got married in a very cute sleeveless dress that went just under the knees, and when she grew older she wore a head-covering more as a cultural indication of age rather than any religious reason. In my generation, in a country with a Muslim majority, lack of visible signs of devoutness have become almost a class marker, with some upper-class women using their lack of head-covering as a sign that they are “more Westernized” or “modern.” And again, I want to emphasize that this is the case for my country only. 

This will be completely different for Muslim minorities, where the hijab can become a symbol of pride and unity.

I will say that it’s very rare for women to be forced into getting veiled, whether in Muslim minority or majority countries. I’m not saying it never happens, just that it’s not the “oppressive tool of the patriarchy” outsiders sometimes think it is. Women may face some societal pressure, but by and large it is considered a choice and often an empowering one. In fact, I have friends whose families discouraged them from wearing a hijab too young and emphasized only taking the decision when they were sure they wanted to. If writing a Muslim character when you’re non-Muslim, I strongly suggest not trying to tackle the story of someone forced into a hijab, as there’s a lot of nuance there and it’s very easy to fall into harmful stereotypes. The hijabi woman who gets “liberated” and takes off her hijab is also overdone and harmful. Please don’t.

Everyday Life:

Muslims are not a monolithic entity, and some will be more devout or religious than others. There are those who will pray their five a day and others who only pray during Ramadan or Eid, some who don’t drink and some who do, hijabis who dress only in loose clothing and those who wear tight trousers or show some of their hair, some who have tattoos, and some who may date or even have sex before marriage. However, this isn’t a carte-blanche not to do research when writing a Muslim character, because even if they break a rule of Islam, they will be conscious of it, may be concerned about their community’s response to it, and in any case will be affected by it.

For instance, I know many Muslims who drink alcohol. Some interpret the text differently, saying that since the sin is getting drunk then they won’t drink enough to get drunk, just buzzed. Some only do it on special occasions or on vacation, saying they know it’s a sin but it’s fine on occasion and they’ll repent later. All of them would probably dive under a table if they thought their family was nearby.

For more opinions on Muslims and dealing with alcohol, take a look at the “Islam and Alcohol” article linked in the reblog of this post.

Here are things that a character who is a practicing Muslim might do or be concerned about in their day to day life:

Checking ingredients to make sure they’re all halal. This goes for things like food, drink, medicine, anything consumable. Things like gelatine capsules are only halal if the source of the gelatine is itself halal, for instance.

Keeping up with their prayers. With five prayers a day, some will inevitably happen while they’re out of the house. Some Muslims prefer to just group their prayers when they get home, but since it’s preferable to do prayers on time, others may try to pray while out and about This means considering the following:

Finding a bathroom for wudu. Part of wudu involves washing feet and the head, which isn’t feasible in a public location or if the person is hijabi and doesn’t want to unwrap and rewrap their hijab. In that case, they can generally wipe a wet hand over their socks and top of their head covering. 

They may carry a prayer carpet or have one stashed in a convenient location, but it’s not a must.

Finding a clean and secluded place to pray. Generally, it’s not done to pray in a place where someone will pass in front of you, and a woman must also take care to pray away from men’s eyes. 

Figuring out where the Qibla is. Luckily, there are apps for that.

If a woman is not hijabi, she would have to carry a veil and, depending on her clothes, something to cover up so she can pray.

If they’re hijabi, they’ll probably have to adjust or re-wrap their hijab throughout the day, depending on the material and their activities. This would typically happen in bathrooms or any other space that doesn’t include men, as they can’t reveal themselves to any men who aren’t of their immediate family. For more on the hijab, and the day to day realities of wearing and wrapping one, take a look at the links provided in the reblog of this post.  

A Muslim woman may choose not to accept handshakes from men who aren’t family.  She has probably considered how to deal with that potential awkwardness.

If they’re fasting, they might carry some dates or biscuits or something in case they need to break their fast while on the go.

If making plans, they might say, “Insha’allah” which means “God willing.” I was always admonished to do so to acknowledge the future is entirely within God’s hands.

If asked how they are, they might reply with “Alhamdullilah” which means “Thanks be to God.”

When starting to eat, they may say, “Bismillah,” which means “In the name of God” and when done eating may say “Alhamdullilah.” These can also be invoked silently.

As you might have noticed, Allah’s name is invoked pretty often. While it’s not preferable to swear using God’s name just to make a point (“Wallahi”), there’s nothing against it, really.

Fundamentally, an important thing to remember is that Islam is a religion of ease and not hardship. This is an actual Quranic quote. What this means is, it may seem like there are a lot of rules to keep in mind, but there are also a ton of allowances for when those rules aren’t feasible, just like the case for fasting above. Other allowances include how an elderly or disabled person who may not be able to perform the motions of prayer can pray while sitting in a chair or even lying in bed. If there isn’t any clean water to purify before prayer or if using the water would mean lack of drinking water, a Muslim can use dust or sand to purify, and if no dust or sand is available then they don’t need to purify at all and can simply pray. 

This means that, say, if your Muslim Jon wants to pray while kidnapped by the circus, he can, even without being able to perform wudu, even without knowing where the Qibla is, even without being able to move or say anything at all.

For more day-to-day tidbits, check out the “More on writing Muslim characters” link in the reblog of this post. 

LGBTQ Muslims:

Needless to say, Queer Muslims absolutely do exist, and their being Muslim doesn’t cancel out their queerness or vice versa. While there are Quranic verses that have been interpreted as condemning homosexuality, there are also other interpretations, and queerness has existed in Muslim societies for ages. There was a ton of homoerotic imagery among Abbasid poets during the Golden Age of Islam, for example. 

However, modern-day attitudes can be difficult to get around, and queer Muslims may have difficulty finding their place in both Muslim spaces and queer spaces, the latter which often expect them to reject religiosity.

Although I am queer myself, I don’t feel it’s my place to speak for queer Muslims and their relationships with their communities beyond this, so I’ll let some queer practicing Muslims speak for themselves.  Please see the reblog of this post for valuable contributions from queer Muslims about their experiences.  

Miscellaneous:

This is mostly for all the random tidbits I thought up while writing this that didn’t fit anywhere else and also because I don’t know when to quit apparently, SO!

Allah is just Arabic for God. Muslims can and do use these terms interchangeably, such as saying “God willing,” instead of “Inshallah,” even in an Arabic-speaking country. 

Also, God has 99 names! Just a fun fact for you there. 

The Devil in Islam is pretty different from his Christian counterpart. Referred to as Iblis or Shaytan, among other names, he is not a fallen angel and there is no great revolt story, nor is he considered a root of all evil. Instead, he is a djinn made of smokeless flame who refused to bow down to Adam, as he felt he was made of superior stuff and not about to bow to a creature made of mud. His disdain for humanity is what has caused him and other shayateen/demons to try and tempt humans.

A person’s right hand is considered purer than their left, so it’s encouraged to always eat with your right hand. Unfortunately, this does mean left-handed people face something of a stigma—or at least that’s the case here in Egypt. My cousins, both lefties, both eat with their right hand, though they  do everything else with their left.

Similarly, it is considered better to enter spaces with your right foot, though only the most devout are likely to think of this all the time. This is especially considered for entering a mosque or new home.

A Muslim might say or write “Peace be Upon Him” whenever the Prophet Mohammed is mentioned, written as (PBUH), and “Subhanuh wa Taala” when mentioning Allah, written as (SWT).

The Evil Eye is mentioned in the Quran as “hasad,” and considered to be a very real thing. This jealous or envious energy is considered able to ruin good things in your life, even if the jealous person didn’t intend to. There are some surahs that are considered good to ward against it, as well as incense, the colour blue, the number five, and the symbols of the nazar (which is a round, blue-ringed eye) and the khamsa (an open five-fingered palm, also known as the Hand of Fatima). The nazar, khamsa, and belief in the evil eye aren’t unique to Islam at all. What is unique to Islam is that a Muslim might preface a compliment with “Masha’allah” which means “As God wills it,” to ward off their own evil eye. 

Much of the Quran in Arabic rhymes and is very poetic, which can make surahs easy to memorise by rhythm. It can also make recitations by a skilled reader very lovely.

[themollyjay]

The Myths of Forced Diversity and Virtue Signaling.

In my novel Mail Order Bride, the three main characters are a lesbian and two agendered aliens.  In my novel Scatter, the main character is a lesbian, the love interest is a pansexual alien, and the major side characters include a half Cuban, half black Dominican lesbian, a Chinese Dragon, a New York born Jewish Dragon, and a Transgender Welsh Dragon.  In my novel The Master of Puppets, the Main Characters are a lesbian shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborg and a half black, half Japanese lesbian.  The major side characters include three gender fluid shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborgs, and a pansexual human.  In my novel Transistor, the main character is a Trans Lesbian, the love interest is a Half human/Half Angel non-observant Ethiopian Jew, and the major side characters include a Transgender Welsh Dragon (the same one from Scatter), a Transgender woman, a Latino Lesbian, an autistic man, three Middle Eastern Arch Angels, and a hive mind AI with literally hundreds of genders.  In my novel The Inevitable singularity, one of the main characters is a lesbian, another has a less clearly defined sexuality but she is definitely in love with the lesbian, and the third is functionally asexual due to a vow of chastity she takes very seriously.  The major side characters include a straight guy from a social class similar to the Dalit (commonly known as untouchables) in India, a bisexual woman, a man who is from a race of genetically modified human/frog hybrids, and a woman from a race of genetically modified humans who are bred and sold as indentured sex workers.

Why am I bringing all of this up?  Well, first, because it’s kind of cool to look at the list of different characters I’ve created, but mostly because it connects to what I want to talk about today, which should be obvious from the title of the essay.  The concepts of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’.

For those who aren’t familiar with these terms, they’re very closely related concepts.  ‘Forced Diversity’ is the idea that characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are only ever included in a story because of outside pressure from some group (usually called Social Justice Warriors, or The Woke Brigade or something similar) to meet some nebulous political agenda.  The caveat to this is, of course, that you can have a women/women present as long as they are hot, don’t make any major contributions to the resolution of the plot, and the hero/heroes get to fuck them before the end of the story. ‘Virtue Signaling’, according to Wikipedia, is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a disingenuous moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character.

The basic argument is that Forced Diversity is a form of virtue signaling.  That no one would ever write characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males because they want to.  They only do it to please the evil SJW’s who are somehow both so powerful that they force everybody to conform to their desires, yet so irrelevant that catering to them dooms any creative project to financial failure via the infamous ‘go woke, go broke’ rule.

What the people who push this idea of Forced Diversity tend to forget is that we exist at a point in time when creators actually have more creative freedom than are any other people in history.  Comic writers can throw up a website and publish their work as a webcomic without having to go through Marvel, DC or one of the other big names, or get a place in the dying realm of the news paper comics page.  Novelists can self-publish with fairly little upfront costs, musicians can use places like YouTube and Soundcloud to get their work out without having to worry about music publishers.  Artists can hock their work on twitter and tumblr and a dozen other places. Podcasts are relatively cheap to make, which has opened up a resurgence in audio dramas.  Even the barrier to entry for live action drama is ridiculously low.

So, in a world where creators have more freedom than ever before, why would they choose to people their stories with characters they don’t want there?  The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t.  Authors, comic creators, indie film creators and so on aren’t putting diverse characters into their stories because they are being forced to. They’re putting diverse characters into their stories because they want to.  Creators want to tell stories about someone other than the generically handsome hypermasculine cisgendered heterosexual white males that have been the protagonists of so many stories over the years that we’ve choking on it. A lot of times, creators want to tell stories about people like themselves.  Black creators want to tell stories about the black experience. Queer creators want to tell stories about the queer experience.

I’m an autistic, mentally ill trans feminine abuse survivor.  Every day, I get up and I struggle with PTSD, with an eating disorder, with severe body dysmorphia, with anxiety and depression and just the reality of being autistic and transgender.  I deal with the fact that the religious community I grew up in views me as an abomination, and genuinely believes I’m going to spend eternity burning in hell.  I deal with the fact that people I’ve known for decades, even members of my own family, regularly vote for politician who publicly state that they want to strip me of my civil rights because I’m queer.  I’m part of a community that experiences a disproportionately high murder and suicide rate.  I’ve spent multiple years of my life deep in suicidal depression, and to this day, I still don’t trust myself around guns.

As a creator, I want to talk about those issues.  I want to deal with my life experiences.  I want to create characters that embody and express aspects of my lived experience and my day-to-day reality.  No one is forcing me to put diversity into my books.  I try to include Jewish characters as often as I can because there have been a number of important Jewish people in my life.  I include queer people because I’m queer and the vast majority of friends I interact with on a regular basis are queer.  I include people with mental illnesses and trauma because I am mentally ill and have trauma, and I know a lot of people with mental illnesses and trauma.  My work may be full of fantastical elements, aliens and dragons and angels and superheroes and magic and ultra-high technology and AI’s and talking cats and robot dogs and shape shifters and telepaths and all sorts of other things, but at the core of the stories is my own lived experience, and neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are vanishingly rare in that experience.

Now, I can hear the comments already.  The ‘okay, maybe that’s true for individual creators, but what about corporate artwork?’.   Maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea.

The thought here is that corporations are bowing to social pressure to include characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males, and that is somehow bad. But here’s the thing. Corporations are going to chase the dollars.  They aren’t bowing to social pressure.  There’s no one holding a gun to some executive’s head saying, “You must have this many diversity tokens in every script.”  What is happening is that corporations are starting to clue into the fact that people who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males have money.  They are putting black characters in their shows and movies because black people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting queer people in shows and movies because queer people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting women in shows and movies because women watch shows and spend money on movies.

No one is forcing these companies to do this.  They are choosing to do it, the same way individual creators are choosing to do it.  In the companies’ cases the choices are made for different reasons.  It’s not because they are necessarily passionate about telling stories about a particular experience, but because they want to create art to be consumed by the largest audience possible, which means that they have to expand their audience beyond the neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white male by including characters from outside of that demographic.

And the reality is, the cries of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ almost always come from within that demographic.  Note the almost.  There are a scattering of individuals from outside that demographic which do subscribe to the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ myths, but that is a whole other essay.  However, within that demographic, lot of the people who cry about ‘forced diversity’ see media and content as a Zero-Sum game.  The more that’s created for other people, the less that is created for them.

In a way, they’re right. There are only so many slots for TV shows each week, there are only so many theaters, only so much space on comic bookshelves and so on.  But at the end of the day, its literally impossible for them to consume all the content that’s being produced anyway.  So, while there is, theoretically less content for them to consume, as a practical matter it’s a bit like someone who is a meat eater going to a buffet with two hundred items, and then throwing a tantrum because five of the items happen to be vegan.

The worst part is, if they could let go of how wound up they are about the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ they could probably enjoy the content that’s produced for people other than them.  I mean, I’m a pasty ass white girl, and I loved Black Panther.

So, to wrap out, creators, make what you want to make, and ignore anyone who cries about forced diversity or virtue signaling.  And to people who are complaining about forced diversity and virtue signaling, I want to go back to the buffet metaphor.  You need to relax.  Even if there are a few vegan options on the buffet, you can still get your medium rare steak, or your chicken teriyaki or whatever it is you want.  Or, maybe, just maybe, you could give the falafel a try. That shit is delicious.

[castawaytheblood]

Oof, I can relate the OP.

To do some math for everyone, the current exchange value in Venezuela-USA is 4M Bolivars for each dollar. It can, and will, rise as soon as the day ends. That's just how most of us here deal with it.

I've seen some fanbooks (which, let's be real, they are fanbooks/art books, not zines, but y'know) go between 40-80$ in price. That's... A quarter of what I have to pay for my college trimester/half of what I pay for my college trimester. Even worse, that's half/a full shopping cart for a month.

I have... very mixed feelings about what is happening in fandom, in economical areas, ofc. I could make a post about the rest of the issues I see, but yeah, for now, I don't particularly want to on that.

On the one hand, it's... Harder to access zines (I'd basically scour the web seas for a free zine, if it allows it to be, but the majority? pay for them, which is reasonable, to an extent, but I still can't in good conscience understand it). Not only zines, but also fic, bookbinds of fic (some fanbinders do commissions, which does end up making some fic able to survive a purge/more lasting than other fic, simply because the author had more money), anime, videogames, media in general. Netflix was one example, but Crunchyroll, too, is in there. By virtue of not being from the US (or not being able to use a VPN for too long), I miss access to a ton of media, for good or bad.

(please don't take this as if I am blaming people for having money and things, that's definitely NOT what I wanted to convey, lol).

I mentioned before having to pirate... Basically every piece of media I had, and it's completely true, tbh. Since I was a kid I took to piracy to enjoy media. My earliest (and best, let's be real) memories of playing games were when I finally got the game in physical copy, which meant that I could finally play well without risking the loss of memory cards and stuff (it was on my 3DS, tbh).

And this not only extends to videogames, it goes for well, everything. Books, too, I had to pirate. Movies as well. Series, dramas, anything I couldn't (and there were MANY) get my hands on, those things I had to look for on the internet

(ah, those old memories of me having to crawl through 20 google pages, searching for something very, very specific).

IDK, I do wish things were more like the earl(ier) days, though I'm taking a bit of a break in fandom stuff, it'd be nice to see more fests/events that don't involve screeching over which paper dolls people are smushing together. Most of the time, there are events I either a) can't participate bc I'm not in the fandom, b) the event's date is VERY inconvenient for me and my schedule and c) it'd be hard for me (specifically) to participate, because the people involved are most likely going to scream over the stories I've written (though it would be more of a matter of WHICH story I've written that raises hackles).

Ah, well. One day I WILL get to making an event, though let's pray I can get enough strength of will to do it.

Edit: I felt very seen by a certain paragraph, due to IRL political/economical parallel with OP, to wit:

"Given where I was born, I was always told I don’t belong in certain spaces. I am by default not allowed to enter certain countries and spaces without going through lengthy approval processes and without being able to prove I can afford being in that space."

God, do I feel seen in that (there have been a few incidents of hate crimes towards Venezuelans in other Latin American countries, hell, just a day ago my father was attacked for simply being Venezuelan in public).

"To tell me I don’t belong in a place or that I don’t deserve to be in a space based on the place I was born and the currency I earn is casual discrimination in a smaller scale, and one that is not often thought about by the people perpetuating it. And to experience it as bluntly as that above — well, let’s say I have never felt as alienated in an online space than I did about four days ago, but it is an alienation I feel regularly in my real life, especially when I visit the USA."

This also hits me hard because... In online fandom spaces... I do feel that isolation creeping in. Like trying to speak in a common language but no one ever gets to speak back to me, no matter how much I try to talk.

God I had a tear running down my face.

Good stuff.

This kind of hints at the definition of a gift economy without fully going into it. But basically, gift economies are places where “payment” is in intangible social benefits. You buy community membership with your labor/products/kindness/presence. It’s not very compatible with commerce in the same way that offering to pay your grandma for the cookies she baked you is not a friendly or normal way to interact within a family.

[bigskydreaming]

#when i read about tim i often kind of come to the idea that he's relatively self centered#and that can be both a flaw and a strength#but he doesn't often consider other people's feelings and circumstances#like when dick made damian robin he didn't really consider the situation from anyone else's view#or in his origin story#he doesn't seem to consider how dick would feel about hearing how tim was affected by dick's parents' death#or with the spyral situation#or in regards to him earning robin#and its pretty consistent in fandom characterization even if a lot of writers don't seem to be aware of it#its interesting cause i think its something i think he has in common with bruce#its honestly a surprisingly consistent thing from what i see#and it can be a strength to#it can absolutely lead to some confidence and self actualization#as well as being able commit to fixing something and working hard at it#because you believe you can and don't think anyone else can/will do it via @emenerd

Y’know, what’s interesting to me about these points is the fact that like.....Tim having tendencies towards self-centeredness is actually something that COMPLETELY makes sense and can be quite sympathetic in light of his backstory of having neglectful parents.

In an age of armchair diagnosticians eager to label anyone who expresses a controversial viewpoint while centering themselves as an example, as like, having a narcissistic personality disorder (and with the loaded implication that this makes them a bad person even if its true, instead of just....having a disorder, yay weaponizable ableism) like, it can be important to add in distinctions that even tendencies that share overlap with a lot of things born of entitlement, etc....aren’t always necessarily proof of that.

For instance, in Tim’s case, an overemphasis on himself and his own position in situations and arguments can very reasonably be attributed as a coping mechanism he developed in an attempt to acknowledge and address self-esteem issues he sees himself as having, DUE to parental neglect.

Its not that he thinks he’s the most important person in the room, necessarily, its that he spent so many years not even being considered a person in the room, that now he OVERCOMPENSATES on his own behalf, in an attempt to remind himself that no, his opinion and feelings and situations do matter.....and because he like most of the Bat-characters has a tendency towards hyper-fixating on a problem they’re trying to address, this can also understandably create a kind of tunnel vision. Where he’s so busy focusing on what he’s diagnosed as an actual issue he has that he’s trying to address or make up for, in order to build up his self-esteem....that he neglects to keep everyone around him equally centered in his interactions with them, and remember that like, they have their own issues and ignoring that to focus entirely on his own runs the risk of negatively impacting them in the exact same way he’s still learning to cope with having been negatively impacted in his development as a child.

None of this makes him a bad person, or is stuff that can’t be addressed and developed just by paying the appropriate attention to it and his interactions.

SO the issue I tend to more often have....

Is with how often in fandom and fanon we hear references to Tim’s neglect and emotional abuse and how this impacted him.....much in the same way we see Jason and Cass and Damian and Dick’s various forms of abuse and the developmental impact it had on them....

BUT there tends to then be a disconnect, IMO, because that acknowledgment of the WHAT of Tim’s neglect and abuse and the HOW it hurt him.....isn’t often followed up by an examination/awareness of how it also SHAPED him.....at least, not compared to how discussions/fics about say, Jason’s abuse tend to point out the latter as much as the former.

And this is a big part of my gripe with the ways abuse is centered and tackled as a topic in fics and fandom discussions, because its so often capitalized upon as a defense or shield for a character from criticism, stuff like that.....without ever actually EXPLORING the topic itself, or the FULLNESS of the impact it can have.

But only in regards to some characters.

What I mean is like....we see a lot of focus on Jason’s childhood abuse, yeah? And this often is then connected through headcanons, meta and fics to various aspects of Jason’s characterization as a teenager, and as an adult as well.....with a tendency towards anger or violence, abrasive personality, etc. Don’t get me wrong, its usually presented as such in a SYMPATHETIC light, especially when raised by fans of Jason themselves.....but his abuse is very much present and centered in fics and discussions as something that not only impacted him and made him suffer, but something that actually shaped him to varying degrees as well....with a lot of focus then in fics of him as an adult, like, paid to him going to therapy and unpacking his childhood abuse in an effort to WORK on these aspects of himself that make his present day life harder or less healthy than he’d like it to be. The issue of how his abuse lent itself to various behaviorisms is raised in order to address various byproducts of his abuse as FLAWS that he seeks to eliminate, in order to make himself happier and make himself someone that people want to be around more.

And again, don’t get me wrong - for the most part, this is a GOOD thing. The caveat here is just a personal dislike I have for how often these narratives smack of a kind of saviorism, and act like it was only through the grace of Bruce and becoming part of the Batfam that Jason’s ever afforded the opportunity to better himself as a person. I dislike the hell out of this because it not only pairs all too well with a lot of classist shit, it feeds into the singular narrative we’re so often presented with by media about abused kids: the myth of the victim being destined to become a victimizer, it all being an inevitable cycle. The reason this myth is so easily perpetuated is the exact reason I’m so critical of the saviorism in a lot of abused-Jason fics.....people can very easily fall into the trap of assuming that abused kids are likely to grow up to be abusers because they never have anyone to TEACH them that abuse is wrong, or to lead by healthy example. 

The harm of this perception is that it kinda throws under the bus every kid who never lucks out and gets a Bruce Wayne style savior swooping in to not only save them from their abusive environs, but TEACH them that they deserved better and that abuse is wrong. 

Because its like, uh, the thing is, plenty of abused kids who never get a personal mentor or savior figure are fully capable of figuring out for themselves that they deserve better and that people hurting them is wrong, because it makes them feel bad and they don’t like that? 

Many abused kids don’t grow up in a media vacuum where they simply have no access to glimpses of lives different from their own.....we see kids having happier, healthier family lives on TV or in books and are able to figure out that society overall thinks that’s what family is SUPPOSED to look like, and its ours that is the aberration? 

The very fact that we’re taught or have it instilled in us by abusive parents that like, we’re not to bring up instances or examples of our abuse to teachers or friends, that its a SECRET, is like, usually a dead giveaway that there’s something WRONG with it that we’re being instructed - and enforced with abusive consequences - to keep from alerting others to....like, this is basically a blaring siren to a lot of us that no, what’s happening to us ISN’T normal and acceptable, and that’s literally WHY the parent we’re afraid of is so insistent on us keeping the facts of it hidden? 

And so like, tons of abused kids figure out for ourselves the difference between right or wrong, based off nothing more than our own feelings about things and a desire to not be like the people who make us feel miserable - like, never underestimate the power of spite to like, keep a kid from growing up doing the same thing to others that was done to them, lol. 

But point being, lots of kids never get a Bruce Wayne figure to take them away from their abuse and also teach them that they never deserved it and how not to pass the hurt forward by doing the same things to others. And its kinda condescending as fuck that we so often see narratives that take it as so obvious it barely merits commenting on, that like, ‘of COURSE abused kids grow up to become abusers if they don’t have someone else step in and show them a better way’....mmm, no. Fuck that. But you get what I mean.

So like, its a mixed bag. Its a good thing, to see Jason-centric stories that show him addressing his childhood and seeking just a more fuller, happier, healthier life for himself. Its a less great thing to see this narrative presented as all encompassing, with it never being raised that no, Jason actually could figure out he deserved better and how to treat people in ways he’d want to be treated even without a billionaire guardian angel.....NOT because the narrative wherein someone helps an abused kid figure out what was wrong about how they were treated is like, NEVER valid....but rather it just becomes a problem when looked at as a data point against the larger tapestry of fandom-wide works....and noticing that this specific narrative is pretty much the ONLY one raised or treated as valid. With it just being ASSUMED to be the natural course of events and characters, rather than just....the direction society overall has their perceptions of abuse steered towards due to a singular and constantly reinforced abuse narrative shown to us in media.

And the way this all plays back into my point about Tim and what took me down this road in general.....

Is that disconnect I was talking about, lies specifically in HOW Tim is often acknowledged and regarded as an abuse survivor due to his emotional abuse and neglect......with this abuse and its impact on HIM often taking center stage, much the way Jason’s abuse and its impact takes center stage in his narratives.....

BUT with a key difference being that while a lot of Jason’s narratives go on to denote the specific ways his abuse helped SHAPE him and his interactions with others, and raise and address the ways in which he can better himself and his relationships by unpacking all of this openly....

Most of the stories about Tim’s abuse/neglect tend to just STOP at the awareness of its existence and impact on him. Never taking it that one step further to examine how those specific forms of abuse could have additionally SHAPED him....in ways that sometimes negatively impact those around him and his own loved ones, even if this is completely unintentional on his part. The difference, the disconnect, lies solely in how rarely its ever acknowledged that Tim’s own upbringing can and does play directly into how he interacts with people later on in life.....and in ways that he’s fully capable of addressing and bettering himself so as to be happier and healthier just in his own life, and in his relationships, as someone others want to be around.

Aaaaand once you actually examine or consider WHY there’s this discrepancy between the full ramifications of Tim’s abuse and that which various siblings of his underwent, when there’s full agreement that what he did go through absolutely can be termed abusive as well....like, its the implications of what about Tim makes him more naturally resistant or whatever to being shaped by his abuse in ways that have actual negative impact on others in his life, whereas the same isn’t true of say, Jason.....that’s when the red flags start to go up for me, and the unintended subtext starts to get Less Than Stellar, IMO.

Anyway. Just food for thought on the subject of Tim, his upbringing, the various impacts this had on not JUST him but also on how he interacts with others, and ways in which all of this compares and contrasts with how the subject of abuse is raised and depicted in regards to other Batkids.

[mincedpeaches]

Hey, can I offer an alternative viewpoint for Good Omens? Personally speaking, I'm ace, and I actually really like the way the love story played out in the show (and I, personally speaking, would have been disappointed if they'd actually kissed etc). The book was one of the few canons that spawned a lot of ace content and now the show has as well. Neil's said they love each other - they're just not male humans. That's not homophobic, and I'm personally quite happy the way their love was shown.

HI OH MY GOD HI

Good Omens discourse? On my blog? It’s more likely than you think.

Other tumblr users have definitely said this far more eloquently than me and I wish I had the forethought to reblog some of those posts at some point. But as far as I’m concerned it boils down to this:

Them being ace is a perfectly valid reading and I know that a lot of people online find that affirming. If someone on tumblr dot com says this, I believe them.

THAT BEING SAID, for people outside the sphere of tumblr and its ever fragmenting lgbtq discourse, they are not going watch the show with their first reaction being “oh wow, good ace representation, ey?” The war on male friendship or whatever is a discourse invented ENTIRELY by the terminally online. A lot of people who are NOT terminally online watching the show will read it as neither gay NOR ace. There are plenty of people that are not going to watch it and read it as a love story, and in fact would be very uncomfortable if that were made unavoidably unambiguous. (With say, for example, a kiss on the mouth. Or even like, be still my heart, holding hands.)

(Also side note, destiel experience tells me that a love confession is NOT enough for some people. They can and still will no homo that.)

So when Neil Gaiman, the man who is being bankrolled to make his show by noted malevolent corporate conglomerate Amazon dot com, says “teehee it’s a love story” but ONLY online where the terminally online live, and also with the caveat that they are not human so it’s not like that, you ever think about why that could be? You ever think about how that seems a little more like him and Amazon want to have their cake and eat it too?

I know the ace reading, I see the ace reading, but for Neil to validate the ace reading over others does not seem like an act of kindness to the ace community, only a happy side effect and silver lining of playing the field to keep as many viewers as possible.

They are not being homophobic and nobody on my reblogged post said they were, they are simply taking the easiest and most monetarily beneficial path. They did not do this for you. They did it because they want no backlash that could actually affect people watching the show.

And so while I am happy that someone found happiness in it, I will still be asking for more. While it DOES count as a love story for me and you and a lot of people online and probably even Neil himself if I’m not being cynical, I know that it easily didn’t for many others, and that is by design. And after destiel and it’s backlash, I just want everyone to be forced to see it. I want Neil and Amazon to prove me and my cynicism wrong.

Also like not to get into the REAL MINUTE of the lgbtq discourse but they could still kiss right. They could still touch lips and be ace. For me personally it is NOT about them having sex or expressing their sexual attraction. They are SO unsexy it’s embarrassing, I would probably die before I read a fic of them having sex or think about them having sex. It is literally about their love story being acknowledged in the canon text in a way that cannot be countered. THAT’S IT.

[meloncubedradpops]

Repo! The Corona Opera

For every rotation that Earth has completed around the sun since the dawn of humanity, humans have created art to cope with the realities surrounding our everyday life. We weave stories in songs, movies, plays, books, paintings, and so forth, that help digest the world around us and provide an entertaining escape from the cruelties we endure. Some stories take place in abstract universes or in the future, and we rely on what we know in our present reality to build upon these fantasy societies. My favorite movie, Repo! the Genetic Opera, certainly makes this list. We are currently experiencing perhaps the most surreal year of our collective lives, and with each passing day I argue that we find ourselves closer to the world crafted in Repo. I have seen this movie, at least 20 times. If you haven't watched Repo! the Genetic Opera or you haven't seen it in a while, I recommend giving it a view. The movie is unique in that it falls under three distinct genres: musical, horror, and sci-fi. And while the jury is out on whether our future society is going to go full on gothic aesthetic, I can say that the Repo! movie experience offers a glimpse into a dystopian fascist post-plague world wrapped in unapologetically hilarity with a heaping side of camp. It doesn't offer any spiritual cleansing that our souls collectively need, but it does show us what a new normal could look like if we really go off the rails.

As things stand, right now, so much of our daily lives and culture are impacted by the coronavirus. All of our institutions have been impacted, from school, to work, to family, to the way we interact with strangers, and especially our economy. We have all felt the effects in one way or another, and honestly? Most the impacts are of our own undoing, for better or for worse. I am going to write three pieces analyzing Repo! the Genetic Opera. First I will create the foundations that bridge our contemporary life and the world of Repo! Second I will explain how the Repo! universe operates under the definitions of fascism. And third I will weave together parts one and two into our contemporary world (particularly in the context of the United States) to highlight the dark path we heading towards. My viewpoints are of mine, and my own alone. Let's dive into part one.

Part I Repo! the Genetic Opera takes place in the year 2056. Humanity was on the brink of collapse as a result of a medical crisis that caused massive organ failure.

I never gave the premise much thought, at least not until recently. We aren't given much detail beyond the fact that entrepreneur Rottissimo "Rotti" Largo solved this crisis through his company GeneCo. GeneCo provides organ transplants that can be repaid through a payment plan. Witnessing the coronavirus unfold in real time and seeing its wrath, particularly on severe cases, honestly makes me wonder if the writers had some sort of "super plague" in mind when creating this universe. For the purpose of this analysis, I will assume that humanity suffered at least one infectious disease crisis. And just to reiterate covid-19 particularly, we really *don't* know what it's going to do to us long-term. Let the parallels begin. 

The world in Repo! the Genetic Opera, operates as normally as the citizens possibly can, which appears to be quite limited. I have noted how dated some the technologies look.

For a world 30 years in the future, it lacks cell phones and easy access to internet. When we enter Shilo's world (aka her bedroom!) she watched Blind Mag sing on a busted up tiny ass TV and the program itself looks like an ad on Home Shopping Network.

The Graverobber is shown reading headlines on a newspaper. The news reporters shown in the ribbon cutting ceremony during the 1st Italian Post-Plague Renaissance have old school cameras with flashbulbs.

The most contemporary technology appears to be a Wish.com version of an Apple watch, and even that looks like a leftover prop from Spy Kids.

Obviously the people who made this movie intentionally inserted these anachronisms, but why? This is a science fiction movie after all. I speculate that they reverted back because the impact from humanity's crisis resulted in an overall professional "brain drain" from the sheer volume of professionals that dropped dead. In fact every scene depicting medical procedures looks dimly lit and lacking in sanitation. We will see this as we struggle to contain the coronavirus, at least in America. Healthcare workers have already died from this thing, and I am sure many prospective college students will have second thoughts about a career in healthcare. I mean hell, look at no other than GeneCo itself. That company employs workers called "Genterns" who are most definitely not in full PPE. I don't doubt their medical expertise, but they appear to be disposable (please see: that time Luigi killed one for NO REASON in "Mark it Up").

On that note, it really was quite incredible how China built the pop-up hospital in Wuhan in under 4 days, but it was also not the most safe or structurally sound building by far (it collapsed, people were hurt!). Maybe at this point, the people in Repo! don't have much of a choice. I am sure there were likely legit hospitals, but the fact that the Renaissance had gross surgery tents is a bit unsettling.

This is a world that is completely built upon the social more of valuing your health above all else. There had to be a turning point in the GeneCo business model where they really played on up-selling organs for the benefit of "genetic perfection". "I needed a kidney transplant desperately. GeneCo showed this single mom sympathy. This makeover came for a small added fee. Now I look smashing on live TV!" Imagine signing the documents for your power of attorney while actively going into renal failure, when your doctor chimes in with an up-sell for breast implants. When all is said an done, your body is now not only functioning again, but you're hot! Even in a post-plague dystopia we are still holding value to having a nice rack. What's not to love about GeneCo? Obviously we know right away that GeneCo has a dirty side. Rotti Largo personally lobbied to make organ repossessions legal, and he does not hesitate to recollect his property. The concept itself is, of course, wild. In America, our healthcare system is incredibly broken and expensive.  You would wonder how it could get worse without us backpedaling many steps on the industrialization timeline. And in a lot of ways, I could see a company like GeneCo thrive here. We already hate the poor, and we have political think tanks that salivate over the idea of cutting social programs that keep people alive. Our president has wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act while many people are unemployed during a pandemic. In Repo! we hear about those who don't pay, but obviously there are plenty of people who do. Those who can will happily pay, either for vanity reasons or to stay alive.

And while society cites Rotti as being a "hero" for humanity, we see more and more evidence that the crisis is both not under control and life is cheap.

His son murders multiple people, in front of others, with seemingly no repercussions. In the scene where Shilo meets the Graverobber for the first time, adjacent to the graveyard and tombs owned by wealthy families who could afford grave markers, lies a poorly constructed wall hiding thousands of corpses piled on top of one another. We even get a glimpse of a truckload pouring more onto the pile. I would not be surprised if there is a disinformation campaign there keeping the public in the dark (although you'd think the smell would be unbearable at this point).

There are multiple indications that propaganda works in society (still), and no one is getting the full picture of how much of a raw deal the people in Repo! have. We see poster after poster about GeneCo, in the literal absence of other corporations. 

And a lot of them bear resemblance to 20th century Russian propaganda. It would be a real shame if the goals outlined The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia were actually realized. Imagine going to visit your mother's grave and hearing commercials for hardcore analgesics play through the cemetery. Also, there's a police presence too. Apparently the police are called Genecops and have authority to execute any assumed graverobbers on site.

Imagine the hellscape it would be to live in a world where your loved ones may have died from a terrible pandemic, and you face a non-zero chance of an over zealous cop murdering you thereafter, and because their qualified immunity bypasses the judicial system entirely...oh wait. Anyways let's circle back to the Graverobber character.

Graverobber's role in Repo! appears to be minor on the surface. Rotti's daughter, Amber Sweet, appears to almost despise her relationship with him. And that relationship involves him supplying Amber with what he describes as the "21st Century cure". This cure you ask? A super effective painkiller with the clinical use to accompany GeneCo surgeries. This drug is called Zydrate, and it has a street version that he acquires and sells, with clients including Amber Sweet.

Graverobber makes his living sucking the glowy blue brain corpse goo and injecting them into people on the streets. Yum!

Not everyone who needs an organ transplant can pay for it all upfront. Luckily for them, GeneCo provides payment plan options! The caveat to this is if you fail to make those payments, legally GeneCo can come and repossess your newly acquired organs. If you find yourself past due, you will soon see the last face before your doom, the Repo Man. He will harvest GeneCo's property, and it won't matter where you are or what you are doing. There is no anesthetic, and you will likely die! This was all made legal through Rotti's lobbying efforts.

Society, as it's set up today, allows for property repossessions. This can be as straightforward as a repossession of your vehicle to as heartbreaking as a foreclosure on your home. At the end of the day, the impacts of that are difficult and life changing. Currently millions of people in America are out of work, and the threat of losing everything is at stake for many. We could lose our homes, our vehicles, and our sense of purpose. And while many government bodies have created temporary moratoriums, they have not provided any substantial financial relief to keep the proverbial repo man at bay. What went wrong in this dystopia to normalize the concept of death due to nonpayment? Fascism! Ah yes, the dreaded f-word. In my next essay, I will outline the 14 characteristics of fascism and how it relates to the universe in Repo! After I will relate that to our modern world so that we can try and stop this from becoming our reality.

[tarhalindur]

Running through the solution space for Watadamashi-hen

With Watadamashi-hen in the books and the obvious and traditional remaining question of “whodunnit?” in everyone’s heads, methinks it would be useful to see if there’s anything we can lock down for sure as constraints on possible solutions.  (Or, seeing as we’re in Gou’s version of the question arc that focuses the most on the local yakuza clan, perhaps a (forum) Mafia phrasing would be more appropriate: who is still in the PoE/Process of Elimination, and who is out of it?)

Here’s what I’ve got, under the cut:

- I do not believe we have quite enough information to say anything definitive about which sister Sonozaki is which during this arc. There’s two big questions here, and both are mostly related to the backstory: did the tattoo incident happen in the backstory as usual, and why is information about Satoshi so scarce this time around?  And both of those in turn boil down to a single issue: the level 0 answer for Watadamashi-hen (or perhaps more accurately level 3 -> level 0) is that Shion is responsible for at least some of the deaths as usual, but if that’s actually Shion during episode 8 then her behavior towards Keiichi here (especially the confession in the last episode) is hard to square with her devotion to Satoshi’s memory in OG. So the obvious questions: 1) did something happen in the backstory to switch which twin has the personality traits likely to drive L5, and 2) is there an easy explanation for why a Shion-born-Mion wouldn’t be as attached to Satoshi this time around?

The one thing I do suspect is that we only see one of the twins in Gou episode 5.  (The question is which - present!Shion impersonating her sister for the game tournament, or present!Mion impersonating her sister for the rest of the episode?   Leaning the former, but that’s not guaranteed.)

(Note: One of the theories going around is that the ending credits spoil which twin(s) are present in which episode of this arc.  I believe this is possible but doesn’t actually tell us much even if so?  The only conclusion that would give me that I wouldn‘t have arrived at anyways is that only one sister Sonozaki shows up during Episode 8 - that would rule out worlds where one of Mion/Shion is attending school at the start of the episode and then dies no later than Keiichi meeting kimono!Mion.  Other than that, as I just noted I’m leaning towards only one twin being present in episode 5 anyways, and everything else including which twin is in 5 is potentially drowned in “yes, I told you it was Mion, but did I mean Mion now or Mion by birth?” unless the tattoo incident never happened and Mion was born Mion... and in that case Mion is the prohibitive favorite for being a culprit anyways because the reasons Mion never goes L5 in OG would now apply to Shion instead, so once again it would just be confirming things I would have already suspected!)

- For each of Oryou, Kiichirou, and {Shion, Mion}, at some point, somebody had access to both their dead bodies and the Sonozaki disposal well.

This is more restrictive than it looks.  There’s really only four groups of people with even potential access to the well: a member of the Sonozaki family, another member of the Club (who could get Mion’s help, wittingly [ala Tsumihoroboshi-hen] or otherwise [Tatarigoroshi-hen]), the Yamainu (courtesy of their raiding the residence), or the police.  Of those, the only people who don’t have severe issues wrt opportunity for both the Oryou and Kiichirou murders are the Sonozakis and Rika (who might have been able to use her position as last surviving member of the third gosanke to set up a suitable opportunity to kill both of them if she went L5 or a Bern personality came out to play), and IIRC the sisters Sonozaki are the only Sonozakis with screen time while alive this arc.

The most likely permutation here is that the obvious inference from OG holds: one or both of the twins are responsible for all three of those deaths in some combination.  Looking it over... I think the second most likely possibility may actually be that the Mion who was at school during episode 8 was telling the actual truth about Rika? (#FeelTheBern)

- Whoever killed kimono!Shmion and Satoko had access to firearms, given both the death pose and the reported gunshot.

This is actually quite the restriction on possible culprits, as AFAICT there are only three groups in Hinamizawa with even potential access to firearms: the Sonozakis, the Yamainu (technically there’s also other Tokyo groups like the Banken, but only the Yamainu show up on screen this arc), and possibly the police.  (Caveat: if kimono!Mion’s gun is real, then it is possible that the culprit here successfully wrested the gun away from her and then shot her with it.)  (I wonder: is there any clear indication in the original Japanese about whether the officers who heard the gunshot heard only one shot or more than one?  I know Japanese often lacks formal singular/plural distinctions, so quite possibly not.)  I am heavily inclined to suspect the Yamainu here - I do not trust Keiichi’s viewpoint wrt Mion’s “revolver”, especially with the mismatch with the gun seen by the dead bodies, and if the shot of Shmion’s and Satoko’s body is to be believed the position of the nominal murder weapon looks really off for a murder-suicide.  (Also, they’re still on the short list of people with obvious motive to kill Satoko - if the clinic is once again “renovating” and that’s a cover for shutting down, they could be cleaning up loose ends.)

(Note: The apparent scratches on the neck of kimono!Mion’s dead body are quite interesting, because we get a clear view of that side of her neck during the confession scene and at that point there is *no sign* of said scratches!  Now, it’s possible Keiichi was hallucinating the lack of scratches, but that’s rather atypical for late-stage HS hallucinations; otherwise, those scratches must have been infliced during the events leading up to kimono!Mion’s death.)

- Whoever killed Rika was either making a delayed statement and/or did not have immediate access to either the Sonozaki disposal well or the Yamainu’s resources.

This one is pretty simple.  The school septic tank is a pretty shitty place to hide Rika’s body (pun intended after the fact) - after all, only {Mion/Shion} calling Keiichi away at the last moment prevents him from finding the body within at most a few hours of Rika being reported missing![1]  It’s certainly inferior to either the well (where the police only ever get to look in scenarios where Mion, Shion, and Oryou all die; Teppei’s body is quite secure there every time its gets moved to the well in OG arcs) or where the Yamainu would hide the body (people killed in the GHD coverup as opposed to the main event stay missing - both police officers shot on the road and villagers trying to escape into the hills).  Now, it’s possible that just like in certain OG arcs the reason Rika’s body is in such a findable place is because someone is making a statement and never intended for the body to remain hidden forever, especially if they wanted the body to stay hidden just long enough to get clear first - AIUI finding a miko’s body in a tank full of human waste would be a bit of a statement given Shinto ritual cleanliness, even/especially given certain features of local Hinamizawa practice (IIRC you could find some vaguely Western analogues in some of the ways Orthodox priests were executed during the Russian Civil War).  (This probably applies at the meta level regardless, especially given that Gou translates as karma.)  If it’s not a statement, however, then the only reason to put Rika’s body there instead of a more secure location is because the better locations weren’t an option (which, in turn, could be either because there wasn’t time/opportunity to move the body to one of the better locations or because the killer just didn’t have access to such locations).

[1] - I’m not sure how incriminating that is for whichever of {Mion/Shion} was at school at the time.  Coincidence is a very really possibility there, absolutely no reason to think it can’t be when that kind of thing is de riguer for detective story red herrings.

Piecing it together, here’s what I’ve got:

Culprit 1: Responsible for the deaths of Oryou Sonozaki and Kiichirou Kimiyoshi.  Likely candidates: birth!Mion, then Rika and birth!Shion in some order (the last probably gates around Oryou crossing one of birth!Shion’s red lines, although something involving fallout from no tattoo incident is also possible).  Corner case candidates: the Yamainu, a different club member, the police.

Culprit 2: Responsible for the death of the “Shion” found in the well.  Can be the same as Culprit 1.  Probably the other Sonozaki twin, assuming that the lack of apparent marks on the body holds and noting that self-defense is a possible motive (or technically suicide + someone else disposing of the body).  Corner case candidates are once again the Yamainu and the police (but why throw “Shion’s” body into the well but not “Mion’s”?),

Culprit 3: Responsible for the death of Rika Furude (or at least for moving her body to the septic tank - I suppose it’s technically possible that Rika left the stage on her own ala Meakashi-hen).  Likely candidates: Satoko, birth!Mion (iff the septic tank was a temporary solution until she could safely move the body to the well), Miyo Takano/Jirou Tomitake (iff one or both is still in town after all, assumes Takano no longer has Yamainu support).  Notable corner cases: Rena, birth!Shion (self-defense? plus birth!Mion caveat).  Other corner cases: Keiichi (iff unreliable narrator manifests as him killing Rika offscreen, which is unlikely but possible), someone else around school (Chie-sensei after Rika insulted curry?), the police.  Probably not the Yamainu; they might have motive but I find it hard to believe they’d leave Rika’s body where it was.

Culprit 4: Responsible for the death of Satoko Hojo.  Not necssarily also Culprit 5, depending on exact events (the notable world here is “kimono!Mion kills Satoko and is then killed by the Yamainu in turn”).  Likely candidates: kimono!Mion and the Yamainu, in some order (kimono!Mion has self-defense as a possible motive given those scratches).  Less likely: Satoko herself (suicide).  Corner cases: the police, Rena (if she somehow dodged the security cams or Keiichi was hallucinating those), Takano/Tomitake (likewise).  Alibi’d: Rika (dead), Keiichi (in the cell).

Culprit 5: Responsible for the death of kimono!Mion.  Likely candidates: the Yamainu, followed closely by kimono!Mion (suicide) and Satoko in some order.  Corner cases: the police, Rena, Takano/Tomitake.   Alibi’d: Rika (dead), Keiichi (in the cell).

[meta-shadowsong]

On Change for the Jedi Order

Specifically in Relation to Nontraditional/Latecomer Students

So, there’s a commentary that’s been floating around lately, that examines whether the Jedi Order/culture should change purely because of Anakin’s issues integrating (and later issues as an adult, some of which are related). And if that were the question, then the answer is probably no--as these commentaries have pointed out, the vast majority of Jedi don’t have that kind of trouble and are, so far as we the audience can tell, happy/fulfilled. Or, if not, they’re willing and able to depart under peaceful circumstances. And, as has also been pointed out, if they did adapt to the changing galaxy in the ways that fandom, with its external viewpoint, would suggest, who’s to say Palpatine wouldn’t be thinking five steps ahead of them and have a contingency plan in place? (The man does love his contingency plans, I gotta say.)

These are valid points, particularly in terms of some of the doctrines/requirements placed on adults/full Jedi (i.e., no marriage, etc.) that tend to catch a lot of criticism, but I feel like there’s a piece missing from this conversation. And that’s a consideration of other nontraditional/latecomer students (and/or nonstudents who are rejected for being too old), aside from Anakin. Because, from where I’m standing, the evidence indicates that the traditionalist Jedi Order, as it is at the fall of the Republic, is not super great at helping them integrate.

Before I get into my actual examples/analysis, I want to say that I don’t think this is from a lack of compassion or effort on the part of the Order. I do believe that, once a nontraditional student is accepted, they are given support in terms of that integration. I just don’t think it’s very effective support, because I don’t think that the Order, as it stands at that point, is very well set up for it.

Second, I want to say that the reason why this matters is that there’s a not-insignificant implication that not all potential candidates are identified within the acceptable age range; and therefore some unknown, and possibly significant (in proportion to the size of the Order itself) number of people are actually affected by this policy. I’ve touched on this before, but the fact that Palpatine (who comes from a) a Republic sector capital, b) a culture that highly values children, and c) parents with means) is never identified indicates that there are some significant gaps in the search process; probably particularly for populations that are more likely to slip through the cracks in a society like the Republic (i.e., the deep underlevels of Coruscant; remote farming/mining communities that are essentially Space Appalachia; etc.)

I should also mention, as a caveat, that we unfortunately have very few examples of nontraditional students within canon, so it’s admittedly not the greatest sample size in the world--I came up with five, which I will discuss at some length. But the sample sizes for any discussion on this subject are pretty small (I think we have personal information/significant canon detail on maybe a hundred members (i.e., ~1%) of the Jedi Order of this period?), so assumptions have to be made regardless. The way I’m defining my five examples is that they are students who came to the Jedi Path later than the traditional Order would typically allow, and they were trained/raised by Jedi Masters who were themselves traditionally trained (so far as we know).

Okay. Moving on.

So, the five nontraditional students we see in any detail are Anakin, Rael Avaross, Luke, Ezra, and Ventress.

With Anakin and Rael, we see a failure to adapt to the culture. Again, this is despite a genuine effort given on the part of their teachers. Admittedly, I’m less familiar with Rael, since I haven’t gotten around to reading Dooku Lost myself, but I’ve read enough excerpts and analyses that I feel like I have a general idea of what’s going on. Basically, my understanding is that he has some of the same issues Anakin has, relating to the family he left behind, and wanting things that are out of step with Jedi values. And, yes, at least with Anakin, Palpatine’s manipulations play a role in that. But the fact that he’s not the only example indicates (to me, at least) that it’s not the only factor in play here.

Obviously, this disconnect does not in any way excuse what Anakin (or Rael) later does, when he comes to a crisis point. I’m not trying to say that.

What I am trying to say is that I think this is an issue of conflicting expectations, and a fundamental miscommunication/disconnect despite genuine effort, particularly in the early stages, that leaves nontraditional students with a shaky foundation even if/when they find workarounds to appear like things are on track. Because the fact is that the Jedi Order typically takes in very small children, who can absorb most of these cultural norms essentially by osmosis, through a combination of infant neuroplasticity and the Force. An older child needs a different approach, and I’m not sure that the Jedi Order actually has the tools it needs to adapt their teaching style effectively to those circumstances. Especially when trying to integrate someone into a close-knit, fairly isolated/insular culture, which is difficult for an outsider/newcomer under the best of circumstances, on top of the new modes of behavior/emotional processing/etc. And, given how few nontraditional students there are, this is definitely a factor.

So, then it becomes sort of a feedback loop--older/nontraditional students have trouble adapting, which means the Jedi Order is less likely to take them on in the future, which means any they do take in have further troubles, etc., etc. Legends sort of indicated how this cycle started; canon has not; but frankly it’s a chicken-and-egg situation as of the period we’re talking about. Once that cycle does start, it’s hard to break.

Which brings me to my next set of examples, and the reason I think this is at least in part an issue in the Jedi Order’s teaching style.

Luke and Ezra are also nontraditional students, who are taught by traditionally-trained masters. And they are both successful.

And maybe, in part, that comes down to some quirk in personality that they share that Anakin and Rael don’t. But there’s also the fact that (due to genuinely horrific circumstances; and I will interrupt myself here and now to say that, while I do advocate for change on this particular issue, I don’t think the catalyst for change had to be, let alone should have been, what it was; but in canon, it was a catalyst for a change in approach), their masters had to adapt traditional teachings and values into a somewhat nontraditional framework. One reason I lean more towards the second/change in approach as the stronger factor--and, granted, we don’t have many specific examples to cite; plus they don’t fit technically my established definition--is that Luke’s new Academy would pretty much have to be all nontraditional students, and, so far as I can tell, the vast majority of them seem to have been successful, or on their way there, until Kylo Ren happened.

So, that leads to the conclusion that there’s an issue in how traditional Jedi Order teachings/teaching styles work with nontraditional students. Meaning, the Jedi Order of the late Republic era has difficulty in adapting said styles to the needs of the few older candidates they do take in, though not for lack of trying.

At this point, I’ll interrupt myself again to say that adjusting these practices might have an impact on the children who are brought in at a more typical age, and there’s possibly a balance to be struck between the needs of those students and the needs of these others. The way the culture is structured now does seem to be beneficial for the majority of students brought in the usual way, and fixing this flaw might open another, which might be more detrimental in the long run. And if there were any viable alternatives for training and support, that would be the end of it, as far as I was concerned. But the fact is--there aren’t. Pretty much all other Force-adepts we see seem to be closed ethnoreligious groups (or Sith). So I think an increase in flexibility in the early-stage teaching style/age limit for adoption is actually of a net benefit. Whether or not any changes are made to the broader framework/culture past that period, which is a separate discussion.

And that brings me to Ventress, my final example, who is much more complicated and harder to discuss due to several key pieces of evidence that are missing.

Where does she fit into all of this?

The implication in her flashbacks seem to be that she does pretty well with Ky Narec, who--without the same awful circumstances pushing his choices--adapts and uses a non-traditional/one-on-one approach with her, rather than trying to bring her to the Temple and integrate her into the culture right away.

Of course, there are a couple of issues with this. One, Ventress falls apart when he dies, so his approach also clearly had some flaws. Two, her memories may not be the most reliable/she might not be a super reliable narrator. Three, we are missing so much information about how and in what order everything went down.

First, why did Ky Narec make the choices he did? One explanation is that he had no way off the planet/no long-range communications and couldn’t contact the rest of the Order. I find this hard to believe for two reasons: how did Ventress then get offplanet after he died; and how did she get onto the planet in the first place? Someone there has a connection with the wider galaxy, and if Ky Narec really wanted to make contact, I’m sure he could’ve found a way.

So, why didn’t he? Was it because he knew Ventress was too old, and he felt he lacked the standing/social or political capital to convince the Council to accept her anyway? Was that assessment accurate on his part? Alternatively, did he think he could get her accepted, but felt that some training on their own before trying to integrate her into the broader culture was the better approach; and then he died before he could complete that process? Was he already thinking about leaving (as did the Lost Twenty), and she was what pushed him to actually take that step? I’m sure there are other possible explanations, but those are the ones that jump to mind.

Second, what did he tell her? What were her expectations for if/when they finally made contact with the Order? Did he warn her that her training was unauthorized and the Order would not accept her (whether or not that was actually true)?

Third, what did she actually do when he died? Did she try to reach out to the Order? Did she assume that there was no point? Did she reach out to her sisters on Dathomir? (From what I recall, most likely not, but it’s been a while since I watched the relevant TCW episodes.) Did she go straight to Dooku?

Fourth, when she did finally contact Dooku, was she seeking him out as a former Jedi who might have some understanding and compassion for her situation, or was she seeking him out as a Sith Lord/Dark Side adept? (Unless that’s actually covered in her flashbacks as well; again, I might be misremembering/have forgotten.)

So…yeah. It’s really hard to evaluate this question fully without more information on how everything with Ventress went down. But all the other evidence does indicate a disconnect.

I guess my point in all of this was…no, it’s not right for an entire culture to have to change everything for one person. But on the other hand, there’s something to be said for a test case/case study that draws attention to an existing flaw in the structure. And Anakin, while the most visible, isn’t actually the only one here.

Also...on a more general note, cultures are dynamic. They do change over time. Sometimes very rapidly, when change is forced by external pressures, sometimes more organically, by gradual internal shifts. So, the implication that the culture of the Jedi Order should remain exactly as it is as of the late Republic because that’s the best possible way for it to be, no matter how much the broader culture of the galaxy and/or their role in it might shift, feels…a little off to me. Especially since the war itself was already an impetus for change. The postwar Jedi Order was almost certainly going to be somewhat different from the prewar Order; how drastic or subtle that change would be without Anakin making all the wrong choices is a little harder to determine. And--look, I know I’m citing Legends here, because canon has yet to provide deep (i.e., 100+ years pre-TPM) backstory, but some of these things already have shifted over time, in response to both internal and external pressures. The age limit for taking in initiates/apprentices being one of them.

...but I’ll admit that that last paragraph may be me misinterpreting/reading too much into some of the posts and my There Is No One True Way button getting pushed again whether or not it’s merited in this case XD

Anyway, tangent aside, I just wanted to highlight why I feel this particular issue should be addressed, even if the expected cultural norms/code of conduct for Jedi who have integrated into the culture remain the same. Because, yeah, those seem to work out for most members, and the option to leave is there for those who have issues.

But the problem of latecomers/nontraditional students, particularly when there aren’t really any other options available to them for training and support, and there are an unknown (but possibly significant, in proportion to the size of the Order itself) number out there, is still a Thing.

((Also, one last tangent re: why this matters/is a Thing…look, applying IRL issues/politics/history and so on to Star Wars can be a weird/hinky/YMMV thing, apart from certain direct/explicit/obviously intentional parallels, and in general I try to avoid doing it--and, like, earlier today, I had to stop myself from going off on a long tangent about the Constitutions of Clarendon and Thomas Becket on a semi-related post about Ahsoka; if I want to do it, I can--but given the issues older kids/teenagers have being adopted IRL, and given the idea that baby Jedi are essentially adoptees, the fact that older kids are excluded is a little…yeah.))

[creepingsharia]

Why the US Army War College Surrendered to Terror-linked Muslim Group CAIR

Submission. “Canceling Mr. Ibrahim’s presentation at the Army War College demonstrates that the global jihad’s information warfare campaign is effective and operating within DoD academic halls.”

“Free speech silenced. The U.S. Army War College capitulates to the demands of Islamic activist groups and cancels the schedule lecture of this author. Why was this Egyptian-American labeled a white racist?”

More via the victim’s website: The Facts: Why the US Army War College Surrendered to CAIR

Perhaps the most dishonorable aspect of this entire fiasco is that, in a vain effort to save face and pretend that the prestigious United States Army War College is not surrendering to the demands of a notorious Islamist organization—whose subversive tactics and terroristic ties are well documented (here, here, here, and here)—the USAWC’s official story is that my lecture has only been “postponed,” and not because of CAIR’s demands. 

As a June 10, 2019 report notes, the USAWC’s decision to “postpone” the event “comes in the wake of strong opposition from the Muslim community to the previously scheduled appearance of author Raymond Ibrahim.  The Army War College on Monday, however, suggested that the postponement had nothing to do with the outcry from the Muslim community” (emphasis added).

Reality is clear enough: for the USAWC suddenly to postpone a long-planned event only nine days before schedule—and just a handful of days after CAIR’s smear campaign—is not a “coincidence”; it is a clear message for all.

Incidentally, the USAWC is now learning that once you give CAIR an inch, like all bullies it will demand a mile. 

Consider: in CAIR’s original letter, Jacob Bender, its Philadelphia executive director, actually conceded to my lecture, with one caveat, which he requested in all politeness: “We would ask that if Mr. Ibrahim delivers his talk that we be allowed the same format to put forth counter points to his arguments.” 

Even though the USAWC completely acquiesced by canceling the event altogether, CAIR—having smelled blood—has since become more aggressive and abusive to the military.  After gloating over the USAWC’s capitulation, the same Jacob Bender who would’ve been grateful just to have the opportunity to “put forth counterpoints” to me (though only after I was gone and no longer there to respond), is now asserting that

The statement [to “postpone” the lecture] by the College spokeswoman falls short of repudiating Mr. Ibrahim’s racist views. A postponement is not enough—the college should reject hate. We will continue to advocate for … [the] exclusion of anti-Muslim racist theories in the college’s programming…. [W]e are ready to provide an alternative viewpoint and suggest a pool of academic analysts who can provide an objective assessment of military and historical perspectives to the US Army War College community.

In other words, if the USAWC really wants CAIR to stop verbally terrorizing it, canceling my lecture is only the first step; the USAWC must next invite a Muslim apologist to come and present a history opposite to the one I was going to present—that is, the usual pseudo-history of an “evil” West that has long victimized a “progressive” Islam, hence “why they hate us,” and why we—in this case, the USAWC—have to appease them, etc., etc.  

The grand lesson of this entire debacle should be disheartening for all who care about this nation.  If an ethnic Egyptian and native speaker of Arabic, with verifiable credentials, whose extended relatives continue to be persecuted because they are Christian, can be characterized by Islamist groups with terror links as a “racist” and “white nationalist”; and if, of all places, the US Army War College, as opposed to the average “liberal” college, can so easily capitulate to such patently deceptive tactics—the true motives of which are to keep the actual and troubling history between Islam and the West concealed from the military—know that the hour is late indeed. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And on CAIR and the perilous situation the U.S. is now in: “Global Jihad’s Information Warfare Campaign”

CAIR’s foundation is in Hamas, the combat jihad arm of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. They were an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal material support to terrorism trial, the Holy Land Foundation trial. Ultimately, after years of public exposure, the FBI was forced to cut professional ties with them. I sincerely doubt the War College leadership is conversant on the goals, objectives and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in America and its front organization CAIR. I will put it in terms they might understand. The trial discovery documents revealed their long view campaign plan, which is centered on “civilizational jihad”— their words.

To quote from their Explanatory Memorandum: “The Ikhwan [The Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Canceling Mr. Ibrahim’s presentation at the Army War College demonstrates that the global jihad’s information warfare campaign is effective and operating within DoD academic halls.

[strrne]

If Disney ever made an obi-wan tv show, starring ewan mcgregor of course, what are some things that you’d want to see in it?

thanks for the question anon! according to the most recent rumors, I think we might just be getting one…?

unpopular opinion. I was pretty ambivalent about the Obi-Wan movie (originally it was supposed to be a movie, like Solo) from the very beginning. Obi-Wan's Tatooine years have their place in canon, I think, but for me personally? I'd relegate them to the lower tiers of canon, like the novels and comics. heck, I'd prefer leave that to the fanfics, because heaven forbid something be left to the fans' imagination. like sure, there's stories to explore there, but the overall premise is much like parallel parking to me. you gotta figure out how to fit it comfortably between two sets of untouchable canon, which kinda makes some of it… almost predictable to me? like, yeah, he's going to be sad. the Jedi are gone, Anakin is gone… oh there's little Luke being a paragon of innocence. sure puts a doleful smile on my face. sand, sand, sand… unsung heroism. sparsely furnished hovel. Anakin's lightsaber. sadness, loneliness, angst. Anakin is Vader??!!! get out of town!  

maybe this is an overly cynical viewpoint, so I'll try to be positive. after all, I enjoyed Rogue One and even ended up liking Solo for what it was, despite the fact that both were set during a very specific point in the timeline and a little too concerned with explaining existing canon and tying it all together. so there's no reason that I wouldn't potentially enjoy this one, too? and, let's be real, even if the end product is abysmal, like I'm NOT gonna watch lol.  

my final caveat is that… I usually try not to make 'wish lists' in regards to media I consume. sure, I'll form my opinions on the plot and the characters and draw my own conclusions about what I think is going to happen vs. what I would like to happen… but I try not to get too invested in my own headcanons/theories/ideas (in this context. fanfics are an entirely different animal bwahahaha). the production of (Hollywood) media is an extremely complicated process involving many, many creative minds and decision-makers and external factors, so I don't really see the point of actively wanting something to happen and then being inevitably disappointed. at this point I've sort of internalized this mindset, so these days I go to movies/watch shows etc. with an open mind, looking forward to seeing the story unfold the way it unfolds. then I will either like, it or not like it, or land somewhere in between.

(tl;dr, it's complicated, actual answer + actual positivity starts below!)

what I would like to see in an Obi-Wan solo series:  

I'll just go ahead and assume this will take place during his Tatooine years following the events of rots.

- I'd definitely want to see a cameo from Hayden Christensen, maybe even have him on as a recurring character, or rather, a presence, in the form of a hallucination/dream or some such. I'm an unabashed fan of Hayden's portrayal of Anakin, flawed directing and all, and I don't really see myself getting invested in the show the same way if the character of Anakin, arguably the most important relationship in Obi-Wan's life, is merely given a throw-away mention or a shot of his lightsaber and maybe a leitmotif. I also don't see the inevitable Vader 'reveal' having the same emotional weight if Anakin, his past self, is not given proper focus and… well, literal presence.  

- and you know… you kind of need Qui-Gon there as well? (you're Disney, slap some of that de-aging magic on Liam Neeson if you need to.) I mean… he's literally a Force Ghost at this point, and kind of also an important figure in Obi-Wan's life… and that Force Ghost training, anyone? and then they could be sad about Anakin together, yay! and you could also do flashbacks with these two. or with Anakin! or both! 

- MAUUUUUUUUL nah, jk. :D but then again it would be HILARIOUS. and I'll take hilarious over predictable.

- I would love to have at least one episode (or even a major theme) dedicated to the clones (Temuera Morrison yaaayy), like some Empire defectors or Clone War deserters who kind of just cross paths with him (on an unremarkable, obscure planet like Tatooine I think it's entirely believable). there could be some tension/mistrust between them first (kind of like in Rebels), but Obi-Wan, of course, would get to showcase his strengths as a communicator and they would sort out the whole Order 66 disaster and the Republic slave labor thingy and… uh, become BFFs? up until Obi would go, this has been nice, but I'm already late for my infinite sadness over there, may the Force be with you, gentlemen.

- obviously there would be some Friendly Neighborhood Space Wizard stuff. go settle those disputes and help those orphans and overthrow some crime lords. bonus points if this is used to explore his Anakin-related angst as he reminisces about how Anakin always wanted to return to Tatooine and free the slaves. and then maybe he has an epiphany like, yeah, this is how the Jedi should have been serving the Galaxy all along. we meant well but made mistakes etc etc. which will result in a THEME and also it will be fun to see how he accomplishes all these small acts of heroism without attracting too much attention but at the same time gaining that 'weird old hermit' reputation.

- I wouldn't mind seeing Owen and Beru Lars as recurring characters. a simple cameo would feel a little hollow, as they are literally Tatooine residents and Obi's next-door neighbors almost and they get a REALLY rough deal in the OT. one of my biggest gripes with the OT is Luke's complete non-reaction to the violent deaths of his foster parents (they ARE his parents! they raised him from infancy! hello???) and while that can't necessarily be 'fixed' here, I would at least love to see them being a little family and living their simple lives.

- there's nothing to stop Obi-Wan from visiting other planets from time to time. I think the Tatooine setting would eventually get a little too limited and tedious. I would especially love to see Alderaan in all its glory, before… well ya know. and then the Royal family would have to cameo. little Leia, and BREHA ORGANA! (and Bail, of course.) 

- this is getting into the 'wildly improbable' territory, but maybe you could bring back a couple of Padmé's handmaidens (Sabé?) and we could have some Padmé feels? they could even team up with Obi on a mission or something! there's your resident Action Girl right there. also, my memory of the Rebels/Ahsoka novel canon is a little fuzzy, so this would probably be somehow contradictory, but… AHSOKA.  

- but since there would inevitably be new characters… my only wish is that they would be well thought-out and interesting (which is subjective, I know). also, you're Disney, you have the budget to do aliens, do aliens. more aliens pls.

I could come up with more, and there's probably something really obvious I'm missing or maybe an error in there somewhere, but here are some of the things I would like to see on an Obi-Wan show. as you can probably tell, I'm conflicted. on one hand, I'm one of those fans who never really actively needed for this to be a thing, but if you get me going about its potential, I actually get kind of excited. the limited scope thingy is a bit meh to me (yes, I say this as a fan of the prequels) since as a consumer of media I'm fond of such things as stakes, surprises, plot twists and creative freedom, and as someone with imagination I don't really need every time period in SW canon to be covered in meticulous detail. BUT! if the Obi-Wan show does happen, one thing is for sure: I will be really happy for Ewan McGregor, who I know absolutely adores his character and has been very open about his desire to play him again.

(but also; seriously, ya better deliver on the Christensen.)

[fracturedsoul86]

Soooo... that blog description. Sounds like a bunch of self-motivated delusion and bullshit right? I mean, that’s what I would have said about it a year ago, and it would be if I did nothing to back any of it up. I’ve started this blog to give insight into the “why” and progression of my journey, where I’ve been, what I’ve yet still to get answers to, what truths I’ve learned, and other observations and theories I’ve developed, which combine science and various theologies to explain how everything around us came to be. One caveat... my lens filters it all through a Christian perspective. What is the final truth can only be determined through collective confirmation of what is Truth. However, when you consider how many people around the world believe in a monotheistic “higher power,” that is around 3/4 of the worlds population between just the top 3, Christianity (including Catholics), Islam, and Judaism, plus those who have a general, self-guided spirituality with a belief in a “universal higher power” and energy-based understanding of reality and life, the likelihood of its reality or some version of it is highly probable. My writings here will share what observations I’ve made and what theories I’ve developed about life and the principles of the design that guide its growth and existence, as well as what memories I have and experiences I’ve lived through that hint at previous existences, alternate or parallel realities, and destiny/fate’s influence on our freely willed existence.

Agreeing on what is Truth is often a difficult task for those deeply consumed by an emotion, purpose, or point of view they are committed to, failing to see that ultimately what’s right or wrong is defined by freedom of all to reach for their happiness, create their own versions of perfectly imperfect balance, where true happiness is derived from positive thoughts and actions, not created through those that are negative. As such, there are clear boundaries which should never be crossed.

It is difficult also to have faith or trust in the True Intentions of those who cannot keep themselves from continuously crossing boundaries when a person’s honest goals for their life have been expressed, and those who disagree with those goals, often in ignorant judgment, pass them off as genuinely good and/or altruistic when so much experience has left the person so traumatized, hurt, disappointed, humiliated, and/or trapped by unyielding confinement. One can only endure so much before ultimate freedom for their fractured, trapped soul comes by completely leaving all those behind that are completely blind to the Truth, only able to see their viewpoint, and dismissing or minimizing the viewpoint and emotional truth of the life being “re-directed,” “adjusted,” or “normalized.”

When affecting another’s life through your own concerted actions or inactions, that person’s life and their viewpoint is in fact the more important to consider, whether it’s positive or negative and in what ways it is. The only time any intervention from outside the person can even be attempted to a small degree is when their actions ACTUALLY, and to an objectively measurable degree, detrimentally affect those lives around them they care for, and/or potentially society as a whole if at all, and the person committing the act can see the negative affects, those “feeling” the negative affects can prove those claims are true, and all parties agree to a path that is mutually beneficial. Without consideration of the person, any act against their stated will for their life is a transgression of boundaries. The only way to handle disagreements of view point are to disagree and remove ourselves from each other’s lives, or agree to disagree and move forward, offering help and support unconditionally, as your help cannot define or direct the actions of the person in their own life. You give the opportunity to the person to do with the help the stated goals they have for their life and allow them to prove their success in it, which in fact can only be defined by them. However, the one true sign of success - happiness, contentment, and fulfillment. The burden of proof falls to those who transgress boundaries, not to the one who is trying to find their true happiness. No one’s journey can be judged, nor can it be influenced by anyone else, only suggestions given upon the person’s solicitation of suggestion, after which the person can choose to take the suggestion and use the information given, or keep it in mind while they consider other options, or flatly say “thank you, but I have other plans in mind” if they are decisive and have conviction for their goals. The person’s choices ultimately must be respected, and if outside parties’ love is unconditional, it will accept the decision, or if not, then is it really love? Move on from the person.

To many, where my life is at currently reflects nothing of the signs typically present to be able to say definitively that I’m a bleeding-heart-turns-things-around success. But to anyone who thinks they can knock me down with their cynical, jaded, and over-confident opinions and doubts, I take note so that I can separate myself, because negativity only eats at my energy. I’m assured in my ability to reach my goals, live my life my way, to my standards, and show anyone who sticks their nose way too much in my business that I’ll go ahead and pop you in the face and tell you to fuck off if you’re going to press me and insert yourself where I didn’t ask you to. With all that time you’ve spent thinking about my life, and in many instances crossing my boundaries and taking action that I was never consulted on and that I didn’t need help taking care of, you should have been worrying about where your life is. It ain’t pretty from where I’m standing, and as Jesus said, let those without sin cast the first stone. Beyond that, I can’t help you understand my priorities if you fundamentally don’t agree with them. That sounds like a personal problem. It’s amazing though that people can be so blind to their own past and their own problems as to deem themselves worthy of placing their judgment on anyone else.

In life, no one gets to determine how many chances you get to succeed at what you want for YOUR life. If your in-tune enough with yourself that you KNOW what you want your life to be, I can tell you from experience that you’re going to spend a lot of time fighting people around you who JUDGE you (no one is worthy of bestowing judgement, only sharing views when asked for them, though none elevated over another, as Truth is the only point for comparison in what views are more right or wrong) think that what you’re doing is wrong or “unhealthy,” when almost everything in life can be done to an unhealthy degree. People take any little minute detail, momentary failure, or overblown fear and will use it to cut you down, railroad you, or water board you with their idea of what’s right for you until you break.

Personally speaking, how I like to handle other people’s expectation and judgement is as follows:

For those who come from a place of care and genuine concern, I’m assertive rather than aggressive, while still remaining considerate. Even that approach, while the correct way to handle most boundary incursions, can come across to those less able to remove themselves from their point of view and their emotion as an attack, and immediate and unyielding steadfastness to a point of view as being inconsiderate, mean, rude, and uncompromising.

For those who come simply from a place of judgement or feigned concern, I simply, possibly even aggressively, say “Well, thanks for your concern, but kindly fuck off.” Or I may use less strong language if it’s in general conversation. If it’s simply a statement, sometimes silence is just the best answer.

Conviction to a point of view, though, does not determine its correctness, but does mean that the view should be respected as the person’s. If they achieve their happiness with that view, while remaining impartial in action as to how they treat those around them, then that is a person who has achieved success.

My goal through this blog, now that you see my perspective on life and how I choose to treat and speak to others, is to give anyone interested some insight into my journey, my fight with societal and interpersonal stigmas regarding homosexuality, drug abuse, and HIV, and what I’ve experienced and learned along the way.