#i just realized in that entire rant it's not actually specific what i voted for

[voxblade]

CRONUS AUTISM ACTIVATED!!!!! DO NOT READ

Get sent to an eternal dream trauma purgatory built from your lopsided memories with 11 other people relatively as shitty as you. Those guys are your only other roommates for 100000000000+(?) years and you're all locked in to have the mental maturity of 19 year olds. Forever. The only one who halfway stomachs you is a puriteen creature forged from the hellish depths of tumblr, who encourages you to never improve (not that your imperfections are his fault, necessarily, but he's really not helping). You're recovering from having not only all your dreams of who you are/your prophecy shattered beyond repair, not only knowing there is literally no version of you that can have a happy ending in all of paradox space due to the nature of your session, not only from being murdered, no, it's worse than all that; you can't even GET LAID for any of it! (Said desperation for sex absolutely isn't related to a misplaced belief that physical intimacy will solve that loathing black hole deep inside, or borne from a need to gain intimacy past being reminded what a failure you are over and over. You just really really want some sex. There is nothing behind your fixation. Absolutely nothing. There's similarly nothing behind your apparent need to rebuild yourself and arduously pretend you're a completely different species but that's a wwwwhole other can'a worms!)

The worst part?

You're written by Andrew Hussie. And Andrew Hussie hates you and made you a joke. You were left there to be a caricature and nothing more.

As it stands, you're a fucking asshole, to put it lightly. A monster, if we want to go even slightly deeper. You're two-faced. You hide behind a pathetic facade, milking any drop of sympathy you can, so the big players leave you alone, but prey on anyone you see as smaller. You love it when other people feel shitty. There's something hateful and violent crawling inside you, and you will never take accountability for your poison, that would take any sense of introspection, or guilt. Besides, you're a nice guy, AND basically fucking royalty, you shouldn't have to do that shit anyway. From a personal standpoint, perhaps one could argue your fate was a Just one. This specific onlooker wouldn't necessarily agree (no one deserves to rot for an eternity), but it can be argued.

Fuck, but if the pieces of you weren't so fascinating from a character perspective. If only the potential of you wasn't so rich. If only people like me weren't plagued with concepts about what Homestuck could have looked like if more alpha trolls were allowed to stretch and fuck things up. What would have been, Cronus Ampora? Comic relief, most likely, but what if you went beyond? What if you improved slowly, made peace with your broken hopes? What if you did go on to embody what was whispered about you, even in death? What if you regressed? How much lower could you fall?

As a character, I understand a lot was being balanced already and it was natural you were left behind. As a fan? God. What I'd give for more time to study you like a bug in a jar.

Consider not only how he was handled, but how you wish he was handled, and if you think he had any potential that was unused.

Note: If I see someone insulting or threatening people over this poll, I will block you so fast your head will spin.

[carcinized]

i need to go have dinner now but one day you are going to rant at me about the american government and how it works bc that is a subject i would like to know more about but also i get overwhelmed when i try researching it on my own like... where do i even start....

anyways yes. information. *grabby hands*

YASSSS OMG STARDUST I LOVE YOU <33333

okay this is going under a cut bc i made this HELLA long uhm oops. this is just a psised off rant about american government from someone who Actually Has a Basic Understanding of American Government

so what i was specifically vagueing about in that post is fucked up representation in congress. so congress votes on some p important shit right? you probably know that. so voting on stuff that affects everyone is p important! and considering we consider ourselves a democracy, youd think representation (and equal representation) is p important! especially considering we had that whole "taxation without representation" thing that started a wholeass revolutionary war that CREATED our country!!!

but no. they fucked up the ONE thing thats important to democracy

i say fucked up which implies it was an accidnet but it wasnt lol people r just power hungry.

so lets start with the senate which is SO UPSETTINGLY FUCKED like what the HELL. so we have two senators per state right? sounds like a banger system until you realize that states have completely different amounts of people in them. so like the half a million people in wyoming have the same amount of say as the 38 million people in california.. like bro thats fucked up

THEN you can tlak about how in congress, folks living in us territories get a delegate per territory in the house (can talk and listen but has NO VOTE) and no representatives or delegates at ALL in the senate. note that they ALSO have no electoral votes, aka a say in who their LITERAL PRESIDENT is!!!!! what the fuck man!!!!

like everyone knows the electoral college is shit at this point but guys. guys can we talk about the FUCKING SENATE.

youve probably heard the term court-packing??? so we discussed how the senate is rigged in favor of smaller, less populated, rural states (think wyoming, idaho, etc). youll notice that those states just HAPPEN to be mostly republican states, while bigger states (think california, new york, etc) are mostly democratic! so the senate is rigged in favor of the republican party. you know what else the senate is? solely in charge of approving the president's candidates to appoint to the supreme court

so if, say, the senate is held by republicans (its rigged RIDICULOUSLY in their favor) while the president is a democrat, any openings on the court will likely not be filled because the senate will simply refuse to approve them. (see what happened during obama's presidency.)

if the senate is held by republicans and the president is ALSO republican, the senate will approve just about any candidates the president suggests. if they were to hypothetically go into their term after a democratic president's candidates were denied, with openings on the court DESPERATELY needing to be filled, then have more slots open up during their ONE TERM, they might even appoint an entire ONE THIRD of the new supreme court justices !!! 3/9 !!! what the fuck!!! and supreme court justices serve for LIFE!!!!!!!! so theres no elections !!!!! you cant replace them!!! HYPOTHETICALLY OFC <3 im kidding lol thats what trump did

youll also recall when we tried to impeach trump and it came down to a senate vote. the senate is rigged in his partys favor therefore we couldnt do it even though his behavior clearly called for it 🥰 even after he attempted to stop our democratic elections (if you can even call them democratic with how badly rigged they are with voter suppression, gerrymandering, the electoral college ETC) and aided an attempt to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power AND aided in a coup!!! but his party will always side with him (which is a whole other conversation about diehard political views and echo chambers and propaganda which is found in both CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL CIRCLES fyi,,, but we're talking about government structure not that rn)

another thing is that bc the senate and therefore a lot of other shit is so favorable of smaller, rural states, (and not representing the territories at all,) not only is it mainly benefitting republicans, its also mainly benefitting white people WOOOOO!!!!! the senate is a HUGE systemic upholder of white supremacy, to absolutely no ones surprise 1!! wooo!!!

ok so anyways uhm.t his got long but if you have any questions feel free to ask :D i love talking about government and how americas is insanely fucking hypocritical like bithc this is NOT a democracy..... the senate is LITERALLY rule of the minority in representation plus you need a 2/3 vote to pass like half the bills and shit anyways so shit is SO stakced against the majority (which is currently the democratic party) rn like genuinely what the FUCK. anyways hi stardust lol i hope this answers some of it

[ladykissingfish]

*cue sad Naruto music*

ya’ll ever think that Sasuke left the leaf village after the war not to go on an “atonement journey” but to ensure Naruto achieved his goal of being Hokage? like, it’s weird to think modern day issues like sexuality or politics would play a role in Naruto times but I think it did. I think Naruto would have gotten together with Sasuke. maybe not married, but openly dated/lived with him. and this image of a male Hokage dating another male wouldn’t have flown with the village elders, or anyone else save maybe some rare progressive thinkers ((see: Kakashi)) (((off-topic but I think Hashirama came close to this as well; he almost gave up everything to be with Madara. fuck Tobirama didn’t necessarily hate Uchihas; he hated Madara. specifically, Madara, because that guy would have messed up his big brother’s chance at the future he had been working so hard to create))) no. a male Hokage should be with a woman, and should have a traditional family. or else stay single ((again, see Kakashi)). but Sasuke being around in any capacity would not have allowed Naruto to hide his feelings or even pretend that they weren’t there. hence why he had to physically go as far away as possible, to remove that temptation. look at America; even in 2021 who would people be more likely to vote for as President? a guy and his boyfriend or a guy with a wife and two children? which is where Hinata comes in. Hinata who doesn’t want to be a ninja. Hinata who can cook, clean, raise kids and keep Naruto’s household in order. Hinata who doesn’t argue or contradict Naruto’s wishes in any way. Hinata who I don’t really think Naruto has romantic feelings for. strong friendship, maybe, and gratitude, but not romance. It’s always been my opinion that NO MATTER WHAT if you’re truly in love with somebody you make time for them above any and everything else. this includes the supposed mountain of work that Naruto faces each day as the Hokage. this would mean him coming home more often, eating with his family, sleeping under the same roof as them instead of at his desk like five nights a week — like Sasuke not calling or so much as sending a message to Sakura in, what was it, 12 years? despite having created a literal human being together? kinda feel like he “married” her and gave her a child because, like Naruto with Hinata, he felt both a sense of guilt and a strong obligation to repay Sakura’s kindness to him . I think maybe he even figured that a child was something that she could lavish that love on that would actually be returned, something to keep her occupied while sasuke had no real intention of ever coming back, or even trying to be a real, stable family with her. look not at the anime but in the manga itself. how sasuke looks to be in physical pain when he’s around his wife and daughter. then look at his facial expressions when he’s around Naruto and tell me, TELL ME the difference isn’t noticeable. and you know. people throw a lot of hatred at Sakura. but in my opinion she doesn’t really deserve that. her irrational love for sasuke aside, she’s a good mother, and she starts a freakin’ hospital to care for injured children. but she needed to grow up a little and realize that the person you love isn’t always the person that is best for you. honestly feel she would have been better off with Rock Lee ((but that’s another rant)) also in manga and anime there’s always this concept of “taking responsibility” in a romantic sense. Naruto took responsibility for Hinata’s feelings for him, the way Sasuke ((kinda, half-assedly)) “took responsibility “ for Sakura’s. but I literally think with my entire damn soul that the two of them only LOVED each other. loved each other enough to be selfless enough to stand back and let each other do what would be in each other’s best interests. honestly sasuke wasn’t coming back to Konaha after the war. why the fuck would he? after being public enemy number 1 on top of that lonely life living in a compound echoing with the memories of his slaughtered clan? Konaha with its idealism and darkness and cover-

ups? he would always have gone.

but Naruto should have gone with him.

the two should have travelled the entire ninja world, the world the both of them saved, together.

sasuke had stepped away from konaha and therefore understood the freedom of choice that comes from not being tied to the village and its (often questionable) practices ((like ordering a young boy to slaughter his entire clan, parents included, making him a criminal and outcast and casting him into an eternal pit of depression and emptiness SEE ITACHI)). but Naruto never had that benefit and therefore got snared up in it like a fly in a spider’s web.

everyone looked at sasuke like he was crazy when he said he was going to kill the five kage and start a damn revolution but fuck HE MADE DAMN GOOD SENSE. he saw how fucked up the system was and he knew it needed to be destroyed.

sasuke may not agree with it but he loves Naruto to the extent that he puts his personal feelings aside and takes these dangerous missions in order to help Naruto keep the Leaf protected, aka help him do his job.

it’s like 2:30 in the morning and I��ve tapped this entire thing out with one finger on my phone’s notepad and in the morning I’m going to look back at this and be like wtf were you talking about like this makes no sense bc I’ve never been good with successfully articulating my feelings about something all I know is I ship Sasuke and Naruto for multiple reasons ok not just for a yaoi reason but because I see two humans who have had awful and love-starved pasts that clearly love each other and would probably heal each other’s souls by being together.

also they have matching palm tattoos.

[tautozhone]

i want more people to know about the Permanent Fund Dividend in Alaska actually. more US citizens specifically need to know our country has implemented UBI systems already (because of oil and businesses bullshit, but still. tldr is that citizens of alaska wanted compensation for everything that would not be there as resource for future generations). it has been going for decades strong. their website is uploading progress and performance reports constantly too. it’s just not talked about, at least not as far as i’m aware about, and the modern usamerican seems to think any sort of social system would be a sin despite the multiple ones we have on national or state levels. the UBI plan in alaska was another nail in the coffin of realizing our system is actively working against us.

on to the ranting

the alaskan people for better or worse modified the state constitution to have a cut of the profit coming off the land. i learned from this that people can organize and fight and put their votes toward meaningful change, but how the rhetoric around it matters. it was to save hope for future generations, i’d like to imagine thats why it went over well. today i feel like so much rhetoric has developed around “handouts” and UBI being bad because ooo scary taxes raising. we just don’t even recognize what has already been helping and what needs to become a more common practice.

imagine if every state with farm land for any big corporation was allowed to have 25% of the profit distributed across the entire population. not just those who work the land, but the people who complete the chain in cycles of production. factory workers. truck drivers. mechanics. the average parent who needs to raise a child and have enough to survive.

are there downsides? yes. people have to register, have to have residency, have to be a citizen, and be of adult age. it’s an opt in system, so they’re technically asking you for your information, but i can barely imagine an automated version of all this that wouldn’t still rely on documentation and ID somehow. the point is that it’s already been done, it’s been happening for longer than we tend to think, and it’s been working as far as i’m aware.

by all means the state of alaska is not in the best shape economically. they rely on gas and oil, and next to other mined resources their main profit is seafood. a form of agriculture. one that they continue to depend on even more as unrenewable resources are stripped away. i don’t like the fucking oil industry as much as the next guy but this is the exact “shave off profits of the rich to support the people” thing that i’ve seen everyone hoping and fighting for.

the future is not as far away as it feels, but it’s not close either. this won’t happen tomorrow. more and more people need to learn why UBI is important and even more importantly how we can learn from what’s happened in alaska and refine it to be less industry specific.

i didn’t even check reblogs to see if anyone had said this already, say it again! say it 500 times!

THE USA ALREADY DOES UBI FOR ONE STATE. IT CAN DO MORE.

there have been 774664 studies on basic income and the results of every single one have been “wow! we gave people money and literally everything improved! crime rates are down! the actual sky is bluer! my (the researcher’s) wife decided not to leave me after all!” but these have all been short studies, just a couple years. i think what’s really missing from the field is a proper long form study, with a broader, bolder demographic, to really get us those numbers we need. a truly diverse study pool like, say, everyone. forever

[lunawings]

King of Prism All Stars Prism Show Best 10! Initial thoughts/summary/review

So I’m going to be splitting this post into several sections with space in between to make it easier for people maybe to skip over spoilers they don’t want to read. 

Table of contents is as below: 1.) Day 1 Greeting Show Live Viewing brief event report 2.) Weekly theatrical video (week 1)  3.)1-10 Ranking and my personal thoughts 4.) New content (intro, ending, in-betweens, etc) 5.) Shin’s new show

1.) Day 1 Greeting Show Live Viewing brief event report

They had a live viewing for one of the greeting shows in Toyko. It was attended by Junta Terashima (Shin), Masashi Igarashi (Minato), and Takuma Nagatsuka (Leo). 

The day 1 greeting shows are always kinda awkward. Especially if it’s a live viewing and ESPECIALLY if it’s before the show because they aren’t allowed to give spoilers. 

Masashi Igarashi seemed even MORE pumped and emotional than usual. You could tell he really wanted to talk about Minato making it into the ranking, which should be a surprise for no one because he was really high in the preliminary ranking, but he still wasn’t allowed to talk about it. 

So he had to like dance all around it with wide hand gestures about how.... these ten shows.... and how amazing it was...... that these particular shows...... hahah ahhh man you could tell it was torture for him and torture to watch. 

Naganyan said that if by chance Leo made it in, he wanted us all to shout IIZE! for him. 

At one point the showed off kanji they wrote to symbolize the new year (a Japanese tradition). Junta said he wrote 変 I think (the first kanji in “change” but it also means strange) but he didn’t have the board with him for some reason so I wonder if he messed it up backstage and they didn’t have another one? Haha. Naganyan wrote 華 (flower). Masashi wrote 手 (hand) and he talked about how hands can symbolize a lot of things, like holding hands and “taking that first step” but then he was like “wait that’s feet....” And it was said in a way where it was difficult to tell if he only just realized that now or not. Judging from Junta and Naganyan’s reactions maybe it wasn’t on purpose hahaha. But then he doubled down on it, and as he was explaining why hands are significant he kept forcefully grabbing Junta’s hand and being like “See? Don’t you feel something??” while Junta was just kinda looking at him like “ummm”. 

I love these dorks so much they’re my favorite. EVERY SINGLE TIME I see them at an event together, Masashi Igarashi just goes on this HUGE rant about something and Junta Terashima is like “...........................................what?” (And Takuma Nagatsuka, if he is there, is like slowly inching away from them.)

I CAN’T WAIT to see them for real in Nagoya next weekend AHHHHHHHHHHHHH. 

2.) Weekly theatrical video (week 1)

So King of Prism movies always have rotating intro or ending videos exclusive to the theater. (The first movie had the characters appealing to be in the Prism King Cup, Pride the Hero had the regional dramas, and SSS had shorts after the credits.) Best 10 has “Prism Star Interviews”. Basically, you hear audio of one character interviewing another which plays to a static image of the characters. 

Week 1 had Shin interviewing Hiro, Yu interviewing Kouji, and Taiga interviewing Kazuki. It was fairly low key. Hiro talked about getting his driver’s license, Kouji talked about sending weird food photos to Minato from abroad, and while Taiga was interviewing Kazuki someone (implied to be Kakeru) slipped him the question “Which do you prefer, tigers or dragons?” After going back and forth for a while, Kazuki ultimately says he likes them both because they are both strong. Taiga is not too happy about this. 

Something to note about the intro videos is this time is they have four weeks’ worth planned, but there are only three courses of the movie. This means the course and intro video are not necessarily connected and as time goes on it will get out of sync and you won’t be sure which intro video you’ll see. I feel like this was probably done on purpose. After a while we never knew what intro videos we would get for the first movie and it was kinda exciting. 

3.) 1-10 Ranking and my personal thoughts

10.) Yu / Shiny Stellar (SSS) 9.) Taiga / Fly in the sky  (SSS) 8.) Shin/Shine / Platonic Sword  (SSS) 7.) Yukinojo / Hyakkaryouran   (SSS) 6.) Leo / Twinkle Twinkle  (SSS) 5.) Kazuki / Freedom (Thunder Storm ver.) (Pride the Hero) 4.) Minato / Sailing  (SSS) 3.) Kakeru / Orange Flamingo  (SSS) 2.) Shiny 7 Stars [SePTENTRION] / Brilliant Oath  (SSS) 1.) Hiro / pride (Prism King ver.) (Pride the Hero)

So I think the voting for this was actually pretty fair. Basically, people who bought the SSS soundtrack CD got a code which could be used to vote only once. So although it would technically be possible to buy hundreds of CDs to try and sway the vote, I kiiiinda doubt that happened? It’s not like event tickets.

First of all, I was surprised at how low Taiga ranked considering he’s always been the most popular SePTENTRION member. But then again, although I really like him too, there are several SePTENTRION member shows I would have voted for before him. I guess that’s because I would assume everyone else would vote for Taiga so he doesn’t need my help? So maybe everyone else thought that way too that’s what happened. 

I’m also shocked at how high Leo is. He beat Yukinojo. HE BEAT TAIGA. After his ranking was announced the first time I actually started crying during his performance just because I hadn’t seen it in a while, and also I had literally JUST finished translating this.... so I was just like..... MY SONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN IM SO PROUD OF YOU (....dammit I forgot to yell IIZE. MY SONNNNNNNNNNNNNNN)

Platonic Sword is at 8 which is OK sure. But you know, to be honest, although I was so distressed by this show at first I’m actually kinda diggin’ it now that I’m used to it because it’s a whole lot easier to enjoy out of context (I don’t have to see Shin crying every time). But it’s just really weird to have THAT smacked right there it at number 8, right in the middle-ish. This supposedly 0 karat show. 

0 karats my ass. 

AND MINATO AT NUMBER 4 AHHHHHHHHHHHH 

I can’t believe it. After all this time. He finally FINALLY got the recognition he deserves. The only SePTENTION member who ranked higher than him is Kakeru and I have no complaints about that because I definitely agree Kakeru deserves that number 3 spot. (You know, I wonder if this means Kakeru actually surpassed Taiga at some point to be the most popular SePTENTION boy? I’m just so used to it being Taiga, but..)

Hiro at number 1 feels right. I’m happy with it. It would be the same in-universe too. (Actually in-universe it would be like ALL Over the Rainbow but y’know.)

It’s really crazy how all of SePTENTION made it in (if you count Platonic Sword for Shin, although they did credit it as Shin/Shine which was nice). I think that’s part of what Masashi Igarashi was trying to say at the theater greeting: To think that the new cast could have come this far. To think that exactly four years ago I left the theater after seeing the first movie for the first time, and I couldn’t even remember over half their names... and look where they are now!!

Although I am certainly not unhappy with the results, and I know the SSS shows are... objectively better, it did make me a little sad that nothing made it in from the first movie at all though. Because those shows had a bigger emotional impact on me overall. I don’t regret using my vote for Minato, because I feel better having contributed to him getting the recognition he deserved than I would have if I had voted for something that didn’t stand a chance. But at the same time, Shin’s Over the Sunshine at the end of the first movie is probably the most important prism show to me, in actuality. 

But they are doing different courses to show the prism shows that didn’t make it in. The first week they are showing a montage of all of Over the Rainbow’s shows. Watching them back-to-back with the SSS shows in this movie really highlighted how old they look in comparison, especially the Hiro/Kazuki Boy Meets Girl. Back when the only texture they used was for Hiro’s stomach...

But anyway, the credits revealed the other courses will show Alexander, Joji, The Shuffle, and Louis’ shows. It is also rather sad that none of the Schwarz Rose boys made it in. Especially since Alec is so popular! I wonder if Alec fangirls didn’t vote for Survival Dance in protest since Alexander has never gotten an original song. I felt the saddest about Louis though... because Shota Aoi and his voice and...... (C.... Can I just slip in the back room, cut out Platonic Sword, and edit in I know Shangri La?)

PS. I think the shows were pretty close to the same versions we saw originally. One notable change is that they added in some subtitles for cheering. Specifically “SHISHO!!!” in Yukinojo’s show and “YO! Daddy I did it!” in Kakeru’s. So I guess we were originally supposed to yell that. (Oops.) As I hoped it would be, Brilliant Oath was also stitched together without that long break in the middle, so in this version it just looks like SePTENTRION created the goddess on their own with their prism jump. But hey! It’s nice to have a complete version. Also Platonic Sword was missing the Prism Axel. (Maybe that’s another reason I could enjoy it this time around.)

As is tradition, the credits are set to a new SePTENTRION song. This one is called Love Gravity.

4.) New content (intro, ending, in-betweens, etc)

There are two new, very brief, traditionally animated segments. The first one is a cold open of SePTENTRION as power rangers fighting Alexander. What makes this even more hilarious is it basically starts right where the original Prism Show Best 10 left off. They even used the exact same background I think!? Some of the boys’ ranger costumes are... interesting... Kakeru’s (and I’m afraid this won’t translate that well to English so I might as well explain it now) is missing the entire backside. The joke is about the contrast between his two sides (business and party: lit his front vs back in Japanese). I think this segment also has the first ever anime/movie reference to Alexander being weak to Leo. (It’s referenced in Prism Rush all the time.)

The second new traditionally animated segment is at the end, and it involves SePTENTRON in the bath discussing different genres of dramas or movies they could do now that their careers have taken off. I’m pretty sure it’s a metaphor for “So much has happened in King of Prism, what now?” After all the discussion of different genres, Shin starts to get worried it means they won’t do prism shows together anymore. But they all agree that of course they will. 

Then there are the Dorachi and Torachi segments. They are simplified and look as though they were animated in flash. In addition to counting down the Best 10, Dorachi and Torachi also have two language teaching sessions. First Dorachi teaches us some “useful” English phrases, i.e. Alexander’s “Go to hell!” etc. Then Torachi teaches us Aomori dialect. What makes this sequence so hilarious is how seriously they take it. Like, as seriously as you could imagine a chibi tiger and chibi dragon teaching you something would be. The Aomori dialect was pretty challenging too, and Torachi actually broke down the sentences, pointing out where the intonation was different and like.... IT WAS ACTUALLY EDUCATIONAL. LIKE..... I ACTUALLY LEARNED SOMETHING. The first two sentences we practiced in Aomori dialect were Taiga’s dad asking him if he thinks his grades can get him into high school, and that random background character saying the nebuta floats won’t be ready in time. But then we got a completely new Taiga line of him confessing to someone which needless to say was NOT in the show BUT...... the background was clearly the scene from the end of episode 3 when Taiga was trying to tell Kazuki something. Pfff. 

There is also a longish short anime during the intermission done in the same style. Torachi finds Dorachi out of power, and the two get lost together trying to find a power source to charge him. Meanwhile Taiga and Alexander don’t come looking for them until after dark because they are too busy fighting. Moral of the story: Dorachi and Torachi are secret BFFs and Alexander and Taiga are terrible parents.  

5.) Shin’s new show

My...... heart............................... my heart felt so full............. nnnghghhgphhhh.........

The context is that Shin is finally performing the song Yu wrote him in the costume Leo made for him at the Rose Party. So it’s taking place chronologically after SSS. 

Daisuki Refrain is a very heavy audience participation song. Perhaps the most intended participation in a King of Prism song we have had so far? There is a beat to clap to, callouts, and even a dance in the middle and it’s pretty clear even during your first viewing what you’re supposed to be doing at all times. 

Also, as I guessed from seeing Junta Terashima perform at the CD release event, Shin’s hat is a huge part of his choreography. What I did not guess is that it’s also a magic hat that grows and you can ride on it if it fills up with prism sparkle hahahah.

Ahhh man.............

....Okay. If you have seen it, I know you’re probably expecting me to talk about that.... one part...... So. I will. Okay. Here goes. 

At one point in his performance, Shin partially obscures his right eye while his left eye shines red. W......Why is that in there WH--okay I kinda know why. I think Shin has been gaining a lot of popularity recently since the end of SSS specifically because of Platonic Sword, and because he has that edge now. So although they gave him a happy, fluffy, traditional Shin show, they still put in a little fanservice for the fans who like the edge. A little reminder that he’s still in there. While I’m like.... YOU... YOU STAY IN THERE. IM WATCHING YOU. Ahahaha. 

One thing though, I could have sworn in the preview showing that Shin’s right eye (the one which would be yellow if he was Shine) was completely obscured.  But when I saw it again on the premiere day, I could see it was only partially obscured and it was clearly the normal red. So. Surely I was just so surprised that they did that in the first place that I just didn’t fully register it. It’s not like they changed it in between the preview and the premiere, right..... RIGHT?

Right. 

Okay moving on sorry that was too long. Haha seriously that scene is like 2 seconds and Shin’s show is SO CUTE AND SO GOOD. I really REALLY did like it and I’ve been singing the song all day. 

And his new prism jump......................

I........

Nnngfdnnnphhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I really don’t want to spoil itttttttttt..... while I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you just wait and experience it for yourself firsthand like I did, at the same time.... not gonna lie... I also really want to talk about it. Because Shin. So I’m gonna end this post here but also write about it at the end anyway. So if you absolutely must know. It’s down there. 

But. 

Thanks for reading! READY SPARKING!

<3

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Okay so Shin’s new prism jump. It’s called Mugen Hug Together.

And it’s basically. 

A reverse Mugen Hug. 

So Shin Mugen Hugs the crowd, but then the crowd reflects it back to him and he’s like AAAAUUUGH and, of course, it takes all his clothes off. 

(And then there’s like an uncomfortably long black screen. Where it’s like.... did we kill Shin?)

(Did we kill him? With our love?)

(We did not.)

(I guess he needed time to get his clothes back on.)

Shin has one of his speeches where he says he’s embarrassed about how he wanted us to feel good but the opposite happened. Then the second part of the jump starts (or I guess it may technically be a second jump), part of which can be seen in the trailer. The part where you take Shin’s hand and he gets wings. Then he takes you around the world. 

The end. 

[captainofthefallen]

Earth, moon, Pluto, Deimos?

earth: rivers or seas? RIVERS!! I enjoy the ocean but I’m a whitewater rafting guide. Rivers are wonderful.

moon: do you play any instruments? I do! I technically play the flute, though it’s been a while, I play the saxophone, I know enough about the piano to play a few songs though I cannot sight read on it, and I sing.

Pluto: I’m gonna come back to that one in a second because I’ll probably need to put it under a cut. (edit: tumblr was stupid and put the whole post under the cut. Ugh.)

deimos: if you could go to space, would you? With the caveat that I’m allowed to come back, yes. I love space, I think it’s awesome, I’d love to be able to see the earth from above and the stars with no atmosphere, but unfortunately for me there’s too much stuff on Earth that I like to leave it behind for good.

All right. So.

pluto: is pluto a real planet or fake? I apologize if you didn’t realize you were opening a Can of Worms. I have a Pluto rant, and you have just asked me about it, so here we are.

The short answer: Pluto is a planet and y’all can fight me.

The long answer: I majored in astronomy, specializing in planetary science. I actually wrote a paper on this topic. (Not a scientific study, just a research paper, it was for a science writing class.) There is no scientific reason that Pluto shouldn’t be a planet. I understand the need for the distinction. Pluto was discovered in 1930, and at the time it was closer to a planet than anything else that had been observed, so it was also a planet. (It’s more complicated than that but this is already going to be a Rant I won’t bore you with the details.) However somewhere around the 90s, astronomers started discovering more things like Pluto in the outer solar system. Wonderful! Awesome! More things we didn’t know about in our solar system!

This, however, gave rise to a Problem: are we just going to keep adding these things to our list of planets? What if there are more? What if there are dozens? Hundreds? Are we going to make our schoolchildren memorize 200 planets (this, I believe, is mostly hyperbole, though the number 200 was floated as a guess on how many other dwarf planets might be out there. The solar system is a big place)? Or do we need to start making categories?

We started making categories. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) had a vote in the year 2006 about how to classify Pluto and these new bodies. The vote concerned a) the definition of the term ‘planet’ which hadn’t had incredibly specific parameters up until that point--planets were the round ones that go around the stars, and b) where Pluto and these other bodies would fall in terms of that definition.

The definition is this: In order to be a planet, a body needs to meet three qualifications: It needs to orbit a star. It needs to be massive enough to be spherical. And it needs to have “cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.” [x]

What does that mean? Excellent question. Pluto fits the first two criteria, as do all the other dwarf planets. The third one is a little more vague, and I’m still decently sure that they just came up with something convenient that would disqualify Pluto and the others, for simplicity’s sake. Essentially, what it means is that a planet needs to be the dominant object in its orbit. There can’t be anything else in its vicinity (in relative terms, since everything in astronomy is fuckin huge) that could compete with it gravitationally. Pluto is in the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system. There are a lot of other objects in the Kuiper Belt, many of which are in and around Pluto’s orbit. Several of them (in the Kuiper Belt, not necessarily on Pluto’s orbit) are other dwarf planets.

If this sounds vague and confusing, it’s because it is! But wait there’s more. If you actually followed my link to the IAU press release, you will have noticed that there was another resolution, something about “classical planets.” This resolution proposed that, instead of removing Pluto from the category of ‘planet,’ there should be subcategories: ‘classical planets’ and ‘dwarf planets.’ This would allow for the 8 ‘classical planets’ to be taught in schools, known by the public in general, etc., while the dwarf planets could be reserved for nerds like myself to research on their own time, but they would still be planets.

This resolution was rejected. Which I understand, I suppose--the wording is vague, what’s a ‘classical’ planet anyway, what does that mean? But I think the idea is sound and could’ve been workshopped. It makes far more sense to have the broad category of ‘planets,’ and then have ‘dwarf planets’ be a subcategory. What doesn’t make sense is to call a series of objects ‘dwarf planets’ and proceed to tell everyone that ‘dwarf planets’ are not, in fact, planets. I asked my roommate about it when I was writing this paper, and she didn’t even realize that ‘dwarf planet’ wasn’t a subcategory of planet. It isn’t. But it should be. It makes more sense.

As far as the science I’ve interacted with, there’s no reason to even make a distinction. If we discovered a dwarf planet in another solar system we would have no reason to make the distinction. Particularly because it’s almost arbitrary. A Pluto-sized planet in a smaller solar system could very well be gravitationally dominant in its orbit. I understand the need, within our own solar system, to make a distinction, but creating a subcategory of ‘dwarf planet’ and then saying they’re not planets is absolutely ridiculous. (If you want an alternative, I saw a term floated, I believe in Mike Brown’s book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, of a plutoid. Which would accomplish several things, first of which creating a category for these objects that doesn’t create confusion, if you’re really dead set on them not being planets, second of which paying homage to everyone’s beloved Pluto by naming an entire category after it. But I digress.)

tl;dr: the fact that they named this category of objects ‘dwarf planets’ and yet insist that they are not planets is absolutely ridiculous and makes no sense. I understand what they were trying to achieve, I can even agree with the need, culturally, for another class of objects in this category, but there are way better ways they could’ve accomplished it. Therefore until they fix it: Pluto is a planet. Fight me.

[lettersofwrittencollective]

The Pull (17/?)

Summary: The Ragnulf’s are one of the oldest lines of werewolves known. A gift from ancient times was given to the line. Though not all of the line will experience it. There are some who will experience a Pull. This Pull leads them to their true mate, a soulmate. The problem is, just because the wolf finds their true mate does not mean that they are the same for that person.

Author: @lettersofwrittencollective​ 

Pairing: Stiles x Hale!Cousin OC (Reader)

Word Count: 2407

A/N: So I  would clarify, when I envision this character- I very much envision this character to be more on the athletic side, a bit lean and muscled, because they are a predator. They are on the shorter side (about 5 ft) which has to do with the fact that research indicates that female wolves tend to be smaller than male wolves.  I have tried to create a character that is Latin with Nordic ancestry (please see part 14) which is why there is some Spanish that gets occasionally thrown in and why Odin plays such a huge role in this. I try to stay away from blatant descriptors but this is so you know that, when they’re there that’s what I am envisioning.

A/N: As always, please let me know what you thought. Any comments, questions, or concerns. I LOVE hearing/ reading your thoughts!!

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Laying in bed that night, Stiles was having a hard time falling asleep. After dropping off Lydia, he had made his way towards Derek's loft to drop off Natasha. He’d been a little surprised that she was a bit snappy at Rafael seeing as how he’s not really seen her snip at any authority figure. Though, he has to admit that he likes that she wasn’t willing to just back down.  He had, however, been very worried about what had happened before the medics and police had gotten to the substation.

“Natasha?” he had asked and at her hmmm of acknowledgment he’d asked if she was okay.

When she had responded in the affirmative, the confusion had been so evident in her voice that he’d slammed on Roscoes breaks. He’d heard her grunt and watched a grimace cross her features. “That right there!!”  he’d exclaimed as he motioned at her. “Not to mention that you just had a whole damn substations electrical current smack you like a ton of bricks. That has to have done some kind of damage! Or are you actually Wonder Woman?” While Stiles had continued to rant, she had very calmly and very casually just reached over and took his hand. He’d been so surprised at her trying to comfort him that he’d stopped his raving.

“Stiles I promise you, I am absolutely fine. It wasn’t the whole substation or I would be very much dead. Seeing how that’s not the case, it was probably just a couple volts that had jumped off. Sure it hurt a ton in the moment but, now, it’s just the same as every other day. Nothing I’m not used to.”

But those words... Sitting up in bed Stiles thought back to some of the things that he had noticed about the girl. The way that she would wince sometimes like she was in actual pain but there had been nothing around that could have been painful. Or the way that she would stretch, and when asked would just say that she was sore. Also, the way that he had overheard Scott ask Isaac if she was still in pain.

He pulled out the notebook he had started on her. There was his research on Themis,  Xolotl, and Odin specifically. Though there was a lot more on the Norse god and mythology than on the other two. He was curious about something that he had noted before-  Stories told of a family of wolves that had walked with Odin. He was trying to figure out if that had anything to do with her caring so much about the god. As he read it, he realized that a lot of it looked like gibberish and he was. well, he was sure that had to do with the fact that he hardly slept.

That was actually one of the reasons that the two of them had started to hang out as often as they did. Sure, her trusting him to not get her leg snapped in half by a bear trap was psych 101 for the friendship but, as they hung out more and more he realized that the girl was actually quite warm, inquisitive and sharp. He had however noticed that she was very hesitant to be affectionate while awake. For the most part, she was only really affectionate with Isaac and, occasionally, Allison. When she was asleep though, she seemed to be much more affectionate. The day that she’d fallen asleep while studying, she had curled up into his side and when he’d tried to leave, she’d searched for body heat and when he’d carried her upstairs earlier, she had nuzzled his neck. He had been hard-pressed not to drop her at that moment as his heart had practically stopped in his chest.

It made him wonder if she was naturally a very affectionate person but just hid it from the group. Not that he could entirely blame her, she still didn’t know him, Scott or Lydia all that well.

He’d noted how her eyes were usually purple or blue. The purple seemed to look almost natural though he knew they weren’t. He’d seen them flash brightly the night Ethan and Aiden beat Scott. The blue, though, was a bright color.

Sighing, he put the notebook away and then laid back in bed. He felt bad that he still had the notebook. Maybe he would get rid of it. But, there were a lot of things he had in there that he had noticed about her. Like the way she bit her lower lip, or how she would get very defensive of both Peter and Derek. Or how her nose scrunched up when she actually laughed. Figuring he’d decide what to actually do with the notebook later he tried to go to sleep.

“I take it you didn’t sleep last night?” you asked Stiles as you hopped in Roscoe. He gave you a confused look and you shook your head, “You look like crap Stiles.”

He acts offended and you chuckle at him. The two of you head to school and you tell him that both Peter and Derek are back. He asks where they were and you just shrug, “Derek had questions for Talia and so they got her claws.”

“Why her claws?”

“Come on Stiles, it’s the supernatural, claws are… well, the best way I can think to describe it is to just say that an evolved wolf’s claws can be used to access them even after death.”

He merely makes a sound that sounds like he’s surprised at what you said. You roll your eyes before realizing that you didn’t see your backpack, “Stiles? Did you by any chance grab my back from your house this morning?”

“Nope, left it sitting on the sofa.”

“Stiles! I need-” his laugh cuts you off and you realize that he’s joking. Huffing at him, you stick out your tongue.

“It’s in the backseat.”

Looking In the back, you see that it is in fact sitting right there. You reach over and pull a notebook  and a pen from it and you start to write down the things you remember from yesterday’s weird vision, or whatever it was.

“What you writing there?” Stiles asks and you tell him about the crazy vision you had had, though you make it out to have been a dream instead. You tell him about the spider and the eagle and the spear but you don’t say anything about him. Instead, you just say that you heard someone calling your voice and that when you found them, they were surrounded by fireflies and a valkyrie.

“I don’t know Stiles it was just weird.. Figured I should write it down though - might be something important later, ya know?”

“Makes sense.” he nods his head and the two of you spend the rest of the way to the school with only the radio making any real sound between you.

When you’re at school, you go with Stiles to his locker. Once the locker is open, he sets his keys inside and begins to get the books that he’s going to need for your first class.

Coach is talking into a bullhorn, “Class starts in five minutes!! Just because there’s no power don’t expect there to be no school.”

“Hey that’s a triple negative.” Stiles points out as he pulls back from rummaging through his locker. “Good job coach.”

“Copy that.”

You look down at your notebook and start to re-read what you had written on the way here. You’re distracted when, a moment later, Stiles is pulling Scott towards him. Truthfully, the only reason you even notice that is because Stiles is saying no and telling Scott to stop.Scott, for his part, is saying that he needs to talk to someone and you’re confused until you follow his eyes and see that he’s staring after Kira’s retreating form.

“No, you need to remember someone left a coded message telling Barrow to kill her.”

“Which is why I need to talk to her.” Scott rebuttals against his friend.

Shaking your head, you point out “Or, you could just talk to her because someone did leave a coded message for Barrow to kill her and she was kidnapped which is a pretty stressful situation for anyone to be in. Scott, you’ve talked to her a couple times. Stiles- we helped save her. I, for one, will be trying to check on her later today. I don’t think bombarding her currently will do any good.”

Stiles looked at you then Scott. “Scott, Natasha,” he began with a serious tone to his voice. “No, until we figure out if she’s just another psychotic monster that’s going to start murdering everybody, I vote against any and all interaction.”

“What if she’s like us?” Scott asks, motioning between you and him.

“That girl walked through 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. She’s not like either of you.”

“But Natasha did the same thing and you’re ok, right?”

Shaking your head, you rub your right hand over your left arm before bringing the hand to the back of your neck. ‘Scott, I didn’t walk through anything. A small bit of electricity had to have gotten out and it knocked me out. I don’t know how much a wolf can take and I don’t particularly care to find out. But there is no way that it would be even half a gigawatt.n That would have killed me.”

Scott looked torn for a moment before nodding his head and heading, presumably, towards the class. You were going to join him when you looked over and saw Stiles staring at a key on his keyring as if he were confused as to why it was there. Something occurred to you at that moment and glancing around you quickly, you made sure that no one you knew with supernatural hearing was in the area.

By the time you turned to look back at Stiles, he was looking at you with a raised eyebrow. You smirk at him, he was the one that had given you the perfect set up to ask anyways, “So…  I take it you don’t think I’m a - what were the word” you stopped for a moment to try and remember what he’d said. “Ah yes, another psychotic monster that’s going to start murdering everybody?”

“Absolutely not,” Stiles says without hesitation as he puts an arm around you and you two walk to History.  You chuckle softly and allow him to pull you along.

Realizing something, you ask Stiles “Have you heard from Allison or Isaac today?”

“No. But I’m sure Scott told Allison what happened so she would’ve told Isaac.”

You merely hum a sound of skeptical acceptance and pull your phone out. Sending Isaac a text, you ask if he’s at school today.

Isaac: Nah me and Allison are taking the day off.

You: Everything ok?

Isaac: Ya

Isaac: just wanted to spend some time together without - ya know?

You: Alright, well stay out of trouble.

You: And give Alli my love

You: 😘💜💜💜💜

Isaac: What about me?

You: 😈😈💩💩

Putting your phone away, you sit in your seat. Scott and Stiles are deep in conversation with each other and Kira is stuck in her paperwork. It actually looks like she may be doodling, considering how quickly her pens moving across the page.

Leaning forward, you tap her on the shoulder. She stiffens for a moment before turning to you. Squeezing her shoulder in, what you hope is, a reassuring gesture she shakes her head at you, “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

You nod your head at her, “We don’t have to. Just know that if you find yourself needing anything, I’m here for you. Pretty sure that Scott would be to…” out of the corner of your eye, you see Scott glance at the two of you very quickly, “Actually I know he would.” you tell her before leaning back in your own seat.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket and you try to ignore it but it goes off a couple more times. You pull it out and look down at the screen.

Stiles: What was that?

Stiles: Natasha… she could be dangerous

Stiles: Do you want to get eaten?!

Stiles: Seriously!

The little bubble that indicates he’s still writing is going off and you shake your head before typing out a quick response,

You: Trust me... Please?

You hear him sigh and the bubble disappears for a moment before it appears again. A second later, you see his response

Stiles: 😑

Stiles: Okay.

Sending him an appreciative smile, you feel your phone vibrate again, looking at it you see a text from Ro in a group chat.

Ro: Ok, so since Ylfa, knows that we’re all talking, I am reviving the group chat and you can all suck it 😜

As you go to respond,  you hear Mr. Yukimura say, “Ms. Ragnulf,” and you know you’ve been caught on your phone. Making a face, you turn to look at him. “Since you seem so preoccupied with your phone, perhaps you already know the answer then?” At your blank look, he repeated the question he had asked the rest of the class. “What happened in the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor?”

It took you a moment to recall your reading but you finally did, “President Roosevelt called December 7, 1941 ‘A day that will forever live in infamy.’ Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan and we are officially seeking vengeance against the Japanese. The following year, Japanese-Americans are thrown in internment camps throughout the United States. The U.S. sends troops to aid the Allied Powers in Europe and fights on the Pacific Theatre. Men end up slaughtered in the capturing Iwo Jima and Okinawa as the Japanese took longer to surrender than expected. Many of the leaders of the Japanese military were required to perform Seppuku because of the shame they had brought upon -”

“Well,” Mr. Yukimura cut you off, “It seems that someone actually did their reading. Good job Ms. Ragnulf.”

Mr. Yukimura then turns back to the front of the class and continues he lecture on World War II.

-

-

-

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Do not copy and paste my writing anywhere without my consent. This work is the property of lettersofwrittencollective . Associated characters belong to MTV and are being borrowed for this work, all OC’s are the property of lettersofwrittencollective. These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

Posted 12 April 2019

[maulusque]

here’s an idea

some of the jedi actually have their shit together re: the morality of a slave army.

Namely Aayla Secura and Plo Koon. From the start of the war, they both voiced opposition to taking part, specifically citing the clones’ situation. The Council convinced them to take part as generals anyway, on the basis that at least they could do some good for the clones as generals, whereas if they sat out and let another take their place, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. They feel like hypocrites, like slave owners, but they both vow to do everything in their power to see the clones freed. After the war. And the war just keeps, happening, you know? It seems like there’s always somewhere where they and their troops are needed, innocent civilians to save, and they can prioritize civilian lives over the clones’ lives, right? I mean, at least the clones are trained for this. They both care as much as they can for the men they have, but they still lead them to battle, lead them to their deaths, requisition more troops from Kamino with the same forms they requisition more blasters with.

 Eventually, as the war drags on and on and on, and their best intentions for the clones are stymied by exhaustion, death, and bureaucracy, both Plo and Aayla realize, independently, that they need to take drastic action if they want to be able to consider themselves Jedi, or even good people. Because they haven’t done right by the clones. Whatever their intentions, they have been complicit in slavery, in child abuse, in murder and torture. Making the clones wait until the end of the war for their freedom is cruel and inhumane, and unless they prioritize freedom and justice for their men now, then they are no better than the slave lords of the outer rim, who sit in their massive palaces with fortunes built on slavery. So, they reach out. They talk to their Commanders. Bly and Wolffe put them in touch with Cody, and with each other. Cody and the other Commanders have been talking, in secret. They, too, have realized that the war isn’t going to end anytime soon, and even if it does, what happens to them? 

Cody is reluctant to trust Aayla and Plo, but Bly and Wolffe vouch for them. He asks them, if you are truly willing to help us, you have to realize that this might mean quitting the Jedi Order. This might mean turning against your fellow Jedi. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to, say, kill Mace Windu, or Depa Billaba, or Ahsoka Tano, if it means our freedom? Aayla and Plo say yes, they are. And they are. This had been one of the toughest choices they’ve had to make in their lives, when it should have been one of the easiest. They are Jedi, and they will fight against injustice and slavery wherever it may be, no matter who is perpetrating it. 

So Cody sets them to work. Aayla reaches out to her old master, Quinlan Vos. In this universe, instead of being a racist dickhead, his anti-clone sentiment is born from the fact that he utterly disagrees with the idea of Jedi waging war, and has transformed that into resenting the clones. He’s spent the entire war being literally as far away from it as possible, ignoring the Council as much as he can. Eventually, though, he undergoes a mr. darcy-like transformation, realizes what an asshole he’s been, and when Aayla comes knocking, he’s already been smuggling troopers slated for decomissioning to safe planets.

Plo Koon reaches out to Ahsoka. In the time since she’s left the order, she’s done a lot of growing up. Outside of the stress of constant war, and the influence of the Council and Anakin, she’s done a lot of thinking and also undergone Character Growth, realizing how unfair the clones’ situation is, and how she contributed to it, how she ignored the power differential between them. She jumps at the chance to help. (it does take her a bit to get used to the idea that she’s not a leader here, not a commander- she’s a useful agent, and her input is appreciated, but she and the Jedi with her are not in charge). Ahsoka approaches Rex, he tells her what happened to Fives. Ahsoka does some digging, and uncovers the chips. She takes the info straight to Rex, who, with the other Commanders and the medics, coordinate a massive, secret de-chipping operation under the guise of every trooper needing a vaccine to combat some new disease making the rounds.

Once Cody and the others are fairly sure that the majority of the army has been dechipped, the Commanders make their move, and the entire GAR goes on strike. Every Commander has passed down orders to their captains, and the captains have passed it down to their men, so everyone is briefed on what to do and how to behave. Any troops currently engaged in battle abandon whatever objective they had, fighting only to their extraction point. GAR ships abandon contested space, re-centering around Republic planets and bases. Troopers are ordered to only perform the duties necessary to keep the ships running and keep everyone alive. Food, sanitation, medical, and defense if they are attacked. Many battalions are essentially dead in space, or on whatever planet they were on, because their Jedi leaders won’t relinquish the bridges of their ships, but their troops refuse to fight. So Aayla, Plo, and the other allied Jedi are able to take their troops to these stranded groups, giving them supplies, taking the wounded, helping them defend against separatist forces if they need it.

Cody and the other Commanders have put together a document, and they send two copies. One to the Senate, and one to the Jedi Council. It is a list of grievances, followed by a list of demands.

Needless to say, the Jedi Council are forced into a negotiation pretty damn quick. The Commanders insist that a representative of the Senate, someone with the authority to speak for them, be present too. The clones refuse to send their representatives to Coruscant, because they don’t trust the Jedi Council or the Senate not to execute them. Anakin Skywalker volunteers his ship as a neutral place- sure, the 501st is on strike, but it’s a Jedi ship, so both parties should feel about as equally uncomfortable.

At the negotiations, representing the Clone Troopers: Commander Cody, Commander Wolffe, Commander Bly, and Captain Rex. Plo Koon, Aayla Secura, Quinlan Vos, and Ahsoka Tano are there to, mostly to say what the clones say, but louder and with a Jedi voice, so the council might actually listen. Present on behalf of the Jedi: Yoda, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and, ironically enough, Plo Koon, who volunteered when Yoda asked for Council members willing to participate in the negotiations. Present on behalf of the Senate: Senator Bail Organa, Senator Halle Burtoni of Kamino, and Chancellor Palpatine. Anakin is there, too, of course. It’s his ship, after all. Cody starts off by re-listing their grievances, the crimes committed against the Clone Troopers (he’s left the chips off the list- they’re still not 100% sure who’s behind it and don’t want to endanger the troops still chipped). Yoda and Mace try to interrupt him many times, but Cody just keeps talking over them, and Plo Koon keeps going “no let him finish this sounds interesting”. 

When Cody finishes, Halle Burtoni erupts into a rant about “traitors” and “defective products”. Senator Organa thinks Cody has a point. A good one. A lot of good ones, actually. Palpatine is quiet, silently calculating how he can turn this to his advantage. Yoda spouts off with a bunch of Jedi platitudes about perspective, the greater good, blah blah blah. Cody just looks at him and says “sir, you’re full of shit.” Before anyone can get on his case for it, Rex stands and starts reading off their demands. Obi-Wan keeps interrupting, with things like “surely, we can negotiate” or “I agree that you and your men have a right to these things, but in war, certain sacrifices must be made” and “can’t this wait until after we defeat the separatists?” Rex tells him to shut the hell up and listen for once in his goddamn life (quote). Obi-Wan turns to Anakin and says “Anakin, I thought you taught your men more respect than that!” but Anakin says “Actually, Master, I agree with Rex.” Before THAT can blow up, Yoda tries to calm things down with “discuss your requests, we must” but Wolffe’s like “Not requests. Demands. We are not here to negotiate, we are here to tell you what you must do if you want to keep your army.” There’s arguing. There’s yelling. Aayla makes an impassioned speech about freedom. Anakin and Ahsoka have a quick hushed aside, in which it takes Anakin about 30 seconds to decide he’s quitting the Order, too. Yoda and Mace ask Plo to back them up, but he just points at Wolffe and goes “my son”. Cody, Rex, Bly, and Wolffe are doing an excellent job of looking like the only professionals in the room. 

Eventually, Bail Organa asks everyone to calm down. “Commanders, I hear your grievances, and I understand that you have been treated wrongly. I propose that I introduce a bill in the Senate, to legally grant your demands-by the way, can I have a copy of that list?- We might have to do some arm-twisting to get the votes, but if you and your brothers hold steadfast in your strike, I’m sure it won’t take too long for the Senators to come around- especially those whose planets are close to Separatist activity.” Yoda mumbles something about needing to meditate before taking any action. Bail turns to Palpatine, who hasn’t said a word so far. “What do you think, Chancellor? Such a bill would move through the Senate much faster with your backing.” 

Palpatine has been watching the proceedings, and thinking. This could totally work out for him. Anakin and Obi-Wan are on opposite sides of this debate, and he didn’t even have to do anything to drive this wedge between them. Anakin is primed to declare against the Jedi Order. If he plays his ace card soon, the Clone Troopers massacre the Jedi, and, combined with their current strike, is more than enough justification for him to declare them all defective traitors and have them all killed via the chips, leaving Anakin with no one and nothing. Then, it’s a simple matter of unleashing him on the Separatists, having him commit more and more atrocities in the name of victory... unless, of course, Anakin decides to help the clones and participate in Order 66 himself, in which case, his job is done! And he might not even need to kill Padme to do it! At least, not until after the children are born and he can assess whether he wants one of them as an apprentice instead of their father. So Palpatine stands, walks over to Cody, and says, “Commander Cody, the time has come. Execute Order 66.”

And Cody says “Fuck you, Chancellor.” and punches him in the face. In the ensuing shitstorm, a lot of stuff is revealed. Palpatine is a sith lord- the angry Force lightning kind of made it obvious. Anakin has good reflexes, jumping in front of the lightning and absorbing the blast to protect Cody (he’s the most powerful Force-sensitive in a thousand years at least, he’ll be fine). Rex has good aim and good priorities- his pistols are drawn and Palpatine has two smoking holes where his eyes were before Anakin has finished screaming and collapsing dramatically. “Oh my fucking god,” Mace Windu says, realizing that they’ve been living in the pocket of a Sith Lord for a good decade and that he is an idiot. Wolffe is trying to get past Plo Koon, who jumped in front of him the moment Cody punched Palpatine. Aayla and Bly both tried to jump in front of each other (Bly won, because Aayla may be a Jedi but she’s shorter than he is), and Ahsoka, who didn’t get the chance to jump in front of anybody, just goes “yikes”. Obi-Wan, who is currently evaluating all of his life choices and also just how well he really knows his Commander, goes “agreed”. 

Anyway Bail gets the bill passed and is elected chancellor, and immediately enters into negotiations with the Separatists (dooku mysteriously vanished, high-tailing it out of there when his master died, and suddenly the separatist forces are much less blood-thirsty and sentient-rights violating when he’s not leading them). Yoda retires to a swamp planet, Mace decides to de-centralize the Jedi Order, re-write a lot of rules and Jedi philosophy, and moves to a new Temple being built on Hoth or something.

The clones are freed, given citizenship, backpay, and reparations, funded mostly by the Senate taxing the shit out of the Banking Clans and the Trade Federation. They objected strenuously, but couldn’t really do much about it with an entire clone army breathing down their necks. There’s a big search for a home for the clones, and a planet that will agree to host them. This is when the clan leaders of the Mandalorian Houses come forward- not the New Mandalorians, but the Mandalorians of the traditional, warrior culture, kicked out of Mandalore by the new government, living as a diaspora all over the galaxy. They say they will claim the Clones as theirs, accept them as their own clan. Their motives are manifold- one, the Clones were trained by Mandalorians, including Jango Fett, and clone culture borrows a lot from the Mandalorians. Secondly, it’ll really piss off Satine Kryze’s government, Thirdly, the promises made to the clones in Organa’s bill could be leveraged into a win-win for the Mandalorian Clans and the Clones. The Clones get their citizenship, and the Mandalorian Clans get recognized as an independent political entity, separate from New Mandalore, and as such, not subject to their laws, and entitled to a Senator of their own, as well as protection and recognition for their citizens spread throughout the Galaxy. 

Additionally, many planets offer citizenship programs to the clones, especially those whose populations had been decimated by the war. Governments are desperate for able-bodied people to come in and fill in the economic gap left by the war to stave off economic collapse. The Senate further creates programs to make it easier for clones to gain citizenship on planets that might not be so eager for them to live there, and for clones who are disabled and unable to work. So many clones end up with dual citizenship- Mandalorian Clans, and their home planet of choice.

Many choose to stay in the army- it’s familiar, it’s easier than trying to find a job and pay rent (especially when you’ve never heard of a job, salary, or rent growing up), it’s where their brothers are, and hey, they’re getting paid now. Anakin talks to Rex, and together, they take the 501st to the Outer Rim and wreck shit on the Hutts and their slave empire. After fulfilling his childhood dream of liberating Tattooine, Anakin retires to raise his children with his wife. Wolffe spends a few years traveling the galaxy alone, seeing new places and meeting new people. Eventually he returns to Coruscant, and when he leaves, a newly retired Plo Koon goes with him, and together they see as much of the galaxy as they can. Cody and Rex spend a while helping to settle their vod’e, taking the cadets and babies from Kamino and setting up home bases all over the galaxy, where they are raised by their older brothers. Cody discovers that he loves teaching. Rex finds out that he really likes kids. Eventually, Cody and Rex retire, but they still spend a lot of time with the clone children, and with their brothers. Ahsoka drops by every once in a while. Bail spends his career rooting out corruption and establishing requirements that Republic planets must elect their senators by popular vote. Everyone is reasonably content, oh and also Fives didn’t really die, he was wearing a blaster-proof vest and went into hiding, he rescued Echo and they both live the rest of their lives happily together.

[ryouverua]

Trial 6 -  ”hello, world!” (6)

Time to pick up the fallen torch.

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

K.... K1-b0? This - this must be you, right?

I’ve been waiting for this moment since the beginning of the chapter 3 trial! Finally, the explanation I’ve been craving! If - if the inner voice is coming into play now - it might actually be a benevolent force, right? Maybe? At this point we just need something to keep us moving forward...

Yes!!!

..... Oops.

“And please choose the right answer this time.”

Okay okay, jeez -

K1... K1-b0? W-Why not - ?

...... remedy the situation. Not save... but fix...???

Voices??? It’s plural now? Does that include me, the player?

K1-b0! Your moment has finally come, with no more lasers or explosions required! hopefully

WAIT

WE’RE OFFICIALLY IN HIS POV NOW???

This is incredibly late game for a protagonist switch b-but okay! also oh god what does that say about Sweetcheeks’s condition -

I’m glad we haven’t completely lost Shuichi. ): He really does look like he’s not with us, though. How can we help him? I joke about how much I love this sprite, but it’s awful seeing him like this.

But apparently Shuichi’s been relegated to the sidelines entirely now, because K1-b0 is entirely focused on Jun - Tsumugi. Oh boy, I almost started thinking of her as Junko. I will not let her hide behind her characters, damn it!

Yes! Yes, exactly! She can’t have it both ways!

YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO BE ANNOYED YOU APPARENTLY WROTE HIM TO BE THIS WAY!!!

Ooh? Yeah, the text is changing at the bottom...

U U H   I’M SORRY YOU CAN’T JUST DROP A BOMB LIKE THAT SO ABRUPTLY -

TSUMUGI LET HIM HAVE HIS COOL MOMENT

HE LITERALLY JUST GOT HIS MOMENT IN THE SUN DON’T JUST UNDERCUT HIM OUT OF NOWHERE 

no seriously she didn’t even give him a chance to build up momentum

The way she’s able to just dismiss him so casually like that, just completely trivializing him, is absolutely brutal. also what plotline lol -

I-I mean I’m joking, he has had a ‘coming to terms with his status as a robot amongst humans and accepting himself’ plotline! Sorta! It’s just been pretty.... well, behind the scenes. I just wished we got to see more of you and Miu together at the very least.

Wait -

He’s been the actual audience’s surrogate? That.... that means his ahoge....... really is the connection to the outside... but also, the only thing holding him back from going kamikaze??? It’s basically an outside force that’s been suppressing his free will?

Oh shit... is that why the game switched us to this POV, for that reveal? Well-damn-played, DRV3!

.....

wow this is getting worse and worse, huh

ALSO OH NO WAY TO SMASH HIS FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM INTO PIECES

“You know all those hi~lar~ious asides everyone had at your expense about you being no more important than your average kitchen appliance? Guess what - ! They were r i g h t!”

Somehow I wonder if it would have been better if it was the mastermind’s will. At least it would assign him some sense of importance, even if that stinging feeling of betraying his friends would be there. At least he wouldn’t literally just be the subject of some nameless audiences’ whims - as it is, he’s basically been relegated to the status of ‘plaything’.

From Chapter 3 onward, when I was thinking about it, I wasn’t sure originally if I should consider it a force for good or evil - it seemed to be generally benevolent and since he didn’t take any actions against anyone, it was generally okay for me to discard it as an extension of ‘a mastermind whose goal was for everyone to be at odds with each other/kill each other’. He was always one of the most willing to cooperate with the others, too! I even considered if any of his actions had indirectly caused tension or murder, and I couldn’t find any instances where he did. But if he’s been at the beck and call of a third party, who’s been directing him for the sake of entertainment? Well, that’s a completely different story. In that context... everything makes... a lot more sense...

.... Except for his Chapter 5 actions??? He nearly got Shuichi to take him out twice??

Wait, actually - oh, this does change how I might look at him from this point on. How often would he consult the voice? Do the decisions override his own every time? Does that mean he can only make a move at the behest of the audience????

THE WAY HE PUT IT IS EVEN MORE DEMEANING

fhgh I guess that answers one of my questions

THE GIMMICK....

every production buzzword thrown in makes my stomach drop more

S-Shit the last time he had his ‘short-circuiting’ sprite was when Kokichi did his mastermind reveal in tandem with the ‘outside world’ reveal - D:

A.... Are you trying to make them feel bad for you, because I don’t think it’s working -

omg I just realized there would totally be twitter threads and reddit posts and stuff dedicated to this, and I’m trying to imagine the rage!posts that would swarm them as users ran to the internet to bitch about how ‘the robot totally isn’t responding to us anymore!’ and ‘I bet they’re rigging it so the ending goes the way they want! What a cop out ending!’ and hell, one of those more topical ‘let 👏 us 👏 control 👏 the 👏 robot 👏 you 👏 cowards 👏’

K1-B0 WAS THE CAMERA?!?!

..................................

glances at my computer monitor, then back here

ahahaha I am officially part of the outside world!mastermind tomfoolery oh god I’m so sorry everyone

Wait.... wait. Wait! So the Nanokumas’ footage is for the mastermind’s exclusive use? Really?

I... I was under the impression that if this audience was watching everyone, they’d have access to everything....

Then how different would this all look from only K1-b0′s eyes?! Did he know about Kaito’s training, for example? About Kaede and Shuichi’s practical inseparability in the first chapter? Wow, how different would this entire thing look from K1-b0′s exclusive POV?

I’m sorry what?

okay okay she’s going off on a despair rant which is - y’know, great, you do you and whatever - but I think it just turned my brain off a little bit. Like I just got catapulted back to DR1.

A-Are we really turning back to the whole ‘Junko persona’ idea? That she took on that role specifically, and by taking on the role as ‘Junko Enoshima’ she feels obligated to follow it through to the end? B-But...... but??? For a show??? That’s... no, that can’t be right, that’s weird, that’s stupid, that can’t be right....

You gotta admire her dedication to the craft I-I MEAN NO

WHAT THE HELL TSUMUGI

THAT IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH MOTIVE

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT KIND OF REASON

SHUT THE FUCK UP KOMAEDA AND DON’T LOOK SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS oh that actually felt pretty good

i say this as someone whose previous favourite was komaeda it was very love/hate don’t @ me

Oh hey, the opening music is on! Is this the big turnabout we’ve been waiting for? It’s.... so.... weird that it’s coming from K1b0 now? Also wasn’t this sort of the plot of the DR3 anime via the Ultimate Animator or -

I??? I guess??? Weren’t they all just screaming DESPAIR at Shuichi a minute ago??? Isn’t it their comments on the screen???

Inspirational and all but -

I’m GoINg to cHOkE anD DiE

ULTIMATE HOPE ROBOT

FJKGHSDKLFJ

WHAT ARE YOU KIDDING ME

oh shit well there’s text saying Hope now so I guess something has changed out there

I believe it’s called déjà vu.

No seriously, am I hallucinating? Is this not what led to the whole final vote in DR1 or am I going crazy? Is this... what is.... happening........???? And Shuichi has just completely BSoDed in the corner??? Like, is he disassociating right now? Where is he?

It’s interesting that she looks happy here compared to angry Junko. She looked excited earlier when K1-b0 challenged her too (her new jazz-hands!sprite, lol) too, and her voice is on the brink of. Uh. I’m just going to say it’s getting very.... passionate. Is she just that confident or...?

Oh hey their sprites mirror each other. Parallels. :D

I like how Tsumugi is having Makoto say this part ~

But this brings up a good question... how exactly is this so-called final battle going to work? If they can’t fight for the right to leave, then what can they do?

alksdfj Himiko and Maki have also been so quiet this so time - I almost forgot they were there. K1-b0 and Tsumugi are basically the only ones doing the talking and between all the cosplays it feels like there are way more people here than there actually are - which is the point, I think? It really adds to that oppressive, ‘everyone is against you four’ atmosphere.

“- DETAILS DETAILS anyway it’s happening I don’t really care, now about that special vote ~”

This -

This is literally DR1?!?!

This.... this is strange. There has to be incentive to vote one way or the other. Is she going to tie ‘vote for K1-b0’ and ‘you’ll be forced into a world where you can’t/shouldn’t exist’ together vs ‘Vote for Tsumugi′ and ‘stay inside forever’? That’s.... what happened in the others, right?

Shuichi, mentally clocked out but occasionally checking back in so he doesn’t miss anything important: Wow this is absolute bullshit

Yeah... there’s no way they weren’t going to find a way to tempt you to vote for K1-b0. Okay, lay it on us.

YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE THEM KEEP GOING?!?!

“Ugh why did I let myself get lured back into the conversation by my bitchin’ ‘Lazy Parallel World’ theme song I’m going to mentally check out again because everything hurts and I want to die -”

There.... there aren’t....??

THAT’S NOT ENCOURAGING omg I missed that catchphrase it always made me laugh

I??? I don’t know if I can trust that??? If you can literally make flashback lights to override their old memories - if you can force it on them, whether they’re willing or not - if you can delete the last 24 hours, you could make them do something again??? T-Though if Tsumugi is gone... but then again, there’s a whole team of people behind this apparently! Her being gone means nothing!

“So you cannot leave this place.” Is it? Is it literally, physically impossible to leave this place? That’s the real question. the impossible is possible all you gotta do is make it so... s o b

HOW EVIL CAN YOU GET

HOW COULD YOU NOT EVEN GIVE THEM A POSSIBILITY OF RETURNING TO THEIR ORIGINAL SELVES

WHY WOULD ANYONE MAKE SOMETHING LIKE THAT WHY WOULD THAT BE OKAY FOR A PUBLICLY TELEVISED TV SHOW

For that matter this whole damn series sounds like a snuff film, if actually people are involved. Dear lord, even if they are actually adults - and I desperately hope that if this is true, that the outside world is actually like this, and watches this for fun, then they have a ‘18+’ rule for auditions (actually considering the love hotel exists they must be at least 18 ggh) - even the survivors.... have been killed, in a sense. Their previous selves have been killed. They were dead the moment they entered the world...

So either 16 people consented to ‘dying’ in an existential sense as well as possibly a physical sense, or 16 people were kidnapped and ‘killed’ for the entertainment of the world. I.... I actually... do at least believe, no matter what, that there is a depraved audience viewing this from somewhere. There’s no way there isn’t - this feedback via comments, the scene with that kid Makoto watching this at the beginning of this chapter - those are true. And they were more than okay with the idea of these people dying for their entertainment, even the so-called winners.

You can only create new identities, not recover them... I, I dunno. Somehow that’s so much more soul-crushing than a lot of the other things that have come up this trial.

t-the way his voice is breaking skdlfjgh -

W HA T!?

WHAT THE FU -

WHY?! WHY?! WHY MUST IT ONLY BE TWO, EVERY TIME?! WHY HAVE YOU BEEN SO DETERMINED TO ONLY HAVE TWO PEOPLE SURVIVE TO THE END?!

H.... How the hell.... are they supposed to do that?! Is that how you’re doing it?! Putting the burden of the decision on them, in order to break them?!

H-HE LITERALLY SOUNDS LIKE HE’S GOING TO BREAK DOWN SOBBING ANY SECOND I CAN’T TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS

She is really trying to push that point, huh... but there it is. They can escape to the ‘outside world’. That is a cold comfort at this point, but...

They...... I don’t. I don’t know. I wouldn’t be able to do this - look my classmates in the eyes and condemn them. I guess this somehow managed to be worse than DR1.

K1-B0 NO

fml of course the only potential option would be students choosing self-sacrifice

I... I’m glad Shuichi is showing concern. I’ve noticed it a few times, how finally in the last chapter or so that he’s been observant of K1-b0′s well-being where the others haven’t been.

But I’m getting distracted - that’s not the point! FML I know he’s been shown those extremist tendencies towards the vague ideal of hope and destroying the despair, I - between this and the ‘destroying the school’ rampage he went on - what is he aiming for? You’re saying that you’re trying to defeat despair, but what is that? Is hope just the opposite of despair? Is despair just whatever Tsumugi says it is, so we’re immediately opposed to it, as the representatives of hope? Are you fighting for them to escape? Why is everyone surviving together ‘living despairful lives’ if Tsumugi is gone and they aren’t trying to kill each other anymore? What makes it that way? Why is this considered ‘defeating despair’? What does that even mean?

I... I guess K1-b0 would be punished anyway if they voted for him, but.... still....

Ugh, I get it. I get that kibou is hope, and that K1-b0 is therefore hope, and that we’re fighting for him to win or... something.... uhghghgh

DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE SHUICHI

This was such an uncomfortable parade of ~ideal waifus~ sdlkfjsdf especially when we were getting into the ‘super tiny/cute’ territory because I have absolutely no interest in that whatsoever also I accidentally deleted Mahiru’s cameo sorry -

.... I wonder if this would’ve been more effective if I was the target audience for this? Either way, ending on Junko was still an offsetting choice, right? Right??

..........

Wait for that matter, who was this aimed for? Who out of Maki, Himiko or Shuichi would have fallen for that? Even if you believe that Maki or Himiko have an interest in women, nothing about the types they showed or may have shown interest in the game (Maki @  Kaito, Himiko @ Angie, Tenko and hell, even Kokichi) would lend them to the girls Tsumugi just cosplayed as? And even Shuichi’s strongest interest were in Kaede and Kaito - so who is Tsumugi trying to appeal to here?!

Oh shit we’re going into a mass panic debate! Okay, okay okay - !

.... Oh. Oh boy, I have to shoot down every mention of despair. Uh, okay -

OMFG I missed the screenshot but Monokuma started shilling their merch and their website I cannot even deal with how they’ll occasionally devolve into corporate shilling it’s so good -

But!!! We’ve got better things to do than get caught up in Monokuma’s commercializing of the class trial!

MAKI

NO MAKI WHY

ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE UP FOR LAST CHAPTER IS THAT WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

omg

are you telling me

you’re not even doing this out of guilt

it

it’s spite

you’re doing this out of spite

you’re sacrificing yourself purely ou t of spite

MAKI HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE MAKI, AGAIN??? AGAIN?!?!?!”

“LET ME KILL SOMEONE SAIHARA IT’S MY DAMN TALENT FFS -”

DOES THIS SCREENSHOT SAY ‘SHUICHI LOOKS YUMMY <3′ YOU’RE RUINING THE MOMENT

okay I’m not going to feel right until I write down the new set of comments

Makiiii

my darling assassin T_T

Hope lives on!

Shuichi looks yummy <3

Well said!

Another hope loop?

Hope is contagious!

Two steps forward...

Don’t lose to despair!

Don’t tempt Maki’s fate...

That’s my Maki.

Hope must go on!

Maki, darling...

;_; I’m gonna cry...

Hope vs despair!

one vote for Keebo!

tfw you’re in despair

ALL OF THESE TEARS

Assassiiiiiiiin

I am living for these comments and I would have killed to see the comments for the Chapter 5 trial - hell, the Chapter 4 trial. that’s what let’s plays and YT comments are for I suppose -

tbh I think if that one that keeps lusting after Shuichi comes to help we’re going to need a restraining order

o

o-oh?!

AAAAAAH

NO DON’T

MAKE ME FIGHT HIM

MY ACTUAL SOUL BRO

is............... Is that -

Clair de Lune playing......?!

[ettadunham]

A Buffy rewatch 3x05 Homecoming

aka nobody wins

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and rant about it in 10-3k words. What you can expect: long run-on sentences and disjointed observations, often focused on one tiny detail about the episode. What you shouldn’t be expecting: actual reviews that make sense.

And in today’s episode, Faith asked Buffy out to be her date at the dance, and she said yes! But then Buffy ended up going with Cordelia, because everybody’s doing this dating thing wrong anyway.

I mean, let’s take a tally here. Buffy’s going out with Scott, but she sneaks out to meet Angel. To whom she’s talking about Scott. And then Scott dumps her.

But that’s okay because Faith asks her to be her date. (She’s being so faux-casual about it too… Oh, Faith.) Except the gang interferes for Buffy and Cordelia to go together and work out their differences. A suddenly dateless Faith then masterfully sabotages Scott and his new date to get back at him for hurting her girl.

Oh yeah. And the Willow/Xander disaster ride has left the station. Which I guess will be my main subject for today, because I love a good trainwreck.

Homecoming is one of those episodes though that has a lot of good stuff going for it, so one should at the very least acknowledge that before attempting some very specific character deep dive.

Buffy has one of her greatest speeches here for instance.

Buffy:  I just thought... Homecoming Queen. I could pick up a yearbook someday and say, I was there. I went to high school, I had friends, and... for one moment, I got to live in the world. And there'd be proof. Proof that I was chosen for something other than this. Besides... I look cute in a tiara.

It’s a great storyline for Buffy, about her trying to reclaim her place in the world as a young high school teenage girl, rather than someone burdened with all these adult conflicts and responsibilities.

But what I also like in this scene is Cordelia. You would normally expect her to cut the tension with a snide candid remark, but she remains silent during Buffy’s speech. She even seems understanding and empathetic listening to her! That’s growth.

Before that though, there’s also this weird thing happening earlier as they’re competing with each other for the title. Cordy remarks that a Homecoming queen should be someone who’s part of the school and has friends. And I was like…

Cordelia, your friends are Buffy’s friends. And in season 1 you complained about how none of your pals from before were actual friends you could connect with. That’s sort of why you started hanging around the Scooby gang in the first place.

I guess maybe Cordelia meant having general connections at the school as well, which she probably still has, despite falling out with her clique earlier… But then again, she lost the vote, so who knows.

The weird thing though is that as it turns out she was right about her having the friends, as the gang ends up helping her instead of Buffy with her campaign. But that’s entirely on Xander and Willow, and Buffy needs about 2 seconds to break Willow to help her out too.

And yes, finally, it’s time to talk Willow and Xander.

I’ll admit, I’m obviously coming into this episode with thoughts and feelings on these characters that reach far beyond the current point in the show. I also sat down already thinking about what I was about to see, so I somewhat predetermined what my read was going to be on it.

I will say though, that the whole HORMONES take does seem a lot more valid after rewatching the episode now. There’s definitely this pattern of them trying to fight the ~~~attraction~~~, and then feeling super guilty about it whenever they ~~~give in~~~.

But saying that it’s just “hormones” and them doing “young stupid shit” is also a boring take. What them being teenagers in this situation essentially means is that they don’t really have the ability yet to self-reflect and try and figure out what they’re acting on. They’re too busy feeling guilty, and guilt and introspection are definitely not interchangeable.

So I’ll do the analyzing for them. You’re welcome.

I used to think of cheating as the ultimate show of a lack of respect for one’s partner. Which it is. But it‘s often also a reflection of how the person doing the cheating currently feels about themselves and the relationship they’re in.

And yes, there’s also the question of who they’re cheating with and how they feel about them. Which I will get into.

I feel like it is noteworthy to point out too that once Willow and Xander get caught, they’ll never again pursue any sort of romantic relationship with each other. We also won’t see them cheat on any of their future partners… but they will manage to self-sabotage their relationships in other ways, proving that they still have plenty of issues to work through.

And some of their baggage can actually be followed back to the same root: wanting to be loved. But how that manifests for each of them is significantly different.

For Willow, being loved means being special to someone. Being the first choice, the person who they’d never abandon. She clings to that feeling and to the people she experiences that with. And we’ll see just how bad that can get, especially once you put power into that mix… but safe to say, that that’s why she held that torch for Xander for so long.

Xander and Willow grew up together, and they’ve been essentially the most important people in each others life since childhood. It’s possible to read then Willow’s crush on Xander as a desire to make sure that that bond would never break, and that she wouldn’t end up being Xander’s second choice. Or worse, someone he would leave behind.

Anyone who knows me even a tiny bit should already be aware of this, but for the record, I’m not saying with this that romantic love is more important than friendship. But I definitely feel like in Willow’s mind and subconscious these things might get conflated.

I imagine then that for Willow, the feeling of Xander finally reciprocating all these confusing emotions is pretty intoxicating. She knows that there’s something wrong with this picture, that Xander’s still in a relationship, and that she’s with someone else who sees her as special and wonderful… But she’s also not putting any effort into figuring out those emotions beyond her guilt. As a result, she has trouble putting a stop to what’s happening, because she doesn’t have a full understanding of herself and what she’s feeling.

And that’s very much Xander’s issue as well. But he’s approaching it from a different perspective.

Xander’s coming from a pretty bad home situation. It’s largely only hinted at during the show, so we can mostly guess at the nature of abuse he grew up with, but it’s pretty obvious that he didn’t receive a lot of love from his family. He learned to cope through sarcasm and desperately trying to be noticed by someone.

The problem is that while Xander wants to be loved, he also hasn’t really experienced what that feels like growing up. So he doesn’t really know what he’s looking for, and instead ends up constantly chasing after something new and unattainable.

The tragedy of course is that he’ll never actually be able to find that missing piece of himself. He’ll never feel the security that comes from growing up being surrounded by unconditional love. He can only learn to accept the people he surrounds himself with as his new family, and share the kind of love he wishes to have always had with them.

In this moment however, much like Willow, he falls into the trap of conflating the nature of his feelings. He’s always loved Willow, she was one of the few positive influences in his early life. But the idea of her as a romantic interest just wasn’t alluring to him, because she was already there. All he had to do was reach out - which is why he never did.

But as soon as Willow became unavailable, Xander’s interest became more and more apparent. He was visibly jealous of Oz, and in the end of s2, he seems to come to a realization of just how important Willow is to him. (A moment which will then be reflected back seasons later where Xander’s “I love you” will bring Willow back from the brink once again, this time completely free from any romantic connotations.)

For me, the fact though that neither of these characters will make any effort to try and figure out if they could be in a relationship together past this little affair they got going on, is what confirms that they’re not really acting on a romantic interest. They love each other, deeply, but mostly, they’re just conflicted about their lives, and about where they and the relationships they’re in are going.

There are definitely reasons one can list on why they’d be self-sabotaging their relationships too. For Xander, I already detailed his chasing the unattainable to find what’s missing from his life mentality, which means that he might be trying to get out of this relationship on a subconscious level. And with Willow, we can easily retrofit her sexuality into this discussion. Especially since it appears that she and Oz were approaching a level of physical intimacy that could’ve given her a lot of anxiety she wasn’t ready to deal with.

Out of the two, Xander will also be the one who won’t make much of an effort to win Cordy back. And sure, Oz might hold less of a grudge too, but there’s still a very clear distinction in how Willow and Xander will be handling the fallout. But as discussed earlier, it’s also very much in character for Willow to cling to these relationships, so this should come as no surprise.

But I might just be forgetting some details about this storyline. We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.

Like I said, I love a good trainwreck.

[patriotsnet]

Are Republicans More Racist Than Democrats

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-republicans-more-racist-than-democrats/

Are Republicans More Racist Than Democrats

How Should We Address The Uss History Of Slavery And Racism Heres What Americans Think

Are White Republicans Really More Racist Than White Democrats?

Reddit

Discussion of racial issues has intensified in recent years, with vigorous debates emerging at the national and local level over once obscure academic arguments such as critical race theory. At the core of much of the discussion is how we should confront Americas history of slavery and racism. As this debate continues, a recently released report from the Pew Research Center sheds new light on the question.

Here are the core findings: Although 48% of Americans think that the country has made real progress on race over the past 50 years, 50% say that a lot more needs to be done, 57% believe that whites benefit from advantages that Black Americans lack, and 53% view increased attention to slavery and racism as positive for society.

Beneath these aggregate statistics, there are significant differences among different groups in the population, mainly along racial, partisan, age, and educational lines. For example, 46% of whites think that giving increased attention to slavery and racism is a good thing, compared to 75% of Blacks, 59% of Hispanics, and 64% of Asians. The partisan gap is large: 78% of Democrats favor highlighting slavery and racism, versus just 25% of Republicans. Young adults are 19 percentage points more likely to approve than seniorsno doubt a reflection of the fact that, as we know from the recent census results, younger Americans are more diverse than older Americans. The same gap divides the most- and least-educated Americans.

White Republicans An Outlier On Views About Race In America

Data: Axios/Ipsos poll; Chart: Axios Visuals

A new Axios-Ipsos poll on race relations one year after George Floyd’s murder shows in stunning detail how there’s no such thing as “what white Americans think,” with Republicans and Democrats seemingly living in two different worlds.

Why it matters: Such a vast gap between the left and right inside the majority U.S. racial group belies the notion of a compromise view, and it shows why Congress has been so slow to act.

Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets.

It also helps to explain why Donald Trump still has such a hold on the GOP.

Watch: Axios’ race and justice reporter Russell Contreras and managing editor for politics Margaret Talev discuss the poll’s findings on “Axios on HBO” on HBO and HBO Max.

Details: Black Americans are the most dissatisfied or worried about the status quo on issues from policing to employment to politics.

57% of white Americans say that “the events of the past year have made me realize there is still a lot of racism in our country,” but that breaks down as 35% of white Republicans and 93% of white Democrats. By comparison, 80% of Black Americans agreed with that view.

The poll also examined racial and ethnic disparities around policing and the criminal justice system, which Axios’ David Nather unpacked as part of our Hard Truths series.

This same split between white Democrats and Republicans can be seen across most of those questions as well.

Not A Generalization But The Majority Of Racists Are Republican

OK, as current proof of my point, http://img3.allvoices.com/thumbs/image/609/480/95031869-vote-romney.jpgSorry for the long link, but it completely proves my point. RACIST!Also, it is not uncommon for people to hold up highly offensive posters at rallies, speeches etc. For example, one said ‘Impeach the half-breed Muslim’ . Tell me again that that isn’t racist. I also want to make the point that NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS! PEOPLE SHOULDN”T CARE IF THEIR PRESIDENT IS MUSLIM ANYWAYS!!!!!!!!! I actually know many Muslims and they are awesome and some of the nicest people on earth . Just because some Muslims screwed up doesn’t mean that every Muslim is the same way. Don’t pull the argument about slavery, the parties have morphed and current examples are better.

Read Also: Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Names

Democrats Or Republicans Who Do You Think The Happier Group Is Overall

Based on my unofficial research and that of some of our readers, the Republicans and Conservative Democrats appear to be the winners. Why do I say that?; Well, just by their demeanor. During interviews they generally seem to be the calmer, more respectable of the two. Republicans certainly arent perfect, and they certainly dont always have the right idea or say or do the right thing.; And, they tend to exaggerate a bit .

Analysis: A Reckoning On Racism Not For Many Leaders Of Gop

NEW YORK If the nation is in the midst of a historic reckoning on racism, most leaders of the Republican Party are not participating.

On the day last week that a jury convicted the police officer who killed George Floyd, Republicans in Washington focused much of their energy on condemning the longest-serving Black woman in Congress. In the days since, former President Donald Trump attacked what he called the racist rants of basketball icon LeBron James. And some of Trumps staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill are considering forming a new group that initially planned to champion Anglo-Saxon political traditions.

Beyond simple rhetoric, Republican state lawmakers are pushing forward with new voting restrictions that disproportionately affect people of color and are resisting legislation designed to prevent police brutality.

The moves reflect a stark political reality: As America grows more diverse, the Republican Party continues to be led almost entirely by white people, particularly men, who cater to an overwhelmingly white base. And despite fierce criticism from civil rights leaders and growing concern from business leaders who are traditional allies, many Republicans see no problem.

Its unfortunate that more in the Republican Party are not willing to stand up for what I would define as creating a more just and humane system, Martin Luther King III told The Associated Press. It makes you wonder if they really even care.

Passage remains uncertain, however.

Recommended Reading: How Did The Republicans Take Control Of Congress

More Than Half Of Republicans Think Minorities Are Favored Over Whites In The United States

At its heart, the Black Lives Matter movement is focused on the ways in which racism is embedded in American law enforcement, resulting in a disproportionately large number of deaths of Black people at the hands of police. This idea that racism may be embedded in governmental or social systems is the crux of critical race theory. Racism, the theory postulates, isnt simply a function of racist people acting out against others because of their race. Instead, some of racisms most significant effects are felt from long-standing systems that have integrated, often invisibly, race-specific differences.

That the Black Lives Matter movement has been so successful at drawing attention to issues of race and racism, though, means that its much easier to notice complaints about systemic racism than it is to notice the racism itself. It means that there are good-faith but clumsy efforts to draw attention to issues of race that have little to do with critical race theory but which become a focal point of aggravation. It also means that groups that benefit from systemic advantages mostly White Americans may feel that they are the ones being criticized. If you dont see the purported racism but feel that youre being held to account for it, frustration would naturally result.

In 2017, fewer than half of Republicans said that minorities are favored over Whites. Now, a majority say they are.

But When You Watch The Republican In The Media Being Attacked The Majority Tend To Handle It With More Grace Then The Majority Of The Democrats

I dont think its because the Republicans have more money because the Democrats tend to be the wealthier group.; The majority of the richest people in the world are Democrats or Liberals.; Yet, they sure dont look like a happy group of folks .; I think a lot of people who are rich were their happiest when they were working hard coming up through the ranks and earning their money.; I also think sometimes the social issues they get caught up in when they become wealthy can be frustrating causing many people to lose their tolerance over time.

Don’t Miss: How Many Republicans Would Need To Vote For Impeachment

Why Did The Debate Become A National Controversy

Arguably, a large part of the debate has been inflamed and muddled by the activism of a conservative documentary filmmaker named Christopher Rufo.

As detailed in an extensive New Yorker profile, Rufo built a cottage industry exposing government racial awareness training across the US. While doing so, he discovered the academic writing behind it – and set out to raise awareness about what he saw as an organised effort to “re-engineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race”.

He labelled all of the various episodes and instances he was cataloguing as examples of “critical race theory” in practice, even though the academic discipline was not always an exact fit for what he was documenting.

“The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory’,” he wrote . “We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

The term, he told the New York Times, made for the “perfect villain” because it sounded academic, elitist, racist and divisive.

How far have African Americans come since 1960s?

Legislative as well as grassroots rebukes of public-school teaching labelled as CRT have cropped up around the country.

Because it is a concept, not a stand-alone subject, opponents have assembled lists to help parents identify what they see as harmful terms and topics in the classroom.

What Do Supporters And Opponents Say

Who Do YOU Think Is More Racist, White Democrats or White Republicans?

There’s a cartoon that circulates among critical race theory supporters showing children, one tall and one short, trying to peer over a fence to watch a baseball game. Equality, the illustration explains, is giving children the same sized box to stand on – with one child still unable to see over the obstacle. Equity, on the other hand, gives the shortest child the most boxes, so that everyone can see the field.

The idea of equity is to provide more to those who are perceived to have the greatest disadvantage in order to achieve better equality of outcome and to compensate for the historical wrongs of discrimination and systemic racism.

“A key part of the argument of critical race theory is that racism is endemic to American society because of the way society is structured,” says Lynn. Teaching with the framework addressed issues that “people have been trying to do for a long time to correct some of the problems we have in schools” he says.

It’s a view that animated affirmative action programmes – race-based preferences in hiring and college admissions – in the past, and currently influences everything from road repair in Oakland, California, to the Biden administration’s vaccine outreach efforts.

He says the idea of “equity” is more than just policy prescriptions, it’s about “abandoning the broad political philosophy that has traditionally held this country together”.

Read Also: How Many Republicans Are Needed To Vote For Impeachment

How Is Critical Race Theory Taught

How – and even whether – CRT is being taught is the subject of contention that lies at the heart of the current debate.

As a curriculum subject, critical race theory is largely the purview of university law schools and graduate programmes.

The concepts, however, have influenced historians, journalists and educators in school districts across the US who say they want to do more to teach the public about the US struggles with discrimination rooted in race.

One high-profile effort, the New York Times magazine’s 1619 Project, was a series of essays and articles that sought to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very centre of our national narrative”, per the paper’s description.

It received mixed reviews, including sometimes sharp criticism from historians who disputed its accuracy.

How the concepts translate into a public-school curriculum and teacher training have become the flashpoint of the CRT controversy.

An elementary school in Cupertino, California, for instance, asked third-graders to label their own power and privilege in an “identity map”. At least 30 schools recommended that students should read Not My Idea, a children’s book that called racism “a white person’s problem and we are all caught up in it”.

Instances like these have led to what has become an increasingly intense criticism.

Reagan’s Neshoba County Fair States’ Rights Speech

Aistrup argued that one example of Reagan field-testing coded language in the South was a reference to an unscrupulous man using food stamps as a “strapping young buck”. When informed of the offensive connotations of the term, Reagan defended his actions as a nonracial term that was common in his Illinois hometown. Ultimately, Reagan never used that particular phrasing again. According to Ian Haney Lopez, the “young buck” term changed into “young fellow” which was less overtly racist: “‘Some young fellow’ was less overtly racist and so carried less risk of censure, and worked just as well to provoke a sense of white victimization”.

Recommended Reading: What Happens If Republicans Win Midterms

There Is A Lot Of Flawed Logic Here

Anyone who equates conservative or Republican with racist is the exact thing they are projecting on others. Plain and simple.Racism is simply the lumping together of large groups of people and claiming they all have the same traits. Anyone who says that all conservatives are racist is exactly the same. The most racist people I have ever met have been liberals. But that doesn’t mean I think all liberals are racists. That’s absurd. But you continue on making generalizations about people you don’t even know. That just shows how tolerant and open-minded you really are.

When Minorities Vote Gop The Media Smears Republicans As Racists

The racism smears stink of fear.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

In just one week, the Washington Post churned out two op-eds on the same theme, “The GOP is Now Just the Party of White Grievance” and “The Republican Party is Making Jim Crow Segregationists Proud”. The D.C. Democrat paper doesnt bother clarifying why Democrats from two generations ago would be thrilled that 1 in 5 black men voted for President Trump.

Ever since the election, the media has been beating its narrative drum with one message.

CNN howls that Republicans are the worst racists. The New York Times insists theyre even more racist than that. And MSNBC will counter that only white racists would vote Republican.

The most famous media exponent of the white grievance line is Stuart Stevens: Romneys senior strategist, who went on to join the Lincoln Project. Stevens claimed on MSNBC that the GOP, “went down a path to embrace white grievance as its core” and that, “of the Americans who are 15 years and under, the majority are nonwhite. They’re gonna be nonwhite when they turn 18 and start voting and that’s the end of the Republican party as we know it.”

My party obviously has an embarrassingly small share of African American votes, Senator Romney claimed after embarrassingly participating in a Black Lives Matter rally.

Recommended Reading: What Do Republicans Believe About Taxes

Americans Who Say A Lot Has To Be Done To Ensure Equal Rights For All Split Over Whether Many Laws And Institutions Need To Be Completely Rebuilt

While half of Americans say that a lot needs to be done to ensure equal rights for all Americans, those who express this view are divided over what needs to be done.

A quarter of Americans say that to ensure equal rights for all Americans, most U.S. laws and major institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased against some racial and ethnic groups. A nearly identical share says while there are many inequities in U.S. laws and institutions, the necessary changes can be made by working within the current systems.

Overall, nearly six-in-ten Black adults say that in order to ensure equality for all Americans regardless of their racial or ethnic backgrounds, most major U.S. institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased against some racial and ethnic groups, while just 19% say necessary changes to address inequities can be made within the current systems; about two-in-ten say little or nothing at all needs to be done. Among other racial and ethnic groups, smaller shares overall say a lot more needs to be done; those who do are roughly evenly split between those who say changes can be made within current systems and those who think most institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased. As a result, Black adults are significantly more likely than Hispanic , Asian American and White adults to say most institutions and laws need to be completely rebuilt.

Democrats Are The Real Racistsand Minority Americans Are Taking Note

Who are the real American patriots?

Who are the real racists?

These two questions will play a big role in the 2020 election.

The left is desperate to turn any traditional patriotic appeal into an act of racism. The left is desperate to smear Republicans and moderate Democrats as racists.

This past week, between Sunday and Tuesday, CNN and MSNBC reportedly used the word “racist” more than 1,100 times.

Part of this desperation is in the left’s inability to debate the facts and their hope that strong smears can shame their opponents out of broaching the argument.

Part of this desperation is in the left’s growing realization that President Donald Trump and the Republicans are beginning to attract minority support in a serious way.

The 2018 election was a watershed in the shift of minority voters toward Republicans.

Consider the example of the very left-wing African American female candidate for governor in Georgia, Stacy Abrams. She alienated enough African American males with her platforms that the Republican candidate got a significant percentage of African American male votes.

In Florida, a left-wing African American candidate for governor lost almost one out of five African American female votes because of his opposition to school choice.

All around the country, Trump is attracting Latinos to his rallies. There is strong support in the Latino community for job creation, income growth, small business prosperity and enforcing the law.

Read Also: How Many Republicans Are Now In The House Of Representatives

[statetalks]

Are Republicans More Racist Than Democrats

How Should We Address The Uss History Of Slavery And Racism Heres What Americans Think

Are White Republicans Really More Racist Than White Democrats?

Reddit

Discussion of racial issues has intensified in recent years, with vigorous debates emerging at the national and local level over once obscure academic arguments such as critical race theory. At the core of much of the discussion is how we should confront Americas history of slavery and racism. As this debate continues, a recently released report from the Pew Research Center sheds new light on the question.

Here are the core findings: Although 48% of Americans think that the country has made real progress on race over the past 50 years, 50% say that a lot more needs to be done, 57% believe that whites benefit from advantages that Black Americans lack, and 53% view increased attention to slavery and racism as positive for society.

Beneath these aggregate statistics, there are significant differences among different groups in the population, mainly along racial, partisan, age, and educational lines. For example, 46% of whites think that giving increased attention to slavery and racism is a good thing, compared to 75% of Blacks, 59% of Hispanics, and 64% of Asians. The partisan gap is large: 78% of Democrats favor highlighting slavery and racism, versus just 25% of Republicans. Young adults are 19 percentage points more likely to approve than seniorsno doubt a reflection of the fact that, as we know from the recent census results, younger Americans are more diverse than older Americans. The same gap divides the most- and least-educated Americans.

White Republicans An Outlier On Views About Race In America

Data: Axios/Ipsos poll; Chart: Axios Visuals

A new Axios-Ipsos poll on race relations one year after George Floyd’s murder shows in stunning detail how there’s no such thing as “what white Americans think,” with Republicans and Democrats seemingly living in two different worlds.

Why it matters: Such a vast gap between the left and right inside the majority U.S. racial group belies the notion of a compromise view, and it shows why Congress has been so slow to act.

Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets.

It also helps to explain why Donald Trump still has such a hold on the GOP.

Watch: Axios’ race and justice reporter Russell Contreras and managing editor for politics Margaret Talev discuss the poll’s findings on “Axios on HBO” on HBO and HBO Max.

Details: Black Americans are the most dissatisfied or worried about the status quo on issues from policing to employment to politics.

57% of white Americans say that “the events of the past year have made me realize there is still a lot of racism in our country,” but that breaks down as 35% of white Republicans and 93% of white Democrats. By comparison, 80% of Black Americans agreed with that view.

The poll also examined racial and ethnic disparities around policing and the criminal justice system, which Axios’ David Nather unpacked as part of our Hard Truths series.

This same split between white Democrats and Republicans can be seen across most of those questions as well.

Not A Generalization But The Majority Of Racists Are Republican

OK, as current proof of my point, https://ift.tt/3jpQSob for the long link, but it completely proves my point. RACIST!Also, it is not uncommon for people to hold up highly offensive posters at rallies, speeches etc. For example, one said ‘Impeach the half-breed Muslim’ . Tell me again that that isn’t racist. I also want to make the point that NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS! PEOPLE SHOULDN”T CARE IF THEIR PRESIDENT IS MUSLIM ANYWAYS!!!!!!!!! I actually know many Muslims and they are awesome and some of the nicest people on earth . Just because some Muslims screwed up doesn’t mean that every Muslim is the same way. Don’t pull the argument about slavery, the parties have morphed and current examples are better.

Read Also: Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Names

Democrats Or Republicans Who Do You Think The Happier Group Is Overall

Based on my unofficial research and that of some of our readers, the Republicans and Conservative Democrats appear to be the winners. Why do I say that?; Well, just by their demeanor. During interviews they generally seem to be the calmer, more respectable of the two. Republicans certainly arent perfect, and they certainly dont always have the right idea or say or do the right thing.; And, they tend to exaggerate a bit .

Analysis: A Reckoning On Racism Not For Many Leaders Of Gop

NEW YORK If the nation is in the midst of a historic reckoning on racism, most leaders of the Republican Party are not participating.

On the day last week that a jury convicted the police officer who killed George Floyd, Republicans in Washington focused much of their energy on condemning the longest-serving Black woman in Congress. In the days since, former President Donald Trump attacked what he called the racist rants of basketball icon LeBron James. And some of Trumps staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill are considering forming a new group that initially planned to champion Anglo-Saxon political traditions.

Beyond simple rhetoric, Republican state lawmakers are pushing forward with new voting restrictions that disproportionately affect people of color and are resisting legislation designed to prevent police brutality.

The moves reflect a stark political reality: As America grows more diverse, the Republican Party continues to be led almost entirely by white people, particularly men, who cater to an overwhelmingly white base. And despite fierce criticism from civil rights leaders and growing concern from business leaders who are traditional allies, many Republicans see no problem.

Its unfortunate that more in the Republican Party are not willing to stand up for what I would define as creating a more just and humane system, Martin Luther King III told The Associated Press. It makes you wonder if they really even care.

Passage remains uncertain, however.

Recommended Reading: How Did The Republicans Take Control Of Congress

More Than Half Of Republicans Think Minorities Are Favored Over Whites In The United States

At its heart, the Black Lives Matter movement is focused on the ways in which racism is embedded in American law enforcement, resulting in a disproportionately large number of deaths of Black people at the hands of police. This idea that racism may be embedded in governmental or social systems is the crux of critical race theory. Racism, the theory postulates, isnt simply a function of racist people acting out against others because of their race. Instead, some of racisms most significant effects are felt from long-standing systems that have integrated, often invisibly, race-specific differences.

That the Black Lives Matter movement has been so successful at drawing attention to issues of race and racism, though, means that its much easier to notice complaints about systemic racism than it is to notice the racism itself. It means that there are good-faith but clumsy efforts to draw attention to issues of race that have little to do with critical race theory but which become a focal point of aggravation. It also means that groups that benefit from systemic advantages mostly White Americans may feel that they are the ones being criticized. If you dont see the purported racism but feel that youre being held to account for it, frustration would naturally result.

In 2017, fewer than half of Republicans said that minorities are favored over Whites. Now, a majority say they are.

But When You Watch The Republican In The Media Being Attacked The Majority Tend To Handle It With More Grace Then The Majority Of The Democrats

I dont think its because the Republicans have more money because the Democrats tend to be the wealthier group.; The majority of the richest people in the world are Democrats or Liberals.; Yet, they sure dont look like a happy group of folks .; I think a lot of people who are rich were their happiest when they were working hard coming up through the ranks and earning their money.; I also think sometimes the social issues they get caught up in when they become wealthy can be frustrating causing many people to lose their tolerance over time.

Don’t Miss: How Many Republicans Would Need To Vote For Impeachment

Why Did The Debate Become A National Controversy

Arguably, a large part of the debate has been inflamed and muddled by the activism of a conservative documentary filmmaker named Christopher Rufo.

As detailed in an extensive New Yorker profile, Rufo built a cottage industry exposing government racial awareness training across the US. While doing so, he discovered the academic writing behind it – and set out to raise awareness about what he saw as an organised effort to “re-engineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race”.

He labelled all of the various episodes and instances he was cataloguing as examples of “critical race theory” in practice, even though the academic discipline was not always an exact fit for what he was documenting.

“The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory’,” he wrote . “We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

The term, he told the New York Times, made for the “perfect villain” because it sounded academic, elitist, racist and divisive.

How far have African Americans come since 1960s?

Legislative as well as grassroots rebukes of public-school teaching labelled as CRT have cropped up around the country.

Because it is a concept, not a stand-alone subject, opponents have assembled lists to help parents identify what they see as harmful terms and topics in the classroom.

What Do Supporters And Opponents Say

Who Do YOU Think Is More Racist, White Democrats or White Republicans?

There’s a cartoon that circulates among critical race theory supporters showing children, one tall and one short, trying to peer over a fence to watch a baseball game. Equality, the illustration explains, is giving children the same sized box to stand on – with one child still unable to see over the obstacle. Equity, on the other hand, gives the shortest child the most boxes, so that everyone can see the field.

The idea of equity is to provide more to those who are perceived to have the greatest disadvantage in order to achieve better equality of outcome and to compensate for the historical wrongs of discrimination and systemic racism.

“A key part of the argument of critical race theory is that racism is endemic to American society because of the way society is structured,” says Lynn. Teaching with the framework addressed issues that “people have been trying to do for a long time to correct some of the problems we have in schools” he says.

It’s a view that animated affirmative action programmes – race-based preferences in hiring and college admissions – in the past, and currently influences everything from road repair in Oakland, California, to the Biden administration’s vaccine outreach efforts.

He says the idea of “equity” is more than just policy prescriptions, it’s about “abandoning the broad political philosophy that has traditionally held this country together”.

Read Also: How Many Republicans Are Needed To Vote For Impeachment

How Is Critical Race Theory Taught

How – and even whether – CRT is being taught is the subject of contention that lies at the heart of the current debate.

As a curriculum subject, critical race theory is largely the purview of university law schools and graduate programmes.

The concepts, however, have influenced historians, journalists and educators in school districts across the US who say they want to do more to teach the public about the US struggles with discrimination rooted in race.

One high-profile effort, the New York Times magazine’s 1619 Project, was a series of essays and articles that sought to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very centre of our national narrative”, per the paper’s description.

It received mixed reviews, including sometimes sharp criticism from historians who disputed its accuracy.

How the concepts translate into a public-school curriculum and teacher training have become the flashpoint of the CRT controversy.

An elementary school in Cupertino, California, for instance, asked third-graders to label their own power and privilege in an “identity map”. At least 30 schools recommended that students should read Not My Idea, a children’s book that called racism “a white person’s problem and we are all caught up in it”.

Instances like these have led to what has become an increasingly intense criticism.

Reagan’s Neshoba County Fair States’ Rights Speech

Aistrup argued that one example of Reagan field-testing coded language in the South was a reference to an unscrupulous man using food stamps as a “strapping young buck”. When informed of the offensive connotations of the term, Reagan defended his actions as a nonracial term that was common in his Illinois hometown. Ultimately, Reagan never used that particular phrasing again. According to Ian Haney Lopez, the “young buck” term changed into “young fellow” which was less overtly racist: “‘Some young fellow’ was less overtly racist and so carried less risk of censure, and worked just as well to provoke a sense of white victimization”.

Recommended Reading: What Happens If Republicans Win Midterms

There Is A Lot Of Flawed Logic Here

Anyone who equates conservative or Republican with racist is the exact thing they are projecting on others. Plain and simple.Racism is simply the lumping together of large groups of people and claiming they all have the same traits. Anyone who says that all conservatives are racist is exactly the same. The most racist people I have ever met have been liberals. But that doesn’t mean I think all liberals are racists. That’s absurd. But you continue on making generalizations about people you don’t even know. That just shows how tolerant and open-minded you really are.

When Minorities Vote Gop The Media Smears Republicans As Racists

The racism smears stink of fear.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

In just one week, the Washington Post churned out two op-eds on the same theme, “The GOP is Now Just the Party of White Grievance” and “The Republican Party is Making Jim Crow Segregationists Proud”. The D.C. Democrat paper doesnt bother clarifying why Democrats from two generations ago would be thrilled that 1 in 5 black men voted for President Trump.

Ever since the election, the media has been beating its narrative drum with one message.

CNN howls that Republicans are the worst racists. The New York Times insists theyre even more racist than that. And MSNBC will counter that only white racists would vote Republican.

The most famous media exponent of the white grievance line is Stuart Stevens: Romneys senior strategist, who went on to join the Lincoln Project. Stevens claimed on MSNBC that the GOP, “went down a path to embrace white grievance as its core” and that, “of the Americans who are 15 years and under, the majority are nonwhite. They’re gonna be nonwhite when they turn 18 and start voting and that’s the end of the Republican party as we know it.”

My party obviously has an embarrassingly small share of African American votes, Senator Romney claimed after embarrassingly participating in a Black Lives Matter rally.

Recommended Reading: What Do Republicans Believe About Taxes

Americans Who Say A Lot Has To Be Done To Ensure Equal Rights For All Split Over Whether Many Laws And Institutions Need To Be Completely Rebuilt

While half of Americans say that a lot needs to be done to ensure equal rights for all Americans, those who express this view are divided over what needs to be done.

A quarter of Americans say that to ensure equal rights for all Americans, most U.S. laws and major institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased against some racial and ethnic groups. A nearly identical share says while there are many inequities in U.S. laws and institutions, the necessary changes can be made by working within the current systems.

Overall, nearly six-in-ten Black adults say that in order to ensure equality for all Americans regardless of their racial or ethnic backgrounds, most major U.S. institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased against some racial and ethnic groups, while just 19% say necessary changes to address inequities can be made within the current systems; about two-in-ten say little or nothing at all needs to be done. Among other racial and ethnic groups, smaller shares overall say a lot more needs to be done; those who do are roughly evenly split between those who say changes can be made within current systems and those who think most institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased. As a result, Black adults are significantly more likely than Hispanic , Asian American and White adults to say most institutions and laws need to be completely rebuilt.

Democrats Are The Real Racistsand Minority Americans Are Taking Note

Who are the real American patriots?

Who are the real racists?

These two questions will play a big role in the 2020 election.

The left is desperate to turn any traditional patriotic appeal into an act of racism. The left is desperate to smear Republicans and moderate Democrats as racists.

This past week, between Sunday and Tuesday, CNN and MSNBC reportedly used the word “racist” more than 1,100 times.

Part of this desperation is in the left’s inability to debate the facts and their hope that strong smears can shame their opponents out of broaching the argument.

Part of this desperation is in the left’s growing realization that President Donald Trump and the Republicans are beginning to attract minority support in a serious way.

The 2018 election was a watershed in the shift of minority voters toward Republicans.

Consider the example of the very left-wing African American female candidate for governor in Georgia, Stacy Abrams. She alienated enough African American males with her platforms that the Republican candidate got a significant percentage of African American male votes.

In Florida, a left-wing African American candidate for governor lost almost one out of five African American female votes because of his opposition to school choice.

All around the country, Trump is attracting Latinos to his rallies. There is strong support in the Latino community for job creation, income growth, small business prosperity and enforcing the law.

Read Also: How Many Republicans Are Now In The House Of Representatives

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-republicans-more-racist-than-democrats/

[tyrantisterror]

Bonus: More Buffy Characters I’d Ruin

I had to cut myself off while writing my How I’d Ruin It: Buffy the Vampire Slayer article because it was almost 10pm and I still hadn’t finished, but goddam if there aren’t more Buffy characters I wanted to talk about, so here’s the “deleted scenes” for the article.

Anya: Introduced as a monster of the week (specifically a demon), Anya was demoted by her bosses to a mere mortal human after she was defeated, and went on to be a recurring cast member.  Anya had a delightfully warped outlook, since she really wasn’t accustomed to human society and as such didn’t understand many social taboos. While she could be blunt and callous, she meant well, and was a good ally.  Unfortunately, she was also written to be Xander’s love interest, and most of her plots were built around him.  Worse, the rest of the characters kind of treated her like shit, regarding her with annoyance at best and outright hostility at worst.

Since my reboot is a bit kinder to monsters in general, we’d go a different way here.  Instead of being annoyed by Anya, the group would all actively try to rehabilitate her – their end goal is coexistence with the supernatural, after all, and Anya could be instrumental in that.  Though it takes a while and is often frustrating, they make progress, and Anya eventually learns the value of humanity and in turn becomes an essential ally.  Especially once her powers start coming back…

Tara: Introduced as Willow’s first female love interest, Tara was a young witch whose family told her (and all her female family members) that women in her family would become demons on their twenty first birthday, and thus had to be hidden away to keep from incurring the wrath of the outside world.  This was resolved in one episode, and afterwards Tara had little to do except be Willow’s girlfriend.  The writers later killed her off for drama because they had nothing else for her to do.

But, I mean, c’mon!  A young woman raised by an abusive and misogynistic family goes to college, discovers witchcraft AND her own homosexuality, and then rebels against her family despite being told that doing so will reveal her true inhuman nature?  Surely that has potential for more than just one episode of focus!   Let Willow and Tara have solo adventures!  Get her involved in helping the rest of the cast!  Shit, you know what, given our reboot’s stance on monsters, let’s make the family’s threat true – maybe she IS part demon.  Demons rebel against authority, and some authority needs to be rebelled against.  Tara has the potential for interesting and awesome plots – plots about how being different from what is normal doesn’t have to be a cause of shame, but can instead be literally empowering.  Let’s make it happen.

Jenny Calendar: Jenny Calendar was introduced as the high school computer teacher, and also a “technopagan,” i.e. a witch who incorporates modern technology into magic, rather than remaining in the past.  That is such a badass concept that it’s a damn shame they never did anything with it.  Instead, Jenny became Giles’ love interest, and then was revealed to be part of the Roma family that cursed Angel to have a soul, which is treated as a betrayal for some reason.  Then Angelus kills her so Giles can feel sad.

Again, there’s so much lost potential here!  Given that this reboot is playing up both the magic AND technology expertise with Willow, Jenny could easily find stuff to do as Willow’s mentor, and making a mix of magic and technology more of a thing could also allow for a lot of weird and fun monster plotlines that they would be key in solving.  Having a strong, adult female role model would also be good for, like, all of the main characters – Buffy’s mom can’t fill the role entirely since she needs to be out of the loop for plot reasons.

Kendra: The first time Buffy died and came back to life resulted in another Slayer getting called into being, violating the “there can only be one Slayer” rule after a grand total of one season.  Kendra is one of the few black characters in Buffy who gets more than one line, AND she’s a Slayer, AND she’s from Africa!  There’s a lot of potential there!  Sadly, she was kind of, well, boring, and her case wasn’t helped by the fact that the writers clearly didn’t do a whole lot of research into any of the various countries and cultures in Africa, resulting in a character that’s pretty stereotypical.

But that potential though! Let’s have the reboot violate the “only one slayer exists at a time” rule right from the get go – instead, there are many slayers, albeit still very few (definitely under 100).  Each would be the hero of their own story, and there could be fun stories where we get glimpses of the different types of supernatural threats on other parts of the globe.  We could explore how different Watchers work with their respective Slayers, comparing Giles and Buffy to others while also examining the problems with the Watchers Council (and perhaps showing that more Slayers than just Buffy realize they’re getting a raw deal here).  The potential is so great!

Faith: As mentioned in the article proper, Faith is Buffy’s evil opposite, the rogue Slayer who became a villain.  Faith loves fuckin’ and killin’, and the show makes it very clear that both of those interests are the reason she’s evil – everyone seems to go out of their way to slut shame Faith, to the point where “evil” and “skanky” are both treated as her defining attributes, each equally vilified. While Buffy has a fairly normal middle class life (despite being in a single parent household and, y’know, a vampire slayer), Faith grew up poor in an abusive environment, and has overall had a hard life.  She is very clearly a troubled person before she turns full villain, and her character arc is primarily focused on her envy of Buffy’s life.  She rants repeatedly about how often she is unfavorably compared to Buffy, and one of her evil schemes involves swapping bodies with Buffy to escape punishment for her actions.

The fact that Faith is positioned as Buffy’s evil opposite because her life situation sucks is, well, problematic, and the slut shaming piled on top of that definitely doesn’t help. However, since we inverted Buffy for this reboot, why not invert Faith as well?

Reboot Faith comes from a ridiculously rich family, is valedictorian at her school, and treats vampire slaying as an unfortunate responsibility rather than an adventure. She’s a brutally efficient yet utterly merciless Slayer.  In her mind, she’s an exterminator, not a hero who saves civilians and certainly not someone who wants to find a peaceful solution to the humans vs. monsters conflict. As far as she’s concerned, supernatural creatures threaten humanity just by existing, and the conflict can only end with one side’s total destruction.  She is essentially every negative implication of a typical “Human slays monsters” story condensed into one character – a proper opposite for Reboot Buffy’s open minded rough housing party girl monster fighter.

Forrest Gates: “Who the fuck is Forrest?” you may be asking. Working for the same government monster task force as Riley Finn, Forrest was essentially Riley’s sidekick and foil.  He was both Riley’s second in command and best friend, and he stuck with the government when Riley rebelled to be with Buffy.  Being a foil, his personality deliberately contrasts with Riley’s: while Riley is straight laced, soft spoken, and “nice” in a bland “I’m not vocally racist but I still voted for Trump” sort of way, Forrest is hot blooded, individualistic, outspoken, sarcastic, and sometimes deeply cynical. If you were to guess which of the two would rebel when they learned their government employers were up to shady shit, you’d guess Forrest – which I suppose makes it an interesting twist that he stays while rule-abidin’ Riley goes rogue.

Forrest doesn’t develop more than that, and when I first saw the series I wrote him off as just what he was written to be: Riley’s foil.  Upon rewatching the series this year, though, I noticed something: Forrest is, well, interesting.  He’s far more analytical and aware than Riley.  He’s got better lines, he’s got a good sense of humor, and he brings a wild sort of energy to every scene he’s in.  He’s got more vocal interest in and chemistry with Buffy than Riley did before they hooked up (not a hard feat, to be fair – Riley has all the romantic energy of two week old mashed potatoes).  And, yeah, he seems much more believable as the army guy who would spot the flaws in his organization and go rogue.  Let’s make Forrest the Initiative Agent who switches sides and goes with our heroes.  It verges into crackfic territory, sure, but that’s what How I’d Ruin It is all about.

Harmony: Starting as “Cordellia except without the depth,” Harmony was just a Mean Girl stereotype until she became a vampire. Then she evolved into something slightly more complex: Harmony was a woefully ineffective villain, a ditz who was not cut out for causing evil that everyone, good and evil alike, made fun of. She also became an abuse victim, which might have been poignant if the show didn’t spend all the rest of her screen time making fun of her for being dumb, shallow, and promiscuous.

I have a noted soft spot for affable and ineffectual villain characters, and I think Harmony could play a valuable role in my heretical reboot’s approach to monsters.  Harmony would be the rare person who actually improved upon becoming a vampire, as her death and rebirth as a monster helps her realize how bullshit all her high school clique nonsense was.  At the same time, she’s grossed out by the whole “eating people” thing, and her general cluelessness actually gives her a unique perspective that other vampires and monsters lack – Harmony, in her own simple way, could note the pragmatism of not eating people, since no one’s gonna stake you for buying blood from a butcher.  When grander villains rope her into their schemes, they quickly find she’s more of a hindrance than a help.  She’d be the loveable rogue of the story – not quite a hero, but never a true villain either.

And maybe we could explore toxic relationships with someone who isn’t quite so cartoonish.

“Angel”: While the core of Angel’s character – being the only vampire with a soul and the guilt that comes with – doesn’t work in the reboot’s setting, that doesn’t mean we can’t have him altogether.  Reboot Angel would take a page from his spinoff and make him a vampire Private Detective, and one of the first vampires Buffy meets that is inarguable a decent person.  He helps the helpless, gets his blood from non-human animals in a human way, and is generally a good person despite being a vampire.  In this take, Angel wouldn’t be a love interest – ‘cause even when he’s not evil, there’s a creep factor to the whole “vampire with a body that’s in its mid 20’s dating a 16 year old” thing, and also because it would be kind of funny to me for a vampire to rebuke the interests of a young vulnerable woman, since, y’know, that’s the opposite of what vampires usually do. Buffy’s crush would, painfully for her, be unrequited.

“Angelus”: In the original show, Angel lost his soul and became the evil Angelus when he and Buffy bumped uglies in the figurative way instead of the literal way they usually do.  It’s one of the more clever results of the show’s “All monsters are metaphors” approach – a guy seems nice until he sleeps with you, then he turns evil. That’s a really good way to use a monster story as a metaphor for a real problem young women face.

But.

There is a crucial difference between the figurative meaning of this plot and the LITERAL events of it, and that difference rests in the guy’s autonomy.  Angel has NO CHOICE in the matter – he has no control of his actions, no agency in the horror that follows.  His soul is magically removed by the coitus, and the evil done by Angelus is the responsibility of the vampire spirit that now runs his body. The only one who has agency here is Buffy – the person who, in the real life problem this situation is an allegory for, should be the VICTIM of the resulting abuse.  Women get blamed for making men abusive a LOT – “she was asking for it” and all that bullshit.  And here we have a monster plot that literally makes the victimized woman the only person in the relationship who has agency in causing the abuse that follows – she literally removed his soul by sleeping with him.  It’s not an unintended thing, either – some of the characters call Buffy “rash” and “careless” for sleeping with Angel, and  taken within the show’s general opinion that girls who sleep with men before marriage are bad, it’s not something we can ignore.

Still, there’s a good idea beneath the awful execution.  We just need to tweak it.

So our “Angelus” would begin as a decent guy who dates one of our young female characters – maybe Buffy, maybe Willow, maybe Cordelia, we’ve got options here.  He seems nice at first – he’s got sort of a bad boy thing going on and he’s a bit older than is normal, but whatever doubts he inspires are quickly dissuaded by the help he offers the group and his general kindness. He might be broody and angsty from time to time, but any red flags he sends are easy to write off.  Until he sleeps with the girl in question.

Then, quite literally, he turns into a monster.  Up till this point the audience would be lead to believe he’s human, but no, he reveals his true colors as something inhuman and heartless – perhaps something much worse than a vampire.  The personality change is as drastic as the physical, and our heroes quickly learn that all his “kindness” before was a ruse.  He is nothing more than cruel and sadistic predator, and one that needs to be put down.

Vampires as a whole: Buffy’s take on vampires is one of my least favorite in fiction, since they’re basically just strong guys with sharp teeth, weird eyes, Klingon bumps, and often an inexplicable knowledge of martial arts.  Like most post-Anne Rice vampires, they’re very simple so as to avoid being “goofy” – no transformation, hypnosis, etc.  My preference is for the “goofy” stuff though – turning into mist, or a giant bat, traveling on moonlight, commanding legions of rats, all that good Bram Stoker shit.  I also love some of the weird folkloric takes on vampires, like the ones with multiple hearts and other weird shit.

Borrowing a page from my own fictional universe, the vampires in my Buffy reboot would be weird and varied.  There would be multiple breeds, and even within those there’s a lot of individual variation.  While some vampires are stronger than others, ALL would be significant threats.  We’d be going for quality over quantity – while Buffy has less vampires to fight in this reboot, the ones she does slay take a lot of work to kill.  So, in short – vampires by way of Stoker rather than Rice.

[ts-akhmim]

Episode 7 “It's a Hot Mess Express “ - Scott

People are so hard to work with. I get they don't like this challenge truly I do but I just wish they wouldn't keep shutting down every idea I had. It's... annoying. I get that I'm also the problem here. Because if an entire room full of people is saying you're wrong then you're probably wrong but still. I dislike being shut down. I've just been feeling kind of isolated since my name was written down. Even in my own alliance it seems like everyone thinks less of me for being paranoid. It doesn't help that I'm not entirely pop culture savvy so a lot of their convos I'm a bit out of the loop on. Part of me wonders if it's cause I'm in a male dominated environment? I don't think they are sexist but I do think that I'm being unintentionally ignored. Like throughout the duration of this confessional I have submitted 6 ideas/comments to the group and they've either been left in the dust or dismissed. That has to mean something right? Is it my personality? Did I come on too strong with my enthusiasm? Do they think I'm bossy? Socializing doesn't exactly come naturally to me. If anyone had met me 4 years ago you'd probably be in the know. You know that ability where you can pick up what people imply, whether through body language or through hidden meanings. I don't. I literally was born with out that ability and it has done whatever the opposite of wonders are for my life. At first I thought it was fine, I thought hey no big, everything is good, people like me eventually. But then I played Malaysia... A lot of great things came out of that game, a lot of good friendships and memories but in a way it sort of haunts me. When the confessionals came out, for the first time ever I saw what people thought about me. Sure they liked me eventually but they also disliked me. Like really really didn't like me at all. It was my first real interaction with people outside of the treatment school I went to, it was my first real interaction with the rest of the world and people hated my guts. Don't get me wrong I always suspected I was disliked but... to see their actual written thoughts on paper was hard. Of course as they got to know me they started to like me but I couldn't forget that it wasn't always like that. That at one point they looked at me or their screen or whatever and saw a pest. And that's my biggest fear, that I'm the problem. That no matter where I go people see me and are filled with dread or disgust. That people are always wishing me some from of ill because I'm bad at conversation or sort of creepy. Well at least they came to their own conclusions now, maybe they pulled their heads out of their asses or because it wasn't me they were actually able to function. God this spiraled, I only wanted to complain about how shitty my tribe was being not go on this full blown existential rant. Fuck me am I right? I'm not sure what this is going to contribute to the game. There is no hashtag big moves or fun comments but like I already typed this up so I'm not going to delete it like a pussy. 

Ok now we can talk whew. UMMMM not Connor fucking up Duncan's perfect record! Now that I'm over the shock, thank you Connor because I'm 95% sure that obsession is the reason Duncan did the most to make sure Devon voted me instead of him back on Thoth https://giphy.com/gifs/mamovie-stalking-octavia-spencer-eavesdropping-j5uEVYERR0ncYlJ36e Really pleased with how the game is shaping up tbh, assuming I don't lose another music video challenge hahaha. I would LOVE a final 3 with me, Ali, and Devon but I know that's a long way off so I'm just focusing on the here and now. My biggest concern is protecting Ali. Essentially Duncan hit me up to work with him, TJ, and Jordan and I was very much like lol not sure about that. Mainly because Jordan and I don't have a strong relationship? And Duncan was like yeah but he wants to get to know you better and I'm like https://giphy.com/gifs/week-wtf-moments-QjIz1AqkGTszK If that's the case, that needs to come from Jordan and then it's between me and Jordan. Why someone else is interceding on Jordan's behalf is very dicey to me but I'm not that surprised because that continues to be a theme with Duncan: getting me to fit into plans that best suit him. Y'all know DAMN well Jordan Pines don't wanna go to the end with me and the feeling is mutual. But I HAVE to make it work with Jordan or Duncan will get pissy. He literally was like ok well who are you close with and I felt a serious feeling in my gut to not mention Ali. So I said oh I talk to Adam a lot but I wouldn't say I trust Adam. So after telling Ali all of this lmao, we decided I needed to go back to Duncan and say yes because it would keep me in the know and keep both of us safe. Also it allows me to keep an eye on Jordan and Duncan at the same time so we truly stan. And the gag is I'm not scared of Jordan Pines and I welcome the challenge of getting him out so love yall for letting me in through the front door hahaha My new issue is just timing. We'll be ok if we win this next challenge but if not, I could see that alliance targeting Ali. Obviously I have a plan and will put the vote on someone else but I really want to prolong turning on that group for as long as I can. I don't wanna spook TJ and I know killing Jordan will leave me with a pissed Duncan and I really don't need that based on how seriously he's playing. So I'm hoping I can finesse somehow? Maybe one of them gets idoled out at merge and then a blindside on the other won't be as messy. But yeah I keep feeling like the walls are closing in, in terms of allies, and I'm working HARD to make sure I have an exit strategy at all times haha cause fuck these men I'm trying to win again. I "love everyone" which means I have no problem voting out anyone

So let me just make sure i got this right, connor tried to get people to vote for me, they all told me, he "planned" with me to go for liam, then....he votes for duncan and he goes home unanimously? little did he realize when he went around and gave a feeble attempt at rallying people to vote for me, i had already rallied everyone to go for him and made sure everyone knew he was a liar and couldnt be trusted, you know im a firm believer in loose lips sink ships and i absolutely used my big mouth as my weapon to sink his ship. Even if there turns out to be some majority alliance that did this all without me then well...i guess that's another story but im still taking my hard earned credit because either way i got what i wanted one way or another so im here for it, sorry gal! i now find myself in a position i hope i can make some moves with, duncan already just made a vague to comment to me about how "it only takes 4 now" which he's right, and he mentioned autumn, himself, me, and ali. Which, that's a 4 I would love to go forward with for the time being, i like to think ive had good genuine talks with them 3 in particular, and now we can start get together maybe lock something in and if we make it to a merge or even another swap we at least have something to work with with each other, but we'll see, we gotta focus on immunity first now, id love to win just to for sure see any of the other people who lied to me go home oop so while i may be feeling ok now i just have to remember to simmer down and play smart and make the right connections with the right people i need and saying the right things to whomever needs to hear it, because that's what i do best in these type of games to stay alive, i feel like my intuition has been leading me ok so far this game so im just gonna keep basing my decisions off that and charging forward PERIOD and ill damn sure do it with or without the help of the tomb because a bitch can not get in ive tried over and OVER at this point im back to pounding on the door of it just hoping if im annoying enough yall will let me in!

i'll do a proper game confessional later but me and dan are both judges for the svalbard music video challenge and its so sad that we cant talk... its like... this could be us working on a music video if things were different kjlsdfa its missing dan and jake hours

Whew! Sorry about that what happened was I ran out of anxiety meds a few days and that rant was the commutation of being with out sanity pills for three days! Everything is fine! I am fine! People are fine! I am sorry to the future Thoth 2.0 tribe, you are all great, I just get very spirally when I am without some sort of stabilizing force! Sorry to the hosts for using this as a diary this is not a diary this is survivor... Anyway this time I have some more constructive things to add! Okay so things are fine. Dan and I continue to bond, though he had to call me out on being bad at communication in order for our relationship to progress. I get it was like a check point or whatever and frankly I appreciated it. Like I said in my rant yesterday I have massive paranoia when comes to interacting with people and whether they like me or not, so constructive feedback while annoying is always helpful. Plus through research I found that he values a good social game so the fact that he's reaching out and telling me what I'm doing wrong is probably a sign that I'm not a lost cause :D. It turns out we have a few mutual friends our lord and savior John Coffey and also Sarah,... Lynn to be specific there are like a shit ton of Sara(h)s so should probably clarify lol. I want to work with him. I know he's in the majority alliance with the brawn tribe, which also contains Jakey and Jordan. Considering the fact that the beauties are slowly but surely getting eliminated, their favor would be helpful to me and mine. However, I know for sure that one of them wrote my name down. Honestly probably both of them. I know I keep harping on this fact but I just really really don't like the idea of looking like an idiot by aligning with someone who wanted me dead or wanted to fuck with me. If we do lose this challenge we are going to have to figure out who to keep or who to eliminate, I feel like it should be between those two. Mostly because I'm not exactly comfortable with a brawn majority. Like I know how people are saying tribe lines don't matter and while they don't, advantages do. And what more advantageous than being in a majority alliance? If we get rid of a brawn that would make it 4 brains- 4 beauty - 5 brawn. Which seems a bit more fair lol. Also RIP Connor remember how I said he was a threat? Welp I guess this is why they don't ask me for cast assessments :/ and also cause I was dead for like several years.

absolutely nothing has happened in fact i was kinda in a ~mood~ today so i feel like my social game took a big L because i didnt feel like talking to anyone and i was busy so i kept being that bitch to responding once an hour ..... but in other news i finally accessed the tomb, and once i started using more than one brain cell at a time i was able to get in and it was actually about 10x easier than i was making it out to be im not sure WHY i was struggling so much but of course, to no surprise i finally get in and the pedestal is empty AGAIN. Now there's not only at least 1 idol from the last time i went in the tomb gone, but there's possibly a second too, if not an advantage that can easily be played against me. At this point all i can do is try and recover a little bit, tomorrow ill have to just try more with my conversations and hopefully one of the people i can somewhat trust is the person who has whatever was in their time time around but probably not, it's never that easy

okay so i have a video confessional from earlier uploading which is kind of a recap of the last two rounds BUTTT!! liam just finished editing our video and i love it!! he did so good and our tribe all tried our best... im just hoping the other tribe didn't go bananas all out, because if they didn't we should hopefully win... i really wanna win immunity because otherwise i feel like adam is gonna be the vote and i dont want that anymore KJASDFA. i would just be sad because idk who the alternative would even be.... so basically we better win immunity KJLSADFA

Me: Alright everyone, make sure you film horizontally!!! Devon: Fuck you

Honestly!!! I take back what i said about Kendall. I feel like we’re making some strides to work together??? Or she’s playing me? I’m hoping to stir a Devon vote this round because I think he threw the vote on Kendall to piss me off, but who knows. I wanna talk to Jakey and see what he thinks about a me/him/augusto/Amir alliance to get through this vote? Idk I trust him but who knows!!!! Maybe everyone is lying to me??? 

okay... i know i said god is a woman and her name is autumn but its time for the remix. god is a woman and her name is alyssa's mum because alyssa's mum just rescued us from defeat in that challenge JKASDF the judges were kinda unnecessarily harsh but we move on. basically for the other tribe's tribal, i hope jake/dan/devon live... hopefully another scary old school person goes but tbh who knows what is going to happen?! im just so happy to have made f13, i said i'd come 14th in my intro so we love surpassing my own expectations

the immunity challenge went well, we won, which is good because i just didnt feel like going to tribal council because im honestly unsure what the hell is going on, i wanted to feel good about the connor vote because obviously that was my plan from the start however he just made it a little too easy by not talking to a lot of people allegedly, up until right before the vote, i dont think there'd be an easy vote next time we go to tribal, unless ... it's me... am i the easy vote?? i wanna really think im not but its just always too quiet to me when we dont go to tribal there's also lots of talk and speculation about a possible merge at 13, but me and my vivid imagination aka paranoia think maybe another swap of some sort could still happen even if for just another round or 2, i never knew with you sneaky hosts!! also i know we won in the challenge but we wouldve won in the challenge by even more if liam used more footage of my video i sent in i feel like i got no screentime!!! but of course i kept my big mouth shut for once because there's no i in team so ill try not to throw too much of a diva fit but listen... i tried to give yall a DEATH DROP, and i pulled a wig ruveal by snatching off my hat, and i was giving you a whole tik tok dance i made myself..... but there was no way i was doing more than beyonce's part so he didnt have much to work with so touche .... the full version i made will just be deleted scenes for myself ill reflect on when im more mature and think to myself "what the fuck was i doing?" 

So not to my surprise, we end up losing the challenge AGAIN!! I've just accepted that I really don't have any luck in this game. I was really hoping that we'd just win every challenge until the merge because I'm over going to tribal and voting people out. I feel like going to the amount of tribal councils that I have has left a huge target on my back. But at the same time, I'm playing the game more than other are. Maybe I have that going for me, who knows. Anyways, the Thots alliance is deciding on either Devon or Dan for this vote. I basically told them I was good with either, even though I would perfer to keep Devon so that I at least have more of an opportunity to rebuild our relationship. I've made it very clear that if the group as a whole wanted to do Devon that I'd write his name down to prove that I trust this group moving forward. So we decide to go with Dan for this vote, and this doesn't really sit well with Jakey. I'm not surprised by that, since I know he's wanted Kendall out for awhile now. But he is really adamant that he doesn't want Dan to go. Which I get, he thinks that Dan would trust him moving forward. When it comes to Dan though, his social game lacks so much that it's like "I don't even know if I can trust him moving forward". And I think the fact that Jakey more so wants to target Kendall this round instead of Dan is a strong sign for me. I'm pretty positive he has an idol since the brain one has been found and he's lied to me about clues before. So this has me thinking, maybe it's a good time to get Jakey out this round? Thinking about it numbers wise for the future, we don't really need Jakey's vote for a majority this round since the four beauties and myself makes 4, and if we bring in Devon that's 5. Plus, I don't even think that Jakey's under the impression that he would... get voted out this round. He seems offly confident that he's staying, just that Dan's going. But I like to think he'd let Dan be a sinking ship and go.. Idk I'm gonna try to pitch this to Amir and see what he thinks. I kind of tried to hint around it to Augusto that Jakey wasn't cool with it, but Augusto kind of turned a blind eye at that. And I don't trust Kendall with my thoughts since she's very blunt... so I wouldn't be surprised if she leaked my plans. Similarly to what Devon did when I voted him out last week. I'm hoping that Amir will see where I'm coming from and that he might be open to that concept. For all I know, I could be voted out this round. And honestly, that'd be the smart move for them to make because my perception in the game so far has been pretty spot on. I think my self awareness this time around has been an asset for me, so I'm hoping that I can get by this vote and hopefully enter the merge soon. 

Coming back into the game, I knew I needed to open up a bit and start to Slither earlier than I would imagine. After throwing a vote onto Kendall, I broke down any chance between the Beauty and Brawn working together to knock out myself and Scott. I haven't told anyone about my vote, and don't plan to. Going into this vote, Dan should be the obvious choice. OG Brawn hasn't suffered any additional losses in numbers, and I'm just too close with Augusto/Amir/Kendall to consider flipping. In preparation of tonight NOT being a swap, I established an alliance with Amir and Augusto. They are a duo in every sense, but attaching myself to them sets up the opportunity to at least CONSIDER voting out Scott next round. It would have to be between him and Scott. 

All I got to say is oof… I genuinely thought I was on vacation after the last round like I’ve been SO bad about talking to people or at least that’s how I felt cause I was operating at 60% instead of the 110% I do when I socialize. That being said, I have my goals that I want to stick to and see happen. Dan needs to leave this tribal so I can get Jakey out next even if Dan leaving makes me really sad. Dan leaving takes a number away from the Brawn and a number away from Jakey, who I am able to get out by keeping Devon and having him/Kendall/myself/Amir vote for him if we happen to lose again. The alliance of me/Kendall/Amir/Jakey/Scott went on call last night and it was deadass an hour and a half long call where everyone was like “idk who should go but I’m fine with whatever” although… that certainly wasn’t the case. I, personally, made points that were pro-Devon such as Devon not having any clear allies to reunite with at merge and things like that and EVENTUALLY at the last 5 minutes of the call, we decided that Dan leaving is the better option. Scott and I even discussed a Brawn having to go before we even did the call so yeah. One thing I could tell though? Jakey was not having it. I understand his frustration but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. I voted out AJ to prove that I am not here to play by tribal lines and you said you would do the same but here we are… Amir called me last night telling me about how Jakey was trying to strong arm him into voting Devon out because Jakey didn’t want to do Dan… like sir, I’m? I’m very happy that Amir came to me and confided in me to kinda spill out his emotions like that makes me <3 but it also made me wanna pop off at Jakey because I don’t like those approaches in games hgfjdks even if I do really like Jakey, I was just ugh gjfdks. That aside, I feel like I am doing good about getting information and building friendships out here like I’m DEADASS is almost every single alliance on the tribes I’ve been a part of and while I don’t get tons of info from direct sources (ie. Jakey), I get the information from close allies (ie. Amir) which in a way can be even better? That being said, I’ve been way too good at forming friendships that every vote makes me feel really bad? With Dan for example, I adore that man like even if he isn’t the most talkative he’s just amazing. But does Dan benefit my game as much as Devon? Not really, even if Dan wanted to align. I’m sticking to my promise of doing what I have to do and be a little bit more cutthroat than I usually am because I do genuinely want to win this game and I’ll do what it takes to get there. Honestly, I’d be SHOOK if we do not merge next round or the round after ghfjdksm but I’m just trying to plan ahead and look at my connections. My Thoth connections are Amir > Kendall > Devon > Scott > Jakey whereas my Hathor connections are Autumn > Duncan > Adam (?) > TJ > Jordan > Liam M > Ali. If we do merge, making a secret thing with Autumn would be KEY just to have another person in my corner but also I need to connect with a Brawn to be good with them yknow? It’ll definitely be interesting and I can see the merge being messier than a taco bell bathroom BUT I’m hyped at the same time?

How is it already Day 16? There seems to be something seriously wrong with that. Anywho, I've let myself take a quick step back on the social game these last few days. I think I've put in the work to cement a couple strong groups here and can put myself in a good spot, but now I can avoid being the person that probably would be seen as a huge threat in the near future. Once merge hits (which I'm hoping is this next round), I'm going to have to go back to bringing that social game to a 9 (10 is where the Alyssa threat level begins), but right now I'm hopefully putting myself in a good place. In the event we don't have a merge and have one more vote on Hathor, I really think I need to make a move on Ali. I realize I keep saying this and I'm going to feel awful when he sees this all, but he is such a HUGE threat, and I can't let him skate by to where there's no room to stop him. I made that mistake last time in letting the person I knew would win get too far without me being able to stop them. Not this time. Ain't no fucking way.

This may very well be my last confessional lmao. I’m just feeling very paranoid about this vote and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone votes for me except for Jakey. Or if he even flips to the majority against me. And honestly! I’ve come to terms with it. I really tried my best in the game and I can’t be mad about how I performed in this game specifically. I understand I’m a threat in these games and if people are worried about me end game, quite frankly they should be. I know that I’ve played Tumblr Survivor one too many times and should have quit while I was ahead. I know I’ve talked about working with Kendall and killing Devon, but honestly idk who is voting where. I think I’m going to try to just go with what I think is majority (against Kendall) and just hope to god I’m not going anywhere. I hate having this defeatist attitude, but if I get voted out I’m going to have zero hard feelings and take it in stride. I guess I’m just not cut out to win tumblr survivor ❤️

Our video was so iconic, SHOUT OUT TO ALYSSA'S MOM!!! I should really be making sure im fortifying the bonds i've made but im really just happy to be on break and not have tribal. I've only been to tribal once within a 7 day time span instead of the 4 times in 7 days the brains endured before. I will say i was positively shook to get the vote from connor, but i never thought i could play a perfect game anyways lol. I'm hoping to god that dan or jakey go, i dont want the brawns over here to have other options than autumn and i come merge. Im surprised at myself because im starting to really want to stick with all these people come a merge, i suppose we'll see how it goes and how my attitude changes moving forward. 

Sooooooo I actually felt kind of bad about voting for Dan until he was throwing my name out :/ I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I'm kind of nervous now. Like Jakey told me this and he did the same thing to AJ. Also I haven't heard anything from Scott yet... that's sketchy right? Ugh I swear if I'm voted out then Alyssa's mom, I will meet you in the Denny's Parking lot for a fight. I'm not afraid to throw hands at the elderly, ask Drew. 

We love when men listen to me an in turn we win immunity! This is now the second time that's happened lmao cause I sure did make everyone commit to a time block so we didn't play ourselves in the endurance challenge and I sure did suggest Telephone as the song choice so wooooo Not a lot has happened and I don't have a lot of time to talk to begin with but I have a strong feeling we are not merging tonight lmao. Tbh I look forward to another day on Hathor it's very chill over here, all things considered. Also I need a couple chill challenges the next two rounds cause ya girl is moving, graduating, and leading an underground movement all at the same time so don't set me up with a crazy time-consuming challenge lol

I feel vindicated. Starting off in this game, I was not doing so well gameplay wise. Flash forward, I've been a big contributor physically, and socially too! I've got big plans, and I will carry this tribe again if I have to!

(may've already submitted this but i'm worried i submitted it for day 18?)

Also...

ok let me just start by saying: im in an emotionally FRAGILE state at the moment writing this right after the winners at war finale.....SPOILERS IF YOU HAVENT SEEN BUT I HAVE TO SAY IT....NATALIE AND WINCHELE ROBBED, as inspired as i am by my aries sistren natalie and think she should've won, im even more upset for my fellow beauty sister michele because lowkey? i absolutely LOVE the way michele plays, because in my own head at least i like to think i at least play slightly similar, i like to lay low and just adapt to where i see i can fit the best, anywho thats all ill say on that, back to THIS game dan being voted out last round, was kinda meh, i had the tiniest conversation with him during one world and he did end up giving me some tea about the brawns, but i couldve easily tried working with him later on against the beauties, PLUS him leaving means that none of those false beauties left, which is bad for me because i want them all gone oop and ive worked hard over here trying to make sure everyone knows they are threats even if theyre not working together, they went against me and lied to me, which means i cant trust them or work with them, which means i need to make sure no one else does either it's very nice though duncan has approached me and asked who i was comfortable with incase we did go to tribal and he said him and jordan pines were pretty close and honestly jordan is the only one ive been on a call with this whole game which is fine because anyone who knows me knows i dont care for calls much in this game and that usually hurts me so im hoping its not hurting me this time but truly, im not sure people are approaching me way more with information and plans then they ever have so im hoping thats a good sign, espcially with duncan saying he basically wanted me to be in the know with him, i think i can trust him as of now going foward and i hope the same about jordan pines, because first of all i love his energy and him as a person my fellow stoner crackhead, and second of all let's be real i definitely want to use him as a shield later on cmon the guy has a season named after him, forget denise being the queen slayer, i want to be the king tamer also in good with ali and autumn i think?? i personally enjoy my short little convos i have with them frequently so i just hope we're on the same page, but idk the little voice in the back of my head is telling me it all seems too good to be true almost like a perfect illusion and maybe duncan is tricking me trying to talk to me about "keeping this tribe strong", so i guess we'll have to wait until the next time we go to a tribal together to find out so yeah in conclusion, sorry to dan, and plot twist of the century im rooting for jakey to not be voted out the other tribe? even though im still convinced he could be making me his number 1 target especially if he gets in kahoots with kendall, but im hoping i played them against each other enough during the one world so that didnt happen 

What do ya know....another tribal council. After only being exempt from one tribal, this has become somewhat of a routine. I am extremely confident in the numbers this round. I'm under the belief that everyone will be writing down Jake's name, and Jake will likely be writing down my/Kendall's name. Still, I believe there is a worry about idols. I would hate to be idoled out by Jake after everything I have worked towards...I can't afford to throw my vote on Kendall or Scott with the merge coming up so soon, because it fractures my game going into a potential merge...Somewhat of a "all or nothing" bet tonight.

Me @ the brawns who have been on this tribe: https://media.giphy.com/media/szPZ2NXIGCMcE/giphy.gif

So a couple new developments: 1. Jordan offered me a final two which I'm sooooo excited to see how that's going to turn out. I've really connected with Jordan this game (which admittedly I didn't think would happen before this game), but he's been the person I've confided in the most out here. So I really think this is going to be the start of something amazing. 2. With this F2 deal, Jordan told me that Amir/Jakey knew each other outside of this game. This is bad for me both because Jakey is supposed to be my other guy with Jordan, but also Amir is the person I'd want to target come merge (which should be next round). I have zero connection to him, he's proven to be good at comps, he's won this game before, and he doesn't add into my plan of having numbers on every side. So now I'm in a spot where I think I'll probably have to make a move against potentially my closest / other closest ally in this game. Being safe right before the potential merge feels amazing and opens a lot of opportunities, but is extremely scary knowing who is going to merge. Hopefully come to merge, I have a chance at the merge idol to avoid anyone else having the chance at getting it, because I need some added knowledge in this game.

I am so fucking pissed at Devon. WHY ARE YOU ON THE BRAINS IF YOU HAVE NO BRAIN CELLS!!!!!!! dsfjkaafkjdaldjfjadksjads Great now I get to die!

I don't know why Jakey wants to kill me. I am not a threat. Like at all? Most of the strategies I come up with are bad and I am barely social? Sure I guess I can win like a challenge or two but not enough to be physical? I mean I'm trying to kill him but like... honestly he started it 2 rounds ago. I am a paper tiger worse I am a paper giraffe. Sure I'm tall but basically harmless and only sort of evil. At least I remember why I hated him so much. I don't hate him NOW, I'm 22 years old I have better things to do then hate some guy for trying to win a game. But I am annoyed and inconvenienced by this. Maybe a little hurt too because the only reason I can think to get voted out is because my personality sucks so much that he doesn't see a future where we can work together. Which is fair I guess? But I can't be that awful right? God this game is a constant existential crisis... Also I think people are annoyed with me for being paranoid and shit. Oh I'm sorry people who's name isn't getting written down, I'm sorry I'm not more pleasant while I'm in fear for my metaphorical life. 

It’s a MESS ITS A FUCKING MESS SCOTTIE WANTS DAN OUT DAN WANTS DEVON JAKEY WANTS DEVON DEFON WANTS DAN AUGUSTO AND KENDALL WANT JAKEY AMIR WANTS NOT JAKEY OR AUGUSTO OR KENDALL I literally don’t have number in this game and I’m going to get fucked on at the merge 

Okay so Augusto basically told him that his name was an option for this vote or the next one and Kendall told him that the brawns are bringing up his name and said that he was the throw away vote So now my gut is telling me dan did it and jakey was in on it But I don’t care, if that’s the case Everyone on this tribe wants a brawn out, EVERYONE I just have to make sure it’s not jakey Because Augusto and Kendall want jakey now and I refuse it Rn it seems they r okay doing dan It seems everyone is cool doing dan So I’m happy with that

Jakey is fucking strong arming me r u joking Ndbdjdjsns Jakey talked to scottie And got scottie to want devon So now they’re gonna try and call the alliance tmmrw and change to vote back to devon over dan And if Augusto and Kendall don’t want to Jakey wants to pull brain and brawn to vote kendall like sir I’m literally getting strong armed, and he can’t see why people want dan out I could make a move rn But should I even I probably shouldn’t If they try to get kendall I will flip it on him 

don’t know what to do I’m pleading so hard with jakey rn like hey it’s not good for me to go into merge with 6 brawn 4 beauty (dysfunctional) and 3 brain (dysfunctional) And I said I want to do dan is that okay like jakey u need to choose a side, brawns, or this tribe And he goes If u decide to do dan Then I’m gonna unite dan and Scott and Devon and vote kendall So if that’s the case, I’m sending u home theres no way around it then

Throw back to last night when I hung up on jakey to call Augusto and told jakey that I was taking a shower but literally I was gone for an hour and needed an excuse fast so I told him i shaved my ass call that strategic ass shaking 

Okay so this tribal. Everyone on my tribe thinks jakey is evil and he’s just going to go back to the brawn tribe, which is like, wtf, he literally voted in minority on purpose and gave us leverage on him. Like he literally has put himself on the line multiple times. He ratted out the brawn majority over and over. Like jakey is not loyal to the brawns on the other side at all. The people on this tribe don’t give a shit and my opinion isn’t being heard at all, Kendall won’t budge and Augusto won’t budge, and Scott wants to keep devon. Can I just say scott is a rat, he is playing every single person. Jakey trusted him soooo much . Anyway, everyone wants jakey out for literallt no reason and jakey trusts me 100% and jakey is the best way to get info from the brawns on the other side. Anyway, KDJDKSN KDNDKD we are getting dirty. Jakey has an idol. And I told him he was the vote and I made it sound like it’s all Scott’s decision cuz I’m really tight with Kendall and Augusto, so now, jakey wants to idol out Scott Basically, it’s time for a cluster fuck and it’s time for chaos So at merge jakey and I will play from Opposite sides

so jakey fking tried to flip the vote and he blew up the 5 person alliance to devon and hes fucking up my game so much nkwejfnkew god maybe i will try and get him out at merge even tho i love him, i basically had to ccreate this narrative that jakey thinks that me jakey scott and devon are voting kendall but jakey is actually voting out scott jesus christ thi round gave me a migraine i have a case of the lie-abetes

I- there's nothing else to say hahaha the boys don't even talk game. So when I know something y'all will know something

People are paranoid as hell about a merge. What is there to be paranoid about, honestly? I've just tried to come into this game and have a good time and I think I've achieved that. No one is really looking at me as a threat right now, and there's still plenty of time left to play.

okay so i filmed a video confessional earlier which i will upload but adam just woke me up to the fact that we might be merging tonight?! which is so exciting and kinda crazy.... and the days line up with montenegro for us to be merging... at merge i think all my "laying low" can finally be for something and i can transition the bonds i've been making into making stuff happen. i've also been hosting a game during these quarantine times and i've realised people that do too much making SUCH deep bonds during the early stages become the people the jury is mad at in the endgame. i feel like im the middle ground, people feel close to me (and I would like to think I've come across as likable) without everyone thinking im their soul sister closest ally. at merge i think my "close" people who i can somewhat rely on are: autumn, jake, dan(?), jordan(?) and adam? like i have a core of people with various connections, which gives me some cover. its just about then feeling out the rest and seeing who i can trust amongst the rest... particularly the unknowns of augusto/kendall/scott/amir (assuming they are all at merge). like that is going to be the most important part of the merge stage for me, is figuring out which of them i can trust (and i do think dan and/or jake's opinions can help with this, because brainstorming with autumn helped me figuring out this hathor swap tribe).

i'm excited for merge... i do think i have early juror written all over me but i am also very excited. its time to emerge from the shadows and stumble my way into the light

live fast die young merge boots do it well. i literally am a clown, i got excited by my guess going so well and now i literally am a target the size of the sun exclusively because of my own actions what was i thinking KJASDFA honestly at this point? i embrace it, i push the 'im a shield' narrative and i trot on my little trotters to being mayor of ponderosa. this season i chopped of my own head so will not be the winner and the king, but hopefully i can be a kingmaker? also if me winning the tiebreak sends jake home i literally will be so unspeakably frustrated with myself i will literally... scream. HE PROBS HATES ME. i'm praying he lives i will feel so bad if he doesnt KLASDF

i literally... can not believe i am so stupid my lack of braincells really boggles my mind

So I was really hoping that we would win this challenge today because I like everyone on this tribe. But of course with my luck in this game, we lose AGAIN. And it's a shame because I like the Thots Alliance and i feel bad voting out Devon. I know he's someone who trusts me and although I don't 100% trust him, I know that he's someone I can depend on. Plus he makes a really good goat at the end, so it'll make winning more of an obstacle for me without him there. To my surprise however, Kendall and Augusto approach me with the idea of voting out Jakey. I really like Jakey and I practically see him as my #1 here, so voting him out would be difficult for me to do as well. We've discussed the idol together, he gave me his CBS all access account info to watch the finale, and hes one of the very few smart people in this game. So on a personal level, this is a hard decision to make. However, from a game perspective, it might be the right call. Jakey's setting himself up to be a swing vote at the merge, and the fact that he campaigned for Dan to stay and was adamant on not voting him out shows that. When it comes to Devon and I, I would prefer to not vote Devon out but if I needed to in order to show that I trust an alliance moving forward I would. So the fact that Jakey doesn't see it like that is alarming to me. In addition to that, I know that Jakey has lied to me multiple times in this game. He purposefully gave me the wrong idol clue for one of the matches, and when I called him out on it he bluffed it up. On top of that, I know for a fact that he voted for Kendall during the AJ vote. And the fact that he's trying to play it off on Devon goes to show the lengths he would go to make sure he controls everything. And on top of that, he wants us all to tell Devon straight up that he's going. Like... did he not learn from my story when I tried to do that? It can't happen. From a game perspective, voting out Jakey is the more logical choice to make. He can navigate better in a group of people and is aware of whats going on. Devon on the other hand, doesn't even know where the idol is or how to look for it. Devon is someone who you can take into a merge and know what he's going to do. Jakey is more unpredictable. And I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to rally up troops to blindside me when that time came. From a personal perspective, I prefer that Devon goes just because of the lack of trust between us and the fact that I don't ever see myself fully trusting him. Sadly I have to lose this battle in order to win the war at the end. So I'm going to vote Jakey out tonight and really hope that it doesn't come to bite me in the but or that he doesn't play his idol (i know he has one, its obvious with how paranoid he's been)

Guess I’m gonna cry because we lost… by a tiebreaker… it was sad. I feel especially awful because had I not made the mistake of repeating a name on my list during my 8th guess, we could’ve very well have won… but no one needs to know that! It just blows because going into a potential merge in a 7-5 scenario is NOT it. Plus like, their only vote was a unanimous vote for Connor which like… love Connor, but a rock could vote Connor out. I wanted to see tension, I wanted to see idols played, I wanted to see hands thrown, I wanted to see lines drawn, and I wanted to see messiness but all I ended up seeing? Disappointment. I hate it here deadass (‘:

Aside from being kinda sad we lost, I do feel super secure. Last round, I wanted Dan to leave to get rid of Brawn numbers and have the best chance to get Jakey out and now I have that! I know Amir is on the fence but I know Kendall and Devon would be all for it (Scott is as well, but I didn’t really know how much he’d be about it until this round) so it needs to happen. While I adore Jakey as a person and we’ve connected a lot, our strategic games don’t align at all since he doesn’t tell me much of anything? Most of his info goes to Amir or Scott and I’m being selfish here but I want all the tea (‘: plus him playing double agent with the Brawns at merge is not what I need if we’re going into the merge with not enough numbers. Not only that but Adam is a wildcard in terms of if he’ll work with me or not but Jakey being there with us makes it so Adam wouldn’t want to so there’s that. Girl… i sound like a whole ass gamebot wtf ghfdjnms

It’s so weird like I am extremely proud of the game I am playing but I still feel inadequate as a player? I know I shouldn’t compare myself to others because I’m ME but my two closest allies (Kendall, Amir) are playing so much better? Amir is able to get all the tea in the world and form those important game connections which I don’t feel like I can yknow? With Kendall, she is just so bold (and beautiful) with her gameplay in a way I could never like she doesn’t mind being the secondary target, she talks to everyone and talks game with everyone, and stuff like that. So in a way, I’m probably not a major threat to people because those two icons are here BUT I also don’t know if that’ll make me seen like a non-factor… that’s just how I feel going into merge and it’s kinda mehhh idk ;-;

MERGE IS COMING. TOnight actually, people are speculating, but im the only one with the certainty that its tonight and im feeling wonderful. I think if I play my cards right Im gonna have a lot of options come merge. God pending Kendall does not die tonight (hopefully her beauties keep her alive) im gonna suggest we secret pair beware this shit and tsart working from opposite sides to keep each other safe. That will allow me to pick of people Im not working with, while hopefully ensure that people im not with who are with her will be detered from targeting me. Thats my plan but who knows what the true dynamics of merge will be. Ive been playing quiet so far but im about to become the star of teh show, my ego just cant take it.

i really feel like by getting a five i got jake voted out and i want to scream i literally am gonna be out for blood if he goes

[kc-meets-dc]

New Members of The Team:

Before I start this post, I’d like to say that this blog isn’t just supposed to be about my theories on Young Justice season three. I want this blog to be about everyone’s theories on Young Justice season three! Feel free to message me or drop an ask in my box about your own theories or hopes for Young Justice: Outsiders! Or you can request that I make a post discussing a certain aspect of Young Justice: Outsiders that you want me to talk about! Whatever it is, my ask box is always open. Now to the good stuff!

So, here’s the next thing you guys voted on that you wanted me to talk about: the heroes who I think will be new members of The Team in Young Justice: Outsiders. However, I’m kicking it up a notch. This theory post won’t just be about possible new members of The Team. It will be about possible new members for all the superhero teams in Young Justice: The Team, the League, the Outsiders, and one more superhero team that you’ll have to wait until the end to find out my theories on them. Theories are all below the cut. Be warned: this is definitely my longest rant yet

Let’s start with the most important team in Young Justice: The Team. Now, I already briefly discussed Spoiler, Arrowette, and 13 in another post, so I won’t bother talking about them now unless you guys want me to. I also already stated that I believe Terra, Ravager, and Raven will be joining them too, so I won’t be mentioning them for now either. Let me start this off with who I think the most obvious person to join the Team this season will be...

Cassandra Cain, AKA Batgirl 2: Electric Boogaloo! Now, we all know that Barbara will most likely be paralyzed at some point this season. It could happen during the time jump or during the season itself, but, either way, it’s gonna happen. Cassandra Cain was the next person to take up the mantle of Batgirl in the comics. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Cassandra’s father was a member of the League of Assassins, which in Young Justice is known as the League of Shadows for some reason or another. Given how prominent the Shadows are in Young Justice as well as the fact that she’s an incredibly diverse character (Biracial and has a disability), Cassandra Cain’s appearance in the series is all but guaranteed

This next character is one that I think has a good chance of getting a part in Young Justice for three reasons: he’s a character from DC’s Rebirth comics, he’s diverse, and he was actually created in the first place by none other than Greg Weisman...

Genji Sato! Now, I don’t know much about this character other than the fact that he’s Captain Atom’s son, and that he inherited some of the Captain’s powers. My reasoning for why this character could appear in Young Justice: Outsiders rests on the fact that Captain Atom was made the leader of the Justice League in season two. See, in case you didn’t know, Captain Atom was also originally created by Greg Weisman. My theory is that Weisman might be showing a bit of favortism towards his own original characters, specifically in season two and the season two tie-in comics. Weisman made Captain Atom the leader of the Justice League in season two, Kaldur and Artemis got that huge story arc in season two, and the alien villain, Kylstar, as well as Major Force (A Captain Atom villain), played very big roles in the tie-in comics. All of those characters were created by Weisman, and I guarantee you that all those characters will only become more important in season three. Genji, much like Kaldur, may have been given a small role in the comics, but I’m betting his role will grow exponentially in the Young Justice series

This next character is one who is actually connected to a theory I discussed earlier. Namely, the one where I said that certain members of The Team would be captured and possibly turned into villains for later seasons. She’s also a character that fans have been clamoring for to join The Team for a while now...

Supergirl! Now, I’m not sure how the Young Justice writers will do Supergirl’s origin story. Maybe they’ll keep it the same, making her Superman’s long-lost cousin. Or maybe they’ll make her another Superman clone, but with better results and more powers. Either way, it’ll open up some good plotlines for Superboy, stemming mainly from his desire to be closer to Superman and with Kara already having that bond from the start. There are two possible ways I can see Supergirl’s story arc going. Either the writers keep her origin story the same, she crash-lands on Earth, joins The Team, then towards the end of the season she, along with Blue Beetle and maybe a couple other heroes, gets kidnapped and turned against her friends by The Light and Darkseid. The other possible route is that she’s a clone made from the DNA of Superman, but somehow The Light managed to perfect the process, thus giving her full Kryptonian powers. Then, towards the end of the series, her clone programming kicks in, causing her to betray The Team, go evil, and also kidnap Blue Beetle and maybe a few others. Either way, it should be pretty cool to watch!

I’m going to share just one more hero who I think has a good chance of joining The Team (For now at least). And, much like Supergirl, he’ll have a very devilish storyline...

Kid Devil! See, in the comics, Kid Devil was given his powers by the demon, Neron. However, my theory is that in Young Justice he’ll be given his powers by a different demon. Namely, a little witch boy named Klarion. Like Supergirl, I think that Kid Devil will also become a villain by the end of season three. Since his soul will be owned by Klarion, Klarion will likely be able to control Kid Devil to some extent, allowing him to use his powers to defeat The Team and kidnap Blue Beetle and possibly other heroes as well. My other theory is that the demon who gives Kid Devil his powers is Trigon. If that’s the case, Kid Devil’s storyline will probably play out in a similar way to how it would if the demon was Klarion, except Raven would also be involved in some way

Okay, now I’d like to move on to a different topic:

New Members of The Justice League:

Given how the Justice League only inducted four new members during the five year time jump in season two, I doubt their roster has expanded very much, so I’ll keep this part short. Up first...

Blue Devil! Blue Devil was already introduced in the Young Justice series, and was also already considered for League membership in season one, but was turned down for some reason. He assisted the League and The Team in shutting down The Reach’s EMDs, so it makes sense for him to be a League member by the time season three rolls around. This is also one of the reasons why I think Kid Devil will be introduced as a character. He wanted to be Blue Devil’s sidekick, but failed. That’s the reason why Kid Devil tried to get his powers from Neron, or, most likely in Young Justice’s case, Klarion or Trigon

My second guess is a little less likely, but I think it still warrants mentioning given how he helped the League and The Team, even while under Reach control...

B’arzz O’oomm AKA Green Beetle. Well, maybe not any more since his Scarab was destroyed, but he’s still a Martian with incredible power, making him a perfect fit for the Justice League. Now, granted, it would be a little difficult bringing him on as a new member of the League since he’s an original character created for Young Justice and they would have to give him an entirely new superhero identity. Normally I would say that they could give him the name of another Martian DC superhero, but for the life of me I can’t find any other than Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian. There was a Martian villain who I think is the reason why B’arzz called Miss Martian, Beast Boy, and Superboy to Mars (More on that later), but other than that I couldn’t find anything. There’s one other way I can see them using B’arzz, but you’ll have to scroll a little farther down in this post to see it. Whatever they do with him though, I think it will be very interesting to see what they do with this amazing character in the future

There’s one more character who I think could join the League this season, and I think you all know who it is...

Cyborg! In the current mythos of the DC universe, Cyborg was one of the founding members of the Justice League. Cyborg’s origin involves his father saving his life by fusing his damaged body with a New Genesis Motherbox. Given how the New Gods are supposed to play a big role in this season, I bet that Cyborg will be involved in one way or another. Of course, he could also be a new member of The Team, but I feel like being in the Justice League makes more sense for him

Now let’s move on to what I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for...

New Members of The Outsiders

In this part of the rant, I will not only be discussing the unknown members of the Outsiders, but also the known members of this black-ops team

These four are the ones we already know to be members of the Outsiders: Artemis, Dick, Black Lightning, and Superboy. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t use Artemis and Dick’s hero names: Tigress and Nightwing. Well, that’s because I don’t think those are the names they’ll be using as members of the Outsiders. I believe that Artemis will be taking her mother’s old moniker: Huntress. I believe this because, 1. Her costume does not look like it warrants the name “Tigress,” and 2. Because Huntress was a member of the Outsiders in the comics. Dick’s new hero name I’m not that sure about. He could still be Nightwing I suppose, but I feel like his character arc this season might be more up the alley of his Agent 37 persona in the New 52. I doubt that he’ll actually go by the name Agent 37, but you never know

Now let’s move on to the unknown members of the Outsiders. Firstly, a person who was a lot of people’s favorite character but was not seen in the SDCC panel...

Miss Martian! Like I said earlier in another post, I believe that the reason why we didn’t see M’gann in the SDCC panel is because she’s secretly undercover posing as an agent of The Light. Namely, Psimon. Since M’gann’s battled Psimon so often on the psychic plane, she definitely knows how he thinks and could certainly act like him if needed. This would also be a good way to get M’gann to see how she’s been abusing her psychic powers by being forced to do exactly that as Psimon. If she sees that the man she probably hates most in her life does exactly what she does to certain individuals, she’ll see how horrible the things she’s been doing really are and will hopefully stop. This could possibly lead to her getting back together with Superboy after she realizes this and apologizes to him and The Team as a whole. I love M’gann, but even I have to admit she went a little too far with her powers in season two

Speaking of Martians, I have to bring up B’arzz O’oomm again. I actually think that B’arzz, if he’s not a member of the Justice League, is also on a deep cover mission within The Light. In fact, I think he could be posing as a leading member of The Light itself, but you’ll have to wait until my next post to learn who :)

The next person who I think could join the Outsiders is probably one of the last people you’d expect...

Cheshire! Now, I know what you’re all thinking. “Cheshire’s a villain! An assassin! A possible psychopath! Why would she join the side of good?” Four words: death in the family. No, I’m not talking about the Batman storyline where Jason Todd was murdered. I’m talking about Cheshire’s daughter, Lian Nguyen-Harper. In the comics, Lian was killed in a terrorist bombing, and I’m willing to bet that in Young Justice she’ll probably die in roughly the same way. I’m sorry to say it folks, but I legitimately believe that Lian won’t survive the time jump to season three. And I’m extra sorry to say that I don’t think Red Arrow will either. I believe that both of them will be killed in some way by The Light. Their deaths will be what motivates Cheshire to join the Outsiders to get revenge on The Light, and also what motivates Arsenal to re-join The Team. I know I said that I thought Arsenal’s renewed membership would be because of Jason Todd, but I’ve been doing some recent thinking and decided that it’s probably more likely that the death of his clone who was also the one who saved him from The Light will be what motivates him to get his act together and be the hero that he should be and should have been to honor Red Arrow

There’s one more person who I think will be a member of the Outsiders, but this person hasn’t been seen on Young Justice yet...

Starfire! My reasoning for this is twofold. 1. She was a member of the Outsiders in the comics to begin with. And 2. As I’ve stated numerous times before, there’s the quote from SDCC regarding Dick and Zatanna’s relationship: “You don’t always marry your first love.” I believe that, at this point in the story, Dick is married to one of two people: either Starfire or Barbara. I know I said previously that Dick would definitely marry Starfire, but, after reviewing the Young Justice tie-in comics, I believe that Barbara also has a chance of being married to Dick at this point. Whether Dick is married to Barbara or good old Koriand’r, I still believe that Starfire will appear this season as a member of the Outsiders

Now, as I mentioned above the cut, there’s one more team of heroes I’d like to talk about in this post. I’m not really sure what they’ll be called. They could be called the Teen Titans, they could be called the Super Friends, they could even be called a name that hasn’t been used yet in DC comics. For now, let’s just refer to them as...

The Runaways! While Virgil has joined The Team as the superhero, Static, the other three Runaways are all out of the hero game

Or are they?

My theory is that Tye, Ed, and Asami have all formed their own superhero team that is unassociated with the Justice League. I also believe that they’ll play a big role in the Metahuman trafficking we’ll be seeing this season. Not as prisoners like last time, but as freedom fighters working to save their fellow Metas from The Light. These three heroes will definitely still be around, and I’d actually like to give some thoughts as to some new crew members they may pick up along the way...

First off, in keeping with the Super Friends trope these characters follow, there’s the Wonder Twins! These twin heroes have incredible shapeshifting abilities that would be highly valued by criminals and villains. I believe that they’ll definitely be targeted by the Metahuman trafficking and that the Runaways will save them and let them join their team

Next on the list is Firestorm. Firestorm is a hero created via the merging of Ronnie Raymond and Prof. Martin Stein. This character’s powers are incredible, which would likely get him targeted by The Light for their Metahuman trafficking operations. I believe that Firestorm will find himself (Themselves? I don’t know) captured by The Light and freed by The Team and/or the Runaways. They’ll probably get an offer to join The Team, but will instead join the Runaways to continue their mission of freeing other Metahumans targeted by The Light

That pretty much concludes my theories on all the new members of then various superhero teams of Young Justice. Once again, feel free to message me about my theories and to share theories of your own. Next week, I’ll be discussing my theories on The Light, their possible new members, and what I think their plans are for season three! Be sure to stick around for that!

[this-is-not-a]

Follow-up to learning about emotional labor

I first saw Gemma Hartley’s emotional labor article on Facebook. After putting together my thoughts, I saw the same article on Hackernews, which I generally regard as having thoughtful comments sections. Here are some of the top comments:

“If I were to point out random emotional labor duties I carry out—reminding him of his family’s birthdays, carrying in my head the entire school handbook and dietary guidelines for lunches, updating the calendar to include everyone’s schedules, asking his mother to babysit the kids when we go out, keeping track of what food and household items we are running low on, tidying everyone’s strewn about belongings, the unending hell that is laundry—…”

That all sounds like household management with some relationship management thrown in. What does it have to do with labouring over emotions? It sounds like this person needs a partner who shares more household responsibilities and has an organization and cleanliness habit that is more in line with their own.

and: 

This sounds like a very dysfunctional marriage. I have been observing what I consider are good marriages that have stood the test of time. Marriages where they have been married 30, 40, 50 years and are still crazy about each other. Here are some things that I have found.

<The comment lists 5 fairly general values. Communication, loyalty etc. I think you get the idea>

These thing should be done by both husband and wife. The author, goes against everyone of them. She expects the husband to read her mind. The whole article feels like some primal cry for appreciation and notice.

If these, the second and third highest voted comments, paint a picture of the Hackernews demographic as too-critical-and-know-it-all-y (a picture which was somehow not already painted by the fact that the platform’s name is hacker-news) you can rejoice in the most upvoted comment:

This is a topic where the more I learned about it the more I opened my eyes to it and saw it happening on my own life.

I'm very easy going and there isn't much I get too worked up about. My wife, on the other hand, is a meticulous planner. I could see her getting stressed out making decisions for a vacation. I realized that by not caring, I wasn't helping and offloading the burden to her. Now I truly didn't care if we went to restaurant A or restaurant B, so she always had to make the decision. Since realizing this I've relieved her more from all the decision making, even if I really don't care about the outcome. Why should I do this? Well, because she's my wife and while I may not care which restaurant we go to, I care about her.

TL;DR It's real and I decided to do take up more of this emotional labor in life.

(If like me you felt a visceral repulsion from the first two comments but not the third, consider the possibility that it might not be the know-it-all-y-ness that you take issue with, but the fact that the know-it-all happens to disagree.)

Am I just listing these comments because I wanted to wave it in your face how original and creative my personal take on the article was? Partly, yes. And partly, I think this serves as a neat example to talk about some other stuff.

The first comment points out that the concept of emotional labor as Hartley uses it doesn’t seem well defined. When a category becomes so broad that it fails to rule anything out it stops being useful. I don’t disagree that Hartley doesn’t give a concrete definition of what she means by the term, but she does seem to be vaguely gesturing at a cluster of related ideas. I think this comment makes the mistake of pointing out an accurate criticism and then using it as an excuse to disregard the rest of the argument being made. The comment goes on to reclassify the issue as a non-gendered issue by framing it as “this person needs a partner who shares more household responsibilities” even though the whole point of the article was that there is something happening related to the fact that Hartley is a woman and her husband is a man. This is a thought pattern that you can recognize by thinking to yourself, “I don’t think I understand X, and I think it’s because the original author didn’t do a great job of explaining it." At this point you can investigate X yourself, or you can notice that X is crucial to this argument that you disagree with and pretend that it explains your disagreement. If your goal is to not change your mind, and you’re actually just looking for ways to prove that you don’t have to change your mind then this will be your preferred choice. But if your goal is to actually be right, it might be useful to fill in your understanding of X while you’re here so you can follow the rest of the argument. (We call this being charitable.)

The second comment does this a little too, when it states “these things should be done by both husband and wife.” Again, I don’t disagree, but the entire point of the article was that there’s something related to the differences in socialization of men and women, so I don’t think the right way to respond is “society expects things of BOTH men and women.” There’s an extent to which that statement is true, and the exact length of that extent is the complement of the extent to which Hartley’s thesis is true. You shouldn’t respond to the claim “part of this wooden horse is being painted green, and I think we should stop painting it green because green paint contains lead” by saying “you’re missing the fact that part of the wooden horse is blue.” You’ll just confuse people who otherwise probably could have benefited from learning that green paint contains lead.

Another mistake the second comment makes is that it gets personal. This is different than offering criticism. I often notice myself interpreting criticism as a personal attack, especially when its criticism of work that feels like an extension of myself, or maybe a purer expression of myself. But I think in this case when the comment says “this sounds like a very dysfunctional marriage... her first loyalty seems to be to feminism, and not to her family,” we can default to the easy outraged response: you don’t know this person. You don’t know her husband. You don’t know her marriage. And if you think you know enough about her from one emotionally charged article to decide that her marriage is dysfunctional and she isn’t loyal to her family then I have a bridge to teach you how to build.

The third comment, and the most upvoted, is hard to be angry at because it’s worded in such a positive manner. My only response to this one is that it doesn’t mention what I consider to be the issue with Hartley’s article, and write about in my response, but you can’t fault a comment for not being an essay. Mostly I included it so you don’t start thinking that Hackernews is a bunch of know-it-alls-who-disagree-with-me.

A last response, which didn’t come from a comment section but came from real life: maybe the reason the article is not a rigorous and impeccable proof from first principles is because it was never meant to be an argument – maybe the article is just a rant, a way to vent frustration?

And I believe this response makes the worst mistake.

First let me try and put my finger on specific aspects of the article that make me deem it unlikely to be just a rant and not an argument. For one thing, it smoothly transitions from her personal anecdote to quotes from sociologists and professors of communication; experts painting in broad strokes about the state of society and the dynamic between men and women at a macroscopic level. The article ends with a sort of call to action, in hopes that our future generations might learn to rid themselves of such needless weight. The article’s caption is “stop calling women nags.” And (need I bring this up again?) the banner photo for the article is a yellow rubber glove giving you the finger. All of this together means you’re going to have a hard time thinking that this article is “a woman sharing her feelings” and not “an activist crafting an argument drawing on personal experience.”

(I’ll concede that the banner photo does fit with either possibility; it would probably be very cathartic to deliver an emotional rant in person and then end it with a showy and ceremonial Giving of the Finger.)

But more generally I am wary of this kind of response because it retreats in a very strategic way. Saying “the article wasn’t meant to be an argument, it’s just an author sharing how she feels” is a fully general excuse that you can use to defend basically anything, and it’s something you only do if you think of criticism as the enemy rather than a shared way of arriving at the truth. It’s a motte-and-bailey trick in which your opponent takes a strong stance and then wordlessly retreats to an uncontroversial stance once you make your argument against the first stance, only to return to the first stance once you’ve left. Climate change deniers will use this to defend themselves from accusations of being unscientific: “I’m not denying science! Science is about skepticism. All I’m saying is that we don’t have a settled and agreed-upon projection of how long it will be until these threats become immediate.” You think to yourself, “that seems pretty reasonable,” and then they interpret your general agreement with their weak position as another person they’ve convinced of their strong opinion. Saying that an article is just supposed to be self-expression, and who could ever be against self expression, is a trick you can use to hide from any opponent. And I know this because I have a tendency to do it too.

Back in the days when I was young and foolish (up until several months ago, at which point I changed my mind about all my incorrect beliefs) I had a saying that I had learned from Dan Harmon: we don’t punish each other for having feelings. You don’t control how you feel, you control how you act. I can’t help but feel angry sometimes, and I can’t control that, but I can decide not to punch my mirror. So it goes with relationships, when a person feels a certain way, don’t punish them for feeling that way. Encourage sharing of those emotions. When you do A it makes me feel B. When you feel B it makes me feel C. In my first relationship we treated these conversations as part of the burden of being close to someone and wanting to be life partners. I feel unloved. When you feel unloved it makes me feel like I’m being a bad partner.

I wanted to bring this mantra back to my relationships with family members. It never seemed to me like we avoided sharing our feelings growing up but I was definitely not as good at it as my friends, which made me suspect that I just could not see our deficiency from where I stood, being deficient myself. So on family vacations I tried to follow my new rules: if it feels like something unspoken has just happened and caused an issue, talk about the unspoken thing. If I have a talent for putting abstract ideas into words, then maybe I can use it to fix this family deficiency, I found myself thinking, as I sat in the car with my parents and my brother on the way to Mount St. Helens, saying to my mom “you can deny that something just happened... but I don’t have great emotional awareness and even I can tell that something just happened.” Putting words into empty space between disjoint understandings seemed to help solve problems. This was more evidence that sharing emotions was an unbounded good thing to do.

Then several months ago, at the end of an emotional conversation I had repeated several times over with my brother, we finished in a place we always finished. When he does A it makes me feel B. He didn’t intend to make me feel B. In this case the subject was Super Smash Brothers Melee, and if that sounds like too childish a thing to get emotional about then just take my word for it that our relationship has a strong mythology built around the game. For many years it was simultaneously the thing that divided us and united us. It was our secret from our parents. It was the only way to get him to spend time with me, and it was the thing that his cool friends all liked. While I played the piano he played Smash, and while the world was happy to accept my talents and praise my practice, fewer people offered positive words about playing Smash. There were bibles and gods. There was crying. I told Mark when he phrases his feedback in a certain way it makes me feel condescended to and it makes me question whether he cares about me and it makes me not have fun. He didn’t intend to make me feel any of that. It’s a game, there’s no point if it’s not fun. So how does this end? Does he need to apologize for making me feel a certain way? Do I need to apologize for feeling a certain way? That would violate the principle that we don’t punish each other for having feelings. But I caught myself in the middle of the automatic thought process, “why did I share those feelings in the first place when I knew it was just going to end here?” “Because sharing feelings fixes problems.” I caught myself and realized that there was a second, more shameful reason I had shared my feelings. Part of me wanted him to feel guilty for making me feel bad. Wanted to cry and show off the pain I was going through so that he would change into something that wouldn’t cause me this pain. (A classic younger sibling tactic.) I had almost glossed over it because of how easy it was to use my practiced justification and deny responsibility. And then I remembered that we don’t control what we feel but we do control how we act. What I felt in that moment was fear that Mark didn’t care about me, and a need to be assured that he does care. So I made a decision to share the feeling. And if you had accused me of purposely trying to shame him in that moment I would have denied it, but because this was me, myself, realizing my mistake and not somebody else pointing it out I was able to accept the truth – part of my decision to share my feelings was because I knew it would lead to getting the validation that I wanted.

In that moment I realized all at once that the sharing of feelings might be an innocent and noble goal, but it can also have an ulterior motive. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t share things that might make others ashamed though. I think the benefit of having a policy of sharing is that it leads to communication. It just means that when we ask ourselves why we felt compelled to share certain emotions with predictable consequences, we should be honest and admit when a little bit of the choice was driven by that secret agenda.

In this same way I do think that Hartley’s piece was meant to have emotional aspects too. I said earlier that I see it as a piece with a thesis and not just personal expression, so maybe I need to backtrack and admit that it’s actually a little of both. I still think it would be dishonest and ill-conceived to dismiss the criticism by saying “it’s not meant to be a rigorous argument,” but when someone has that response I don’t see it as malicious motte-and-bailey-ing. What I see is that although the argument isn’t perfect, the emotional arc of the piece is still really compelling and relatable to this person. This has value, and its not entirely separate from the value we get from carefully considering our viewpoints. As Otium points out,

Splashing around in the Emotion Sandbox often means saying things you don’t really mean, and when people take you literally, you’re deceiving them. Truthful people are also reluctant to jump into the Emotion Sandbox with you, because they want to maintain their own intellectual integrity.

I’m a little bit deficient in emotional awareness. In college I made it my goal to address this and a lot of my choices started involving my own and other people’s feelings. But I don’t want to disavow my natural tendency to be thoughtful about expressing emotions. Hartley does a good job telling an emotional story, and a pretty good job giving a carefully considered argument. Maybe another version of me would have defended it from criticism that exact same way. Ideally I think we should take the experiential knowledge the story imparts while simultaneously asking what it says the truth is. Then I hope that my responses convey a little experiential knowledge too, and get us all even closer to the truth.