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bao3bei4 · 4 years ago

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kpop music videos that gave their fans sexual brainworms

OR accidental fetish pop and its fringe fanbase: meditations on gendered desire

large warning here: i am someone who has been into kpop for the past 10 years. however, i have always been an extremely casual fan. i do write fic, but not rpf. if any of that makes you not want to hear me talk about kpop rpf (or you don’t want to hear about it in general), please keep moving.

anyway, obviously pop is corporate, soulless, and manufactured. but sometimes some truly bizarre shit gets past the committees and destroys a generation. these are their stories.

the video that started this is all is got7’s just right, released july 10th, 2015.

yes that’s all 7 members of got7 (one is out of frame) shrunken down for your viewing pleasure. they live in your room and tell you you’re just right.

this sheer fetish power of this video is nerfed only by how utterly sexless it is.

they’re styled like and dance like this. it’s a totally unironic sendup of the seminal work that preceded it by four years, “what makes you beautiful” by the white kpop group “one direction.” the chaste energy of the whole thing makes you legitimately wonder if the good people at jyp have just never heard of microphilia. (during a dramatic reading of this piece, here a friend interjected seriously, “i think it’s korean culture not to talk about things like this, fetishes in the workplace.”)

it’s for the best, honestly, though because the actress in the music video is lee ja in, who was 11 when the video was shot. considering that the members themselves ranged in age from 18-23 at the time, i think it’s actually very impressive that we only have to cancel one.

you receive absolutely no prizes for guessing that it’s jackson wang we’re sending to social justice prison. why’d he do this? no one asked.

at any rate, got7 fans, or “gans” (they actually call themselves igot7s which is too twee for me), have much to think about here: all 7 very small members of got7 sneaking into their room, possibly weird age play, and jackson wang eating a very large cake.

let’s see what they actually did.

twitter was actually very tame. the most charged thing i found was (unsurprisingly) from a bts fan (“ban”). i don’t actually know what it means, but i think it means something.

so, of course, i turned to the internet’s last bastion of free speech, where you can say whatever the fuck you want and receive cheers, or as the kids say, “kudos.” that is, i read fanfiction.

for those of you who don’t know your herstory, i started my journey at Asianfanfics.com, where, at the time of writing, there were 12,067 got7 stories. i want to start this by saying that i think feminism won, because someone was paying real human dollars to advertise their irene/wendy fanfiction on a banner ad, which is quite possibly a win for women for everywhere.

anyway, Asianfanfics.com’s search engine sucks ass (i kept on finding stories about different combinations of bts members worrying about their weight and being reassured by another member that were entitled “just right”), so i decided to look through all got7 stories written between july 2015 and december 2015.

but, alas, not a single got7 microphilia fic to be found.

also, some genre commentary while i’m here: i think the stories i respect the most are the “[y/n] is a ordinary girl who’s assigned to be got7’s manager! can she make them into superstars? as sparks begin to fly, can she keep it professional?” like fuck yeah that sounds like a kickass dating sim. it almost definitely already is one. i salute all the teens around the world for buying into the fantasy of dating a boy band member that they themselves sell you.

however, i don’t think i respect the “[member a] and [member b] are mafia/jocks and nerds/college students/high schoolers” concepts. in my opinion, the whole fantasy of boy band member is their personas, their hidden real personalities, their celebrity, and the show business setting. find a different intellectual property if you wanna write about school. i even respect the “yugyeom drank girl juice [not estrogen] and turned into a sexy girl” story more, because at least it knows exactly what it wants, and also because they’re all still boy band members. well, band members. shout out to yugyeom.

so, anyway, i looked elsewhere. at the time of writing, archive of our own only had 11,645 got7 stories, but it does have a better search, so it effectively has more. as an aside, i think it’s so funny, and mildly disorienting at first, that archive of our own separates the “music & bands” section from the “celebrities & real people” section. boy band members aren’t real people.

the first problem i encountered is that only 20 or so stories were written within a year of just right’s release. absolute cringe gans. don’t you care about your boys? there were zero stories tagged “vore” or “microphilia” either. stories containing the word “tiny” that were rated either “explicit” or “mature” were all normal (“normal”) size fetishization rather than, you know, just right.

however, i learned my lesson from twitter. i realized that what had happened was that watching this video had created sleeper agents, just waiting for their activation phrase. that activation phrase? bangtan boys. and yeah, lo and behold, there was one! unfortunately (fortunately?) it had nothing to do with got7, let alone just right, so i’m not going to talk about it.

basically what i learned is that this video may have actually been very normal, and my brain has just been destroyed by being too online at a young age.

however, there are plenty more videos in this genre. i present to you exo wolf, a banger from may 30th, 2013. i say banger, because in a comedic inversion, it’s actually fucking terrible.

this video is pretty self-explanatory in terms of why it might induce certain responses.

let’s get the formalities out of the way. this video, the member who’s getting cancelled is kai. he has braids in this video :/

also skating on thin ice: xiumin and chen. guys what was up with the whole exo-m thing? like, we’re gonna have a cpop subgroup, but it’s going to be part chinese members and part korean members that we’ll give a chinese name? unsurprisingly, the three exo members who have departed from the group are all chinese. they weren’t able to stand the microaggressions probably. but xiumin and chen remain uncancelled as an official chinese apology for five thousand of years of on-and-off invasions of korea. sorry guys that was kinda fucked up. our bad!

anyway, there are basically three avenues for exo fans to take: 1) humans with wolfish characters (usually wolf pack dynamics, which even wolves themselves don’t fucking use so i think all of you should shut up. the real omega here is your brain), 2) werewolves (duh), and 3) wolves with human characteristics (i.e. standard furry fare).

exo themselves let all these possibilities exist at the same time, superimposing them over each other, which is very woke and egalitarian of them. let’s see what the people decided. awoo.

Asianfanfics dot com had many stories in this vein. i feel very validated that this time i was able to correctly predict a fetish. that said, briefly returning to my earlier comment regarding alternate universes: it’s intense psychic whiplash reading about these vampires and werewolves, and going okay okay luhan is a vampire this that whatever, and then seeing the actual real performance photos the author attaches at the bottom of each chapter. bro i forgot these were actual people.... it breaks immersion so bad... i’m sorry, i just can’t believe that any of these dancing boys are having weird vampire sex with wings or whatever.

archive of our own also had many stories in this vein. and i think there are some important difference between the two sites worth talking about.

first of all, i think the higher engagement rate of archive of our own really enables some of the authors to get super bold. it makes Asianfanfics.com seem a little quaint, actually. like the wordcounts are waaay longer, for one. it’s uncommon for a story hosted on Asianfanfics.com to be more than a few thousand words long (most of them could easily be published in the new yorker), whereas some of these archive of our own people have written full length novels about if the members of exo were werewolves. i guess it’s just intensely demoralizing for the aff.com crew to get, like, three comments per story.

the second big difference is that i’m noticing more common themes between the ao3 crew’s writing. like stan intertextuality, or plagiarism, or whatever, but they seem to be implicitly engaging with each other’s characterizations, storylines, and tropes. i think it is because they probably all follow each other on twitter. (i have been active on twitter for three weeks now so i am an expert on fanfiction twitter.)

anyway, like not that i am a particularly big gan (cannot even list all the members), but these people seem to have reached a very specific consensus on how jackson wang, for instance, would react in a variety of situations that really surprises me? if i were to sit down and write a got7 story, i think the fuckboitude, the douchebaggery is a big part of his charm. not to be nationalist or anything, but for god’s sake, he’s from hong kong. but these people have him as very sensitive, lots of protective instincts. not that i understood what anyone on aff.com was doing with his character either, but they did all seem to be doing different things. “kudos” to that, i guess.

but: exo. wolf. i searched the “wolves” tag. this filtered the list down from 33459 stories to 52 stories. and the “wolves” tag was very different from the aff.com “wolf” tag. for the most part, aff.com liked stories where a member was a wolf (usually shapeshifting), feral boy, lots of y/n, lots of y/n dating a feral boy who is secretly a wolf.

ao3 really, really, really likes alpha/beta/omega stories. sorting by the most popular stories, only five on the first page weren’t a/b/o. and one of them was a cis f!baekhyun story, so i think the intended effect was communicated. anyway, let’s talk about some of the themes.

first of all, i’m disappointed. today’s bonus cancellation is of ao3 “wolves” writers. why the fuck are you drawing so heavily from european wolves?? there are wolves in asia!! you don’t need to keep giving their packs and ranks weird latin names. i will kill you. i hate italy. korea literally has a native wolf. i hate all of you!!! if you want to write caucasian wolves go watch that dumbass cw show!!!! my god.

the second theme (the first one was white supremacy) is that no one wants to be a wolf who fucks. i think that we need a sex positivity movement, or something, for omega rights. like, are all of you doing okay? you’re queering misogyny by inventing new genders to oppress. another level to “no one wants to be a wolf...” is the “who fucks” part. there are so many consent issues. and not even in like, a sexy intentional way? in a “i genuinely do not think this author understands how their writing comes off” way. unfortunately i am sensitive to untagged sexual coercion, and there was a lot of that.

at any rate, the aff.com wolves were at peace with being wolves, very self-actualized. the ao3 wolves know that every minute they spend alive on this bitch of an earth is suffering, and also sex.

the third theme is the evolution of y/n. y/n, who, in a startlingly woke move for aff.com, is almost always korean, is a girl main character stumbling into love, boy bands, and wolves (i think it’s because aff.com is oldschool kpop fandom, so therefore heavily asian itself in userbase). but y/n is not the main character in ao3 stories. she is the straight best friend. in what i think is a hilarious move, ao3 authors invert the gay best friend paradigm to give the gay main character a straight girl as best friend. she usually calls him “a gay,” she has lots of thoughts on boys, and she knows his sexuality better than he does and before he does. (sidebar: if all the men are gay, and all the women are straight...)

there’s a really fun twist to this, though, because the main character is always a self-insert in fanfiction. but where older fanfiction like aff.com was at peace with this and literalize it via y/n shenanigans, modern fic writers who haven’t finished distangling their complicated relationship with wanting to be a man who loves other men instead simply imbue their main character with their essence. a little voodoo doll sehun, with a lock of y/n hair.

this creates a deeply ambivalent relationship with gender in these stories. the main character is usually an omega, but one who resents being an omega. their body and its parts is usually described, if at all, as ostensibly intersex (except more offensively), but in practice, these discourses inscribe a trans body. (nb: i think cis writers approach this in a really fucked up fetishizing way, but i hope by this point we know that that goes without saying) it’s incredibly straightforward to read this, and see the underlying desires and fears in a heady cocktail of unfiltered writing that’s deeply confessional. you know when freud had people say whatever the fuck they wanted and figured they’d eventually free associate into releasing their subconscious into reality? yeah.

okay, and while we’re on the topic, let’s talk f(x) nu abo, released on may 4th, 2010.

this is a blitzy, maximalist, amped up dance hit that even has its own applause and cheers built in. it’s so fucking annoying, and i love it.

this song is on here because the second most popular kpop a/b/o story on ao3 is called “nu abo” except it’s about bts. that’s offensive enough in its own right. write something about f(x) (702 works). when will women win the right to have their own self-lubricating holes.

anyway, even though f(x) is probably innocent in all of this, i’m still cancelling amber liu.

for queerbaiting. who told her to look like ruby rose but hot? and for what? i’m also cancelling her for racism, but that wasn’t in this video.

moving on to a double feature: vixx voodoo doll and vixx chained up, released november 19, 2013 and november 9, 2015 respectively. this is because while voodoo doll is more formative, i think the fans who write fanfiction today got into kpop more recently, so we are casting a wide net.

anyway, voodoo doll is jam packed with weird pseudo-medical imagery, blood, vivisection, bondage, puppet shit, femdom, sharps, piercings, asphyxiation, dollification, stabbing/penetration metaphors, and a really sick and catchy dance. god that looks like the list of tags on the a/b/o wolf stories.

for this song, we’re cancelling you, for being way too into this song when you were 13.

vixx voodoo doll made me goth i guess! insert that pic of the your music saved me sign, except it saved me from getting into emo or pop punk probably.

chained up, comparatively, is much more tame. the only thing of note about it is that there are around 10 completely different chokers and choker looks the members wear in this music video. also they’re singing about being chained up, but that seemed a bit obvious.

we could argue that voodoo doll is gay while chained up is gay (derogatory); that voodoo doll is queer while chained up is gay; that chained up is a sensitive masterpiece of omega4omega sexuality. but we’re not going to.

we’re going to talk about what voodoo doll fanfiction was and was not. first, Aff.com had plenty of it. however, i was extremely disappointed to see that much of it did not hew to the spirit of vixx voodoo doll. my god, the voodoo doll becoming the one preying upon you disgusts me. the fantasy of the voodoo doll is that of absolute power. the idea that the doll itself has agency? instantly breaks the fantasy. i’m even not into voodoo dolls and i’m offended.

i also don’t think it’s part of the voodoo doll fantasy to release the doll. the only story on there that involved Y/N kidnapping vixx members like in the music video was unavailable because the author deactivated their account. come back qxeen what did you see.

i think this got off track, actually, in that i was mostly wondering why these people imprinted differently onto vixx voodoo doll than i did. like i don’t think you’re supposed to actually like straightforwardly absorb the morals and aesthetics of music videos like it’s propaganda. however, it’s more entertaining if you do. i hope ao3 doesn’t let me down.

out of the then 5932 works in the vixx fandom (the least out of every group so far, excluding f(x) because they’re women), 59 of them included the word “voodoo” somewhere. that’s 1%. i legitimately can’t tell if that’s high or not.

after some more cursory reading through the first page of popular results, my big takeaway is that people watched that video and wanted to be tortured and enslaved? but not, like, in a sexy way where the torturing is the point, the way where the point is to suffer bravely and beautifully, to endure the world’s harms like jesus on the cross, and then to fall into the arms of a beautiful boy who may or may not be the one hurting you in the first place.

there’s a certain predictability to these fantasies. like it’s not even masochism, which would be fun at least, it’s literally just like the desire to be beautiful, even as you suffer. and i do find that a little boring. (but, i mean, you can’t help being a woman!)

sidebar: on chained up. what’s interesting about chained up, is that most of the then 38 “chained up” works (likely because the video has no storyline) are about the members fucking during chained up promotions. no one’s ever actually chained up, but whatever. it’s fine. it’s fine!

anyway, here, more than ever, the nature of desire is stripped bare. i’ve written before [elsewhere in the unreleased tshirt cinematic universe] on how kpop boys are, through fandom, re-formed as white, or more strongly, i guess, blank slates. it’s really interesting to me how so much of this dynamic of projection is enabled by the fact that they’re asian men. they’re infantilized, feminized vessels; they’re seductive, but childlike, oblivious to their own charms, so nonthreatening; they have uncontrollable desires for sex, they’re scared of sex. and above all else, white women submit themselves to them, insert themselves into them. basically kpop fans tend to rework old school yellow peril and emasculation fantasies to reenact their own desires, often white, often cishet on them.

what i am saying is that there’s another thesis about forced feminization and its racialized subtext in here. obviously gender is a racialized construct to begin with, but like it’s fascinating to argue that when white women remake asian men according to their own desires, that is, into themselves, they (hopefully) unintentionally echo these old fears about the sexual order.

it illuminates, it seems, the underlying dynamic in the denigration of asian men, which is of course the fear of miscegenation. now, my breathtaking ability to make everything about me aside, miscegenation is interesting because it presents a racial synthesis, beginning to collapse and trouble the artificial designations of purity. so we make asian men into white women, and end up with an unsettling hybrid. i’m sure this has deep implications for me personally.

but i think we already knew that quite a few of these people had yellow fever, so let’s talk about the gender dialectic at play. basically, the above dynamic, of making men into women (whether literally, in body; or subjectively, in mind; or even relationally, as they are objectified into passive vessels for your desire) coexists with the ostensibly converse dynamic, in which the straight women desires to be a gay man. these aren’t necessarily in conflict: it could easily be that these are different writers writing different stories, that both are ways of expressing discontent with existing in a raced, gendered body, or even that the end product of both is the same.

it’s been a while without a picture. all of you now have the legal right to hunt and kill me for making a d&g joke.

anyway, what i want to talk about is how these two fantasies can coexist. that by making a man into yourself, you can speak on your own desire in a passive way. my normal interest is analyzing forced masc fantasies (albeit in chinese opera lol), and they bear little to no resemblance to this kind of fantasy. this kind offers plausible deniability, of course, because wanting things is embarrassing. but also the fantasy isn’t about wanting to be a man, it’s about having no choice but to be a failed one. the gender pessimism running through these stories is palpable. basically andrea long chu wants what wolf fanfiction writers know: everyone is an omega, and everyone hates it.

at any rate, this racialized dynamic is one that i wasn’t sure how to bring up throughout this piece, mainly because there is no definitive way for me to tell the race of any individual writer, beyond just like the clear and present vibes that i receive. but i think it structures a lot of the fantasies contained in this essay. (i felt more comfortable bringing up the gendered dynamic, because it was fairly trivial to find out the current gender of the person writing each story i was reading.)

obviously we should return to the specter haunting this conversation: the very much alive david eng. i think this sort of argument is familiar to readers of racial castration, especially his chapter on m. butterfly. btw sorry for mentioning that play 2 out of 3 posts on this blog. i have problems.

let’s talk about the parallel imagery between the depiction of gallimard’s final speech and the fanfiction i’ve described above. in it, gallimard makes himself into his own dream woman, dressing in yellowface and robes, the costume of puccini’s original madame butterfly. and he laments his lost love:

there is a vision of the orient that i have. of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. who are born and raised to be the perfect women. who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally.

in that, i see the self insert, and i see the sufferer of vixx voodoo fic. the fantasy that gallimard has about asian women is repeated, this time about asian men and a helpless identification with them. and on some level, gallimard’s women do have something very compelling to identify with: they suggest that there’s a way to endure white male violence without sacrifice, and even more potently, to enjoy it on some level.

but onward to the titular racial castration. eng argues that gallimard’s wilful ignorance of song’s true gender is a psychic castration -- song’s masculinity is diminished so that his own can be enhanced within their relationship. this, eng believes, acts out “richard fung’s contention that in western imaginary ‘asian and anus are conflated.’” this process stabilizes the relationship between the asian man and the white woman: they occupy the same place within the sexual dyad.

this is, i think, why some people are addicted to writing from the bottom’s perspective. again -- not implying that irl bottoms don’t exist or that bottoms are psychically castrated lol -- but rather that you can fantasize about this ideal asian man that you can come to embody. in kpop rpf, rather than it being between a white man and an asian man (unless someone’s started writing chad future fic), it’s between two asian men. so this transformation is performed. whiteness is always intruding and so i think eng is helpful here to making it visible again.

this essay isn’t a callout or actual cancellation or anything like that, i do wanna be clear. i guess i just like talking about fantasies, even the embarrassing ones, and where they come from. i think oftentimes in fandom spaces, we write a lot of stories off as idfic, and i think virtually every single one of the stories i referenced to write this fairly uncontroversially fall into that category. but i think calling something an “id” something or the other naturalizes the satisfaction it gives as purely instinctual and unconscious, when i do think there are deeper narratives at play. while i didn’t ever actually reference the base here (sorry), i do think it’s worth talking about how real world power shapes & maintains the superstructure, and thereby our fantasies.

anyway in conclusion, maybe i was the one with sexual brainworms the whole time.

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shinygoku · 4 years ago

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Thunderbirds (2004)

A review by me, CutCat! This is 8-ish pages long!

Spoiler for the end of the film warning: Alan is in International Rescue. What a twist!

Totally Turbulent

Soooo, Tbirds ‘04 is one of those Infamous Adaptations, at least among those who enjoyed Thunderbirds (’65) and of more recent times, Thunderbirds are Go (’15). It’s one of those Bad Live Action Adaptations to a near sacred property, making it dubious contemporaries with Dragon Ball [Evolution], Avatar [The Last Airbender] and suchlike.

But wait, is it really That Bad?? Why is it as divisive as it is? What caused the film to be the way it is, and quite unpopular at that?

First I’m gonna make a long story very short by saying that a Live Action Thunderbirds movie was on and off production for many years, and that the script we ended up with is apparently better than another one that was pitched... but there are reports of cooler scripts further back that never made it, for various reasons. It’s almost a story of it’s own right but I’m only going by 2nd hand information at best, so I’d rather just link them at the end for Additional Reading if y’all felt so inclined.

With that out of the way, we have the Takes from the Andersons to look at. Sylvia had a very favourable reception to it:

"I felt that I'd been on a wonderful Thunderbirds adventure. You, the fans, will I'm sure, appreciate the sensitive adaptation and I'm personally thrilled that the production team have paid us the great compliment of bringing to life our original concept for the big screen. If we had made it ourselves (and we have had over 30 years to do it!) we could not have improved on this new version. It is a great tribute to the original creative team who inspired the movie all those years ago. It was a personal thrill for me to see my characters come to life on the big screen."

Whereas Gerry had a considerably blunter response at the opposite end of the scale:

"the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life."

As for me, a mere fan of predominantly the TAG series with limited but fond memories of the 90’s TOS reruns, I’d been inclined to ignore it and write it off as a DBE or TLA lost cause. But the combined effect of me deciding to check out unpopular media for myself, namely Dragon Ball GT and the live action Super Mario Bros. movie, and thoroughly enjoying both; and the other effect of TAG finishing but my fixation reawakening with the need to consume More, I dived deeper into the fan base than I had dared to before, in which I found more reasons to watch it and make up my own mind fairly.

Find out what I thought, and a review of the movie itself, below the Cut! ✂

Stormy Story

Ok, enough teasing, I see good things in the movie but not enough for it to be a secret masterpiece, not by a long shot.

1/3 Stars from Me. That’s Poor. (Compare with 2/3 being Good, and 3/3 being Excellent)

My main beef is unfortunately kinda the crux of the whole story, so while there were aspects I really liked, it had permanently set the bar low, and other issues were not helping matters. I’ll go into the problems after I sum up the plot.

[sitcom harp music]

14 Year Old Alan Tracy is stuck in a stuffy school with only his nerd friend to confide in. Something’s eating him up, and it’s jealousy over how his family are International Rescue, the secret rescue workers whole pilot the Thunderbirds, impossibly cool craft with capabilities vastly exceeding standard technology. Even when he’s allowed out of school and back to the Island, his envy and barely repressed resentment over not being a member himself causes him to go off and sulk and to try taking Thunderbird 1, the hypersonic jet plane, for a joyride.

His father and the leader of International Rescue, Jeff Tracy chews Alan out for almost compromising the need for the organisation to remain secret, lest their advanced technology falling into the wrong hands. Alas, said wrong hands are already working against IR: The Hood, a diabolical, cold blooded criminal with psychic powers and a grudge against Jeff. After successfully tracking the location of Tracy Island, he launches a missile towards Thunderbird 5, the Space Station where IR monitor potential disasters to prevent as much damage as possible, manned by John Tracy.

With TB5 crippled and John injured, Jeff and his other three older sons all scramble to the disaster zone via Thunderbird 3, the Rocket Ship. But with Tracy Island largely unmanned, The Hood moves in and aims to use the Thunderbirds to rob bank vaults while simultaneously smearing International Rescue’s good name. As the only Tracy brother left on Earth, it’s up to Alan and his 2 friends, Fermat and Tin-Tin, to foil the Hood and save his family, proving himself worthy in the process. He is also assisted by IR’s London Agent, Lady Penelope, and her driver/butler/lockpicker, Parker.

...

Ok, so that’s a summary you may read on the back of a DVD box, maybe it’s a bit long but whatever. Do you see what’s wrong with the story? The massive rift in the formula that should be within a template set by the hugely popular TV Series?

Critical Crux

For me, the main issue with the movie is that the Tracy family are thrown under a bus, or perhaps it’s more like being locked in a closet, in order for Alan to rise up and be The Hero. A show that was about each of them having different roles and personalities to the others, and the movie sees the best way to adapt the premise is to reduce 3 of them to cardboard cutouts who aren’t allowed to do or say anything meaningful, with the exception to this getting the dubious honour of getting a missile and exploding space station to the face.

I can’t clearly express how much this pisses me off! It’s downright insulting and baffling as well. They had pre established characters right there for the taking but go NO! Let’s make OCs to fill this newly created void instead and make the main Message of the film Friendship Teamwork.

Why does every child-skewed media hafta have the Friendship message? It’s a good one, sure, but nothing said in this film about it was fresh or original. Y’know what I see far, far less? Not just in Kid Flavoured Media, but all sorts? The importance of Brotherly Bonds between actual brothers!! I don’t subscribe to the massively misunderstood message version of ‘Blood is thicker than water’, but a story with the siblings actually pushed and stressed and coming out stronger at the end would have ruled!!

[For what it’s worth, the actual saying is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”, i.e. the bonds you choose to forge are more important than happening to be born to certain people. This correct message is still compatible with literal siblings though!]

The other, somewhat lesser Large Issue with the movie is simply that we don’t see much in the way of Rescues with the titular Thunderbirds. We only get the tail end of the Oil Rig in Act 1, and then the ‘Birds are used predominantly to get to London and save 1 Monorail Car with TB4.

Watsonian Woes & Doylist Dilemma

When looking at Media, there’s 2 main angles to consider; Doylist and Watsonian. Doylist is the “real life / meta” angle, the structure of the story or interests of the author being in the plot, that kinda thing. Watsonian is the reason given within the story.

All stories have Watsonian and Doylist reasonings, the trick is to blend them in and not use a weedy Watsonian reason for something stupid happening.

Why bring this up? Because it’s still part of the Huge Problem I have with the film; the Doylist reason for all of IR being incapacitated so easily is so Alan can shine without fighting for focus in a large group. I don’t like it, but let’s go along with it for now.

Believe it or not, but I can accept that a Movie format isn’t going to be the same as an ongoing series. There’s way less time and you gotta hit certain beats. Ideally you also condense the essence of the show into the film while being more than just a long episode. They didn’t hit this note in my opinion...

But other than ‘It has to happen for he story to work’, there’s no damn reason for all the Non-Alan Tracys to be cooped up in the crippled TB5! They put all their eggs into one basket when a considerably more sensible choice woulda been to have a small crew, and the others remain on base. Because even without factoring in a worst case scenario where another missile hits them while in space, killing them all, which totally could have happened for all they know, there’s also the part about them being International Rescue! They gotta be ready to respond to other disasters should those develop. TB1, 2 and 4 were still available for use!

If I was Jeff making the boneheaded decision, I would have taken a second to think about it and have 1 of the Bros come up in 3 with me. Seeing to John shouldn’t be something 4 people are needed for, it would just get more crowded and the oxygen would be used way faster! Considering they all come close to asphyxiating, 2 less people would mean things weren’t so damn close to the wire! (Granted, the movie also has them falling into Earth’s atmosphere and burning up as a hazard, but the whole crew being there doesn’t affect that.)

Jeff! You’re the patriarch and supposedly most experienced dude in the whole movie! Why didja run into that trap with both eyes open? Stressful situation, sure, but in the Rescue Business you need to be able to listen to the cold, clinical angle. You’re risking more of your sons’ lives making such a rash judgement!!

Character Conundrums

This is the part of the review where I begin to really emphasise the differences between TOS and this movie. I’ll hold off TAG for now in the interest of fairness.

The movie is a mixed bag when it comes to the individuals within it. Some have been refreshing updates to stuffy 60′s tropes, but several draw the short straw, feeling even stiffer than their marionette precursors.

Alan - Hoo, boy. The plot follows Alan.... for the third time if you’re factoring in the Supermarionation movies, which was quite the baffling choice as Puppet!Alan is quite the obnoxious jerk. But whatever, new movie, new canon, new Alan. While the Alan of the 60′s was a bizarrely whiny brat of a character considering he was supposed to at least be in his early 20′s this Alan at least makes more sense to be annoying. But yes, he starts off as a sullen jerk with unclearly defined jealousy towards his own brothers and seemingly a lack of grasping the stakes behind International Rescue, viewing being one of the crew as a Cool Job rather than a gruelling, life-risking ordeal. Over the course of the movie (mostly Act 3) he becomes less of a berk and a better team player, even going as far as to save the Hood personally.

Jeff - One of the stronger characters in the movie, even with this poor choice I’ve gone on about already, haha. You get the real impression the job means the world to him, but still secondary to his sons. An update and improvement to the sometimes stodgy and holier-than-thou character from the 60′s, plus his proactive role makes him way less of a backseat driver.

Lady Penelope - Best character and a splendid update to the 60′s Socialite. This Penny is always a delight to see, although her ability to change clothes offscreen sometimes pushes plausibility, haha. She and Jeff also have very natural and endearing chemistry, so for this iteration at least, I’m up for shipping them, something I can’t say for TOS.

Parker - Remarkably true to the beloved puppet version and another highlight. His interplay with Penelope is some of the best dialogue in the whole movie, and was written by Richard Curtis in an uncredited role, or so I’ve read.

The Hood - A shockingly sadistic and cold blooded so-and-so. His Psychic powers have been given a huge boost, and the depths of his spite generates all the tense scenes the movie has to offer. His performance may be the best in the whole film, simultaneously over the top while also completely deadly.

Tin-Tin - Y’know, Tin-Tin is a funny character, in how she’s very different in all versions. I enjoy her in TOS, but her potential as an engineering assistant, mathematician and member of IR are quickly discarded to make her a secretary, which is further demoted to bringing coffee. Ahh, The Sixties! One of her other defining features was the sometimes bickering sexual tension with Alan. Movie!Tin-Tin is still the implied love interest [and the same age] with him, but she’s also an Action Girl extraordinaire, with abilities bordering on metahuman. She can trek through the jungle without slowing down, she can dive underwater for prolonged sequences, and has a variation of her Evil Uncle’s Psychic capabilities, but used for good. Notably, the Kayo of TAG takes significantly more from this Tin-Tin to the original, sadly sans Telekinesis.

Fermat - The only OC I’m gonna dignify with a section here lol. He’s basically mini-Brains, complete with the way he t-ta-tal- -distinctive speech patterns. But yeah, as the hypersmart and nerdy pal, I feel that his role is pretty superfluous, though his performance in the movie got me to soften up, he’s a good kid. Just one who, like, is part of the deal breaking issue I have with the whole film. In a way I think he’d have made a better lead than Alan lmao

Brains - Not much to say here, he’s also a dude in distress for a majority of his screentime. Seems to be older than his TOS self and a bit less subservient to Jeff, but also a father ....or Fermat is his clone. They never make that clear. He��s hit on by the Hood’s Female Scientist and it’s played for comedy, more on that later.

John - In TOS, his role was infamously minimal, as Gerry Anderson took such a strong disliking to the John puppet and the TB5 model that he exiled both into space with a few token shots per episode. So in comparison, this movie is far kinder to John! He has a nice, genuine chat with Jeff, without any mission to initiate said videocall. The movie is also quite mean to John in how he gets bombed by the Hood, his space station in tatters, his arm hurt and then near suffocation with Jeff and most of his brothers. Ahh, the conundrum of being John.

Scott, Virgil and Gordon - No, they don’t even get their own paragraphs in my review. Their lack of presence and importance in the movie is my giant gripe (have you noticed yet?) and it got to the extent that I feel they could have been combined into one character to save casting money. They get maybe 5 lines each, if that. I literally can’t tell Scott and Virgil apart (I know they have name tags on their uniforms, but in most scenes I couldn’t even read that) other than knowing 1 of them is taller. Which that one is, is a mystery.

The only one with a slightly distinctive appearance and air is Gordon, which is another can of worms because he seems to be the designated Doubtful Jerk Brother and that drives me mad!! In TOS he wasn’t as main a character as Scott, Virgil or Alan, but he was still a defined person with his own abilities. And his personality was as a slightly mouthy but the most lighthearted character! Why didn’t they carry that over?!

And yeah, Scott and Virgil are pretty much the Main Two of the brothers in TOS, so their roles being reduced to 1 token act during the oil rig rescue each [Gordon didn’t even get that!] is all the more mind boggling.

Hood’s Minions - Can’t be assed to write their names out, I refer to them as Heavy Dude and Science Woman. Heavy Dude is the Heavy, and his character consists of Dumb and somewhat Sadistic Muscle. Science Woman is first objectified (we see her ass first. Yes, really.) but then it’s ‘revealed’ that as she has Austin Powers level teeth, she’s uuuuuglyyyyy and her otherwise genuine attraction towards Brains is played for laughs with this angle. And that’s still female on male sexual harassment, which doesn’t fly with me. Eeeesh. Bad writing! She does Science Things for Hood.

The Rest - Kyrano and his wife are in this. Wife is Original but basically Grandma’s role, though she doesn’t even get a single word to say. Rip. Also the Hood has a few more generic mooks from somewhere, but seemingly only for part of the movie. Kyrano didn’t do much in the show except get bullied by the Hood and little has changed.

Tone Trouble

I feel like the movie has a bit of an issue with balancing a consistent Tone. Again, let’s look back at TOS. It was a Family Show, designed to not just appeal to little kids, but to also keep their parent and other adult amused. Maybe some of it was also the result of the times, but striking to me is that they allowed the characters to get pretty hurt, complete with red paint being applied to look like realistic blood. Some of the criminals, including the Hood himself, would be very vicious, how he treats Brains in Desperate Intruder comes to mind. There was even firefights resulting in death, like the memorable climax of Operation Crash-Dive, where Gordon has to shoot a saboteur in the back, into the open sea below the compromised plane. He then proceeds to hold the cut wires together with his bare hands. Don’t try this at home, kids!

So while I can understand some of that being removed from the Movie (and TAG), there’s still the irritating going down to a perceived kid’s level for the majority of the film, which is probably also a large reason for the massive structural change. But then, there’s shockingly dark implications here and there, and the haunting sight of the crew trapped on TB5 floating lifelessly in the dark, asphyxiating. But then, again, we have goofy choreographed fight scenes with juvenile stock cartoon sounds. And then, we have Hood force choking Alan?! It has been mostly consistent until Act 3, then the tone goes up and down more than the flying machines.

Revamped Rockets

I’m mostly talking about the main craft here, though I know the Pod vehicles got modified too, I’m not sufficiently a TOS Pod Buff to go over them.

TB1 - Looks real nice! Maintains and even enhances the sleekness, and the idea of a glass cockpit is much better than having 1 tiny window and a dinky TV screen to see by. Oddly dark inside the cockpit considering how much glass there is, though. Probably my fav of the Movie Fleet.

TB2 - Oof. Looks bad, man. Like, really ugly. What have they done to the glorious design that was the Original Big Green? The unofficial mascot from her importance and unorthodox style? They turned her into a stubby, too glossy, chunky bar of green soap. The thick ass legs are a good idea but it sure ain’t enough. Also, she carries 3 smaller pods insteada 1 big one.

TB3 - Like TB1, pretty much the same design but streamlined a little. Docks with 5 sidewise instead of like pen going into its lid.

TB4 - I’m mixed. I like the idea of giving her a glass canopy and extendable arms, but the movie’s version is so boxy she looks more like a small yellow Greenhouse with the rear half of the old Four, haha. The arms also look a little stiff, can they bend? Now, if there was a sleek, glass hulled, variable armed, demolition charges-loaded Four, that would be my favourite possible version ;3 Four is my fav craft in TOS and TAG, for what it’s worth.

TB5 - I say it’s quite a visual improvement over TOS and the odds and ends jumbled look that had, though I do appreciate a bit of Chunkiness. This one really needs to have better defence too, TOS 5 may’ve been able to tank that missile lmao

FAB1 - I know that she would have been a Rolls Royce in the film, but BMW said no, so that’s not a point against the movie. And failing the classic image, it’s cute that it’s a Ford Thunderbird, though I’d have preferred one with those 50′s/60′s stylish fins personally lol. Her ability to fly is new here unless you count the Dream Sequence in Are Go (’66) and the water mode was also seen in that before this, and she gets the job done, though we don’t get to see as many gadgets and gizmos in the course of the film.

Unlikely Uniforms

I really don’t understand these. Why are they off white with minimal accent colours? What was wrong with the blueness of their suits and the broad stripe of a secondary colour? I sure ain’t saying the 60’s costumes were practical or even that fashionable, but they were very distinctive and striking!

Not only that, but for some strange unexplained reason, their uniforms all correspond not to their own speciality, but to which craft they’re currently piloting. Even if they’re all in the same Bird...! So like, four out of five are wearing identical looking red accented suits while locked in TB5. I already find the elder brothers to be the Similar Squad, and their microscopic name tags don’t help!

Why don’t they wear their own coloured uniforms all the time? Then ya don’t need the name tag at all! And the silly implication from the way there’s apparently a whole set of Craft Specific uniforms is that there’s piles of clothes that ain’t getting used in all of them, like the tiny TB4 probably having 6 whole sets on board at the end of the film.

Between that, no blue and the outfits looking like Generic Sports Wear, the only nice thing to say is the THUNDERBIRDS down the sleeve is a cool touch. Which should really say International Rescue or IR...

Mingled Misc.

Yeah, The conflation of Thunderbirds and International Rescue is a tad irritating but it’s actually something I can overlook. It’s not a dealbreaker and it makes sense the Dumbass Public would misunderstand and call them the wrong thing.

Jeff refuses Alan early access into IR and cites “No shortcuts”. Then at the end he echoes this when he is making Alan an official member, saying he did it with no shortcuts. The whole faffing scenario was a giant shortcut!!! Fuck training and being a suitable age, am I right?!

Amazingly I didn’t cover this already, but when Alan shortcuts his way onto the team he’s made pilot of ... TB4. That’s why he’s in yellow accents in the pic. Gordon is seemingly the main pilot of TB3 instead, but the movie doesn’t deign to make that clear. While I appreciate that the 14 year old with no Astronaut training isn’t put in charge of 3 instantly, I resent the careless removal of characterisation. Obviously movie Gordon never served with WASP or won the gold medal in swimming or had a massive hydrofoil crash to nearly kill him but ggggghgggaaahhhhhhhhh

Also what’s with the implication that Four is the Babby’s First Machine? She’s a highly specialised craft that would require different training to flying or Space shit! How dare you?! The most charitable link is that Alan stood around in 4 as Tin-Tin did most of the work herself, but I guess it coulda as some level of experience.

Ford Sponsorship - Gets a bit much! It’s one thing for all the cars to be Ford, but them seemingly owning the News is like an unpleasant look into a world where corporations run everything.... hahahaahaaaaaa........

Marvellous Music

Something the movie really excells at is the tunes! The remix of the Thunderbirds March is good in it’s own right and very welcome, and the new music is all solid. Special mention to Busted’s outro song for slapping so hard even people who hate the movie leave warm youtube comments about the song. I have a habit of listening to it set to TAG footage myself, haha

Sincere Summation

Look, I’ve come off negative in this, but I honestly have a lot of respect for a lot of the parts of this picture. Hood, Penelope, Parker and Jeff are fantastic, the physical models and sets have a lot of care and loving detail poured in, the music is all bangers and other little nods and homages to the show shine brightly. The director got a lot of good work in and I hold him no ill will.

I think the problem is in the Writing and probably Studio Mandates, I’m not 100% sure, but things often get snaggy when the studio you’re working under gets bought out by a bigger company partway through. Again, I’ll refer to the info I’ve seen instead of trying to relay it in my own words.

And they made a real bad call snubbing Gerry as a Creative Consultant. Some of his venom towards the film may be from that, as well as his alleged preference to Team America: World Police as a theatrical homage. And I’ve seen that before and wouldn’t really say that’s true to the spirit of Thunderbirds, but yeah...

I’d be interested in any future Thunderbirds Movies, if that’s ever on the cards again. I’d probably be even more up for continuation of the TAG series, or newer new Captain Scarlet with International Rescue involved. Either way, I want new footage of the Birds taking off again, be it puppet, people, CGI, or something new~

Extra Reading

https://securityhazard.net/2017/05/19/thunderbirds-2004/ Full movie review, warm reception. Contains photos of set pieces and costumes.

http://groovyfokker.blogspot.com/2013/02/thunderbirds-arent-go-unfilmed-versions.html Insight into some of the past issues developing a Movie, but gets some basic information wrong (Since when is Gordon the youngest and TB3 orange??)

Thanks if ya’ve been reading the whole thing! <3

#Thunderbirds 2004 #Thunderbirds #Thunderbirds TOS #Thunderbirds Movie #Movie Review #can't really tag it with TAG because I deliberately kept that minimal lol #I care so much about Tbirds so I had much to say #I hope the links don't mess up it appearing in the tags :v

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hermannsthumb · 5 years ago

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OOOH AUTUMN FIC MEMES !!! okay if you aren't terribly busy and wouldn't mind, of course, i'd love to see the prompt "hayride" and/or "flannel shirt" for newmann :3

from autumn fic meme here: 25. Hayride + 28. Flannel Shirt

HELLO ERICA....YES OF COURSE.......have some post-movie newt and hermann as roommates with a side of mutual (not that they realize) pining

————————————————————————

It takes Hermann ten days to agree to the idea when Newton first proposes it, and even then, he’s skeptical; he blames his allergies first (dust, dead leaves, mold), his back (extra-sensitive to being jostled about), his schedule (too busy, Newton, really, perhaps next year), before Newton—evidently quite desperate—finally decides to just bribe him into it. “It’s literally thirty minutes,” he begs, “it’s fun, and I’ll do the dishes for a whole month afterwards. A whole month! For thirty minutes of fun bonding with me.”

This is no small compromise: in all of their time sharing close quarters, from the professional nature of their laboratory to the more—well, er—intimate friendship of their two-bedroom-flat, Newton has never once put a single plate in the dishwasher, never once wiped down a single coffee mug, never once even offered to rinse off a damn fork. “Make it two,” Hermann says, “and you’ve got a deal.”

“You’re a dick,” Newton says, but agrees to the terms.

Hermann knows Newt will get lazy and fall back on the deal in a week or so, but even that one week will be a welcome change from the usual course of things (i.e., Hermann doing everything) and a great big sacrifice for Newton (i.e., eating chips on the sofa in his underwear) he can’t imagine is worth it. All to pay $20 to sit in the back of a tractor full of hay and be shaken and jostled around for half an hour. Absurd.

“It’s fun. It’s a fall tradition,” Newton shouts over the engine, “like dressing up as a slutty nurse or remaking ‘Halloween’ for the tenth time.” A woman sitting across from them pulls two children closer to her knees and shoots Newton a dirty look; Newton smiles sheepishly. “Dressing up as a wholesome, chaste nurse,” he corrects, “who—”

They drive over a particularly large bump, and Newton bounces off his bale of hay and to the wooden planks of the tractor bed at Hermann’s feet. “Ow.”

Hermann rolls his eyes and offers a hand. “Here we are, Newton,” he says, helping him to his knees with a grunt, “up you go—”

“Thanks, mom,” Newton says. He squeezes back in next to Hermann, wriggling strictly more than necessary, elbow jostling into Hermann’s side; Hermann jabs him back with his own elbow. “Anyway, it’s important for us to, you know, do that kind of stuff now. Normal stuff. Annual traditions.” His eyes flicker down to his boots. “Together. You and me.”

Hermann coughs. He knows the point Newton is trying to make, at least: until recently, they haven’t had the time to do these sorts of things, or even the time to consider these sorts of things—it was difficult to put an effort into making annual traditions when the odds were high they wouldn’t survive that year, let alone the next. And Hermann would know. He calculated the odds himself. “You and me,” he echoes.

It’s their first autumn they’re settled in as roommates. Colleagues. Friends. It makes sense. Friends make traditions together. Newton is only his friend.

(The Newton of now is far more mellow than the Newton Hermann shared a laboratory with for nearly a decade. He’s less prone to shouting. Less prone to arguments. More prone to listening to Hermann. Softer, somehow, even physically, his hair a bit longer, his stubble a bit scruffier, his cheeks a bit fuller. It’s different—not better, not worse, but different. Hermann finds it suits him. Hermann finds it suits him very, very well. Sometimes, when Newton shuffles around in the early mornings in nothing but boxers and a hoodie, when he sits next to Hermann on their couch and offers him coffee with a smile, when he packs Hermann lunch and doodles a few Sharpie hearts on the brown bag, Hermann doesn’t want to be just his friend.)

“I’m surprised you’ve never done one of these before,” Newton is saying. “Didn’t you grow up on a farm?”

“It wasn’t an actual farm,” Hermann says. “But there were—chickens. And an old barn.” There was a broken-down and rusted old tractor in the barn when they bought the property, and plenty of fields (though quite overgrown), so Hermann imagines it’d been a farm at least at some point in time. It wasn’t when he lived there.

The answer seems to satisfy Newton. “My dad used to drive us out to the middle of nowhere to go on these every October,” he says. The wind is blowing the hair from his face, and he’s smiling in that way that makes Hermann feel funny—makes his chest tighten up, his pulse race. “Hayride, then pumpkin picking. Then we’d drive all the way home to carve them for our front step.” Another elbow against Hermann’s side. “We should totally go pumpkin-picking next weekend.”

“What’s the point? We can just go to the shops for one. Probably half the price.”

“Yeah, but that’s not fun,” Newton says.

The tractor hitch jerks and jostles them again, and Hermann’s back hits the wooden bench hard. “This isn’t particularly fun either,” he snaps. “It’s uncomfortable, it’s crowded, it’s bloody cold, too—” It’s freezing, actually, only more so because they’re moving. Hermann’s already planning a hot shower when they get home.

“You’re such a baby,” Newton says.

“A baby?”

“Here I am,” Newton says, “trying to make memories with my best friend—” Before Hermann can even begin to comment on his choice of words, Newton is suddenly yanking off his flannel shirt—leaving himself wearing nothing but his jeans and a tight t-shirt—and tossing it at Hermann. “Just wear this and stop whining.”

Hermann stares at it dumbly. “Your—?”

“Yes,” Newton says. “My flannel. It’s warm. You’re gonna look dumb with it over your sweater, but you’ll be warmer.” When Hermann opens his mouth to protest, because it’s Newton’s flannel, Hermann won’t take it and let him freeze instead, Newton shakes his head and shoves it against Hermann’s chest. “I’m serious, Hermann. I gotta a lot of body heat. I’ll survive.”

Hermann pulls it on over his sweater. It’s large on Newton—Newton, who’s shorter than Hermann, but stockier and nowhere near as skinny—which means it fits easily over all of Hermann’s layers, and it is, indeed, very warm, though it makes Hermann feel a bit like a marshmallow. It also smells like Newton: like his aftershave, his Old Spice deodorant, his fruity shampoo, the coffee he manages to spill on himself every single day. It’s like being wrapped up in Newton’s arms. Like a great big hug. (Or so Hermann assumes; he and Newton don’t make a habit of hugging.)

"I look a ridiculous,” Hermann declares.

“You look cuuuuute,” Newton says, grinning, and knocks the heel of his right boot against Hermann’s left oxford. “Like a big, puffy—”

“Three months, Newton,” Hermann warns. “Three months—“

He means to tack on, retroactively, to Newton’s dishwashing sentence, but they go over another bump, and this one sends Hermann losing his balance and falling forward right into Newton’s lap. “Whoops,” Newton laughs. Hermann blinks dazedly up at him. “You okay, dude?”

Even sideways, and hovering above Hermann with his hair in his face, Newton is distressingly handsome. Hermann’s always found him distressingly handsome. It’s very unfair. “Yes,” Hermann says. “I lost my balance.” The wind carries another whiff of Newton’s deodorant towards him, and his mouth goes dry. He feels dizzy. “Er—would you mind, Newton—?”

It’s Newton’s turn to help him straighten back up; though, when he’s finished, he doesn’t move his arm out from behind Hermann’s back, but curls his fingers around Hermann’s waist instead. “A pumpkin,” he says, breath puffing out warm against the shell of Hermann’s ear, and Hermann must fight to not shiver, “from an actual pumpkin patch. We can each carve a side. How about that?”

“Only if you clean up the mess,” Hermann relents, finding it very difficult to deny Newton anything at the moment.

Newton’s grin returns. He gives Hermann’s waist a squeeze. “Deal.”

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #they gay.#newts-geiszler

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tanadrin · 5 years ago

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The current episode of WITH with Gabriel Zucman has some good bits: he argues that tax jurisdiction shopping probably isn’t something the US has to worry about, because being a citizen resident outside the country isn’t enough to avoid US taxes, and renouncing your citizenship comes with a tax on unrealized capital gains--Warren proposes making this a 40% wealth tax, in addition to her annual wealth tax, which would be pretty funny IMO. He also argues that combating mundane tax avoidance schemes is mostly a matter of political will. Europe hasn’t tended to have that, which is why European wealth taxes have not seen much success; fortunately, in the US, the idea of a wealth tax is wildly popular, among supporters of both parties.

The only argument he can muster against Hayes weakly suggesting that maybe it’s better for Bill Gates to spend Bill Gates’ money than the US government spend Bill Gates’ money is that relying on private charity is undemocratic, and while I think that’s true, I wish he’d given over half a sentence as to why. “Undemocratic” by itself is kind of waffly, and not super convincing. The real answer I think is that politics often points to needs of the electorate that billionaires overlook or outright refuse to fulfill--one half of one percent of Warren Buffet’s net worth annually could, for instance, do wonders for Nebraska’s public schools--and even in the most generous reading, where this is nothing more than the result of coordination problems among charitable foundations run by rich people, we have a mechanism for solving that particular suite of allocation issues, and it’s called a legislature and a state or federal budget.

The biggest rejoinder of course is that the US government also spends a lot of money on awful things like wars. However, I think the rejoinder to that rejoinder is that the politicians more likely to enact wealth taxes seem the least enthusiastic about wars: Warren and Sanders are no Biden or Clinton (to say nothing of Cruz) and so as a practical matter I feel like the likelihood of US tax revenue being spent on mass murder is going to be strongly anticorrelated with actually increased tax revenue. (If Bernie Sanders starts arguing we need to bomb Tehran, I promise to revise my position accordingly.) But even if there were no correlation in either direction, I still feel like the consistent position would be to vote for wealth taxes and against war.

There’s another argument against wealth taxes that I think is quite good--that is, that (say) Jeff Bezos’s hundred-billion dollar net worth is a theoretical number, and is as high as it is at least in part because it is owned by Jeff Bezos. You can’t treat assets, especially ownership stakes in publicly-traded corporations, as though they’re equivalent to piles of cash in a vault, even if we attach numbers to them that indicate they’re in some sense similar. Forcing Bezos to sell some small part of those assets annually to meet an arbitrary tax demand might not yield the expected revenue for the US government, and having Bezos, who apparently doesn’t suck at his job, hand over control of these assets to other people might be bad for the economy as a whole in the long run.

To this, I would say: sort of, but that’s actually kinda the point. First, I’m pessimistic and I think it’s very, very hard to overestimate the amount of wealth that very rich people have that’s the product of rent-seeking, favorable regulation, and luck, rather than innate capability. But even if it were true that Jeff Bezos is one hundred billion times smarter and more capable in a general sense than One-Dollar Bob who runs the convenience store next to my house but is up to his eyeballs in back child support payments, then by virtue of his talents and abilities, he is always going to enjoy an outsized proportion of wealth and prosperity compared to poor ol’ Bob. After all, Warren and Sanders are not proposing a law saying all billionaires as of January 1, 2021 are to be taxed until they’re wearing half a boot for a hat and living in an old boxcar--I think Warren’s proposed tax is like 2% above 50 million and 6% above a few billion? I.e., you can be close to filthy stonking rich as you like by the average person’s reckoning, and be liable for bupkis under Warren’s tax (even better if you live in a low cost-of-living state like Nebraska!); this is a far cry from seizing the means of production and setting up a guillotine in front of the NYSE.

I think it’s a good thing not to have huge swathes of the economy in the hands of a small number of people. I think it’s a good thing because I think rich people largely aren’t nearly as competent as we alieve they are; we often operate under the opposite, rosier end of the just world intuition, and forget how much wealth depends on things like favorable tax codes, exploitation of labor, and rent seeking. Fuzzy concerns about “democracy” aside, I think a small number of private individuals not responsible to the electorate are going to be worse about directing their wealth to publicly useful ends, even if they are highly motivated to do so. And even if we got very lucky, and we had a generation of billionaires in the US who were, every single one, deeply committed to extremely important humanitarian projects like eradicating malaria, we could at best treat such a thing as a fluke. The problem with absolute monarchy is that even when you get a great king, his successor can be a real jackass, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The heuristic that private property--not mere personal possessions, but an abstract imperium over the ends of the labor of thousands or tends of thousands of people a major shareholder may never meet, reified as a thing like a physical possession in law--ought to be endlessly deferred to, even when such property is hoarded until someone has command over the equivalent of 4% of California’s GDP, relies for the continued good functioning of the economy, and the wise application of that power, on mechanisms of succession that, like the peasant in the Kingdom of Prussia, many interested parties simply have no say in, and to which few tools of institutional improvement can be applied from the outside. In short, there’s no reason to think that even if Bezos is good at his job, his kids won’t suck at theirs, and ruin a lot of people’s livelihoods as a result.

The real solution to my mind would be to heavily reorganize the economy in the direction of giving workers a far greater stake in the companies they work for, and requiring democratic methods of workplace management. That’s a far more radical approach, though; by contrast, a wealth tax--a gentle nudge in the direction opposite the accumulation of vast fortunes, but by no means an iron law against it--is a positively delicate instrument.

#i am aware that if you think all forms of taxation are theft #then a wealth tax is probably morally equivalent to me murdering your family and burning your house down #but if you think all forms of taxation are theft #then you and I probably have a more fundamental rift in our starting assumptions than can be resolved on tumblr

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kittyrossa · 7 years ago

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when i first watched the S5 finale, i was instantly struck by how the white lion trials parallel the marmora trials! for brevity’s sake, i will refer to them as WL (white lion) and BoM (blade of marmora) throughout the post.

my friend @shirogane-s made a gorgeous gifset that sums up the main parallel, which is, as she says in the caption:

keith initially embodies lotor’s “i will get the results i want (i.e. victory/knowledge) or die trying” approach, but is only able to awaken his blade once he yields, which nicely mirrors allura’s success with the white lion

these three characters (keith/lotor/allura) are all fascinating foils to one another, so it makes sense that their trials would highlight exactly that!

HERITAGE

kolivan: the only way [awakening the blade] is possible is if galra blood runs through your veins.

lotor: that thing is a guardian — it will only allow worthy alteans through.

the BoM trials can be completed by those of galra blood, and the WL trials can be completed by those of altean blood.

keith goes into the BoM trials wanting to discover the secrets of his past; he has spent his entire life with a blade that he does not know the origins of, but has reason to believe is connected to his mother and to galra heritage.

lotor goes into the WL trials wanting to discover the secrets of altean alchemy; he has spent centuries searching for clues of oriande, hoping it will connect him to his altean heritage and to his mother, who possessed the same thirst for knowledge.

allura goes into the WL trials wanting to discover the secrets that her father knew and that she may have inherited: the ancient altean wisdom that allowed him to create voltron and spread peace throughout the universe, the very legacy that allura wants to continue.

CHOSEN

lotor and allura are branded with “the marks of the chosen”, altean markings that glow when deemed worthy of entering oriande. lotor is unsurprised that allura is chosen — alfor had the strongest understanding of altean alchemy — but lotor does seem surprised by his own selection. because honerva did not unlock the secrets of oriande, lotor only saw allura as a potential key. it’s plausible that haggar and lotor were given the properties of a sacred altean after honerva went through the rift, but lotor is not yet admitting that haggar and honerva could be one and the same. whether or not being chosen by the guardian is due to bloodlines, lotor and allura are both chosen. lotor says this is because some alteans are more connected to energy — more “magical” than others. this is just the first step, however; they will still have to prove their worth in the WL trials.

keith being “chosen” is not quite as magical or mystical! he is chosen by his parents to own the blade, though in its knife form; the magical and mystical part comes if he awakens the blade, transforming it. from the way antok reacts — accusing keith of stealing it — it’s clear that most BoM trials end in owning a blade that is individual to the wielder. because keith comes to the trials with a blade that used to be his mother’s and was then passed on to him from his father, he has to prove that he is worthy of being “chosen” by both the blade and his parents.

you can even argue that keith is chosen by a third person: shiro, who ends up playing a crucial role in the BoM trials, and who was himself chosen by ulaz as a fighter/leader that could help the BoM. shiro chooses keith not just as a right-hand man that will partner him to the headquarters, but as someone he trusts to take over leadership should something ever happen to him. shiro says that keith needs to work on controlling his emotions and on learning self-discipline, unaware that the BoM trials will test keith with that same mindset.

BLACK HOLE VS. WHITE HOLE

each trial is hidden: the BoM trials within a space pocket bracketed by black holes, and the WL trials within the energy of a white hole.

this is true to the fact that both trials are rooted in secrecy. the BoM’s location is only revealed because ulaz entrusted shiro with the coordinates, and the WL’s location is only revealed because allura’s power granted her access to the compass stone’s map. only two are permitted to enter the BoM headquarters, and only two are chosen by the guardian to enter oriande’s realm. in both cases, the rest of the paladins are forced to wait at the castle, without a glimpse of what could be happening — the black and white holes cause too much interference, preventing any readings.

lotor: the wise stand back from the fire; fools are burned on the pyre; the mystic becomes one with the flame; the embers and he are the same.

keith has to navigate away from being sucked into the black hole, but lotor and allura have to navigate inside the white hole. this is a mirror of the trials themselves: the BoM trials are about evading a dangerous path to focus on the destination, and the WL trials are about becoming one with energy to reach the destination.

KNOWLEDGE

as soon as the trials begin, they do not stop. keith is faced with the relentless swordsmanship of the BoM, and lotor and allura are faced with the charged attacks of the white lion.

keith and lotor rise to the challenge, but allura is quick to realize that engaging in combat is not the answer:

allura: i do not wish to fight! i come here seeking knowledge. this isn’t the way.

though allura has lost altea, she has not forgotten its culture or what she has learned from her father. alfor’s contribution to peace went beyond voltron; as coran says, they “can’t always put the fate of the universe in the hands of a giant weapon — at least, that’s what your father believed.” alteans were diplomats. the first time allura awakens her magic, it’s not through weapons, but through words. her voice reaches the balmerans as she tells them not to give up — she knows what it’s like to watch her home planet die, and will not let it happen to them.

coran: in the days of old, when alteans were given the gift of crystals from a balmera, we would repay its sacrifice by performing a ceremony. a sacred altean would re-infuse the balmera with quintessence. in this way, we had a symbiotic relationship.

allura: the galra have only been taking. it’s time we give back.

allura risks the same ceremony that her father performed, even though she’s never done it before and the scale of it may come at the cost of her own life. the ceremony isn’t about power, but about how she can use power to provide peace; and since then, this has been allura’s goal every time she has awakened her magic. her magic destroys the komar (haggar’s experiment that drains planets of quintessence), and her magic revives voltron on naxzela before haggar can bomb it. allura’s magic may be new to her, but by following her father’s footsteps in saving countless lives, she is firm about what she wants to do with her magic.

this is the wisdom that allura brings with her to the WL trials. lotor admits that none of his research can prepare them for what happens once they’re in oriande, but allura is a natural at navigating the obstacles presented by the sages. she knows that she needs to kneel and seek permission for passage and clarify that they intend no harm; that they offer up the compass stone as a gift. she also spots the teludav that transports them to the WL trials, something that lotor says only a “trained altean” would recognize.

as much as he wishes to connect to his altean heritage, lotor is not a “trained altean”. he has attempted to train himself by exploring the universe and gathering what remnants of altea that he can find, but there’s a difference between scientific theory and spiritual practise. attempts at either have been shamed as weak by zarkon — “you have altean blood running through your veins, poisoning your very being” — or outright crushed.

lotor: i envy you growing up with king alfor. i always wanted to be an explorer and learn about the universe. my father was only interested in conquering it. he once put me in charge of a planet for a year, running the quintessence mining and getting to know the local population. rather than employ the usual galran methods of subjugation, i worked alongside the leadership of the planet, learning their customs. we would only extract as much quintessence as could be replenished, and i enjoyed my time there quite a bit. when my father found out what was happening, he ordered me to destroy the planet. i refused, and he sent me away. he destroyed them all. i was powerless to stop him.

lotor does try to prioritize knowledge, just as he feels his mother once did — and if he’s going to gain a victory, it’s not going to be through the brute force and aggression that is favored by his father. he’s a fighter that survives by trapping and evading and using his surroundings; when engaged in combat, he provokes whoever is at the other end of his sword — throk, zarkon, sendak — by mocking their aggressive clawing for power and glory. when zarkon pursues him in the air with the intent to kill, lotor doesn’t fight, but escapes through harnessing the power of a sun.

because he’s been raised in galra culture rather than altean culture, it’s understandable that it’s lotor who keeps repeating that the WL trials will likely test their “worth”. when we first meet lotor, one of the first things he reveals is that rising to the galra throne is through “the honorable rite of combat”, and this is further confirmed with the ceremony of kral zera. you win by being the strongest, whether your methods are mental or physical or a combination of both.

lotor is a “trained galra”, even if he tries to rebel against that training. allura isn’t afraid to be alone during her WL trials, but lotor is out of his element when he finds himself without her, asking after her by calling her name. the landscape is an open space — there is nowhere to hide and its emptiness provides nothing to use. he can’t evade this. plus, the white lion doesn’t talk: it’s like a translucent spirit, making no sounds beyond roars and growls. there is no personality for lotor to provoke, no amount of cunning that will stop the white lion’s physical force — he can only respond to it by matching it with his own.

lotor: i will not yield! i will gain your secrets!

this is an obvious echo of keith in the BoM trials, though he’s fighting people rather than projections:

BoM: surrender the blade and the pain will cease.

keith: i won’t quit.

BoM: surrender the blade and the pain will cease.

keith: never!

this is not about glory; this is not about proving himself the strongest. keith is galra, but hasn’t grown up in the empire as lotor has, internalizing its values despite himself. this isn’t about his pride as a fighter, but as a person. if he surrenders the blade, he is surrendering his identity. if he gives up the fight, he is not being faithful to his determination to always see a goal through — to be all in.

like lotor, keith hasn’t been trained by his mother. keith is coming into his trials with the least amount of knowledge about his family, and he sees his knife as his key. how can he let them take it away? he doesn’t know the BoM’s customs and culture. he doesn’t know that these trials are not just testing his endurance against the empire’s unyielding fight, but testing his ability to know when to stop — a balance that he’s already struggled with.

coran: it’s zarkon! keith, get out of there, now! zarkon is too powerful!

keith: this is my chance to put an end to the galra empire! i have to take it!

zarkon: you fight like a galra soldier — but not for long!

unlike lotor, however, keith has a support system that has helped him try to find that balance.

keith: patience yields focus.

shiro: that really stayed with you, didn’t it?

keith: you’ve given me some good advice. if it weren’t for you, my life would have been a lot different.

shiro is right there watching the BoM trials, worrying for keith and rooting for him. he knows that keith will never quit, and he knows that keith’s emotions can overpower his focus. keith may be seeking knowledge about his galra family, but shiro is his found family from earth. they met at some point in their lives, and shiro for keith became the one person who “has never given up” on him, implying that others have given up. others have perhaps looked at keith’s fire and found the flames too dangerous or destructive, a person they don’t want to get burned by, but shiro looked at keith’s fire and helped him transform it into a light to guide both keith and others, including shiro. he believes in keith.

so, it takes him some time, but keith eventually uses “patience yields focus” in the BoM trials: he slows down and notices the escape route, throwing his knife and evading without surrendering. keith is exhausted and in pain and he desperately wants to see shiro, which is why hologram!shiro appears as a manifestation of his hopes and fears — the hopes that he will support keith, and the fears that he will reject keith. hologram!shiro tries to impart wisdom, but it’s clinical and cruel: keith is selfish, keith already has family in shiro and the paladins, and if keith doesn’t give up the knife, then keith has chosen to be alone. shiro abandoning him is the first thing to make keith hesitate, but before he can run after him, the mindscape changes to a hologram of keith’s father, who has all of the knowledge that keith is seeking.

SACRIFICE

the BoM trials and the WL trials come down to the ultimate question of “what are you willing to give up, and will you give it up?”

allura: i seek the secret of life. i give my own.

allura is willing.

keith: just take the knife! it doesn’t matter where i come from — i know who i am. we all need to work together to defeat zarkon. if that means i give up this knife, fine. take it.

keith is willing.

lotor: victory or death!

lotor is unwilling.

before i continue, there’s a third “trial” that feels relevant: shiro’s battle with zarkon in the astral plane.

zarkon: you have no idea how to command a weapon like this!

shiro: no one commands the black lion!

zarkon: you dare lecture me? do you think the black lion would allow such a feeble creature to pilot it? only the powerful can command it!

shiro: you’ve forgotten what’s most important between a lion and its paladin. it’s not about power. it’s about earning each other’s trust!

lotor fails his trials because he fails to realize what allura and keith do: that it’s not about being worthy of power, but about being trustworthy.

lotor doesn’t trust the white lion not to hurt him, and it’s hard to blame him. his father has targeted him with the same physical force, and would have gone to the point of killing lotor more than once. and though lotor is adamant that “that witch is not my mother”, haggar is the nearest maternal figure that he has: she has stood alongside zarkon and participated in the attempts to control lotor, albeit more psychologically than physically. she has sent out people to spy on him (military, narti, shiro); and though she shares the same blood that blocks her from the throne, haggar coldly calls lotor a “half-breed” whose altean blood quells the rights granted by his galra blood.

so, it’s understandable that lotor isn’t quick to trust people, let alone mysterious mystical lions. his team of generals came the closest in that lotor trusted them to carry out his plans, and in the end they deserted him — but only because lotor lost their trust first. cutting narti down is an example of how lotor does not like to feel powerless — like he’s losing control — and thus is not above doing whatever it takes to regain that power and control. he has manipulated the empire, the rebels, and the paladins, presenting and performing himself as trustworthy in actions and in words. but it’s likely that the white lion would have seen a manipulative stab at diplomacy such as “i come here for nothing but peace.” lotor may claim that as his aim in discovering the secrets of altean alchemy, but in reality he is still too focused on power.

it’s comparable to the triforce from the legend of zelda: three forces (power/courage/wisdom) that need to be balanced to bring peace. allura, though she also relies on power and courage, embodies wisdom; keith, though he also relies on power and wisdom, embodies courage; and lotor, though he also relies on courage and wisdom, embodies power.

allura and keith have a better hold on balancing all three, even if one can dominate; but lotor largely uses his courage and wisdom for the endgame of power, a path that his parents went down and launched an unending war.

alfor: the ore from the comet practically engineers itself. it’s frightening, in a way.

zarkon: endlessly powerful ships for the galra empire.

alfor: and an endless source of clean energy for the entire system.

alfor: we must exercise caution. we have no idea what is out there.

honerva: the ancients thought that lightning was shot from the bows of the gods until science proved otherwise. we must always push into dangerous territory in pursuit of knowledge.

honerva: quintessence is so much more than you can understand. it is life itself.

alfor: you’ve gone too far.

honerva: you’ve always been a coward! you wish to close off our gateway to enlightenment — we should be expanding it!

zarkon: if we use voltron, we can enlarge the opening to the other reality!

alfor: it’s madness! this prolonged exposure to quintessence has poisoned your minds.

zarkon: we’ve only scratched the surface. we can rule this entire universe! we can live forever! all of us!

alfor: i cannot be a part of this.

zarkon: you are only one part of voltron, alfor. you cannot hold us all back because of your fear! alfor, i lead the paladins! i command you!

lotor doesn’t want to be his father, but emulating his mother doesn’t mean he isn’t seeking power. like honerva, lotor seeks power through knowledge; and like honerva, lotor sees going through the rift as how to get that power. plan A was reaping the rift’s quintessence by building ships from the transreality comet. when that failed, lotor went for plan B: allura and voltron — much like how zarkon and honerva manipulated alfor and voltron.

shiro: how do you get an empire that’s only known violence for thousands of years to put down their weapons?

lotor: by providing them with the very thing they’re fighting for: quintessence. unlimited amounts of it. and allura, you are the key to getting it.

lotor: in order to transition the galra empire to a peaceful existence, i need to open up a pathway to the quintessence field. once my people have access to unlimited energy, the old ways of the empire will be behind them.

allura: if this voyage is successful, the universe will finally be on the path to peace.

again, lotor is certainly saying all of the right things — but, well, “the masses are easily manipulated.” he must know that it’s not that simple: unlimited quintessence may stop the hunt for power, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stop the hunger for it. the galra spirit won’t change from power-hungry to peace-seeking overnight — the galra can still use unlimited quintessence for physical force and violent feats. when keith and krolia reunite, it’s on a mission to destroy a superweapon built from undocumented quintessence that is unparalleled in its power; and lotor says himself that haggar is constantly seeking altean magical knowledge to “pervert” for her own power.

allura: your mother was honerva? the honerva that discovered the rift on planet daibazaal? then you’re — half-altean!

lotor: yes. it was something the galra considered a weakness, but i considered it a strength. the union between zarkon and honerva sparked a technological revolution within the empire. even back then, altean culture was remarkably advanced. the kinds of experiments she was conducting — she advanced science by eons.

lotor is trying to gain power in the Altean (Honerva) Way that he sees as superior to the Galra (Zarkon) Way. given how much lotor has had to fight for his own survival, it’s not unreasonable that he thinks he needs power to do so — specifically more power than zarkon, who lotor has felt powerless against before. when the white lion attacks him, lotor kills it — “victory or death!” — out of survival instincts; he isn’t about to sacrifice his own life that easily, not after centuries of fighting for it and for the dawn of a new age that honors his (and his mother’s) vision of power.

lotor: i will light the flame. not for defeating my father, and not even for being the strongest galra here. but because i did something no one else could do: i returned the black lion to the galra!

lotor may try to distance himself from his father, but at his core, he too sees voltron as a source of power to command. he displays himself as having ownership over the black lion, which is why he doesn’t succeed with the white lion. it never once occurs to him that it’s about teamwork and trust, a sincere emotional bond — “political allyship for one’s own gain” is not going to cut it.

keith’s BoM trials are about forming an alliance between voltron and marmora, but keith succeeds where lotor fails because he puts the mission above himself. the mindscape is on the cusp of unlocking every secret kept from keith, but he’s distracted by the galra attacking earth and people screaming and the red lion waiting for him.

keith: dad, i’m sorry, i gotta go. there’s people that need me out there.

keith’s father: don’t you want to know where you came from? your mother gave [the knife] to me.

keith: mom?

keith’s father: she’ll be here soon.

keith: you gotta tell me, dad. i have to know! where did the knife come from? what does it mean?

keith’s father: your mother is almost here. she’ll tell you everything.

keith: i can’t wait around anymore, i have to go!

keith’s father: if you walk out that door, you’ll never find out who you are.

keith: goodbye, dad.

arguably, the first lion “trial” is between keith and red: the red lion requires its paladin to prove that they’re worthy of respect, and keith has to fight off galra and get thrown out into space for the red lion to believe that he’s “all in”, swooping in to save him; a pattern that continues after keith finds out that he’s able to connect to red from long distances. keith is a paladin of voltron: he knows that working together with your lion is what will save the universe. he would never strike it as lotor did to the white lion, and the red lion would never let anyone strike keith.

shiro: [the red lion] has a link with keith. it knows when he’s in danger — it’s coming for him!

shiro joins red in fighting the BoM, only letting go of a wounded keith to defend him against kolivan and antok, who demand that keith give up his blade because he “failed to awaken it.” keith stops them as shiro and antok clash, voicing what he decided in the mindscape: he knows who he is and what he wants to do. what matters is saving the universe, and they need to work together to make that happen. if he has to give up his knife for that teamwork and trust, then he’s willing to make that sacrifice.

this is what awakens keith’s blade, and it is probably what has awakened other blades: the willingness of the BoM member to put the mission above anything that could hold them back. emotions are a “luxury” they cannot afford; kolivan doesn’t call emotions a “weakness” because he recognizes emotions for what they are: powerful feelings that can make someone selfish instead of selfless, upholding their own life above the lives that the galra have been threatening for several millennia. if they want to defeat the empire, then they can’t indulge in emotions that risk outweighing that mission.

krolia tells keith that she left keith once and will never leave him again — she, too, had chosen between family and mission, and now wants to meet in the middle. in retrospect, this sheds a light on how keith has always struggled with that balance: at one moment, he is scolding pidge for wanting to find her family over forming voltron; at the next moment, he is willing to give up on voltron because he wants to find shiro, his found family.

allura: keith — i know exactly how you feel. but our mission is bigger than any one individual. even those who are … completely irreplaceable.

keith: i know you’re right. it’s time to figure out how to reform voltron.

the black lion trusts keith in replacing shiro because shiro trusted keith in replacing shiro. keith has no visions of the black lion granting him power and glory. he only sees that he is filling the seat of someone he desperately wants back, and keith talks to black as though the lion and shiro are one soul: “i know you wanted this for me, shiro. but i’m not you. i can’t lead them like you. this one’s for you, shiro.”

when shiro does come back, keith sacrifices his own place on the team to make shiro black paladin again. rather than kick lance out of red and allura out of blue, keith turns his efforts towards somewhere he knows he can play a role: the BoM. he makes this sacrifice no matter how much he may miss the lions and the paladins and the teamwork and trust that they have begun to build together. as always, the mission comes first.

and allura isn’t wrong: if anyone knows how keith feels, it’s her.

allura: i don’t know if we should run to preserve what we have, or stay and risk everything. i want to fight, but the paladins of old are gone. i know what you would do.

hologram!alfor: i scattered the lions to keep them out of zarkon’s hands. you urged me to keep them and fight, but, for the greater good of protecting the universe, i chose to hide them.

allura: i think i understand.

hologram!alfor: no, daughter, you were right. i made a terrible mistake, one that cost the universe countless lives. forming voltron is the only way to stop zarkon. you must be willing to sacrifice everything to assemble the lions and correct my error.

allura doesn’t have the luxury of putting her grief above the mission. she has lost everything irreplaceable to her — her father, her planet, her people — and yet she doesn’t falter in putting herself out there to ensure that others don’t experience her pain. she ruthlessly trains the new paladins not out of a power trip, but because she understands the urgency of war; and it’s the same when shiro disappears and she has to push keith to step up to the plate, just as she had to for alfor.

it’s hard for her to let go of those leadership instincts when it’s her turn to pilot a lion. she’s used to flying the castle, creating wormholes, and calling the shots for the entire team — and while she doesn’t lose that role completely, it takes a trial and error period to realize that she can’t command blue as she would the castle. she knows that bonding with a lion is important, but as happened to lotor, it’s one thing to know something in theory, and a whole other thing to act it out in practise.

allura: nothing works! i’ve tried asking you nicely, and i’ve tried commanding you! what do you want from me? i can’t do this. everyone depends on me. the universe depends on me, but i can’t control everything. i need your help. guide me. i can’t do it alone.

allura accepts that she can’t fight on her own, and this may be why the blue lion accepts allura where the red lion didn’t. she did ask red for help, but because alfor piloted red, allura put double the pressure on herself in asking red to accept her: not because she wanted the glory of being her father, but because some part of her felt she could only follow alfor’s footsteps if she mirrored him in every way imaginable.

she still sometimes feels that pressure, fearing that she’ll never be the alchemist her father was, but by opening herself up to the support of others as she did to blue, the journey has become less lonely. the universe doesn’t rest on her shoulders alone. the WL trials again ask her to consider the balance between power and peace, and allura accepts the white lion’s energy into her heart — she sacrifices command and control. it’s about working together and trusting each other. how else will they save the universe from a constant cycle of fighting?

allura has the same awakening in accepting the help of the galra: the BoM, keith, and lotor.

allura to keith: i’m so sorry i misjudged you. you’ve proven it’s not what’s in your blood — it’s who you are that counts.

allura to lotor: what you did was for the greater good. and for many of us, proof of your intentions for peace.

despite her trauma, allura’s perspective on galra can be changed if they prove that they are fighting for the same cause that she is. it’s an extreme emotional risk — the first time she had a galra teammate, they betrayed voltron and killed her father and destroyed her entire culture. this cannot be understated, nor can the amount of strength it takes to put herself on the line for that vulnerability again and again. but from where allura’s standing, keith and lotor have proven — again and again — that they believe in voltron’s mission.

as of S5, allura and keith have a relationship of genuine trust. it’s been tested, such as when keith began prioritizing BoM missions over being the pilot of the black lion; but at the end of the day, keith has always done whatever it takes to fight the empire. they were both willing to leave the castle to find out if zarkon was tracking them, sacrificing their own safety for the safety of their team and the entire universe. keith was willing to put action over caution and infiltrate central command to finally defeat zarkon, earning allura’s turnaround in trusting him. they were both willing to sacrifice the chance to stay with their departed fathers, letting go of their holograms to maintain their mission. and allura was willing to reach out and offer keith a place in her “new family”, knowing what it is to lose your biological family and have to rebuild and reconnect.

keith doesn’t fault allura when she falls for lotor’s trap with the altean distress signal, and allura expresses condolences when keith loses regris, partially due to keith’s own risk-taking. keith has allura’s blessing in joining the BoM, knowing he’ll make them proud — and she acknowledges that the BoM have been instrumental in the fight against zarkon, a huge leap from her initial distrust in them and criticism of their caution. though they’ve parted ways for now, allura is similar to shiro in that she has made it clear that she wants keith to feel he can come back to them; that the team has faith and trust in him.

as of S5, allura and lotor have a relationship of tentative trust — “tentative” because it’s genuine on allura’s end, but lotor’s end is debatable. fandom seems 50/50 on it, which speaks to lotor’s complexity and how you can build a case for both. but these are the facts: lotor has communicated faith and support in allura’s abilities, urging her to be the person who can carry on the tradition of altean alchemy. honerva and alfor were alchemists, and zarkon and alfor were friends that fought alongside each other. can’t lotor and allura be the same, and rewrite their wrongs? everything lotor says is rooted in truth, even if there is a part of him that’s bending it to get the results that he wants. he and allura are both genuinely nostalgic for a time that no longer exists — as the new rulers of their royal families, they can understand each other in a way that few others can.

we can assume that lotor is using altean nostalgia for an ulterior motive, just as he used the altean distress signal to appeal to allura and get him the transreality comet. what he’s doing now is a more personal version of that plan, becoming friends with her and earning her trust and confidence. he says that he cannot revive altean alchemy without her, and allura boomerangs the same sentiment back at him: “i’m glad you’re here to help me now. i never would have gotten here without you.” this comes after lotor confides in her his reasons for being exiled, and his genuine despair at how he was powerless to stop zarkon. when allura later repeats that she couldn’t have unlocked her altean alchemy without lotor, he smooths over his frown with a smile and says that oriande was for her and not for him — she is the true alchemist.

alfor was once blinded by his compassion for zarkon, and allura may have that same blindness in her compassion — and empathy — for lotor. but the potential is there for them to have a future relationship without ulterior motives; to someday join together and restore altean culture and bring peace to the universe.

what about keith and lotor to complete the trifecta? as of S5, they have what i call a “wild card” relationship, and one of distant trust. it’s unclear if they’ve properly met in terms of being formally introduced — keith knows who lotor is, but lotor doesn’t seem to have been told that a former paladin (and one that he fought) is now a part-galra member of the BoM. they used to collide in battle when keith flew black and lotor was emperor pro tem; keith had immense distrust in lotor, doing everything he could to thwart him and his traps. but more recently, they’ve collided while saving each other — lotor unaware of who he was saving, but keith completely aware and doing the exact opposite of how he’d approached lotor before. lotor saved keith and the universe for his own political gain, but keith saved lotor because he now trusted him to be someone who could change the political tide.

i said this in my keitor meta for S3 + S4, but lotor saving keith had the potential to make keith do a turnaround in his trust of lotor, and S5 confirms this even if they never met afterwards. keith is still with the BoM, and their contact with lotor is indirect — lotor gives the paladins intel to pass on to kolivan, and kolivan reports back that it’s trustworthy. communications appear to stop after lotor kills zarkon, which is why keith doesn’t hear from them about kral zera — but it’s kral zera where he and lotor collide again, and it’s kral zera where keith saves lotor.

keith and lotor’s potential dynamic is a “wild card” because unlike their dynamics with allura, it’s galra-on-galra. prior to S5, many of us assumed that keith was a prime candidate for manipulation — he was part-galra like lotor and isolated from his former teammates like lotor, and if lotor wanted to deepen that wedge, he could have appealed to keith’s desire to belong by offering him a place alongside him. but as of S5, the tables have turned: it’s increasingly clear that keith is the galra that lotor pretends to be — that lotor finds it hard to be as the emperor’s son. keith refuses to be a prisoner of his own blood, knowing that galra blood doesn’t automatically make one loyal to zarkon or “just like” zarkon. he works with the BoM to take the empire down from the inside, and not just to shift its methods of power as lotor is doing with altean methods, but to dismantle its power and restore stability — hence the plan to blow up kral zera as the symbol of the first planet the galra conquered, along with the galra’s currently powerful leaders.

keith aborts that mission when shiro and lotor arrive — and the fact that keith lumps in lotor with shiro as “someone i want to save” is huge. but it’s logical: keith’s trust in lotor shifted once lotor executed the exact action keith was planning (destroying haggar’s bomb). seeing shiro ally himself with lotor is going to deepen that trust, even if keith is only viewing things from a distance. lotor is like a “cool/calculating” version of shiro: both have been pursued by zarkon for taking his former thrones (the empire’s + the black lion’s), and zarkon has mocked shiro and lotor for being “weaker” than him, stopping at nothing to eliminate them. and of course, both have been pursued by haggar and are currently being pursued by haggar, who through her magic tries to control them for her own agenda for power. lotor and shiro deal with this trauma by masking it with composure, and they make decisive and difficult choices to keep on surviving. keith has never lost trust in shiro, so it’s not out of the question that he’d trust lotor if he got to know him more personally — unless he saw the “cool/calculating” personality for what he used to see: someone cunning and chaotic. this may depend on how lotor responds to operation kuron: eliminate shiro like he eliminated narti, or help him and empathize with him (and therefore maintain keith’s trust)?

on the flipside, keith is like a “fiery/explosive” version of acxa — lotor’s former, and most devoted, general. less is known about acxa’s backstory, but since her introduction in the weblum, she has been mysteriously honorbound. keith says she’s “just like the rest of them” after she steals the scaultrite, but acxa remains different in that she doesn’t kill keith once she gets what she needs (and she pays her debt by saving him at kral zera). she reminds her teammates not to kill anyone, but to get the intel they need and get out. like keith, she encourages her team to stay efficient and dedicated to the mission, and like keith, she is intensely loyal to her leader; she wants to trust that he’ll protect them, and she needs to be convinced to overthrow him for her own gain. even then, her decision to do so is “for narti”, and she can’t help but insist that “no one is replacing lotor” when zethrid and ezor muse about usurping him as emperor (very keith-esque in how he responded to anyone replacing shiro as black paladin). what separates them is that acxa maintains her composure where keith’s emotions are often crystal clear; but they have both served as trusted right-hands to their leaders, and so it again makes you wonder what would happen if there was a mix-and-match: lotor meeting keith, a foil to acxa, and keith meeting lotor, a foil to shiro.

if allura represents the altean side of lotor that he on some level wishes he could embody, then keith may become that for lotor’s galra side. his WL trials demonstrate that he still has a long way to go on the path to inner peace and universal peace; allura and keith are already moving ahead.

as of S5, allura is connecting more and more to alfor and her altean heritage. as of S5, keith has just been given the opportunity to connect to krolia and his galra heritage. but as of S5, lotor has been denied the secrets of oriande and seems to be in denial about haggar being honerva — if he’s admitted it to himself at all, he sees them as separate entities. discovering that haggar is essentially an “amplified” version of the mother he holds on a pedestal could be something that destroys him, or it could be something that allows him to finally move forward and balance these two important sides of himself.

there’s nothing inherently evil about seeking victory or seeking knowledge — it’s about why and how you seek those things, and allura and keith are proof that choosing the honorable path is possible. for inner peace, they could use a little of lotor’s “selfishness” (not sacrificing their own emotions), and for universal peace, lotor could use a little of their “selflessness” (not sacrificing the safety of others). even if you theorize that lotor wants to go through the rift for “selfless" reasons — quintessence to uncorrupt haggar, as his parents may have wanted quintessence to save lotor’s life — there is still an element of selfishness in seeking power that can save one person at the cost of endangering the entire universe.

whatever happens in S6 and beyond, it’s safe to say that keith/lotor/allura all have compelling arcs about the trials of repeating history + shaping their own history. i’m super excited to see how these arcs continue to parallel and/or intersect!

#leithal #vld keith #keith kogane #vld lotor #prince lotor #vld allura #princess allura #keith and allura #keith and lotor #allura and lotor #more chara-centric than shippy but tag it as kallura or keitor or lotura if you want!#vld meta #long post #add-on:#keith and shiro

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stalen00bsblog · 6 years ago

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Introduction

With TypeScript we get a unified class construct in JavaScript. The syntax is based on the ES6 version, preparing TypeScript to remain a full superset of JavaScript even with ES6 implementations. Of course TypeScript compiles down to ES3 or ES5, which means that this class construct will be decomposed to something that is available right now: again the prototype mechanism. Nevertheless, what remains is code that is readable, cross-implementation (ES3 / ES5) safe and agrees on a common base. With my own approach (oop.js) no one besides me did know what was going on without reading the helper code. With TypeScript a broad set of developers uses the same pattern, as it is embedded in the language.

It was therefore just natural to convert the Mario5 project to TypeScript. What makes this worth an article on CodeProject? I think it is a nice study how to convert a project. It also illustrates the main points of TypeScript. And finally it gives a nice introduction to the syntax and the behavior. After all, TypeScript is easy for those who already know JavaScript and makes it easier to approach JavaScript, for those who do not have any experience yet.

Background

More than a year ago Anders Heijlsberg announced Microsoft's new language called TypeScript. This was a surprise for most people, as Microsoft (and especially Anders) seemed to be against dynamic languages, in particular JavaScript. However, it turned out, that Microsoft realized what a big opportunity the centralization of general purpose programming to web programming is. With JavaScript for Windows Store apps, the ongoing hype with node.js and the NoSQL movement with document stores that use JavaScript for running queries, it is obvious that JavaScript is definitely important.

Remark: Anders joined the TypeScript team at some point (v0.8) in the development. It is unclear if he invented the language or if somebody else came up with the idea. Nevertheless the team is currently lead by Anders and given his experience and expertise, it is certainly good to have him in charge of the project.

The realization did influence the decision on the design of a new language. Instead of creating a new language from the ground up (like Google did with Dart), Anders decided that any language that may be still established has to extend JavaScript. No solution should be orthogonal. The problem with CoffeeScript is that it hides JavaScript. This may be appealing for some developers, but for most developers it is an absolute exclusion criterion. Anders decided that the language has to be strongly typed, even though only an intelligent compiler (or transpiler to be more correct) will see these annotations.

So what happened? A true superset of ECMAScript 5 has been created. This superset has been called TypeScript to indicate the close relationsship with JavaScript (or ECMAScript in general), with the additional type annotations. Every other feature, such as interfaces, enums, generics, casts, ... follows from these type annotations. In the future TypeScript will evolve. There are two areas:

Embracing ES6 to remain a true superset of JavaScript

Bringing in further features to make JS development easier

The primary benefit of using TypeScript is two-fold. On the one side we can take the advantage of being informed of potential errors and problems during compile-time. If an argument does not fulfill a given signature, then the compiler will throw an error. This is especially useful when working with larger teams or an a bigger project. The other side is also interesting. Microsoft is known for their excellent tooling with Visual Studio. Giving JavaScript code a good tooling support is tedious, due to the dynamic nature of JavaScript code. Therefore even simple refactoring tasks such as renaming a variable cannot be performed with the desired stability.

In the end TypeScript gives us great tooling support combined with a much better idea about how our code will work. The combination of productivity plus robustness is the most appealing argument for using TypeScript. In this article we will explore how to convert existing projects. We will see, that transforming a code to TypeScript can be done incrementally.

Converting the existing project

TypeScript does not hide JavaScript. It starts with plain JavaScript.

The first step in utilizing TypeScript is of course to have TypeScript source files. Since we want to use TypeScript in an existing project, we'll have to convert these files. There is nothing to do here as a requirement, however, we'll just rename our files from *.js to *.ts. This is just a matter of convention, nothing that is actually required. Nevertheless, as the TypeScript compiler tsc usually considers *.ts files as input, writing *.js files as output, renaming the extension ensures that nothing wrong happens.

The next subsections deal with incremental improvements in the conversion process. We now assume that every file has the usual TypeScript extension *.ts, even though no additional TypeScript feature is used.

References

The first step is to supply references from single JavaScript files, to all other (required) JavaScript files. Usually we would only write single files, which, however, (usually) have to be inserted in a certain order in our HTML code. The JavaScript files do not know the HTML file, nor do they know the order of these files (not to speak of which files).

Now that we want to give our intelligent compiler (TypeScript) some hints, we need to specify what other objects might be available. Therefore we need to place a reference hint in the beginning of code files. The reference hint will declare all other files, that will be used from the current file.

For instance we might include jQuery (used by, e.g., the main.ts file) by its definition as via:

/// <reference path="def/jquery.d.ts"/>

We could also include a TypeScript version of the library, or the JavaScript version, however, there are reasons for including the definition file only. Definition files do not carry any logic. This will make the file substantially smaller and faster to parse. Also, such files will usually contain much more / better documentation comments. Finally, while we would prefer our own *.ts files to *.d.ts files, in case of jQuery and other libraries the original has been written in JavaScript. It is unclear, if the TypeScript compiler is satisfied with the source code. By taking a definition file, we can be sure that everything works.

There are reasons to write plain definition files ourselves, as well. The most basic one is covered by the def/interfaces.d.ts file. We do not have any code, which would make a compilation irrelevant. Referencing this file on the other hand makes sense, since the additional type information provided by the file helps in annotating our code.

Annotations

The most important TypeScript feature is type annotations. Actually, the name of the language indicates the high importance of this feature.

Most type annotations are actually not required. If a variable is immediately assigned (i.e. we define a variable, instead of just declaring it), then the compiler can infer the type of the variable.

var basepath = 'Content/';

Obviously, the type of this variable is a.string This is also what TypeScript infers. Nevertheless, we could also name the type explicitly.

var basepath: string = 'Content/';

Usually we do not want to be explicit with such annotations. It introduces more clutter and less flexibility than we aim for. However, sometimes such annotations are required. Of course the most obvious case appears, when we only declare a variable:

var frameCount: number;

There are other scenarios, too. Consider the creation of a single object, that may be extended with more properties. Writing the usual JavaScript code is definitely not enough information for the compiler:

var settings = { };

What properties are available? What is the type of the properties? Maybe we don't know, and we want to use it as a dictionary. In this case we should specify the arbitrary usage of the object:

var settings: any = { };

But there is also another case. We already know what properties might be available, and we only need to set or get some of these optional properties. In that case we can also specify the exact type:

var settings: Settings = { };

The most important case has been omitted so far. While variables (local or global) can be inferred in most cases, function parameters can never be inferred. In fact function parameters may be inferred for a single usage (such as the types of generic parameters), but not within the function itself. Therefore we need to tell the compiler what type of parameters we have.

setPosition(x: number, y: number) { this.x = x; this.y = y; }

Transforming JavaScript incrementally with type annotations therefore is a process, that starts by changing the signature of functions. So what about the basics of such annotations? We already learned that number, stringand any are built-in types, that represent elementary types. Additionally we have boolean and void. The latter is only useful for return types of functions. It indicates that nothing useful is returned (as JS functions will always return something, at least undefined).

What about arrays? A standard array is of type any[]. If we want to indicate that only numbers can be used with that array, we could annotate it as number[]. Multi-dimensional arrays are possible as well. A matrix might be annotated as number[][]. Due to the nature of JavaScript we only have jagged arrays for multi-dimensions.

Enumerations

Now that we started annotating our functions and variables, we will eventually require custom types. Of course we already have some types here and there, however, these types may be less annotated than we want to, or defined in a too special way.

Sometimes there are better alternatives offered by TypeScript. Collections of numeric constants, for instance, can be defined as an enumeration. In the old code we had objects such as:

var directions = { none: 0, left: 1, up: 2, right: 3, down: 4 };

It is not obvious that the contained elements are supposed to be constants. They could be easily changed. So what about a compiler that might give us an error if we really want to do nasty things with such an object? This is where enum types come in handy. Right now they are restricted to numbers, however, for most constant collections this is sufficient. Most importantly, they are transported as types, which means that we can use them in our type annotations.

The name has been changed to uppercase, which indicates that Direction is indeed a type. Since we do not want to use it like an enumeration flag, we use the singular version (following the .NET convention, which makes sense in this scenario).

enum Direction { none = 0, left = 1, up = 2, right = 3, down = 4, };

Now we can use it in the code such as:

setDirection(dir: Direction) { this.direction = dir; }

Please note that the dir parameter is annotated to be restricted to arguments of type Direction. This excludes arbitrary numbers and must use values of the Direction enumeration. What if we have a user input that happens to be a number? In such a scenario we can also get wild and use a TypeScript cast:

var userInput: number; // ... setDirection(<Direction>userInput);

Casts in TypeScript work only if they could work. Since every Direction is a number, a number could be a valid Direction. Sometimes a cast is known to fail a priori. If the userInput would be a plain string, TypeScript would complain and return an error on the cast.

Interfaces

Interfaces define types without specifying an implementation. They will vanish completely in the resulting JavaScript, like all of our type annotations. Basically they are quite similar to interfaces in C#, however, there are some notable differences.

Let's have a look at a sample interface:

interface LevelFormat { width: number; height: number; id: number; background: number; data: string[][]; }

This defines the format of a level definition. We see that such a definition must consist of numbers such as,widthheight, background and an.id Also, a two-dimensional string-array defines the various tiles that should be used in the level.

We already mentioned that TypeScript interfaces are different to C# interfaces. One of the reasons is that TypeScript interfaces allow merging. If an interface with the given name already exists, it won't be overwritten. There is also no compiler warning or error. Instead the existing interface will be extended with the properties defined in the new one.

The following interface merges the existing Math interface (from the TypeScript base definitions) with the provided one. We gain one additional method:

interface Math { sign(x: number): number; }

Methods are specified by specifying parameters in round brackets. The usual type annotation is then the return type of the method. With the provided interface (extension) the TypeScript compiler allows us to write the following method:

Math.sign = function(x: number) { if (x > 0) return 1; else if (x < 0) return -1; return 0; };

Another interesting option in TypeScript interfaces is the hybrid declaration. In JavaScript an object is not limited to be a pure key-value carrier. An object could also be invoked as a function. A great example for such a behavior is jQuery. There are many possible ways to call the jQuery object, each resulting in a new jQuery selection being returned. Alternatively the jQuery object also carries properties that represent nice little helpers and more useful stuff.

In the case of jQuery one of the interfaces looks like:

interface JQueryStatic { (): JQuery; (html: string, ownerDocument?: Document): JQuery; ajax(settings: JQueryAjaxSettings): JQueryXHR; /* ... */ }

Here we have to possible calls (among many) and a property that is directly available. Hybrid interfaces, therefore, require that the implementing object is, in fact, a function, that is extended with further properties.

We can also create interfaces based on other interfaces (or classes, which will be used as interfaces in this context).

Let's consider the following case. To distinguish points we use the Point interface. Here we only declare two coordinates, x and y. If we want to define a picture in the code, we need two values. A location (offset), where it should be placed, and the string that represents the source of the image.

Therefore we define the interface to represent this functionality to be derived / specialized of the Pointinterface. We use the extends keyword to trigger this behavior in TypeScript.

interface Point { x: number; y: number; } interface Picture extends Point { path: string; }

We can use as many interfaces as we want, but we need to separate them with commas.

Classes

At this stage we already typed most of our code, but an important concept has not been translated to TypeScript. The original codebase makes use of a special concept that brings class-like objects (incl. inheritance) to JavaScript. Originally this looked like the following sample:

var Gauge = Base.extend({ init: function(id, startImgX, startImgY, fps, frames, rewind) { this._super(0, 0); this.view = $('#' + id); this.setSize(this.view.width(), this.view.height()); this.setImage(this.view.css('background-image'), startImgX, startImgY); this.setupFrames(fps, frames, rewind); }, });

Unfortunately there are a lot of problems with the shown approach. The biggest problem is that it is non-normative, i.e. it is no standard way. Therefore developers who aren't familiar with this style of implementing class-like objects, cannot read or write code as they usually would. Also the exact implementation is unknown. All in all any developer has to look at the original definition of the Class object and its usage.

With TypeScript a unified way of creating class-like objects exists. Additionally it is implemented in the same manner as in ECMAScript 6. Therefore we get a portability, readability and extensibility, that is easy to use and standardized. Coming back from our original example we can transform it to become:

class Gauge extends Base { constructor(id: string, startImgX: number, startImgY: number, fps: number, frames: number, rewind: boolean) { super(0, 0); this.view = $('#' + id); this.setSize(this.view.width(), this.view.height()); this.setImage(this.view.css('background-image'), startImgX, startImgY); this.setupFrames(fps, frames, rewind); } };

This looks quite similar and behaves nearly identical. Nevertheless, changing the former definition with the TypeScript variant needs to be done in a single iteration. Why? If we change the base class (just called Base), we need to change all derived classes (TypeScript needs classes to inherit from other TypeScript classes).

On the other hand, if we change one of the derived classes we cannot use the base class any more. That being said, only classes, that are completely decoupled from the class hierarchy, can be transformed within a single iteration. Otherwise, we need to transform the whole class hierarchy.

The keywordextends has a different meaning than for interfaces. Interfaces extend other definitions (interfaces or the interface part of a class) by the specified set of definitions. A class extends another class by setting its prototype to the given one. Additionally, some other neat features are placed on top of this, like the ability to access the parent's functionality via.super

The most important class is the root of the class hierachy, called Base. It contains quite some features, most notably

class Base implements Point, Size { frameCount: number; x: number; y: number; image: Picture; width: number; height: number; currentFrame: number; frameID: string; rewindFrames: boolean; frameTick: number; frames: number; view: JQuery; constructor(x: number, y: number) { this.setPosition(x || 0, y || 0); this.clearFrames(); this.frameCount = 0; } setPosition(x: number, y: number) { this.x = x; this.y = y; } getPosition(): Point { return { x : this.x, y : this.y }; } setImage(img: string, x: number, y: number) { this.image = { path : img, x : x, y : y }; } setSize(width, height) { this.width = width; this.height = height; } getSize(): Size { return { width: this.width, height: this.height }; } setupFrames(fps: number, frames: number, rewind: boolean, id?: string) { if (id) { if (this.frameID === id) return true; this.frameID = id; } this.currentFrame = 0; this.frameTick = frames ? (1000 / fps / setup.interval) : 0; this.frames = frames; this.rewindFrames = rewind; return false; } clearFrames() { this.frameID = undefined; this.frames = 0; this.currentFrame = 0; this.frameTick = 0; } playFrame() { if (this.frameTick && this.view) { this.frameCount++; if (this.frameCount >= this.frameTick) { this.frameCount = 0; if (this.currentFrame === this.frames) this.currentFrame = 0; var $el = this.view; $el.css('background-position', '-' + (this.image.x + this.width * ((this.rewindFrames ? this.frames - 1 : 0) - this.currentFrame)) + 'px -' + this.image.y + 'px'); this.currentFrame++; } } } };

The implements keyword is similar to implementing interfaces (explicitely) in C#. We basically enable a contract, that we provide the abilities defined in the given interfaces within our class. While we can only extend from a single class, we can implement as many interfaces as we want. In the previous example we choose not to inherit from any class, but to implement two interfaces.

Then we define what kind of fields are available on objects of the given type. The order does not matter, but defining them initially (and most importantly: in a single place) makes sense. The functionconstructor is a special function that has the same meaning as the custom methodinit before. We use it as the class's constructor. The base class's constructor can be called any time via.super()

TypeScript also provides modifiers. They are not included in the ECMAScript 6 standard. Therefore I also do not like to use them. Nevertheless, we could make fields private (but remember: only from the view of the compiler, not in the JavaScript code itself) and therefore restrict access to such variables.

A nice usage of these modifiers is possible in combination with the constructor function itself.

class Base implements Point, Size { frameCount: number; // no x and y image: Picture; width: number; height: number; currentFrame: number; frameID: string; rewindFrames: boolean; frameTick: number; frames: number; view: JQuery; constructor(public x: number, public y: number) { this.clearFrames(); this.frameCount = 0; } /* ... */ }

By specifying that the arguments are public, we can omit the definition (and initialization) of x and y in the class. TypeScript will handle this automatically.

Fat arrow functions

Can anyone remember how to create anonymous functions in C# prior to lambda expressions? Most (C#) devs cannot. And the reason is simple: Lambda expressions bring expressiveness and readability. In JavaScript everything is evolving around the concept of anonymous functions. Personally, I only use function expressions (anonymous functions) instead of function statements (named functions). It is much more obvious what is happening, more flexible and brings a consistent look and feel to the code. I would say it is coherent.

Nevertheless, there are little snippets, where it sucks writing something like:

var me = this; me.loop = setInterval(function() { me.tick(); }, setup.interval);

Why this waste? Four lines for nothing. The first line is required, since the interval callback is invoked on behalf of the window. Therefore we need to cache the original this, in order to access / find the object. This closure is effective. Now that we stored the this in me, we can already profit from the shorter typing (at least something). Finally we need to hand that single function over in another function. Madness? Let's use the fat-arrow function!

this.loop = setInterval(() => this.tick(), setup.interval);

Ah well, now it is just a neat one-liner. One line we "lost" by preserving the this within fat-arrow functions (let's call them lambda expressions). Two more lines have been dedicated to preserving style for functions, which is now redundant as we use a lambda expression. In my opinion, this is not only readable but also understandable.

Under the hood, of course, TypeScript is using the same thing as we did before. But we do not care. We also do not care about MSIL generated by a C# compiler, or assembler code generated by any C compiler. We only care about the (original) source code being much more readable and flexible. If we are unsure about the wethis should use the fat arrow operator.

Extending the project

TypeScript compiles to (human-readable) JavaScript. It ends with ECMAScript 3 or 5 depending on the target.

Now that we basically typed our whole solution we might even go further and use some TypeScript features to make the code nicer, easier to extend and use. We will see that TypeScript offers some interesting concepts, that allow us to fully decouple our application and make it accessible, not only in the browser, but also on other platforms such as node.js (and therefore the terminal).

Default values and optional parameters

At this stage we are already quite good, but why leave it at that? Let's place default values for some parameters to make them optional.

For instance ,the following TypeScript snippet will be transformed...

var f = function(a: number = 0) { } f();

... to this:

var f = function (a) { if (a === void 0) { a = 0; } }; f();

The void 0 is basically a safe variant of undefined. That way these default values are always dynamically bound, instead of default values in C#, which are statically bound. This is a great reduction in code, as we can now omit essentially all default value checks and let TypeScript do the work.

As an example consider the following code snippet:

constructor(x: number, y: number) { this.setPosition(x || 0, y || 0); // ... }

Why should we ensure that the x and y values are set? We can directly place this constraint on the constructor function. Let's see how the updated code looks like:

constructor(x: number = 0, y: number = 0) { this.setPosition(x, y); // ... }

There are other examples, as well. The following already shows the function after being altered:

setImage(img: string, x: number = 0, y: number = 0) { this.view.css({ backgroundImage : img ? c2u(img) : 'none', backgroundPosition : '-' + x + 'px -' + y + 'px', }); super.setImage(img, x, y); }

Again, this makes the code much easier to read. Otherwise, the propertybackgroundPosition would be assigned with default value consideration, which looks quite ugly.

Having default values is certainly nice, but we might also have a scenario, where we can safely omit the argument without having to specify a default value. In that case we have still to do the work of checking if a parameter has been supplied, but a caller may omit the argument without running into trouble.

The key is to place a question mark behind the parameter. Let's look at an example:

setupFrames(fps: number, frames: number, rewind: boolean, id?: string) { if (id) { if (this.frameID === id) return true; this.frameID = id; } // ... return false; }

Obviously ,we allow calling the method without specifying the id parameter. Therefore we need to check if it exists. This is done in the first line of the method's body. This guard protects the usage of the optional parameter, even though TypeScript allows us to use it at free will. Nevertheless, we should be careful. TypeScript won't detect all mistakes - it's still our responsibility to ensure a working code in every possible path.

Overloads

JavaScript by its nature does not know function overloads. The reason is quite simple: Naming a function only results in a local variable. Adding a function to an object places a key in its dictionary. Both ways allow only unique identifiers. Otherwise we would be allowed to have two variables or properties with the same name. Of course there is an easy way around this. We create a super function that calls sub functions depending on the number and types of the arguments.

Nevertheless, while inspecting the number of arguments is easy, getting the type is hard. At least with TypeScript. TypeScript only knows / keeps the types during compile-time, and then throws the whole created type system away. This means that no type checking is possible during runtime - at least not beyond very elementary JavaScript type checking.

Okay, so why is a subsection dedicated to this topic, when TypeScript does not help us here? Well, obviously compile-time overloads are still possible and required. Many JavaScript libraries offer functions that offer one or the other functionality, depending on the arguments. jQuery for instance usually offers two or more variants. One is to read, the other to write a certain property. When we overload methods in TypeScript, we only have one implementation with multiple signatures.

Typically one tries to avoid such ambiguous definitions, which is why there is are no such methods in the original code. We do not want to introduce them right now, but let's just see how we could write t tohem:

interface MathX { abs: { (v: number[]): number; (n: number): number; } }

The implementation could look as follows:

var obj: MathX = { abs: function(a) { var sum = 0; if (typeof(a) === 'number') sum = a * a; else if (Array.isArray(a)) a.forEach(v => sum += v * v); return Math.sqrt(sum); } };

The advantage of telling TypeScript about the multiple calling versions lies in the enhanced UI capabilities. IDEs like Visual Studio, or text editors like Bracket may show all the overloads including the descriptions. As usual c,alls are restricted to the provided overloads, which will ensure some safety.

Generics

Generics may be useful to tame multiple (type) usages, as well. They work a little bit different than in C#, as well, since they are only evaluated during compile time. Additionally ,they do not have anything special about the runtime representation. There is no template meta programming or anything here. Generics is only another way to handle type safety without becoming too verbose.

Let's consider the following function:

function identity(x) { return x; }

Here the argument x is of type any. Therefore the function will return something of type any. This may not sound like a problem, but let's assume the following function invocations.

var num = identity(5); var str = identity('Hello'); var obj = identity({ a : 3, b : 9 });

What is the type of num, str and obj? They might have an obvious name, but from the perspective of the TypeScript compiler, they are all of type any.

This is where generics come to rescue. We can teach the compiler that the return type of the function is the calling type, which should be of the exact type that has been used.

function identity<t>(x: T): T { return x; } </t>

In the above snippet we simply return the same type that already entered the function. There are multiple possibilities (including returning a type determined from the context), but returning one of the argument types is probably the most common.

The current code does not have any generics included. The reason is simple: The code is mostly focused on changing states and not on evaluating input. Therefore we mostly deal with procedures and not with functions. If we would use functions with multiple argument types, classes with argument type dependencies or similar constructs, then generics would certainly be helpful. Right now everything was possible without them.

Modules

The final touch is to decouple our application. Instead of referencing all the files, we will use a module loader (e.g. AMD for browsers, or CommonJS for node) and load the various scripts on demand. There are many advantage to this pattern. The code is much easier to test, debug and usually does not suffer from wrong orders, as the modules are always loaded after the specified dependencies are available.

TypeScript offers a neat abstraction over the whole module system, since it provides two keywords (import and export), which are transformed to some code that is related to the desired module system. This means that a single code base can be compiled to AMD conform code, as well as CommonJS conform code. There is no magic required.

As an example the file constants.ts won't be referened any more. Instead, the file will export its contents in form of a module. This is done via:

export var audiopath = 'Content/audio/'; export var basepath = 'Content/'; export enum Direction { none = 0, left = 1, up = 2, right = 3, down = 4, }; /* ... */

How can this be used? Instead of having a reference comment, we use the require() method. To indicate that we wish to use the module directly, we do not write var, but import. Please note, that we can skip the *.tsextension. This makes sense, since the file will have the same name later on, but a different ending.

import constants = require('./constants');

The difference between var and import is quite important. Consider the following lines:

import Direction = constants.Direction; import MarioState = constants.MarioState; import SizeState = constants.SizeState; import GroundBlocking = constants.GroundBlocking; import CollisionType = constants.CollisionType; import DeathMode = constants.DeathMode; import MushroomMode = constants.MushroomMode;

If we would write var, then we would actually use the JavaScript representation of the property. However, we want to use the TypeScript abstraction. The JavaScript realization of Direction is only an object. The TypeScript abstraction is a type, that will be realized in form of an object. Sometimes it does not make a difference, however, with types such as interfaces, classes or enums, we should prefer import to var. Otherwise we just use var for renaming:

var setup = constants.setup; var images = constants.images;

Is this everything? Well, there is much to be said about modules, but I try to be brief here. First of all, we can use these modules to make interfaces to files. For instance the public interface to the main.ts is given by the following snippet:

export function run(levelData: LevelFormat, controls: Keys, sounds?: SoundManager) { var level = new Level('world', controls); level.load(levelData); if (sounds) level.setSounds(sounds); level.start(); };

All modules are then brought together in some file like game.ts. We load all the dependencies and then run the game. While most modules are just objects bundled together with single pieces, a module can also be just one of these pieces.

import constants = require('./constants'); import game = require('./main'); import levels = require('./testlevels'); import controls = require('./keys'); import HtmlAudioManager = require('./HtmlAudioManager'); $(document).ready(function() { var sounds = new HtmlAudioManager(constants.audiopath); game.run(levels[0], controls, sounds); });

The controls module is an example for a single piece module. We achieve this with a single statement such as:

export = keys;

This assigns the export object to be the keys object.

Let's see what we got so far. Due to the modular nature of our code we included some new files.

We have another dependency on RequireJS, but in fact, our code is more robust and easier to extend than before. Additionally, all dependencies are always exposed, which removes the possibility of unknown dependencies drastically. The module loader system combined with intellisense, improved refactoring capabilities and the strong typing added much safety to the whole project.

Of course not every project can be refactored so easily. The project has been small and was based on a solid code base, that did not rust that much.

In a final step we will break apart the massive main.ts file, to create small, decoupled files, which may only depend on some setting. This setting would be injected in the beginning. However, such a transformation is not for everyone. For certain projects, it might add too much noise than gain clarity.

Either way, for the Matter class we would have the following code:

/// <reference path="def/jquery.d.ts"/> import Base = require('./Base'); import Level = require('./Level'); import constants = require('./constants'); class Matter extends Base { blocking: constants.GroundBlocking; level: Level; constructor(x: number, y: number, blocking: constants.GroundBlocking, level: Level) { this.blocking = blocking; this.view = $('<div />').addClass('matter').appendTo(level.world); this.level = level; super(x, y); this.setSize(32, 32); this.addToGrid(level); } addToGrid(level) { level.obstacles[this.x / 32][this.level.getGridHeight() - 1 - this.y / 32] = this; } setImage(img: string, x: number = 0, y: number = 0) { this.view.css({ backgroundImage : img ? img.toUrl() : 'none', backgroundPosition : '-' + x + 'px -' + y + 'px', }); super.setImage(img, x, y); } setPosition(x: number, y: number) { this.view.css({ left: x, bottom: y }); super.setPosition(x, y); } }; export = Matter;

This technique would refine the dependencies. Additionally, the code base would gain accessibility. Nevertheless, it depends on the project and state of the code, if further refinement is actually desired or unnecessary cosmetics.

Credit

Florian Rappl

Florian lives in Munich, Germany. He started his programming career with Perl. After programming C/C++ for some years he discovered his favorite programming language C#. He did work at Siemens as a programmer until he decided to study Physics. During his studies he worked as an IT consultant for various companies. After graduating with a PhD in theoretical particle Physics he is working as a senior technical consultant in the field of home automation and IoT. Florian has been giving lectures in C#, HTML5 with CSS3 and JavaScript, software design, and other topics. He is regularly giving talks at user groups, conferences, and companies. He is actively contributing to open-source projects. Florian is the maintainer of AngleSharp, a completely managed browser engine.

Repository at GitHub

Points of Interest

One of the most asked questions in the original article has been where to acquire the sound / how to set up the sound system. It turns out that the sound might be one of the most interesting parts, yet I decided to drop it from the article. Why?

The sound files might cause a legal problem (however, the same could be said about the graphics)

The sound files are actually quite big (effect files are small, but the background music is O(MB))

Every sound file has to be duplicated to avoid compatibility issues (OGG and MP3 files are distributed)

The game has been made independent of a particular sound implementation

The last argument is my key point. I wanted to illustrate that the game can actually work without strongly coupling it to a particular implementation. Audio has been a widely discussed topic for web applications. First of all, we need to consider a series of formats since different formats and encodings only work on a subset of browsers. To reach all major browsers, one usually needs at least 2 different formats (usually consisting of one open and one proprietary format). Additionally, the current implementation of the HTMLAudioElement is not very efficient and useful for games. That is what motivated Google to work on another standard, which works much better for games.

Nevertheless, you want a standard implementation? The GitHub repository actually contains a standard implementation. The original JavaScript version is available, as is the Type'd version. Both are just called.SoundManager One is in the folder Original, the other one in the Scripts folder (both are subfolders of src).

#article #javascript #tutorial

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dedalvs · 7 years ago

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Does it bother you that your work (or at least the work you’re best known for) is to supplement other people’s creations and not your own?

I guess this question would be more appropriate for an actor, since nothing they ever do is their own. Of course everyone working in Hollywood knows this and doesn’t care. There are hundreds of people that work on every single television show and movie. There may be only a handful of people that get the praise or blame for any given project, but nothing that anyone sees is free of influence from someone other than the creator. The very notion is kind of up in the air. Look at Defiance, for example. The original “creator”—the one who came up with the names “Stahma” and “Datak”, for example—never wrote an episode of the show (this is Rockne O’Bannon). He gets credit for co-writing the pilot episode, but what happened was he wrote the pilot then left the show—and then a new showrunner (Kevin Murphy) came on and rewrote the pilot. And the whole thing was an adaptation, anyway, of a property developed by a video game company, Trion. I guess no one who worked on the show really created anything, if I’m following the logic of the ask correctly, since it was all done to supplement Trion’s game. I don’t think anyone working on the show cared much about that fact.

This is one of the main differences between Hollywood and, say, fiction writing. Everyone working in Hollywood looks at each endeavor as a team project, whereas writers write a book that others help them with (i.e. this publisher is publishing my book; this artist is doing the cover art for my book; this publicist is working to advertise my book, etc.). You can see the difference in attitude when it comes to language creation. A producer/director hears about language creation and says, “Ooh, cool! We’ll have to hire someone to do that!” A fiction writer hears about language creation and says, “Ooh, cool! I should do that! I’m probably great at it!” (Or alternately, “Oh, brother… I guess now I have to do that too so my readers don’t complain…”)

Anyway, there are lots of different aspects to this question, so let me try to address all of them.

First, in case it’s ever seemed like I’ve indicated otherwise, I really love what I do. I may not like deadlines, and translation is not my favorite aspect of language creation (and translation constitutes 90% of my job), but there’s really very little difference between what I’m doing now and what I was doing ten years ago, vis-à-vis conlanging. Really, the major differences are that there are deadlines, I get paid, and some people outside the conlanging community care about what I do. It’s still language creation. It’s always fun to come up with a new project, and I’m certainly doing that more now than I would have been otherwise. So the simplest answer is no.

I guess, though, you might think I was just putting on a positive face publicly…? I mean, no. In creating a language, there always has to be some pretext—some reason for the language to exist. If you’re creating a language you want to use in your own life, the pretext is very simple: I want to use this language in my life, therefore I’m creating it. The pretext is less simple when creating a naturalistic language. After all, if I’m creating a language for my daily personal use, why would I bother with a fictional history and sound changes, etc.? I’d just create something simple whose sound I like and whose grammar corresponds to what I find easiest to use. For those of us who find naturalistic conlanging interesting, though, the pretext is a necessity. I never liked conworlding or conhistories (or fantasy, to be honest), so in the early days when I would conlang, I’d basically pretend like I had a conworld/conculture, when in fact I didn’t. Really, though, what that amounted to was that I had a lazy conculture: One I didn’t think too much about and didn’t write down. It’s funny. The same attitude a lot of writers have about conlanging (that it’s a timesink that takes away from their story) is the attitude I had about conculturing. Once I realized what a huge role that plays in the lexicon, though, I came to think of it as a necessary evil. And if I had a language project I was really excited about, I would frankly find it very daunting to have to come up with an entire world and people and systems of government and clothing, etc. Seemed like a drag, to be honest.

Creating languages for other stuff is great because I can cut out all that nonsense and let someone else do it. The resultant culture may not be very good (”Oh, sure, that social model is totally sustainable! I’m 100% sure that patriarchal fantasy is super realistic!”), but (and this is the important part) I didn’t have to do it—and I don’t have to take credit for it. Instead, I can just play around with the language. It’s just delightful!

Like right now, for example, I’m running this D&D campaign, and it is so exhausting to have to come up with every single little detail! It’s fun to act out the characters, and there are other parts I like (like coming up with flags and names), but figuring out exactly how many towns and of what size there should be in a given area is just too much! My hat is off to all DMs out there. It’s a lot of work!

Anyway, as for what I’m known for (the parenthetical part of the ask, which may be the main part of it), I might have had a different answer ten years ago, but now, I honestly do not care. I figure if someone cares about anything else I’ve done ever they’ll find it. Those that don’t, why would I care what they think? About anything? I don’t know them. I’ll probably never meet them. And honestly, have you seen some of the stuff that people talk about wrt conlanging? “What’s a better ConLang: Gallifreyan or Tengwar?” The ones who only know me for what I’m best known for are probably not very discerning. But if they don’t care, why should I?

It took suffering through the George W. Bush economy for me to really figure out what I want in life, but I did, and it’s fairly simple. I want to spend as much of my life as possible financially stable and with my friends and family—while pursuing my interests. Previously I thought I also wanted my friends and family to also care about my interests, but I’ve come to learn that that actually isn’t important to me either. No one else needs to care about what I do so long as I think it’s worth my time and effort. Honestly, with the internet and digital file storage, if there’s someone out there who desperately wants to know every little thing I’ve ever done in my life, that will likely be possible. It’s not like last century: That stuff will probably be available indefinitely (barring societal collapse).

Even if you filter all this out and just focus on language creation, I care much more about the status of conlanging in general than I do what I’m known for or not. It bothers me that it’s been almost ten years and neither Hollywood nor the general public really gets conlanging. It’s gotten better, but since conlanging has gotten a lot of widespread attention, it’s also amplified the ignorance. I feel like I get the same questions over and over again and give the same answers over and over again but there’s still the basic assumption that the quality of a conlang is equivalent to the fame of the conlang. I guess language itself is always going to be something that’s fairly opaque, but it just bugs me that very few people have any idea what they should be looking for in a conlang. It’s like watching someone pick up one of Picasso’s really abstract pieces and also a drawing by a four year old and trying to judge which one is more realistic by comparing the colors in each one to the colors of the shirts worn by their family members in the pictures in their iPhone photo album. Like you can try to say, “Hey, maybe realism isn’t the best thing to look for in either of these,” but there’s just so much nonsense in here that why would you even bother?

The only thing that gives me hope (and not just about this, but in general) is that the younger generation seems really amazing. I’ve said that before about the generation before the youngest generation (I think there’ve been two since me…? I honestly don’t even know how you count these things), but honestly, it gives me hope every day seeing the amazing things that even teenagers are doing. It’s an awesome thing to witness. If you’re a part of the 25 and younger crowd, you should feel really good about what you’ve done and the lives you’ve led thus far. (And that’s an in general type thing. If you’re 26, you didn’t miss the cutoff, or anything.) From someone who went to school in the 80s and 90s, do you know how cool it is just to see teenagers be cool about friends and classmates that are LGBT+? Because that so didn’t happen when I was in school. That’s what you did by just living your lives the way you’re living them. That’s awesome. Really makes me believe that we can actually fix the things we (my generation) were told had already been fixed in the 90s.

Not sure how I got there, but I hope that answers your question. Again, the tl;dr answer is no—no matter which way you meant it.

#conlang #language #Defiance #Anonymous

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destroyyourbinder · 7 years ago

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the girls not like other girls / coming home

One thing a lot of detransitioned and reconciling women have noted is that the only female-centric space they were permitted to have or felt comfortable in was a trans-specific one (i.e. a support group for transmasculine people) and I think this is extremely important to note, whether you are a female person who is trans-identified or an outsider to this whole experience.

As a child, I felt extremely alienated from straight-girl spaces and girl-socializing, even though I had no understanding of myself as a gay kid or as being attracted to women (even though I can see that I was attracted to other girls in retrospect) or even as particularly gender non-conforming. I figured I was "not like other girls", but I had only a crude understanding of this. I was not allowed to express my non-conformity through my appearance-- my mother forced me to wear my hair long and to wear typical girl's clothes, and I was only allowed a certain amount of token resistance before relatively severe abuse kicked in-- so I had little to appeal to in my young brain to explain why I was ostracized from girl groups or why I felt an affinity for boys or fellow strange girls.

I can see now as an adult that there was quite a lot at play: I was awkward and weird in general and had trouble making friends with kids for many reasons, especially with socially astute children who were beginning to learn about and focus on social hierarchy. I found socializing overstimulating and scary in general, and did not want to socialize in a way that involved testing social boundaries and exchanging social information, although I did enjoy the company of my friends. I preferred socializing alongside other children while we had a shared goal, like playing a game of some sort or building a structure. Because a lot of toys and activities intended to inculcate femininity in girl-children are intended to facilitate the former kind of socializing-- such as a jewelry game where girls display how well they can dress themselves according to status-rules and monitor each other's standing, or a kitchen playset where girls are intended to mimic not just making meals but making meals for family members-- I had very little interest in activities designated for girls. I also had a complicated relationship to boy children, where I often thought they were full of shit, boring, and little assholes, but since they were the only ones engaged in things I wanted to do (like jump off the swings) I had to interact with them. I sought out their company and input because even at a very young age I knew male attention and opinions were considered more legitimate, and I figured I could maybe be taken seriously if I spent time with the people who were, well, taken seriously. Maybe they would even approve of me, maybe I could even be better than them. Boy children have intense social structures as well, and they are complicated in their own right; I think some women who prefer or once preferred the company of boys/men like to say their socializing is "simpler" or "easier" or "without drama", but I don't actually think this is true. I think it's easy to forget when socializing with boys or men as a female person that you are not considered the same sort of being as them, and so the fact that it may be easier to interact with boys or men is not a property of men or male socializing in general, but the fact that you are only interacting with a truncated form of their socializing, since you are "only" a girl or woman interfacing with the male world. What I found to be true is that it was sometimes simpler as a female child to interact with boys given that you have no real social position with them-- you have avoided the hierarchy simply by not having the standing to enter one. Boys do not really know how to treat you if you are not readily submitting to a girl role and not easily sexualizable; you sort of fall between the cracks, which can be preferable to being the shittiest girl in a group of girls. I found I was not really at the "bottom" (boys never took me seriously enough to even consider me a true failure) but I could never enter their social structure no matter how hard I tried to play by their rules. I tried to make it clear I had standing with boys through competing with them and trying to outperform them at their own games. Prior to puberty, I tried to compete with boys physically, whether it was by playing bloody knuckles, doing backflips off of the playground equipment, holding races, or doing one-armed pullups. When this no longer worked, I switched primarily to competing with boys and men in intellectual domains, and invested a lot of my self-worth in how good I was compared to boys and men in traditionally male intellectual pursuits like math or logical reasoning, or by competing with the men interested in less masculine areas (but who were still considered the most serious and worthy contenders) like fine arts or writing. I maintained this mentality until I was in my early twenties. I can't say it was a good look.

While I did have some female friends as a child and adolescent, I found it very hard to maintain these friendships, even with other weird girls. There is something inherently anti-supportive and destructive about a friendship with another girl based on how much not-like-the-other-girls you are. I found myself insecure and paranoid that my weird girl friends thought I was too "normal" or too "preppy" or too "girly" for them, that the criticisms and frustrations and vitriol they leveled at girls who ostracized them or who tried to coerce them into femininity work they didn't want to do or who simply made them feel bad were also things that applied to me. I found myself frustrated, too, at my friends for "betraying me" by buying into things or behaving in ways that escalated my insecurity that I was somehow actually, truly inferior for being a girl, and one who couldn't even girl right at that. We were all caught in a bind where we believed both that girls were stupid, but also that we were freaks for personally resisting what we thought was stupid about girls. I can now recognize this as the classic psychology of oppressed people, born of continual abuse by hierarchical superiors and horizontal hostility between people frantically attempting to avoid this abuse and make sense of their situation in a way that allows them to survive it without summoning punishment for resistance. Grooming girls, particularly those prone to be resistant to patriarchy, into this psychology is convenient: it prevents them from recognizing what is really going on and from having solidarity with and compassion for each other. Instead of fighting who was hurting us, we were occupied with fighting each other over who was too obsessed with boys and who was trying too hard to be cool. The trick about this thinking was this: it wasn't that Christina *wasn't* too obsessed with boys. She was, and it was hurting her directly, as well as damaging her long-term development into a woman with a strong sense of dignity and personal agency, and it meant she was willing to damage her friendships for the sake of a dipshit who would dump her in two weeks. We just took the situation as a personal affront to our insecurities about it being proved Cosmically True that girls were stupid sluts, rather than digging deep and giving a shit about Christina and putting the blame where it belonged: the teenage boy four years older than her. Ironically, the straight girly-types were in some ways more successful in resisting patriarchal pressures than we were: at least they had each others’ backs when they complained about boys with each other, at least they were able to share strategies for mitigating the worst of the misogyny they faced. We were left in the cold.

Bizarrely, when I started interacting with other female people who were basically the same Weird Girls, but who didn't call themselves such, those who framed their issues as a gender identity or gender dysphoria problem rather than in the misogynistic way I had framed it in my childhood, I got along much better with them and felt much more understood. It was partially this feeling, that of finally understanding other female people, not being severely ostracized, and having the relief of not being so paranoid of other female people that I was alienating them pre-emptively, that convinced me that my experiences were transgender experiences rather than "just" “regular girl” experiences. Because misogyny had been removed from the table almost entirely-- both in the sense that we were all female people together and that we were not framing all of our experiences, including with other female people, through a lens of potential sexist violations of our humanity-- I felt like I could relax for once in my life. I was no longer obsessive about policing myself and the female people around me. With no male people around, and no longer worried about whether my feelings and reactions had anything to do with my inherent inferiority or not, I was no longer afraid of what my interactions with others indicated about who I really was. Of course, if you stay in transgender community long enough, a lot of these anxieties will resurface in your thoughts and in social hierarchy. Who hasn't seen a literal dick-measuring contest on an FTM message board or trans men accusing other trans men of being "trenders"? But by then, you are no longer permitted to name what's going on, nor have an inkling of where it comes from. Because being transgender has nothing to do with sexism, it's just a medical condition. Or an identity. And men aren’t catty, they don't do that sort of social thing anyway... right?

Sometimes this is what I think people mean when they say discovering they are transgender is like "coming home". It's like taking your shoes off or sliding into bed. It's relief, a relaxation of something painful, annoying, constricting. But turns out I never knew a comfortable home, so I was easily able to feel at home in a home where I was afraid, confused, and never quite clear what was going on. Was I a trender or was the guy shouting about trenders a trender? Did I really belong with these other female people or was I a faker, a poser, a loser here, too? Did I have to believe that misandry was real and defend cis men's behavior to protect myself, or did I have to flagellate myself for having the "privilege" of failing to be feminine enough?

Sound familiar yet?

When detransitioned and reconciling women discuss how having relationships with other women is healing, this is a large part of what they mean. They mean both the good relationships-- healing, genuinely supportive female friendships-- and finally getting a radically honest perspective on bad relationships, too. I had to pop out of understanding myself as "not a girl" or "not a woman" to even acknowledge that I was having classic girl-girl, woman-woman, female-female dynamics in my relationships, nonetheless see how this dynamic played a role in my disidentification and general life course. I could not see that I held responsibility for how I behaved in these relationships, nor have compassion for both other women and myself, until I was able to first see that I was not a separate type of being from the girls for whom I once held contempt. I don't think disidentified and/or trans-identified female people are much different from female people who recognize themselves as women for this reason: female people who call themselves such still separate themselves into "bad women" and "good women", women who get into trouble and women who don't, women who sacrifice their own selfhood and the women who hold onto something. There are whores and madonnas, but also there's prudes and girls who actually put out; wives who take care of their husbands and wives who need to shape up and the wives who need a life; the boy crazy girls or the sad old cougars, the women who settled down, and independent women who have some self-respect; there's women who know how to do their face and hair, and women who don't take care of themselves, but there's the women who try too hard and they look like clowns, you know.

I catch myself doing this, even still, but I know we're all doing it, and I know why. I know I'm not not-a-woman for being insecure about how much femininity I've internalized-- that's universal-- I'm just one of the women who erred on the side of judging myself for giving up my self rather than judging myself most harshly for whether or not I stayed out of trouble.

#writings

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adultprivilege · 6 years ago

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I love my boyfriend to death (we’ve been together for 2 years and then some) but god do I hate his parents. They’re straight up unbelievable. Every time they throw a party for their friends or eat dinner it’s their son that they make clean the house from top to bottom. He looks after their animals, he’s expected to keep his room military spotless at all times, they barge into his room unannounced, they buy themselves nice things while their sons things are broken... 1/2

(they’ve been in use for over a decade) and refuse to replace them, they constantly make him feel not worth the money they spend on him, he’s legitimately yelled at for eating in his own home, they make him feel unloved and stupid constantly, and when he was 7 they forbid him from eating because he was “eating too much” - when they found rotten food under his bed they took his bed frame. None of this is considered child abuse, he just turned 16, and his parents are wealthy. What do I do? 2/2

You could try child protective services or the equivalent, although, I’m from the U.S. so I can only speak to the U.S, and tell you that child protective services mostly only exists to make rich parents feel good about themselves, but it depends on the state, I’d try contacting a local youth-centric non-profit to be sure. Honestly, though, it would be better to start planning an escape plan, I.E. move out at 18. If he’s lucky, despite them being assholes, they’re the type of parents to pay to send their kid out of state for college, and he’s the type of person to “be lucky enough” to get internships in said neighboorhood of out of state college, or “just really want to graduate early” at said out of state college, and just never leave, and “just so happen” to get a job after graduation. Worst case, he’ll be enslaved by capitalism instead of his parents. That’s why a plan is really important. No parental support means paying for your own transport, food, clothing, and shelter, which is nearly untenable given the wonders of age inflation. At 16, he can likely legally get a job, but he would have to be discreet about it, and open his own savings account (which you can’t at 16 in some states.)

Things that he’ll have to go about stealing or discreetly obtaining a new copy of include his social security card, his birth certificate, and if applicable, passports/drivers license. He would want to go about obtaining a drivers license, preferably discreetly, immediately, as well as a passport card, which is cheaper than a passport but still works as two forms of I.D. required to get a job Where you can help in this is that to get his own copies of his identity documents discreetly, he’ll need an address that isn’t his parents. You could also help him hide some of his belongings.

Once he has copies of his identity documents, he can not only open secret bank accounts (in some states) but could get a secret after-school job somewhere, and start accruing capital. He will want to spend as little of it as possible, and just start getting a pile. If he’s really paranoid, in most states, teenager’s money is technically the property of their parents, so he could spread his savings across multiple credit unions (the big banks probably won’t let you create a savings account young even if it’s legal in your state, and quite frankly, you don’t want to), or put it in assets that are harder to liquidate such as CDs, but that has the downside of being harder to liquidate. In terms of where that after-school job should be, he’ll likely be cut off from college savings, so it needs to be a sustainable job, i.e. a unionized place of employment that pays the living wage and has good benefits for full-time employees. If he can’t get employment in such a place, his priority should be building employable skills, for example, learning to code and building a portfolio of work on GitHub, and working gigs on Craigslist that build his skills. If you have a choice, being paid poverty wages learning nothing is worse than not being paid at all, because if you aren’t being paid at all, at least you have time to increase your wages. He’ll also want to build skills of independence, I recommend marathoning How To Adult on youtube. Once he has a pile of cash and the skills, he’ll need to find and independently vet roommates, and then move out. The pile of cash should be 3-6 months of living expenses, and he should also have a job that can pay for the rest of his living expenses without running a deficit. Dave Ramsey is kind of conservative and gross but knows how capitalism works, and know how to avoid its pits. Also, libraries are great.

One thing you’ll need to support him through is the psychological effects of their abuse. Abuse survivors when they don’t have support, tend to get support from unhealthy methods. Another place where you can be a good ally is tracking down non-profit therapy, like your local equivalent of Face2Face.

Busses. busses are really good, he should probably still get a drivers license b/c employers, but busses are really cheap, learn them, live them, love them. Free Geek is great for cheap electronics, Goodwill Outlet is sketch, but has cheap prices on pretty much everything else. Meetup and Eventbrite are good for networking, and cheap entertainment.

IDK, anything else fam?

-ademainalors

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prosserjohn · 4 years ago

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Dear White People, You’re Not That Well-Intentioned

On my way through town, after work, I pulled up to a stop light in a quiet part of town. There was some construction and the stop was longer than normal, but not obscene. This particular intersection stands as a portal of sorts to an infamous stretch of street where, growing up, the local police would ticket anyone going over the posted 25 mph speed limit. I think they still do.

As I was waiting a few cars deep, a white woman, probably in her late 60s, walked up to my car. She was holding a picture, printed on regular white paper, of her grandkids. I had no idea who this woman was, but I rolled down my window. She handed me the picture. Cute kids. About 10 or so in all. All of them were white, except for one. The young child in the center was Black. This matters.

When she approached my window, after handing me the photo, the woman said, “I saw the message on your car and I like it. But I can’t say ‘Black Lives Matter’ because all of my grandkids lives matter. All lives matter.”

Here’s a photo of the back of my car.

Sitting behind me at a traffic stop, this woman was so...moved? Distraught? Guilt-ridden? that I wrote this on my car that she had to absolve herself of the reasons why she can’t bring herself to say “Black Lives Matter.” This matters.

I didn’t catch the woman’s name. She seemed kind, I suppose. As kind as walking-up-to-a-stranger’s-car-at-a-stop-light-to-show-him-your-grandkids-so-he-knows-that-you-have-9-white-grandkids-and-1-Black-grandkid-and-you-can’t-bring-yourself-to-say -“Black Lives Matter”-because-the-lives-of-your-white grandkids-matter-too can be.

If I’d had more time I would have taken the photo out of my sun-visor of my 3 kids. I’d have shown her that I think their lives matter too. And yet, I can still say “Black Lives Matter,” because there’s nothing about loving my children that takes away the urgency with which we need to recognize and honor Black lives.

If I’d have had more time I would have explained that her Black grandchild’s lived experiences will be different from her white grandchildren’s lived experiences. That her Black grandchild will face barriers that were established at the very founding of this nation to ensure that Black people don’t have access to the same opportunities and resources as white people. He will have to navigate a world where the police can walk into his home and shoot him in his own bed and be charged with a property crime. He will have to navigate a world where an entire major political party (the GOP if you weren’t sure) targets millions of Black voters for suppresssion campaigns - gerrymandered voting districts, closing polling locations, voter ID requirements, and the sordid list goes on. This matters.

This woman wanted to convince me that she was “well intentioned.” But she wasn’t well intentioned. She said she “liked the message on my car,” only to explain to me why she didn’t like the message on my car, or at least to imply why she was too cowardly to stand up for the only one of her grandchildren born without the advantages that being white affords. This matters.

White people like this woman don’t want to be called racist. They don’t like it. But they don’t dislike it with sufficient frustration to change their behaviors or change their words or change their attitudes. But that’s what moral conviction should do - it should change our attitudes and behaviors when we feel guilt. And that’s what she was truly expressing: guilt. When you are compelled to engage a stranger because of the words on his car, but not engage your own attitudes, for whatever reason, you’re a moral coward.

So she wasn’t well-intentioned at all. This matters.

It shouldn’t be hard for white people to acknowledge that Black Lives are deserving of dignity. It shouldn’t be hard for White people to acknowledge that Black Lives are threatened in ways that white lives aren’t. And yet, white people like the woman who approached my car struggle to find the room to acknowledge either of the above sentiments, as if doing so would betray her to her white grandchildren. It doesn’t. My white children are my heart and soul, and they are not betrayed by my commitment to fight the oppression and violence against Black Lives.

Shortly after this encounter, on September 29th, I started writing this blog entry. I never finished it. A month later, I put my thoughts into the following Twitter thread from my @prosserjohn account. I’ve decided to merge these two pieces of writing together with the hope that these words will help white people learn how to become more than well-intentioned; I wish for them to become well-actioned.

The October 20, 2020 Twitter thread:

1/ p v ~ p. This symbolic sentence, read as “p or not p,” is a tautology, meaning it’s always true. Either the proposition p is true & satisfies the truth of the sentence, or its denial is true & satisfies the truth. E.g. The kitchen light is on or the kitchen light is not on.

2/ Tautologies like the above are not controversial. They don’t express a ton of information, but they are useful in logical reasoning. We know that if a proposition is not true, that it’s denial must be true. And that if a proposition is true, it’s denial must be not true.

3/ E.g. We know the proposition “Bananas are blue” is false, so it’s denial, “Bananas are not blue,” must be true. It doesn’t tell us what color they are, but we know what color they aren’t. So the proposition “Bananas are blue or bananas are not blue” is always true.

4/ “The sun rose today or the sun did not rise today.” This statement is always true. p v ~ p, where p stands for the proposition “The sun rose today.” This is not controversial.

5/ “It is raining right now, right here, or it is not raining right now, right here.” This statement is always true. p v ~p, where p stands for the proposition “It is raining right now, right here.” This is not controversial.

6/ The p v ~p tautology is always true and never controversial. Well, almost never controversial. There is a special controversy right now, with this very tautology, that has some people very angry. Can you guess the tautology?

7/ Now, let p stand for the proposition “Black Lives Matter.” So p v ~ p reads “Black Lives Matter or Black Lives Do Not Matter.” This tautology is still true. Not controversial. But what makes this statement true & informative, is that p itself is true: Black Lives Matter.

8/ And this is where the controversy suddenly arises.

When I say “Black Lives Matter,” I’m uttering a proposition, a statement about the way the world is. I’m declaring that Black lives do indeed matter. That Black lives have value and worth. That Black lives deserve rights.

9/ But when I say “Black Lives Matter” and someone gets angry at this statement, they reject proposition p, which means, necessarily, they assert proposition ~p. That is, to deny “Black Lives Matter” is to, necessarily, assert that “Black Lives Do Not Matter.” p v ~ p.

10/ Either p is true, or ~p is true. One must be true. So denying the claim that “Black Lives Matter” means you are arguing in favor of the truth of its denial, I.e. ~p, I.e. That Black Lives Do Not Matter.

11/ The oddity within this “controversy” isn’t that there are racists and racists don’t value Black Lives. We know racists exist & we know they don’t value Black Lives.

12/ No - the oddity here is that the ppl who reject the proposition “BLM” refuse to admit that they believe it’s denial is true. They will simultaneously erupt in anger at the claim “BLM” & throw a tantrum if you clarify “So you’re saying Black Lives Don’t Matter?”

13/ Try it sometime. Find someone who thinks “Black Lives Matter” is offensive, then ask them “So you’re arguing that “Black Lives Don’t Matter?” And guarantee they’ll say “That’s not what I’m saying!” or “I’m not racist. All lives matter!”

14/ Except it’s patently true: if you reject the simple, uncontroversial claim that #BlackLivesMatter, then you necessarily assert its denial, that Black Lives Don’t Matter, and this...this makes you a racist. It really is that simple. So don’t be a racist. Support Black Lives.

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anctilbrayen · 4 years ago

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awhilesince · 4 years ago

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Thursday, 16 June 1831

Thursday 16

8 1/4

1 35/''

up at 6 50/'' but so vexed at its being so late, and so lazy, too, that lay on the bed till 8 1/4 – Fahrenheit 67° at 8 1/2 – writing out 5 June – breakfast at 10 to 11 1/4 – then asleep in my own room till 12 5/'' – from then to 3 35/'' (at 12 35/'' sent of note to “James Edward Norris Esquire” to say with my compliments that if he had no other engagement I should be glad to see him here this evening) (answer that he was from home) – from 12 5/'' to 3 35/'' wrote out from Monday 6 to all but the last 6 lines of Monday 10 June – James Holt came at 3 35/'' and staid till 4 55/'' – pretty well satisfied about the coal – he says, and I hope it is true, that not much harm is done – they pricked thro’ in one place but it is quite dry there now – (just at the lowmost extreme point of their getting coal, in the lower Whiscum field) – and it seems the weight of water on the other or Halifax side did, in one place, burst thro’ the 10 or 15 yards breadth of coal left as a barrier – but Mr Rawson has by means of galls gained 2 yards of level, so that now all the water goes the Halifax way instead of coming Shibden way, so that all is safe – asked why they had been suffering to go beyond their limits (i.e. into lower whiscum field) at all – but said not very much press this (so got no particular reason or decided answer) for it it would do no good to get wrong with Holt – he said when he found where they were (what business to be there at all?) he made them turn down according to the line marked on the plan leaving this barrier of 10 or 15 yards, and went down every fortnight to look after and keep them right – never had so much trouble with any property – Perhaps there may be nearly 3 d.w. (days work) stolen behind the 10 or 15 yards barrier – the only way to know, is to get down into Walsh and Hinchcliffe’s old works behind this said barrier, and measure – we must sink and go down near where Oates and Green and Walsh and Hinchcliffe pricked thro’ – Holt to ask W(alsh) and H(inchcliffe) if they will allow us to go down into their old works, and then try and make an agreement about the coals they have stolen – said I did not hope they would let us go down; but if they refused, it would look as if there was something wrong and they would have no chance of making an agreement for any fresh coal with me – I thought equity would compel them to let us go down; but, if all could be managed quietly, I would not be too hard with them – Hinchcliffe would give £100 a d.w. (days work) for the coal, in a new agreement, if allowed to set an engine (water engine – should only see the going up and down of the piston above ground) at Tilleyholm stile, and have all privileges granted, – to loose what coal he liked – but this would never do – for he could buy plenty of coal at £20 a d.w. (days work) and then get it easy enough with the loose he would have – for which loose I ought to be paid nor I myself ought to buy the coal at £20 a d.w. (days work) and then sell it again at a fair price considering the loose – In whatever agreement I make have a clause to bar their loosing anybody’s coal but my own – this engine at Tilley holm style would loose about 60 d.w. days work breadth on both sides, and the coals would come out in the new road and be 1st for sale and there might be a sight of coals got and there would no need to break up any ground in the estate – this colliery would employ 10 colliers constantly for 20 years – ought to pay me £200 a year – for Holt would advise me not to let in the same way as at present which is very troublesome and very expensive but to stipulate that so much per annum should be paid whether coal to that amount was got or not – this is the way in Holt takes of Waddington – and Waddington understands coals, and Holt would rather have to do with understanding people for Waddington – and he has never had a wrong word yet – this is the plan Holt would follow if the coals were his own – but they would pay for keeping, and he would advise me to wait a year or two – should I had no objection to this Swalesmoor coal will be done in about 5 years and Stocks will have none to bring but what will come from the other side Amblerthorn bar – then talked about Dumbmill loose – that would loose about 200 acres but would take an engine of 8 or 10 horse power, and cost above £2,000 – but Holt would employ the power in some way or other so as to pay for itself so that the water would in fact be lifted for nothing (i.e. it would turn some machinery which would pay the cost of lifting) and this would make it answer – but he agreed the Tilleyholm style loose would last me my life and would be the best to begin with – then got to talking of Emmett and Wilson who are beginning a pit in Quarry house land – will have a hundred yards to lift the water – and they have all the springs to lift dirtband spring which is the largest, and all – they will want a 30 horse power Engine – Stocks says it will all cost £20,000 before done; and Holt thinks it will cost £10,000 and no colliery here will pay for that – a very foolish business – ask what he thinks the value of upper-brea coal for me to buy – answer £50 a d.w. (days work) both beds, not surface measure – the land at £80 a d.w. (days work) suppose there are 70 d.w. (days work) at 50 + 80 = £9.100 quite enough for me ever to give I think – He would give more for Dove house coal (if he was in my place) – values that at £60 a d.w. (days work) (both beds) surface measure – but the land on the wrong side the hill and not worth more than £60 a d.w. (days work) – there are 50 d.w. (days work) at £120 = £6000 – I would rather have Dove houses at 6 than upper brea at 9 thousand pounds – speaking of Mr Waterhouses coal (Sim car) it turns out that Holt with _____ of the public house there bade £60 a d.w. (days work) to have all privileges – not worth more than £50 a d.w. (days work) would rather give £40 for those I have just bought of Wilkinson than £50 for Mr Waterhouses – Clark would have bought them, but they said they would not take less than £80 a d.w. (days work) not likely to get this nor to have £60 bid soon again – Holt to ask Joseph Wilkinson what he would take to have all the coal - monthly paid down at once – and what price he sets on that pointed bit of ground between the meeting of the Lower brea and Northowram roads – It was the sitting over a couple of glasses of beer that got me all this information stood talking to my father 3/4 hour about the coals after Holt was gone – asked Holt not to give his vote for m.p. (member of parliament) of Halifax till he heard more about it from me, which he promised –

wrote (in pencil) all the above of today except the 1st 4 lines, and then dinner at 6 1/4 in 1/2 hour – then 1/2 hour talking to Marian – She is in despair always having workmen – give her £500 a year, and she would go away – often thought she would go away as soon as ever she could, and never come back again but for a day or 2 –

out at 7 1/4 – walked all the road and by Benjamin’s to the top of Bairstow and then to the Coneyry to Matty Pollard’s and she and her husband kept me talking till 9 3/4 – sad disreputable work at Benjamin Bottomley’s – his son John says my father had promised him the farm which I said I did not believe a word of –

on getting home found Mr Norris had been here about 1/4 hour – complained of the heat of the little sitting room and soon adjourned (Mr N– (Norris) and I) to the drawing room – Had wine, and sat talking till 12 – On saying why and apologizing for having sent for him pledged to Mr William Lascelles, at least so I told him, on finding that, tho’ he said he was not pledged, yet he had gone so far as to ask him if he would stand if he was solicited, and the answer was,"nothing would give him greater pleasure” – but he said he had 1st asked It seems this took place last March – I observed that he had indeed taken time by the forelock – “yes! Nothing like it in elections” – He wondered he had not thought of Lord Pollington – nobody could be more proper – sorry he had not thought of him – but his only remembrance of him was of a boy shooting rabbits with his father in the park at Methley – odd he had not thought of him, for he had asked Lord Mexborough 1st if he would stand for H– (Halifax) they were walking arm in arm together in Bond Street when he (Mr N– (Norris)) was in London and he had popped the question but Lord M– (Mexborough) declined it, saying he was now since his father’s death sure of Pontefract – Mr N– (Norris) had then seen Mr William Lascelles’s brother and mentioned the subject to him – answer he dared say his brother would be very happy but he was not then in London – On Mr N–’s (Norris’s) return, and arrival at Doncaster, who should he see but Mr William L– (Lascelles) he went up, said what he wished and received the above (line 11 above) answer – on getting home he spoke to “Rawson” and 1 or 2 more friends, who would have voted for Dimtombe the last election – and all were agreed – In fact, he had got 400 votes promised and was always getting a vote or 2 when he could – had got 2 today – to those he could trust, he mentioned the name – others he begged to trust to him and depend upon it they would be satisfied – He did not believe there were more than 800 votes in the town, instead of 1036 – He had taken a great deal of pain about it and made out a list of all the votes (which he said he would send me) noting which way they would all vote and giving all the doubtful ones to Stocks, and yet he had a majority for William L– (Lascelles) He had 18 votes himself and had 20 houses that he meant to raise to 3 storeys and that would give him 20 votes more (18 + 20 = 38) I said there was nothing to be said against Mr William L– (Lascelles) – oh! No! said Mr N– (Norris) he connects us well with the Lord Lieutenant And several peers, and it is very useful in a committee of the house of Lords to have a peer to apply to – yes! but said I the other (Lord P– Pollington) is connected with as many peers – “yes! certainly” and then his Mr N–’s (Norris) entirely with Lord Mexborough made him sorry he had not thought of him – speaking of colours and saying it was a pity to stick to such very deep blue – oh! yes! but it was impossible to do otherwise – that the only chance about Mr William L– (Lascelles) whether he was not getting a little too yellow in consequence of his marriage (married Lord Morpeth’s sister) – I took no apparent notice of this but merely said it would be possible to make a strong diversion in favour of Lord P– (Pollington) (yes! he would have all the Lumley Saville interest which was great in Stainland, and all his own) but said I it would be a pity in such a case to have any collission – yes! indeed it would for what ever party brought forward 2 members would lose it – and if a yellow once got in it would be difficult to get him out again – that, said I, would never do – at all rates, Lord P– (Pollington) knows nothing about it – this seemed rather unexpected to Mr N– (Norris) but no more was said about it – I dwelt upon the pity of having any collission – said it was a pity Mr William L– (Lascelles) could not be provided for in some other way in which case Mr N– (Norris) would certainly give his interest Lord P– (Pollington) I seemed perhaps as if hearing how things were I had given up all thought of Lord P– (Pollington) but studiously avoided directly saying so – speaking of probable votes, Mr N– (Norris) said Mr Edwards was for tree trade – did not quite know whether he could count on his vote – oh! yes! said I – I could less count upon Mr William Henry Rawson – no! no! Mr N– (Norris) quite sure of the latter –

Inquired about having newspapers from the newsroom – all sold at 1/2 price at the year’s end and always sent away after being 12 hours in the newsroom – and this enabled the subscribers to have so many more papers – then about the navigation – the rail-road all in the hands of the unitarians at Manchester, and might or not be carried – thought there might be want of money – but if not, and the rail road was made, tho’ according to present dues it would carry goods rather cheaper than we do, yet we could lower so as to be the cheaper of the two and then we should have the carrying of all that did not require particular despatch, and could not be hurt more than a third – the rail-road to cost £800,000 from Manchester to Selby of which £480,000 to Sowerby bridge – thought it would cost the whole £800,000 to there – He had proposed a plan for our getting an act to take it forward from Sowerby bridge to Wakefield and then we should be sure – we should keep the carriage in our own hands – government would certainly give us the preference over any new company – If the rail road was made to Sowerby bridge we should make ours – if not, we should be quiet and remain as we are – It would be an insurance – would cost about £250,000 – we should have to subscribe 6 per cent per annum for some years – we have now 18 per cent and should then have 12 – would not sell out now – the shares at the lowest – he had bought in at 320 or 330 I think he said – would have bid shares had they been put up in the lump, but they were sold in single shares – then about coals. He Mr N– (Norris) (for Mr Prescott) gave Mr Rawson his loose price £2,000 – Mr R– (Rawson) had been about it some years – at 1st offered £5 a year and Mr N– (Norris) would have taken £100 a year, but at last would have and got the 2 thousand – Mr R– (Rawson) must have laid out 2 or 3 thousand pounds on the works – Told the story of his making Walsh and Hinchcliffe pay Mrs Prescott for all the coals they had stolen in Haines (alias Folly) land, tho’ they had made themselves fraudulent bankrupts – He said they had stolen 3 d.w. (days work) from my uncle – yes! said I. I want to know what to do about that – He offered me the sight of some old plans of the works in Mrs Prescott’s land , and the sight of a plan of Mr Rawson’s works from which there is a drift by which Holt could get into the old works and measure off what has been stolen – I said how much I was obliged and how great a service he would do me – He observed I had a fine coalfield – yes! said I, I might begin in Tilley holm or at Dumb mill, and loose everybody – but I was inclined to wait a little – He said I might easily have £500 a year and it was a pity to lose the interest of the money – ah! said I “I must get you to help me then; but I have inherited my attorney with the estate” – Mr N– Norris thinks I shall soon have an opportunity of buying Godley – said I would not give more than it was worth – would not buy it like the other – but for that I had a particular reason – tho’ it did not appear as yet – but I was going away – did not like to have it, and would have given anything for it – would rather have Dovehouses than Upper brea for which he bade 7,000 guineas and Stocks £12,000 merely to put him off – but he might have had it afterwards – meant to have made the house into a residence – but had got one now in the town, and would not interfere with me for Upper brea now – Dovehouses must be sold by auction some time – Landed property much lower now – yes! but when I want to buy anything, I never find it out – mentioned the little bits I wanted cut off by the roads – the best way would be to get the Commissioners to buy them for me – Mr N– (Norris) offered to do anything for me he could as a friend, and see what Mr Emmett will take for that bit near Benjamin’s, and write and let me know – to be folded up betterwise, and his note will then be forwarded if I am not here – I was of course as civil as I could – said I should be glad to see him on my return – he held out his hand on my coming into the room which I of course took very graciously I must keep up with all these people Lord Mexborough is a friend of his ditto Mr William Lascelles what a pompous forward talking fellow He is but no matter I may get something out of him talking –

It was 12 5/’’ by the kitchen and all were in bed – went and stood talking at my aunt’s bedside 1/2 hour – then 1/2 hour (till 1) writing the notes of this visit – very showery day till near 6 – afterwards fine – Fahrenheit 65° now at 1 tonight –

reference number: SH:7/ML/E/14/0072 - SH:7/ML/E/14/0074

#annelistercodebreaker #annelister #june 1831

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badbackgroundscience · 7 years ago

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Mole Man returns, still knows nothing about geology

Hey, Sue’s less useless now!

Those of you who haven’t read the old Fantastic Four comics might never have known that Susan Storm was originally only capable of turning herself invisible. The comic wherein she finally gets her upgrade doesn’t say she generates force fields - instead, her “invisibility is a form of energy”* - and it never offers up the science-y explanation of her being able to bend light around her, which will pop up as an explanation some unknown time in the series’s future.**

She can also now make other people and objects invisible, but not while invisible herself. And she can turn already invisible objects [i.e. ones she didn’t turn invisible] visible, which turns her invisible whether she wants to or not. It’s a bit weird, and part of her powerset so we won’t be continuing the analysis any further. But it’s important that the character’s not just good for sneaking purposes, anymore, so I need to mention it.

This issue sees the return of the Mole Man, whom we last saw all the way back in the very first issue I ever covered on this blog. He tricks the Fantastic 4 into considering buying an uninhabited island off the coast of New Jersey, and captures them when they go to survey it.

[Quick vocabulary lesson: “Geography” is a field of study, both of the physical properties of the Earth itself and how they influence people living on it (or how people influence the Earth). The word comes from the Ancient Greek γεωγραφία for “a description of the earth”, which is made up of the words γῆ (gê, “earth”) and γράφω (gráphō, “write”). You cannot own “a piece of geography”. Apparently, people in business use “geographies” in place of the perfectly sensible word “regions”. They’re weird, but if you were one of them I guess you could say you owned “a piece of a geography”. I wouldn’t be proud of you.]

After the team arrives on the island, something steals their ride and Johnny almost drowns trying to get it back. The Thing claims they’re now stranded on the island “for good”, completely forgetting the fact that if they’re mere miles away from the East Coast, all they have to do is wait for Johnny to wake up and dry out and he can fly back to go get someone with a boat. Or something.

Follows a shadowy figure into a cave, Reed gets ‘caught’ in the worst pair of handcuffs ever...(The man’s arms are noodles! Those aren’t handcuffs! They’re a poor McDonald’s advertisement.)

But anyway, Mole Man reveals himself and drops the lot of them down a cavern of unknown height onto a small trampoline surrounded by a radioactive wall that only glows when they get close to it.

How can a wall be radioactive only on the inside, you might ask? I mean, technically that’s easy. Only some element isotopes are radioactive. The outside of the wall could be made of the non-radioactive lead-208, and the inside of the wall could be made out of a uranium-rich material, since Uranium ores/minerals have been used to tint things yellow in the past (e.g. glass). Many Uranium minerals/ores are yellow-green in color, like

Autunite, Ca(UO2)2(PO4)2·10-12H2O:

Saleeite, Mg(UO2)2(PO4)2·10(H2O):

Uranocircite, Ba(UO2)2(PO4)2·10H2O:

or Gummite (an unspecific mixture of uranium minerals):

You’ll notice that none of them are glowing, but Uranium minerals do fluoresce*** under ultraviolet light (usually they’re green, though - not yellow):

So, if there was some sort of proximity sensor which turned on a giant blacklight no one bothered to point out, then our uranium-laced wall would indeed glow.

But this all ignores the fact that the wall is somehow so radioactive that simply touching it would kill a person instantly, but absolutely benign when you stand a few feet away from it. Is that even possible?

It depends on the type of radiation being emitted by this wall (alpha, beta, gamma); each has its own ability to penetrate air. Uranium basically always undergoes alpha decay, whose particles are effectively blocked by mere centimeters of air. Even your outer layer of dead skin cells (or solid rock, if you’re Ben Grimm) can block basically all of it. I wouldn’t go climbing a mountain of Uranium any time soon ever, but if you accidentally touch a rock of it you’re not going to die a slow agonizing death, let alone a quick one.

[Some of uranium’s other decay chain products - that is, the elements uranium decays into along the way to lead - emit beta and gamma rays, so Mole Man’s giant wall of radioactive ore probably isn’t just emitting alpha radiation. Beta radiation can cause radiation burns with a skin-penetrating power of about 1 cm; gamma rays can go all the way to your core.

That being said, having an outer ring made of lead isn’t going to stop all the radioactive particles from staying inside the circle, and if the wall emits enough radiation to kill the F4 with a single touch, it’s too dangerous for Mole Man and his cronies to be anywhere in the room.]

We learn Mole Man’s plan to take over the world via monologue. He’s built hydraulic platforms underneath “the largest cities on Earth” (by which he means New York City and Moscow), and they will lower the cities “down to the Earth’s core”. He then assumes the US and the USSR will bomb each other to smithereens and Mole Man can take the rest of the planet by force.

Let’s ignore the complete unfeasibility of digging a hole with the cross sectional area of an entire city to the Earth’s core.**** Or any hole to the Earth’s core.

The temperature’s going to get so hot that giant metal contraption is going to melt long before it gets anywhere near the core - the Earth’s mantle ranges from 1000 to 3700 °C - the latter of which is hotter than the melting point of any known elemental metal, and hotter than all but a couple of alloys’. Inside the Earth, the high pressures help keep things solid, but if Mole Man’s dug a hole - and can keep something that wide open - that source of pressure is gone.

And, like, why does he even need to lower them down to the core? People will be dead before they even hit the mantle - water boils at 100 °C, remember, and humans are bags of mostly water?

And and, like, why does he think the US military will see a giant perfect circle in the ground going Odin knows how far down and think it’s a nuke attack? We’re the only country that’s dropped nukes on another nation! We know what a nuked city looks like!

Did none of Mole Man’s subterranean underlings ask about this plan? I mean, good job on the “let them destroy themselves” bit, but why not dig a hole beneath someone’s nuclear stockpile, steal some bombs, and then launch them at the other guy? I came up with that in literally 2 seconds.

How long did it take you, Mole Man, to come up with your brilliant plan?

Obviously, the F4 stop our baddie from dropping either city even a meter. Sue uses her new force field powers (that aren’t force field powers) to block him from pressing the not-big-&-red button, and also shielding her team so they can crawl up the wall.*****

They somehow land in the exact right positions to drop down into customized traps.

“...the one which is now sucking you down to the bottom with a powerful vacuum blast of air...”

Vacuums are a complete lack of air.`* What does that even mean!?

Our heroes get out of their respective traps - the Thing’s is everyone who took gymnastic’s lessons’ worst nightmare (a foam pit). Mole Man turns off the lights (If he can see in the dark, why even have the lights on in the first place?) and escapes. The F4 follow suit, and when Mole Man pushes the button it’s their off-the-coast-of-NJ island that sinks.

Because...Reed rewired...something...

And that’s how our comic ends. Was it worth wading through that ridiculous science to see the only woman on the team get a power upgrade?

Yeah. Probably.

* Energy is not the same thing as force. Very roughly speaking, a force is a push or pull on an object, whereas energy is something used to exert a force upon an object over a distance. Also, “invisibility” - as in not being visible - can’t be “energy” anymore than, I don’t know, being “tasty” can be.

** James Kakalios suggests in The Physics of Superheroes that Sue’s invisibility comes from an ability to make her molecules not absorb visible light whenever she wants (by “[increasing] the “energy gap” of all the molecules in her body” so that she absorbs/reflects ultraviolet light). This is based off 2002′s Fantastic Four #62, Vol. 3, which states while she’s invisible she uses “scattered cosmic rays” to see. (As he says, “Right idea -- wrong illumination source.”)

*** Fluorescence happens when a material’s atoms absorb certain wavelengths of light - kicking some of their electrons into higher orbitals - then emit light as the electrons fall back down. Usually the light emitted is lower energy (and therefore longer wavelength) than what was absorbed. Glow-in-the-dark products usually use phosphorous, which absorbs UV light and emits visible light. Fluorescent lights use an electric current to make mercury atoms emit ultraviolet light, which is then absorbed by a coating inside the tube, and that coating emits that sick office-cubicle color.

**** If we make a circle 2500 square kilometers in area, approximately equal to Moscow’s land area, Mole Man would need to remove at least 90,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms of rock to lower the Russian city to the core [It’d be more because the density of the Earth increases as you go down, and I just used the average density of rock], which is not quite the mass of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

It took 20 years to dig the deepest hole we’ve ever done - which went a whole 12 km down...and is 9 inches in diameter.

***** You might be wondering why Johnny doesn’t just fly out the open top. Don’t worry. I am, too.

`* If he got ‘sucked’ into that room ‘cause it had previously been a vacuum (He really would have gotten blown into it by air trying to rush in), Mole Man’s room would have had to close back up and then somehow suck all the air out of it again.

Also, if Johnny were actually trapped inside a vacuum, he’d lose consciousness after 15 seconds and die in 60-90 seconds.

Enjoy the blog and have a dollar to spare? I have a Patreon, now.

Fantastic Four #22 - Writer: Stan Lee, Art: Jack Kirby, Ink: G Bell

Image Credits:

Autunite By Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0

Saleeite By Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0

Uranocircite By Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0

Gummite By Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0

Fluorescence By Weirdmeister - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

#comics #fantastic four #geology #fluorescence #uranium #Radioactive

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powerssquaredcomicbook · 5 years ago

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This Week in Powers Squared: Report From the Front: SDCC 2019

Editors Note: This is taken directly from http://1000wordsadayeasily.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-week-in-writing-256-report-from-front.html which is David’s personal blog about writing.

A day late, but better late than never, right?

Every year, for 13 of the past 14, I've attended San Diego Comic-Con and every year, since I've been blogging, I've written about my experience, first on Trophy Unlocked and then here for the past few years now. I write about my experience at the Con and the panels I've attended, sharing what I've learned in hopes that it will help me make more sense of what I've learned and to pass that on to you, dear reader, in case something I've learned would be helpful to you. I will write about about some aspects of the convention but if you're looking for photos of Cosplayers or a rundown of the MCU Phase 4, I'm going to have to tell you to look elsewhere, as there are much better sources for that sort of information. In all the years I've attended, I've never made it into Hall H, nor have I attended the Masquerade ball they have on Saturday nights. This is the first year that I've attended the event as a Professional, thanks to Powers Squared. Obviously, sales numbers are not taken into consideration when it comes to handing out that sort of badge. Being a Professional means that you don't have to go through the registration process, you get all four days and preview night, and you don't have to pay for admission. While that is all pretty sweet, that is all that you really get. After that, you are simply an attendee with no other real perks, or at least ones worth noting here. For those who couldn't attend, I put up some photos as a sort of travelogue on the Powers Squared Instagram page, which means they showed up double on the comic's Facebook page, Twitter feed, and Tumblr. If you want to see lines and crowds and see where we ate while there, please check that out. Paul and I also did short videos which will be edited together for next week's A Week in Powers Squared vlog that we put up on our YouTube channel. Let's get over the basics, Comic-Con is tiring and expensive. For the most part, you're one in a sea of people all trying to do something different, which means there is general organized chaos going on at all times. Lines are long, even for pre-ordered items, and having a magic ticket, so to speak, means you're at the end of a line that never seems to move more often than not. Some booths, like Hasbro, seem to know how to handle a giveaway while others, like Viz, still do not. Last year, they nearly shut down the Con based on the near-riots that they caused. While I want to have fun at Comic-Con and did attend some panels in that vein, over the past few years I've trying to attend more learning and professional sessions and that's what I write about here. There was one panel, The Art of the Pitch, that I could not get into. Not sure why, but I suspect that it had something to do with Yvette Nicole Brown, of Community fame, being the moderator. Don't know for sure because I never got into the room and I wasn't paying attention to what the next panel was supposed to be in that room. For some panels, especially the popular ones, you have to sometimes sit through one or more prior to get to the one you want to see. I didn't expect one about Pitching to "sell out," so I missed that. There is no substitution for actually attending these sorts of panels. I know not everyone can, so I try to present what I learned to help those who can't. I did make it into Finance Your Indie Comic Now, moderated by Barbara Randall Kesel, and while it featured four male black creators and one woman, as Kesel pointed out, this wasn't about diversity in comics. The nice thing about the panelists is that they, like many in the room, were creatives; Andre Owens had recently become a full-time creative, which is, of course, everyone's goal. Like most panels, there really isn't that much that you haven't already learned and you will sometimes hear advice that is impractical for your situation. However, here is what I was taught in the panel: 1) If you spend more than $162 a page, in a comic book, and your sales are not 5000 and up, there is no way to make money on your book. 2) You should try to price your book at about half of what Marvel and DC charge for the same amount of pages $4 to $5, which means you should price at $2 to $2.50, or make up for it by offering more than what they provide for the same price. 3) The sources for funding are the usual: Crowdfunding (Kickstarter and the like), Print-on-Demand and Digital-only distribution. They did agree that there is a little Kickstarter fatigue that has set in, which, if true, is not a good thing. 4) They did mention a website that I have not had a chance to explore, http://www.creatorresource.com, which is meant to provide comic book freelancing tools and resources. Nerdy Finance was actually a replacement panel, but when I heard about it, I wanted to be sure to attend. Presented by Neil Narvaez, the panel discussed the tax implications of a hobby and trying to run a business, or as he put it, trying to make money. His first bit of advice was to have an accountant do your taxes, as they know, or should know, the ins and outs of the tax codes and will allow you to take full advantage of all deductions. The IRS considers you a business if you are: 1) Acting like a business (i.e., trying to make money) 2) What is the time and effort you're putting into it (can't be an hour a week or a month)? 3) Do you depend on the income generated by your business? 4) Are losses beyond your control? 5) Do you change strategies to be more profitable? 6) Do you have knowledge/skill? 7) Did you make a profit in the past? 8) If you made a profit, how much? The top five deductions for a creative: 1) Home Office. If there is a part of your home that is only used for your business, you can claim that percentage against everything from mortgage/rent to property taxes to utilities as a deduction on your taxes. 2) Travel - to conventions, etc. This is no longer allowed for W-2 work, but if you're your own business, then it is still allowed up to 50%. 3) Meals while traveling. Again, it's up to 50% 4) Materials and supplies. 5) Hiring your children to work in your business. He also talked about the perceived tax advantage of being an LLC. While a Limited Liability Company does provide you with some sort of protection, it does not have an impact on your Federal or State Taxes. He made it sound like it is more trouble than it is worth. In states like California, it costs $800 a year to register. There might be cheaper ways to protect yourself, like an Umbrella insurance policy. He also did not recommend forming an S Corp unless your income is $60,000 or more. Again, costs and bookkeeping, etc. He also talked about Estimated Tax payments. While these are voluntary, if you owe Uncle Sam more than $1000 at the end of the year, they will fine you, so if your accountant recommends you make them, you should. See an accountant! Proper Pitching and Promoting Yourself was moderated by Bryan Kaiser Tillman, a very charismatic behind-the-scenes creative who has been doing some form of this panel for the past 10 years. He opened by saying that you wouldn't necessarily hear something you had never heard before, but he would make it so that you would remember. He went over the top five rules for proper pitching: 1) Know your product. There will be questions asked that you need to be prepared to answer. The better you know your product, the more confidence you'll have when presenting. Rehearse. Everyone is in the same boat you are, but the more you practice what you'll say, the better you'll present. And most importantly, you need to believe in it. 2) BS your way to the Truth. If in your presentation you're asked something you haven't considered before, you'll need to come up with an answer on the fly and then make it part of the story. DON'T LIE!! (as an example: Don't say you can pencil 24 pages in a week because when you can't, no one will hire you.) If you didn't think about it but can fix it in your presentation, do it. But remember to be consistent. If you give an explanation one time, you need to give the same one each time, as you don't want to lose the confidence of those you are presenting to. 3) Don't Cross the Thin Line between Confident and Cocky. No one will want to hire or work with you if you're a jerk. Something that was mentioned more than once in several of these panels is the old adage that you need to be two of three things; Fast, Good, Friendly. If you're a jerk, then you have to be good and fast, which is difficult if not impossible. Be nice to people. Don't be a jerk. 4) Network. Okay, we're all introverts in this room, but it can start with nothing more than saying "Hi" to someone and talking to them. Ask questions. Go to conventions in your area of interest. He made a point that if you're a creative, you don't or shouldn't go to Comic-Con to go to Funko, you should go for the opportunities to meet like-minded people and learn. And don't be creepy. 5) It's not about you. It's about the product. Learn to detach yourself from your work. The final panel I attended, Full Time Creative Work on a Part-Time Schedule, spoke to me when I saw it in the list of panels. Oddly enough, this panel was one of the last ones offered at the Convention. You'd think if you have a full-time job, then you might be leaving earlier than most to get back home. This one was held at 4 to 5 when the convention closes down at 5, so there's no revisiting the floor after this one. This panel was actually pretty good and included an opportunity to network with the panelists as well as others in the room. Of course, it was important to have a business card which one of the panelists, Sean Glumace, emphasized. He talked about the ability to use software like Evernote to ingest business cards and set up networks. To demonstrate, he used his phone to scan and send emails to Trevor, Paul and I during the panel itself. Unlike most people, we actually had cards to hand out. Very effective demo. One of the things I need to do a better job of is following up with people. In addition to having business cards, it is recommended to have a page on Linkedin and Facebook, which people who hire still use and will look there to see who you are and to look at your work. Apparently, Linkedin now has a place for portfolios. They took Q & A, which for the most part was specific to the person asking the question. However, advice to writers: Always Keep Writing, Keep Sharing and Surround Yourself with other writers, including writing groups. They also provided the basics part-timers need to be aware of: Communication - Everyone needs to be on the same page. Focus and Time Management - Rearrange as much of your life as possible so that it points to your goals. Never Too Early to Start - So many people get their start in college. Organization - Make lists and use them. Networking - This comes up in every panel. Support - You need as many people helping you as possible, but it is a two-way street. So much for the panels I attended. Again, if you have the chance to go to Comic-Con or a like convention, then I recommend trying to attend professional panels if they are offered. One of the important things about conventions is to make contacts and to keep up with the ones you've already made. Was able to touch base again with Doug and Corey at the Comic Creator Connection. Their book, Epic Win!, was very important for me when we started Powers Squared. Also able to run into our contacts at comiXology and at IDW. The former is our digital publisher and the latter is someone we've known through various conventions for the past ten years it seems. I had been carrying around printed versions of Powers Squared for a couple of days, which for 9+ hours a day can get quite heavy. I wanted to be prepared, if the opportunity arose, to show them to someone. I managed to get up the courage to show them to our friend at IDW. He was very complimentary, saying they're getting better as they go along, which they should. He also liked the artwork. I had to point out to him that we had changed artists; he had thought the artist had simply gotten better with time. I know it's not much of a win, but hearing that from him made me feel like we're at least on the right track. Did make an effort to support other creatives when I could, reaching out to Don Nguyen and Andy Nordvall, who were doing a signing at the Geekscape booth on Sunday. Nice to put a face to people you've only met through social media. Wanted to support them as well. Bought some of their books and will discuss as I read them. Right now I'm still working my way, slowly, through Spider-Man Noir. Next year, I'd like to try to do some portfolio review with the book. Maybe we could interest someone in picking it up or maybe we could find additional work because of it. In our absence, work continued on Powers Squared, with Rachel sending up four more penciled pages that Paul and I, as of this writing, have yet to have a chance to review.

#powers squared #SDCC2019 #panels #comic book

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