#it would render capitalism entirely pointless.

[horce-divorce]

crazy how if you're not selling your time to an employer, suddenly everyone else thinks they're entitled to it. ie "you don't have anywhere to be, why can't you just do XYZABC for me?" as if i have nothing else important to do, ever, just because some authority figure isn't setting my schedule for me, or because those tasks don't bring me income, or whatever, it merely fucking keeps me alive. useless, I know

[feelingbluepolitics]

We Must Handle the Truth

There's no question that the management of Donald trump will be an issue of on-going global importance. Knocking him from his (alleged) official perch is only the first step.

The more crucial steps must follow, because trump will retain his influence and his supporters, and they will do whatever he hints that he wants, even up to treasonous attacks, assassination attempts, and mass murders.

We must be clear. There is no cozy "look to the future and heal" pretence of an option in our present situation. This is aside from the fact that taking that Pollyanna path repeatedly --from Watergate to Reagan to Bush-- helped to criminalize and radicalize the Republicon Party into the danger they are today.

Shame, honor, and true patriotism have become vestigial on the Right. Their criminal administrations and elected representatives keep getting away with what they do because we embolden them each time with a blind eye.

That is not how justice works. The blind eye of justice means that no one, no matter how powerful, is exempt. The time to work on that is January 20, 2021, and we are far overdue. Politicians, corporations, tax cheats, polluters: we still have laws, for all of trump's and his administration's destructive efforts.

We sully our government offices and endanger our nation by not requiring accountability to the office and to the people, over and above any present occupant. Where we are blocked by pardons we must still have thorough public investigation. That is not a waste of time for lack of a prosecutorial path. It is existential. It's the accountability we cannot do without. It's the foundation of the future laws we need to draft and pass to safeguard this country.

Pardons become entirely corrupt when we acquiesce to them blocking investigation. Democracies survive on information and truth, combined. We are where we are now in part because we still have corrupt actors left-over from Watergate active in our politics.

What are we to do about trump? That isn't initially, or perhaps ever, all about pardons, or state versus federal charges, or orange jumpsuits. In this instance, ironically, the potential solution is all about trump. This is where an examination of how trump interacts with the rest of the human world can guide us.

He forms specific categories of relationships which are actually invariable, because he is permanently shallow and unperceptive. Because trump the consumate narcissist is always the center of every relationship, and because he is, without introspection, forever fixed in all his defects, all of his various relationships fall into the same patterns within their categories. Here they are:

1) The Strongmen. Shades of daddy Fred trump, these are aspirational relationships teaching the type of utter control the core pathetic trump would like to wield. But because of daddy, trump is conditioned to the "love me, admire me, and be useful and loyal or I will harm or destroy you" format, but on the weaker side.

This is why we have seen trump pushing the United States of America into eagerly obsequious deference with respect to Russia, North Korea, and Turkey, and also pandering to Saudi Arabia's power which is additionally derived through vast transactional wealth.

But we cannot and do not want to transform America or Biden into this Strongman mold, because then it will have been pointless to remove trump.

2) The Assets. This category comprises trump's immediate family members and all Republicons in office, from Mitch McConnell to Kevin McCarthy, and from Michigan’s Republicon Senate members to, potentially, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. This category also extends to trump's supporters, mostly as a collective.

These are the flipside of the Strongman category, where trump gets to play the opposite role. These people are tools, who work constantly to remain in good standing with trump, rendering obsequious deference and servitude as a matter of advantage but also, essentially, as a matter of status survival.

trump is a horrible antagonist or enemy.

This, by the way, is exactly the relationship this country cannot continue to allow with trump, as a matter of national security.

3) The Targets. We know who they are. They caught trump's wrathful attention. Some of the targets are personal to trump to varying degrees, while some are a matter of expediency, or are demonstrated examples, or are, so far, peripheral.

But everybody knows trump will never stop -- that is the personna he cultivated-- unless a Target person has something of value to make them an Asset again. (This is why trump is called purely transactional, in combination with having no beliefs, no morality, and no honesty.)

Fauci, and Birx, (who for a while pulled off a mommy-style interaction with trump as he tried to impress her with nifty genius like injecting bleach), are in a no-man's land, transitional between Asset and Target, in part because trump doesn't like attention on covid if he can help it.

We don't know exactly what trump will try to inflict on Mary trump for writing her book, but we've already seen a variety of attacks against Bolton, Kelly, and Michael Cohen, along with innumerable others. (It isn't just books. It's that these people did not keep flattering, and obey.)

He ousted from political power Jeff Sessions, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker (White House as "an adult day care center"), and Mark Sanford, of "the Appalachian Trail." He can do the same to any other individual Republicon, because as a group, they are all too backstabbing, dishonorable, greedy, and cowardly to unite against him.

Certainty we have seen trump's behavior with respect to Fox Gnus, the Clintons, and Obama.

This is the relationship this country cannot allow itself to fall into with trump. But how possibly to prevent it?

For that, we look to another category of trump's relationships.

4) The Survivors. Of those not in the Strongman category, there are few people who have survived relationships with Donald trump and who can get trump to do favors for them -- to do what they want.

It is dangerous idiocy to call them trump's "friends," by way of explaining their leverage and longevity. The key is leverage.

Rudy Giuliani :

- A "very, very good relationship" with trump.

- "I've seen things written like he's going to throw me under the bus. When they say that, I say he isn't, but I have insurance."

- "I do have very, very good insurance."

Giuliani's insurance is knowledge; some knowledge about trump gives him leverage. The leverage has to represent knowledge that trump fears exposure of or consequences for. Giuliani doesn't fear being otherwise loose-lipped, or even crazy, and his relationship with trump is currently letting him pull in $20,000 a day for "legal work."

Roger Stone :

"[trump] knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn't."

This leverage allowed Stone to openly demand clemency from trump regardless of any amount of political capital it could potentially cost.

The succession of wives, too, possess whatever personal knowledge, likely far more powerful than negotiated pre-nups and settlements, which ensure the notorious litigious deadbeat abides willingly by contractual terms.

As a nation, we need to survive trump. We have observed what works. But as a nation, we must address the issue of trump just a bit differently. Unlike Giuliani, Stone, or even Putin’s special holds over trump, we must:

1) Investigate trump extensively. Entirely. Turn him inside-out. And then,

2) Make the findings public. This is where a nation, a government of, by, and for the people in a country ruled by law and not kingdoms or cults, differs from defensive black-mailers or manipulative foreign spies.

This part, making public everything that doesn't actually threaten our national security to reveal, is necessary to harden both our resolve and our democracy, and to peel off whatever of trump's support that we can, and to deter the next trumpian assaults, whether by trump or the people who will try to follow the path trump has scorched into the fabric of our nation.

Public reveals are also a safety measure. There is vast potential for corruption otherwise. But then,

3) Keep every single trump-related criminal prosecution -- legitimate, of course, because we are not trump -- on the table. That is the leverage.

That's how to survive trump. There must be no more talk of how investigating a former *resident will turn us into a "banana republic." In a so-called banana republic, powerful government officials pressure others, either to carry out vendettas, or favors of protection by "looking the other way". Government is bent toward personal exploitations. Been there. Done that these past four years under trump and Republicons.

They have actually installed what can be termed "a deep state," notably for the first time, and sane Americans must know its extant. Fcuk their cries of victimization and oppression of the Right. The only difference is, when we investigate, there are actual violations, crimes, and scandals, with evidentiary proofs; when conservatives investigate, it's fundamentally bullsh*t-and-paranoia based.

A "banana republic" is exactly what we are attempting to rescue our nation from. With all the recognition that the Right has systematically unmoored from truth, and the terrible dangers that threaten as a result, from a stupid civil war born of propaganda, to climate devastation, as much truth as we can discover is what we need.

Knowledge is power. With trump out of the White House, we can get it. We must have it.

[theculturedmarxist]

Essay quam videri

hey, so this election is the first time I’ve been old enough to vote. im not a Democrat; I was doing work for bernies campaign and was pretty heartbroken when he suspended his campaign cause I know that biden is a rapist piece of shit and kamala is a fucking cop. but when the time came to vote in the election I voted for biden anyway cause I was told it would do more to protect people who were harmed by trumps campaign I don’t expect any sort of real change with biden and I worry that electing him will pacify civil unrest and provide people with a false sense of security,, but I felt like I wouldn’t have any right to be upset about trump being re-elected if I didn’t vote but do you think that voting for biden was fundamentally wrong? I’m trying to figure out how to navigate living in an evil system and sometimes I don’t know if it’s better to opt out or to participate and support an evil that is nominally better than another evil just wanted your opinion cause most ppl I know are on that “vote blue no matter who” shit

Hey,

I do understand how you feel. It can be really confusing, and it is a difficult question to come to grips with, trying to navigate an evil system and to minimize the damage your participation in it brings. This isn't an indictment of you personally, but an indictment of the world in which we live. One of the most horrid aspects of Capitalism is the barbarity that it makes us all ineluctably complicit in. Most people participate in the evils of this system through no real desire of their own, but because Capitalism has developed over the centuries a number of means to coerce participation. You can't have slavery without slaves, and there were always slaves because they created the profits that shackled them. That doesn't make picking master's cotton a fundamentally wrong act. You're a captive, and the captive's first duty is to survive, and secondly, to escape.

This ubiquitous coercion naturally makes any mechanism which we are invited to participate in suspicious. This recent election is a prime example: do you vote for this senile, racist, war-mongering, pedophile rapist, or that senile, racist, war-mongering, pedophile rapist? Do you vote for the man who put the people into camps, or vote for the man that built the camps? Do we bear the ills we have, or fly to others we know not of? You're right to be wary of participation. Part of its purpose is to instill a feeling of complicity in the crimes that result, either in yourself, or cast over some other party. The Democrats took advantage of this over the last four years to berate Trump for doing everything that Obama and Biden also did. They did and said the same things during Bush II's presidency. Now they exchange gifts with him and have brunch. It's theater, and they're all in the same troupe.

Do you know what constitutes bourgeois moralism? That it is pointless, epitomized in the phrase "thoughts and prayers!" It's wishing for good rather than doing good, hoping to be passed over by evil instead of working to destroy evil. Why do the bourgeoisie love philanthropy? Because it does nothing to lessen human misery. That is the essence of bourgeois moralism: seeming rather than being. The proletarian has no use for something so impractical, and you should not let yourself be fettered in this way. It will do you no good, nor anyone else. You will merely appear to be doing good, which is far worse than being nakedly evil.

Whether you decide to vote or not, and who you cast it for is entirely your prerogative. Haranguing the voter for participating or not, in a system they do not control, have no voice in, nor any real method of shaping, for people they had no hand in choosing, is nothing but vapid bourgeois moralism. It's a sleight of hand, transferring the guilt for Trump's crimes from the people that perpetrated them—Trump himself, the bourgeois that supports him, the thugs that carry out his orders, and so on, the willful perpetrators—onto you, the individual that had no part in any of it. This tactic is used to assuage the guilt of those who are willfully either complicit in a real sense or complicit in spirit. The same charlatans that try to shame you into voting want you to ignore that they've spent the last four years casually participating in the society that Trump runs, and dutifully supporting his regime with their taxes and commerce, and facilitating it with their compliance. They have nothing to offer you for your vote, because they are bankrupt themselves, bereft of the moral fortitude they fault others for not having. All they want is absolution, and the onus does not lie on you to give it.

That not casting a vote gives you no right to be upset about the outcome of that vote is another facet of this, a fallacious tactic on the part of the bourgeoisie. Not casting a vote is a vote in itself. Your assent and support is something that should be earned, not demanded, or expected, or brow-beaten out of you. If there is no candidate that you believe deserves your vote, then the only responsible choice is to not cast it. To say otherwise is to disembowel the very meaning of democracy. The compulsion of assent renders it meaningless.

With that said, is it fundamentally wrong to vote for Biden?

I think that isn't as useful a question as, what do you hope to accomplish by it? Biden as an alternative to Trump is a false choice—we have Trump _because_ of Biden. He didn't spring from nothingness, after all. Biden, and the rest of the political class at the behest of their corporate donors, have for decades shaped policy, enacted legislation, and brick by brick built the road that brought us to Trump. That is in addition to the Democrats' faux opposition to Trump, and their total collaboration in acting with him and the rest of the Republican party. The danger you want to mitigate is as much the legacy of the Democrats as it is the Republicans. They work in tandem in order to hold the people you wish to shield hostage against you. To put it simply, there is no Trump without Biden.

Yet neither is one exactly like the other. While they are both bourgeois politicians representing bourgeois cliques, they represent different factions of the plutocracy and their interests. Does the US go to war with Iran, or with Russia? Does the US continue to spread fascism in South America or in Southeast Asia? You can choose not to choose, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that. You can choose the person that supports bombing country A or the one wanting to sanction country B, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that, either. In the grand scheme, your personal, individual vote amounts to very little. You'd might as well fret over which brand of soap you buy at the store, which brand of cereal, or your search engine. If there is no ethical consumption under Capitalism, then it would seem to follow that the only ethical choice is to not consume—to commit suicide. Even if you make your own rope from your own home grown organic hemp, you are still injuring the working class by doing the work of the bourgeoisie for it. Capitalism robs us even of escape in death.

What is fundamentally wrong is casting a vote based on nothing but wishful thinking and delusion, of which "Blue No Matter Who" is a byword. The bourgeois voting for Biden at least has the virtue of voting for their own interest. "Blue No Matter Who" is an affirmation of nihilism, that not only can they do nothing, but they also expect nothing. It isn't a political strategy. It's naked resignation. The consumer society that Capitalism has shaped has induced people to believe that their desires can be bought. Buy this soap and 5% of the sale goes to preserving the rain forest. Donate 30 cents to end starvation in Africa. That is the mindset at work here. The removal of Trump is just another item to add to the cart. Vote, and all the discomfort and ugliness that Trump has made them aware of will go away. Things will go back "to normal." They are deluding themselves that think this is not normal.

Mao himself says that nothing is wholly good or wholly evil. Good may come from evil actions, and evil may result from good actions. Gavrilo Princip had no idea that when he killed two aristocrats that he was setting in motion events that would not only lead to the deaths of millions of people, but also the death of the empires he hated. Your vote is just another small piece of an ongoing, dialectical process of events and actions and decisions leading into and influencing one another, most of which is largely outside of your control. Years from now you might have reason to regret it, or to celebrate it, or maybe even both. Actively making that decision, however the outcome, at least means that you chose to be rather than to seem, and that’s the first step to doing good.

[cursedwithgloriouspurpose]

More zoldyck family hot takes: i don't think they're AS terrible as much of the fandom wants to believe. Don't get me wrong, this family is as dysfunctional as they come, and definitely have some capital letter Issues they need to work through, but they are also not moustaches twirling evil for evil's sake.

Take Zeno, for a fantastic example. We've seen him on two outings where he broke his contract and left. In one case it was due to the client having also been eliminated, thereby rendering thier contract null and void. He could have still killed the target, but states that doing so would be a pointless death. He makes it a matter of point never to take a life outside of a contract.

We see him (accidentally) break this oath later on when the client, possibly inadvertently, lied to him about the circumstances surrounding thier attack plan. This upset zeno so much that he immediately severed the contract. (And ge technically killed someone right afterward that was purposely picking a fight with him, but it was pretty clear he didn't want to.)

Silva is cut from the same cloth. Neither seem to be overly fond of killing for killing's sake. It's just a job, and their family has been well trained for generations to be completely pragmatic about it.

Similarly, while the way they train thier kids is fucking cruel in many ways, it's also pragmatic. These are kids whose lives come preprogrammed with enemies that stretch back at least the generations. Judging from the sort of fights that regularly occur in the series, those enemies are very often likely to be on a god tier level. The training they recieve is as much to ensure that they survive as to make them into good assassins.

Furthermore, we can't be sure that illumi's commentary on killua's being raised without emotion or desire outside of bloodlust was actually true. After all, illumi was specifically manipulating killua in that moment. He wanted killua to back off and go home, and was using his literal power to force killua into doing what he wanted while hopefully severing the bonds killua had with his newfound friends still in the room. I'd actually posit that illumi is 100% bullshitting in that moment because what he says doesn't align with Silva's actions or philosophies at all.

Silva clearly has no great desire to kill, and does value outside friendships as evidenced by his blood pact with killua concerning Gon. Silva takes that friendship and pact so seriously that he's willing to let killua take his younger sister on a cross country journey to save Gon's life.

And as for Alluka... i already said this earlier, but i do legitimately think the issue (at least so far as silva and zeno are concerned) isn't that they want to control her power for thier own ends. They are legitimately afraid if the destruction she has and can bring upon people. After all, they only locked her away after she'd set two mass murders. This girl literally killed 64 people in a single moment. That goes against the family creed in a big, big way, and killua is being a little naive when he asks "how is that different from what we do." The difference is that alluka doesn't just take down a single target, she takes out (or can take out) hundreds, even thousands at a time and so far as they know, no one can control it. Not even her.

Yes, it's still fucked up that they don't consider her human at all, but sadly they're still people and people are sometimes short sighted assholes. (Also they *technically* aren't entirely wrong. Nanika is not human, she's a dark entity tag along. That's been explicitly stated.)

Of course none if this is touching kikyo who is a lot harder to get a grasp on as she hasn't had much screen time. Her priorities do seem like they run somewhat contradictory to Silva's, however, and it has been stated that both Illumi and Milluki took more after her sadistic nature than killua did. That said, given her reactions to killua's displayed kindness towards alluka i have to question whether kikyo actually agrees with decision to lock alluka away. After all, her words were "killua is such a good brother," implying that, unlike Silva, she does consider alluka to be her child. I also don't think she actually addresses alluka by any gender signifiers, so it's possible she also accepts that alluka is a girl.

In the end, the family also decides to trust killua to take care of alluka and chooses to let them go on thier own way. While illumi is still a threat, this heavily implies a change in heart on Silva's part.

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader - “John Wick” Part 3

Y/N left The Organization 3 years ago for the one reason strong enough to make her settle down: love. But after tragedy crushed her to pieces, she decided to leave The Joker and seek refuge with an old friend and mentor - John Wick. Needless to say The King of Gotham can’t accept his wife running away without a word, especially since he didn’t have a chance to tell her things she might want to hear.

Part 1     Part 2

The Joker listens at the bedroom’s door, impatient to have a conversation with you. It seems you are engaged into a fervent phone call with Winston and figured he shouldn’t interrupt.

“Please, anything you can discover would be a great help! U-hum… U-hum… Thank you,” and you hang up, which queues your husband to walk into the room.

You completely ignore him, scrolling through the numerous text messages you sent to your connections; several are already answering back and hopefully you can get some news soon. The more people are involved into the project, the more chances to find Kase and untangle the mystery of what happened to him after he was removed from the car.

“You left me there,” The Joker sneaks in and closes the door behind him. “Luckily we had Wick with us so he gave me a ride.”

No reaction. He takes a deep breath, trying to get your awareness.

“I didn’t sleep with Evelyn; sex wasn’t the reason why I kept visiting her. I know how that asshole made it sound and he was totally out of line!”

You quickly glance at him, busy replying to Ares since you feel you’re going to explode soon.

“The only skill I was interested in is the fact that she is an excellent painter and a popular art smuggler, OK?” J raises his voice, sort of annoyed you neglect to participate into his monologue. “I did not cheat, alright?” he approaches his wife. “First of all: I’m VERY picky! Second of all: why would I want a woman everyone else had?! I don’t like used toys. Third: nobody’s been polishing my gun as you tastefully addressed the issue! I have one Queen and I married her!!”

A little bit of doubt in your eyes and he utilizes the opportunity.

“You said you saw me going to her house? I did! The Bowery King asked if it was for the last 6 months? Yeah, I did! You know why?!”

At least now The Joker got your attention: you play it cool but he guesses you’re torn apart by his confession.

Many unfortunate events crammed in lately and hating the man you love made life infinitely more unbearable.

“Why…?” you barely muster the strength to inquire and he sees it as a possibility to mend a few broken pieces; although you can hide your emotions well, J can still read between the lines.

Maybe that’s why he answers with another question:

“Do you realize there are just three Monet paintings in circulation on the black market in the entire world? You admire his work and it took a lot of effort and a substantial fortune to acquire The Water Lily Pond painting. Evelyn Black helped with the transaction, then I had her make some modifications to the original masterpiece.”

You keep staring at The King of Gotham, uncertain about the stuff being tossed your way: is he lying or telling the truth?... In your line of work translating feelings is a huge part of the job; ultimately you had the best mentor to teach you the ropes when you started with the organization: none other than the legendary Baba Yaga. Despite his reputation and to your own amazement, John was one of the few hitmen with integrity and perfectly mastered the aptitude of not being a jerk. Such a rare gem… And blissfully unaware of it himself.

On the opposite end, The Joker is a jerk and flawlessly acquainted with his own “captivating” personality that made you fall in love with him anyway.

Also, doesn’t appear to be deceitful for the moment.

And you despise yourself even more for wanting to believe him.

“What… modifications?...” you throw him a bone and J is definitely not going to pass on the alternative of explaining his actions.

“I wanted to surprise you so I took advantage of Miss Black’s capabilities in the art field; I had her add small images to the authentic canvas: an evolution of you being pregnant, the nine frames culminating with a tenth: the new mother holding our son. Similar to a timeline,” he emphasize and you look intrigued, which might be a positive sign. “Needless to say it was tedious, difficult work, especially because she had to apply special pigments you can’t find at every corner of the street. Apparently you can’t mix old paint with contemporary shades, thus I had to order aged, special colors from Italy, Spain and France. That’s why I went to her place so often: I had to supervise the long process and make sure it turns out astonishing. Then…” and The Joker pauses,”…Kase was gone and I didn’t know what to do with my gift: bring it home or not? Would you have loved it? Would it make you sadder? I continued to drive to Evelyn’s and glare at the stupid painting for hours, undecided on what to do…”

J watches you bite on your cheek, then straightens his shoulders as you utter the words:

“… … … You ruined a genuine Monet?”

Your spouse might be a smooth talker when needed, yet he’s not wasting his versatility on this statement:

“I didn’t ruin it; I made it better!”

Silence from both parties. A good or bad omen? Hard to decipher the riddle with two individuals tangled into a relationship that somehow worked despite countless peculiarities meant to keep them apart.

“I have to talk to Jonathan,” you finally mutter and The Joker steps in front of you.

“Talk to me!”

“Unless you know the exact location of the suitcase full of gold coins he’s been safekeeping for me, I really have to speak to him. Or do you want to hammer the whole basement searching for it?”

Y/N walks out of the bedroom and J lingers inside, evesdropping on the conversation happening downstairs. He can’t understand the chat, but you are probably notifying John about the details your husband left out.

Might as well join the party, therefore The Clown pops up in the living room with a plea impossible to refuse:

“Hey Wick, can I stay here? I don’t care if you say no, I’m not going to leave.”

Your friend crosses his arms on his chest, focusing on the random topic:

“How could I deny such a polite request? Of course you can stay Mister Joker; my house is your house.”

You’re watching the free show unamused; usually it would make you smile…now you lack the depth for such connotations.

“Don’t get smart with me, Wick!” J growls and Jonathan pushes for a tiny, unnecessary quarrel.

“I’m not; although generally speaking, I fancy considering myself a smart guy.”

The Joker opens his mouth and you’re not in the mood for whatever the heck they’re initiating:

“I’m going to pump, then after you dig out the suitcase I’ll take half to the Bowery King,” you announce your plans to them.

“You can do that and rest; I’ll deliver the coins,” John immediately offers. “I can stop by Aurelio’s car shop and ask for his collaboration: he has a lot of associates, doesn’t hurt to get him involved. You have plenty of gold.”

“I have two more suitcases in the Continental’s safe and two more at The Penthouse. It doesn’t matter if it’s all gone as long as I can find my son.”

“I know gold coins are preferred; don’t forget we have a lot of money too,” J reckons with spite.

Is he reminding you or Jonathan?...

*************

Your husband spent the last hour in the garden, talking and texting with a lot of people; needless to mention he’s capitalizing on his network also. Winston disclosed Stonneberg’s contract is still opened, meaning the son of a bitch is out there; you have to scoop him before anybody else does.

“Y/N…” The Joker tiptoes in your quarters. “I thought you were taking a nap,” he huffs when he sees you at the edge of the bed.

You glare at the vial on the nightstand, sharing your idea for a future you wish will come true:

“I didn’t have my medicine in two days; I won’t take it anymore because if we get Kase back… I will nurse him. It all goes in the milk and I want to be able to feed my baby… Do you think his little heart is still beating?...” you sniffle and J is currently debating on a clever response since his mind is blank; one could deduce messing up is encoded in his DNA, but on such a huge scale… well, it gives new interpretations to the term even for him.

The grieving woman seeking reassurance for their loss is trying to make sense of the pointless occurrences that lead to Kase being an innocent victim and The Joker can’t render clarification: he has no clue why he asked her to marry him and why she said yes, it’s not that he’s husband material or a family man. Perhaps Y/N thought he could be… just enough to get by, that’s why she accepted his proposal.

Most women would have cringed at the concept. Most women. Not Y/N.

Most women would have flinched at the notion of having his baby. Most women. Not his wife.

Above all, she trusted J with their son and he treated the three weeks old like a trinket: didn’t drive him home because he had an important meeting, didn’t bother to assign escorting cars nor extra security. The King of Gotham took his child’s safety lightly and it definitely had severe consequences. Too late now to fix past mistakes... but he can attempt.

“You’ll be able to nurse him, OK?” he sits by you and hands over his cell. “Can you enter your phone number in here? Or am I not allowed to have the present digits?”

You’re hesitant and he slides the screen while you hold the gadget.

“Lemme help you,” The Joker sarcastically mumbles. “It should be the first on my list, right where the old number you canceled was.”

You exhale and fulfill his demand out of pure frustration when he squeezes in a second innocent petition.

“Chose my avatar.”

You grunt at his rubbish, scrolling through his folders for a picture anyway; J hopes the largest file will get your attention and that’s the point. How could Y/N miss it?!

Entitled “Baby”, the humongous cluster of pics contains 5,723 items. You open it quite absorbed by its size; what’s more puzzling is the collection depicting Kase’s ultrasounds, hundreds of frames with you being pregnant taken without you knowing: there’s a few when your ankles were so swollen you had to sleep with your feet up on 4 pillows, others with you munching on strange food you craved, more with you in the shower focused on your bump, a decent amount of couple selfies when you were sleeping and J had to immortalize the moment without waking you up and approximately 1,500 images of the newborn.

“You didn’t gross me out when you were pregnant,” The Joker reminds a teary Y/N. “Not sure why you would believe such aberration...” he pulls you on his knees and yanks the phone away, tossing it on the nightstand. “I would also like to underline I didn’t have an affair with Miss Black, alright?”

J lifts your chin up, forcing to look at him.

“Let’s put it this way: why would I fuck around with another woman when I have a wife at home that wants to kill me on a regular basis, hm? Where would the fun be? I mean, she didn’t pull the trigger yet but it’s exciting to hope she might. You know me: I’m a sucker for thrills!”

“Do I?”

“Huh?” J steals a kiss and you frown at his sleekness.

“Know you?”

“Yeah,” the green haired Clown acts composed while in fact his feathers are ruffled. Before you catch onto it he has to ultimately admit: “I’m sorry I didn’t drive the car… I should have…”

The Joker holds in his breath when your arms go around his neck very tight.

“I’m suffocating…” he grumbles. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to hug me or choke me to death,” J keeps on caressing your hair, prepared to block your attack in case you’re actually in killing mode.

This is the excitement he was speaking about: with you, one could never know until it’s a done deal.

“I bumped into Magnus at the Continental,” you give him a bit of space to inhale much needed air and The Joker is surprised at your revelation. “I had no idea about his scheme, otherwise I would have skinned him alive right on the hotel grounds! I wouldn’t have cared about the consequences!”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” J cuts you off and he can tell you’re getting mad; maybe you think he doesn’t give a damn but the reason is simple. “You would’ve been declared excommunicado for murder on neutral ground and I don’t want my wife to be the target of such punishment from the company she so proudly retired from. I need my partner!”

The King of Gotham touches your forehead with his as you whisper:

“I hate you!”

“Mmm, regarding this true love affirmation, I’m gonna need you to take a break from detesting me until we have Kase, then you can despise me full throttle again. Deal?” he extends the palm of his hand and you reluctantly shake it, not realizing you’re reacting to his nonsense. “Is that a smile?” J returns the favor with one of his creepy silver grins.

“No.”

“Liar,” he pecks your lips and can’t explain the weird feeling in his heart when you kiss him back.

*************

Jonathan enters the house and becomes suspicious after a few minutes: too much silence.

Omg! Did you and The Joker engaged into a brawling that ended up badly? Did you end each other?!

John frantically runs to the garage, nervous to see your car and J’s are still parked inside. Shit!

“Y/N?” he shouts, concerned about your fate; The Joker’s… irrelevant. Nobody in the garden, patio is empty also. Downstairs is deserted thus he rushes upstairs to your room. The door is not completely shut and he slowly pushes it, knocking.

“Y/N? Can I come in?”

The first thing he notices are clothes scattered on the floor, then he halts his movement at the sight of Y/N and her husband dozing off on the bed sideways: the naked bodies are covered with a blanket, but he can tell you’re snuggled in J’s arms.

Jonathan steps backwards, guilty of invading his guests’ privacy; he certainly didn’t expect to intrude in such a manner and softly closes the door, grateful it’s not what he feared.  

You and The Joker are so worn out the sound of your phones vibrating on the nightstand doesn’t wake you from the deep sleep. Your numerous contacts keep replying back to the text messages, the most important one showing up on his cell: one of the people J reached to is Evelyn Black and the two sentence conversation lights up the screen.

“Let me know if you see Stonnenberg.”

“He’s here.”

 Also read: MASTERLIST

You can follow me on Ao3 and Wattpad under the same blog name: DiYunho.

[mittensmorgul]

I find it endlessly fascinating that I can rewatch 12.19 now post 14.20, and still fundamentally feel exactly the same way about it.

Jack’s power tapped into Cas and did exactly what it did for Kelly. Jack’s power ensured Jack’s safety through whatever means necessary. Kelly needed proof that Jack was not evil, not a force of pure destruction that would tear down the world, and she got it when he resurrected her. But as Dagon and Cas both pointed out, that was at least partly in Jack’s own self-interest. He still needed Kelly’s body to ensure his own survival. But Kelly was unshakable in her belief after Jack’s power touched her, despite not understanding it herself. The vision Jack sent her of the sandbox, that was her point of no return. Yes, Jack’s power was able to use Cas to destroy Dagon, but Joshua also died in the process. All of this was still arguably done for Jack’s own self-interest, or he could’ve saved Joshua, too.

This all becomes entirely evident in 13.01, where Jack’s singular focus after birth is finding Castiel, because he “chose” him to be his parental figure. Jack himself had no understanding of his own power at that point, no understanding of humanity or reality in general (he knocked out Sam and Dean as a reaction to Dean brandishing a gun at him and then wandered off naked in search of answers i mean...).

There is no rational interpretation of this that allows one to assume that whatever vision Jack showed Cas in 12.19 was a True Rendering Of Future Events. It was as much a manipulation of Cas as anything Chuck has ever done to any of TFW. 

Because it preyed on Castiel’s fundamental self-doubt, the absolute low point we see brought to fruition by his death in 12.23 and then his experiences confronting the Empty Entity in 13.04. It promised Cas the one thing he had failed over and over and over to secure for himself, for Dean, as he explicitly says in this episode: a win. Defeating Dagon-- even at the cost of Joshua’s life, even at the cost of the Colt destroyed, even at the cost of literally abandoning Sam and Dean because Jack’s power only needed Cas and Sam and Dean had proved to be a potential threat-- this was still something Cas considered a “win.”

And that proved, yet again, to have been the wrong choice. And heck, have we seen Jack make “wrong choices for the right reasons” over and over and over again for the last few years. Up to and including his “stop lying!” in 14.20.

My tag for a while has been “lies and damn lies,” because not all lies are bad. Some lies can hurt terribly... and some “truths” can destroy everything.

Jack didn’t show Cas some objective truth, but what he thought he needed to see to secure his help. He gave Cas something he could have faith in, and he put his faith in Cas. He showed Cas a way he could be useful. He gave Cas hope that he might not be a complete failure, and gave him purpose, gave him a mission...

With Chuck’s revelations in 14.20, that he directly “provided” the BMoL as an antagonist, and now rewatching 12.21 is just... wild. Like the antagonism and gamesmanship, the mistrust of everyone including the people in their own organization, the complete isolation and control the entire organization inflicts on their members up to and including brainwashing, torture, forcing their operatives to destroy any connection through friendship or family from the time they’re children, in order to secure their complete obedience to The Code... well...

We paralleled them to the sort of Angelic Obedience that Heaven has always enforced through the same methods-- literally brainwashing, absolute control and obedience, secured through “reprogramming” via torture if necessary. And now we KNOW, we have proof from Chuck’s own mouth that this was just another retelling of his own original story. All the glowing crosses in the room Mary is imprisoned is just another version of Naomi’s Heaven. There is no difference. And what were they taking from her? To ensure her compliance?

Free Will.

This is what Heaven has always tortured out of Cas. Every time he was dragged back for disobedience, for compassion, for having too much heart, his free will was crushed out of him. And yet... we still had s6. Cas inadvertently (with a bit of manipulation on Crowley’s part and a desire to protect his loved ones, or well... specifically to protect Dean) set himself up as the leader who demanded absolute obedience, because in his mind he was doing the only thing that could save the world again, from Raphael and his loyal angels’ plan to free Lucifer and Michael again.

We KNOW that Cas would do anything to protect Dean, to spare him from ever having to say Yes to Michael. Because that is eventually what would’ve happened. This cycle appeared doomed to repeat itself ad nauseum as long as the angels remained obedient to the ruler in Heaven. They may have technically “won” at Stull in 5.22, but just barely, and at an unacceptable cost.

And then Cas HIMSELF freed Lucifer, brought this burden down on all of them, and felt responsible for fixing the messes that made. He could spare Dean. He could clean up his mess, he could prove that he hadn’t done more harm than good... he could again sacrifice himself.

He could cut all ties to the Winchesters, cut the temptation to ask for their help and endanger them, because Jack chose him, Jack gave him the ability to have faith in himself. Because that was the one thing Cas thought he needed. He didn’t feel like he’d earned his place as a Winchester. As part of this family. And he still needed to prove he could be useful. That’s what Jack gave to him, even through all his doubts.

But Cas... despite all of his progress toward humanity, all his understanding of Free Will, still hasn’t understood this final lesson. Even through s14 when he helped Jack come to terms with his own loss of power, he’s only just begun to understand that there’s never really been a choice between peace or freedom. And in 14.20, Chuck demonstrated that completely.

Cas clung desperately to the hope that Jack could still serve as his point of usefulness to the Winchester family. His faith in himself was shaken through Jack’s first death, to the point he was willing to sacrifice himself on the spot in a final act of usefulness in returning Jack to Sam and Dean. His self-worth was still directly tied to what he could do for Sam and Dean. And isn’t that just horrifying.

He deceived himself as much as every BMoL agent who played into Hess’s power games-- dangling the promotion to Mick’s job over both Toni and Ketch and winding them both up over it. He decieved himself as much as both Crowley and Lucifer did through their own power plays. Because ALL of it would eventually prove pointless. They ALL died for it in the end. Burned to the ground and rendered irrelevant by the story, by the storyteller. By Chuck.

Jack... is the disruptor. Jack is the thing that Chuck can’t account for in the story. The Big Bad of s13 (I said back then) was Dramatic Irony and Miscommunication, but in light of 14.20, I’d venture to say that might still be true, but it was also about Chuck desperately trying to provide a distraction that would lead to Jack’s neutralization.

Cas never could win while Chuck had always been controlling the game. Chuck sets the rules. He’s proven he can override the rules with a snap of his fingers. He could’ve “fixed” everything at any time. He could’ve rewarded Cas with a win at any time. He could’ve ended the fighting between Lucifer and Michael at any time. He could’ve sealed off the alternate universes or ended them or even returned to the Apocalypse AU and given Michael the explanation he’d burned down that world in hopes of getting. But he never intended any of that, because it wouldn’t serve his story. He can’t write endings. He can’t even truly extract himself from his own story.

And as long as Chuck continues to author the rules of the universe, this will always, only, ever be the story. Jack is the disruptor. He’s the thing Chuck can’t account for. And not even Jack understands this yet.

But I’m betting this is what Billie and the Entity will be explaining to him in that realm where Chuck’s power has no influence.

I’ve been wondering since 11.23, after Chuck explained to Dean that he was the “firewall between light and darkness,” and the supposed unification of Chuck and Amara, what would keep those two forces united once they supposedly left the world in Dean’s hands. Now with the proof delivered to us in 14.20, it’s clear that without Dean uniting them, Chuck and Amara effectively went their own ways, unable to maintain that balance on their own. Chuck ditched Amara in Reno (divorce capital of the world!), lost his ending because he didn’t want his favorite story to end. He can’t help himself, because it’s literally what he is.

Jack has what neither Chuck nor Amara do... balance. Hard won through all the experiences of his short life. Not just the experience of “good” and “bad,” but of the vast grey area in between. He’s the embodiment of unification. He’s a walking duality, and neither part of him can survive on its own. But he’s not just a duality. Unified, he transcends it entirely. He’s more than the sum of his parts. Without his grace he isn’t just a human, and without his soul he isn’t just an angel.  And it’s taken him this long to begin to learn this.

And he never could’ve come to this point if he hadn’t forced Chuck’s hand into dropping the curtain. As much as Jack proved to be a uniting force for TFW, even through their darkest hour when Dean believed Chuck and followed the story Chuck wanted to tell-- of forcing Dean to sacrifice Jack and himself for the sake of the world. Dean couldn’t do it in the end, because Jack isn’t a disruptor to him anymore. Through everything they’d been through because of Jack-- going all the way back to 12.08 and his very conception-- through having their entire family torn apart because of Jack, because of his very existence, this round of the story eventually has come full circle.

Now, with all of the story between then and now laid bare, I don’t know how assumption can be made in retrospect that this is always what Jack showed Cas in 12.19. This is literally the opposite of what Cas described. Because what Cas thought he wanted in 12.19-- to be useful, to win within the context of the narrative of his existence as he understood it at the time, was always only ever a lie.

There was never any escape from Chuck’s Grand Story, except by seeing it for what it really was. There was never truly Free Will for any of Team Free Will. And in 12.19, it’s not even what Cas wanted. He wanted his family safe by any means necessary, he wanted to feel that he had a purpose in securing that, when the overarching force controlling the entire universe expressly prevented that from ever being a possibility.

And now, Chuck has proven that. By Jack’s third death (the death of his grace in 13.23 by Lucifer, the death of his soul in 14.08 through 14.14 by Michael, and then his ultimate death by Chuck’s own hand in 14.20), he’s been torn apart and now reassembled in a microcosm of the entirety of creation itself.

Jack isn’t just a mirror for Cas. He isn’t even just a mirror for TFW. He’s the embodiment of the grand narrative of Creation itself. He’s light, darkness, and his own firewall that holds it all in balance. And that has been the story of HIS journey, as the combined reflection for all of TFW, but also as the firewall between Divinity and Humanity.

As above, so below. And Jack is the force that connects it all. 

[maddmuses]

Boku no Hero Academia

Multiverse Designation: Earth-8118

Quirk: Hyper-Sense!! Peter’s physical senses are extremely sharp and acute. This gives him an awareness of his surroundings that are hyper-detailed, allowing him to get an almost premonition-like ability to detect danger. When Peter IS in any degree of danger, he begins to experience a tingling sensation in his mind similar to that of a headache. This quirk lets Peter react to threats, often before they happen!

Peter Parker was thought to be quirkless and high-strung for years! An intelligent and inventive boy, Peter dreamed of being a hero, like many young people in the heroic capital of the United States: New York. However, despite a history of some quirkless heroes managing to become pros, Peter didn’t have anything in common with those specimen.

He hadn’t trained his entire life, nor was he particularly athletic, his only talents seemed to involve science and inventing.

Instead, Peter resigned himself to attending New York’s Kirby Academy (One of the four great hero schools in America: Lee Academy, Kirby Academy, Siegel-Shuster Tech, and Finger Academy) enrolling in their hero support program. It was in this course that he would thrive, inventing web-shooters, a specialized piece of equipment that was meant to be used for villain capture, with a webbing fluid that he developed that was stronger than steel, once it solidified.

Peter would also develop a number of other gadgets, such as HUD Lenses which served as miniature computers, and a costume which could cushion impact, and was resistant to even cutting and some low-end bullet-fire, woven from a non-dissolving version of his webbing that he used in his web-shooters.

On weekends Peter would often spend time in the city, testing his support gadgets on low-level thugs, as a vigilante, sneaking his gadgets out of the school against policy. Parker knew if he could prove that his support equipment was effective enough to allow a quirkless boy like him, who only had an understanding of leverage and momentum to serve him beyond the devices could take down villains, then his gadgets would be good enough for Stark Industries, a combination support company and hero agency run by his favorite hero Iron Man, might hire him on so he could support his family.

Tony Stark was one of the greatest heroes, having not only designed his own support tech that he used to fight crime while quirkless, but also designed some of the support tech for the likes of Captain America and Thor.

However, one villain would escape. Marko Flint, the Sandman, would evade Peter, as his quirk rendered Peter’s attack, webs, and any other means of capture pointless. And Flint wasn’t so willing to let Peter’s attempts at capture go without punishment. Retaliating, Flint would follow Peter home, and attack him, his uncle Ben, and aunt May.

Fighting furiously to protect his family, Peter was ultimately out-matched, and before any pro heroes could arrive to intervene, and chase off the villain, Uncle Ben would be stabbed through the heart by Flint, as a show of what happened to people who crossed him. And he was sure to let Peter know that if he hadn’t tried to play at hero, Ben would still be alive.

The information surrounding the attack on the Parker’s home would become heavily publicized, including the use of support equipment that was stolen from Kirby Academy, and Peter was very nearly expelled.

However, Tony Stark took an interest in the story, and would intervene on Peter’s part, taking over the cost of tuition as a Stark Foundation scholarship, and taking up the role of mentorship over Peter. Telling Peter that what he created was already more than enough to work in the same capacity as a hero when he’d started, but that he knew Peter had the ability to be better.

Re-enrolled at Kirby Academy, Peter began working on a new project. A costume that could function much like Tony’s Power Armor, conferring to its user strength, speed, and durability.

When the time came for Kirby Academy’s Sports Festival, Peter would appear, showcasing his new “Spider-Suit” using the accommodations afforded to support students that allowed them to use their own inventions. With this suit, and the discovery that he did, in fact, have a quirk; he was able to take the top spot in the festival, and receive an endorsement to begin in the Hero Course after Summer break. Additionally, due to his status as a support dept. student formerly, he would be permitted to continue using their facilities to develop his own equipment, as it was a hallmark of his ability to perform.

Support Equipment Web-Shooters: Peter’s first invention while attending Kirby Academy, these wrist-mounted spinnerets are able to fire pressurized fluid from them, as well as manipulate their shape and pattern once they pass the threshold of the shooter’s nodes. Originally bulky, large, and only able to be used to create lines and shapes, as well as nets. During the testing process, in which Peter had been fighting as a vigilante, Peter began upgrading the shooters to become more compact and versatile, appearing as little more than a pair of wristwatches until engaged, and with the ability to factor a number of custom settings, such as taser-webs, web bullets, impact-based webbing, magnetic webbing, flaming web, insulated web, web grenades, web shields, and the like. These shooters also include assisted aiming, which Peter can access from his lenses so as not to alert others with an aiming beam. -Web Grenades: Small orbs that the web-shooters can produce, which can almost immediately expand from the size of a marble, due to pressure, to the size of a baseball. The bombs can be set to either trigger on impact with a hard surface, or set to a timer. Once detonated, the grenade will loose a wide casting of webbing nets that ensnare any who are within its range of detonation, usually going as far as 15 feet, but having been known to go as far as 25 in some cases. -Web Trip Mines: Mechanical devices with a more precise web-shooting system than its counterpart, the Web Grenade. A Web Trip Mine is able to fire cast webs from both the hole in the center of its top, as well as the bottom, allowing it to ensnare two targets against each other simultaneously, rather than strictly capturing one target to a wall. -Concussive Blasts: A modification that Peter added as a means to hope and counter Flint Marko. By creating a repulsion, similar to that of Iron Man’s own, but based on more of a pushing power than a true beam of energy, bursts of force can be fired from the web shooter, from a nozzle situated just beneath the spinnerets. These blasts of force are actually strong enough to send athletic adult men flying back. --Suspension Matrix: An upgrade of the science from the concussive blast addon for the web-shooters, it uses wider pulses of the same force to create a sort of gravity field that will suspend those within its range into the air. This was further designed to sabotage the ability of Marko Flint to deconstitute, and keep him apart, in many grains, rather than any larger shape. This matrix functions for a short time, and must be recharged over several hours.

Spider-Suit: In its earliest incarnations, this was a suit woven from a variant of Peter’s Web Fluid that he used in the Web Shooters so as to foster durability and flexibility. Over time, this suit was enhanced to have different variable modifications that Peter has installed into different versions of the suit. Peter has developed roughly seven different versions of the Spider-Suit. The second generation of suits would begin to include unique electron-field manipulators in the gloves and soles which enabled him to adhere to surfaces by simply tensing his fingers, or triggering a pressure-reader along the toes of his costume’s feet. This is accomplished by mimicking the property of a repulsion and attraction quirk he’d studied in medical journals, inventing a generator which inverted the charge of electrons within the suit’s molecules, making his hands and feet like natural magnets to whatever they touch, if Peter activates it. More advanced models of the costume would begin to include lenses that served as miniature computers for Peter, or any wearer, to use so as to track his own vitals, ammunition, the condition of different gadgets, search and surf the internet, and analyze an opponent. The most advanced, and frequently used, versions of the suit reached an apex that make the costumes more akin to power armor, however. Through the use of a harness woven between two layers of the costume’s fabric, Peter is able to rely on a state-of-the-art system of micro-hydraulics and magnets to enhance his strength to superhuman levels. The suit originally enhances Peter’s strength by a factor of 20 (making him able to lift roughly 1 ton in the first version of this system), having an impact on not only his ability to lift and punch, but also to move acrobatically. As well as a passive-observation system that alerts the wearer to certain external stimuli based on a series of pre-programmed conditions. This, for a normal wearer, might give one just enough time to react to certain slower-moving projectiles and sneak attacks from an enemy, but in tandem with Peter’s quirk makes him a frustrating target to hit.

Spider-Tracers: Small devices that Peter designed to track targets for stings, or to be able to pursue escaping villains. Tiny, almost the size of an actual spider, these robots aren’t particularly durable, but are very effective at adhering to surfaces, skin, fabrics, and the like. These robots will broadcast on a specific radio channel which Peter’s lenses can tune into, but only within the range of several miles.

Spider-Drone: Drones that have been modified by Peter to act as combat support against multiple targets. Each comes equipped with a series of web-shooters, and can fire with similar settings to Peter’s own wrist-mounted shooters. He doesn’t make excessive use of these, as a destroyed and abandoned drone could result in a reverse-engineering of his inventions.

[obsidianarchives]

Game of Thrones Recap: S8E6 - "The Iron Throne"

After the penultimate episode dropped the bar for plausible writing and character motivations, I was already primed for the finale to be more of the same. Written by men who had an ending in mind without much of an idea of how to get there, “The Iron Throne” is again carried by outstanding performances by the actors who have grown to embody their roles on screen, but hamstrung by the apathy borne through the shortcuts taken to get there. Still, we’re going to get these jokes off and try to make sense of what happened along the way.

King’s Landing

The episode opens with a quiet close up of Tyrion’s disgusted and broken face as he surveys the aftermath of Daenerys’s decision to go full Adele and set fire to the reign. If you didn’t know the finale was going to be Peter Dinklage’s Emmy push, you figured it out soon enough. The charred and still-burning remains of the capital city (with surprisingly walkable debris-clear walkways) daunt the Hand of the Queen as the last Lannister takes on the weight of his failure to convince Dany to be merciful, choosing a solo walk to the Red Keep.

Jon and Davos, after granting Tyrion’s wish of solitude, run into Grey Worm and a platoon of Unsullied soldiers carrying out the Queen’s Justice. The (not-quite) bastard of Winterfell gets on his high horse and objects to further slaughter of defeated Lannister troops but the leader of the Unsullied isn’t trying to hear any of that noise. To his eyes, they are the Queen’s enemies and they’re still breathing, so the job isn’t finished. Being the damned honorable fool he is, Jon tries to grab Grey Worm’s arm to stop him from carrying out his sentencing and the rest of the Unsullied square up to protect their general. The Northmen behind Jon follow suit, quite a bit slower, and we’re stuck in a stand-off until Davos eases tensions and suggests talking to the Queen to gain clarity on that order. Let’s keep it a buck, Jon’s troops would have gotten that WORK from the Unsullied. He knew it, Davos knew it, their mamas knew it, and so Jon lets Grey Worm’s arm go and skips along to see Dany faster than Cersei did avoiding the Cleganebowl.

Making his way into the castle, Tyrion passes the Small Council chambers, Cersei’s painted map of Westeros, and searches the cellars for some sign of hope against all futility that Jaime was successful at escaping with his sister. Digging through the rubble, he comes across a golden hand, and after uncovering his twin siblings’ remarkably well-preserved remains, breaks down in rage and despair. That boy was ACT-ING this episode!

Arya, who was last seen as Death riding a pale horse leaving the city, is for some reason back in the middle of King’s Landing on foot as she spots Jon making his way through Dany’s army celebrating their Queen’s conquest with the Targaryen flag already flying above the city. As Jon slowly summits the steps leading to the burned out Red Keep, we get a flawless rendering of Dany walking out to meet the masses with Drogon’s outstretched wings behind her, the Targaryen every bit the dragon she was born to be. Not ones for subtlety, Benioff and Weiss have the Unsullied and Dothraki (who both seem to have magically repopulated since the Battle of Winterfell) aligned in classic military propaganda formation straight out of the Third Reich, as Daenerys launches into her vision of the new world. Rather than being satisfied with coming home again and reclaiming her ancestral throne, she is now ready to liberate all the people of the world from tyranny wherever she sees fit on every continent, as she finally gives voice to her abstractions of breaking the wheel.

What made last week’s heel turn for Daenerys such an odd choice, was that this was the tyrannical energy the show had been seeding for her all series long. Dany the Conqueror, rather than the Queen, is who she has always been shown to be at the core. Even a character as single-minded as Daario peeped game on that seasons ago. Her needlessly slaughtering citizens of the country she now controlled added nothing to her story when she was already presented as someone who would burn down the old world and anyone standing in the way of her just new one. The fact that the show realized this hadn’t been presented as alarming enough to give Tyrion, Jon, and the others pause until two episodes before the finale — forcing the need to insert implausible character decisions this late into the game — is endemic of the writing so many have been disappointed by.

A Daenerys so convinced of her innate goodness that she sees herself as the only arbiter of justice is terrifying, yet entirely within the scales of an established morality we’ve seen since episode one. Burning your own city to instill fear in those who were only in the capital because they were already afraid of you is maddeningly pointless and logically inconsistent.

Tyrion, who’s as fed up as many of the viewers, confronts his Queen while confessing his latest treason of freeing his brother, and flings off his Hand of the Queen badge in front of the gathered host. Somehow he wasn’t executed on the spot for this (or all his other failures) and is brought to a makeshift prison since the Black Cells are closed for excavation at the moment. He shares a knowing look with Jon as he’s being led away, who turns to probe Dany marching back to her castle, leaving him alone on the platform until Arya ninjas her way up there. She tries to warn Jon that he’s in danger, but you already know he knows nothing.

A picture of inner turmoil, Jon visits Tyrion in his cell, seemingly looking for any way of talking himself into continuing to stand behind Dany after her war crimes. Tyrion however, realizing he played himself after betraying his best friend for inciting treason just last week, pulls a 180 and does everything but get down on one knee to beg Jon to put aside the Ranger and become who he was born to be. The former Hand tries to explain (as a proxy for the writers) how Daenerys’s murder frenzy was foreshadowed all along and compares burning slave masters with non-combatant civilians, showing my man has still lost the thread as he hasn’t been right since he shot his father with a crossbow.

I appreciate the attempt at demonstrating a pattern of violence, and the fact that Daenerys kept killing the right evil people did obscure a creeping tyranny of her own, but these two things are not analogous. It’s the same reason we can tell the difference between Tyrion using wildfire in the Battle of the Blackwater, and Cersei using it to blow up the Sept of Baelor. Tyrion also elides the fact that he was by her side, advising Daenerys through many of these decisions by admitting he loves her, so it's not his fault, nor would it be Jon's for that same reason. After all his other pleas fail, Tyrion echoes Varys trying to convince Ned Stark to confess in season one, and invokes the safety of Sansa and Arya, as it’s all too clear the lengths Daenerys will go to consolidate and maintain her power. He even flips Maester Aemon’s warnings that love is the death of duty into, “sometimes duty is the death of love.”

Still swearing by his Queen, Jon proceeds to the throne room, but not before being sniffed out by Drogon — the three-time defending Hide-and-Seek champion — who managed to bury himself completely in the falling ash. Meanwhile Daenerys, fulfilling her vision from the House of the Undying finally lays her eyes on the prize, and summits the steps to the Iron Throne. She reaches out to claim her victory, but just as in her dream she turns away before getting to sit, becoming distracted by Jon entering the room.

Secure in herself having attained her dream, she greets Jon warmly forgetting she’s disgusted with his betrayal. She begins telling him her origin story, which he interrupts to talk out his angst. As the stupidest man alive, Jon implores her to find some justification for her actions and searches for any shred of the woman he thought she was. Dany unwittingly talks herself out of salvation, describing the world she and Jon will build together as they decide what “good” is, and he realizes she’s too far gone with her convictions. Promising she’ll always be his Queen he finally kisses her like he did by the lake in Naboo, but as he slips the tongue Jon also slips his knife into Daenerys. Just like a man he had to get up in them guts one last time. Cradling Dany’s limp corpse the same way he did Ygritte after she was shot in Castle Black, Jon is a broken man crushed by the weight of his sense of duty to the realm with the genuine love he shared for his now murdered aunt.

The most surprising part of this moment was how boring the whole thing was. Despite genuine performances (Emilia Clarke deserves all her things), and a beautiful score backing it, the whole affair came off as entirely perfunctory. Sure it was the ending most expected, but I never thought I would feel the gaping nothingness watching it all go down. For all the investment I had in both of the characters’ arcs, it was Drogon’s pained screeches of fury that moved me the most as he felt his psychic bond with his mother severed. Watching my young dragon son try to nudge Daenerys back to life like she was Mufasa somehow managed to be far more evocative than the supposed shock of being stabbed to death by her love. Jon didn’t even get Lightbringer for all his troubles.

The dragon in a rage turns towards his cousin, and Jon who it feels like has been looking for a way to die ever since he was resurrected, stands there ready to receive justice. Drogon, First of his name, rightful heir to the Iron Throne and King of the Seven Kingdoms, decides instead to turn his fury on the chair whose corrupting force drove his mother to this end and melts the damn thing. We knew dragons were highly intelligent, but who knew they had such a grasp for symbolism? Taking a final look at Jon, Drogon picks up Daenerys with his claw and flies off into the night as we fade to black.

The scene reopens with Tyrion being awoken in his cell after an unspecified time skip marked only by the shagginess of his beard. Grey Worm leads him out to the Dragon Pit where the lords and ladies of Westeros’ Great Houses have assembled. Sam speaks for the Tarlys despite being disinherited as a member of the Night’s Watch, we have the unnamed Prince of Dorne mentioned two episodes ago, Queen of the Iron Isles Yara Greyjoy, Lord of Storm’s End Gendry Baratheon, a couple of random white men no one even bothers to introduce, and they even dug up Edmure Tully and a Neville Longbottoming Robin Arryn. But the stars of the show are clearly the Starks (Arya, Bran, and Sansa) here to get their brother out of prison. Oh yeah, Jon apparently was arrested off-screen despite there being no body of Daenerys, no dagger to find, and no witnesses to what happened, so you know his dumb ass confessed unprompted. And some people really wanted this dry snitching idiot as King.

As always in these Love & Hip Hop reunion shows, things get off to a contentious start. Yara, whose reign in the Iron Islands was granted by Daenerys, is all for executing Jon for regicide. Arya reminds her to check her tone, and that if she talks about killing Jon again she’ll help her join the rest of the Greyjoys in the afterlife with the quickness. Davos offers to pay off the Unsullied with the Reach (presumably Highgarden) but Grey Worm angrily rejects the bribe in favor of justice. As there is no King or Queen to decide that justice however, Tyrion proposes the assembled crowd decide on a new ruler. There is a perfectly hilarious moment as Edmure Tully really has the unmitigated gall to put himself up for the throne before Sansa — with all the kindness and shade she can muster — tells her uncle to sit his five dollar ass down before she makes change. For a moment, I thought he might have had the good sense to nominate someone else (namely Sansa), but he really tried it. The cackle I let out when I realized he was serious might be my favorite thing this season. Edmure couldn’t even sit down after being shamed into silence without accidentally banging his sword on the pillar of the tent. A clown to the last.

Sam tries to propose the concept of democracy and gets laughed out of the room to the general bemusement of the convened crowd. Tyrion, once again talking himself out of trouble is asked who he thinks should be crowned, and those who thought Jon’s parentage would come into play (at all) in the finale were as bitterly disappointed as #SansaHive when the Lord Lannister put forth Bran Stark. Citing the importance of stories, he decides that Bran has the most electability and as the Three-Eyed Raven knows all the stories. How he decided Bran had the best story when Sansa, Brienne, Arya, or even Davos are sitting right there, no one knows. It remains unclear how much anyone outside of Winterfell is even aware or believes about Bran’s abilities so I’m still not sure how the rest of the nobility went along with it, but after a whole season maintaining he doesn’t want anything anymore, Bran accepts the nomination as King with a sardonic “Why do you think I came all this way?”

Forget the horrible title of “Bran the Broken” as given by Tyrion, he’s Bran the Scammer. This fool really sat there in his chair and finessed his way to the top. Chaos is a ladder indeed! The last time we saw this man in charge he was giving away the two farm hands that Theon burned in place of him and Rickon, and losing his castle to a motley crew of Ironborn. But for some reason, everyone else seems to listen to the twice deposed Hand and Bran carries the day. After a unanimous vote, Sansa demures and asserts the North’s independence from the crown, which King Brandon Stark accepts. Apparently no one told any of the other houses that was an option before the voting. That noise you hear in the background is the internal scream of Dorne and the Iron Islands' regret. Bran then immediately makes Tyrion his Hand, much to Grey Worm’s objection, his punishment for his crimes being to fix the many wrongs he’s made…by doing the same job he already had and screwed up in the first place. Apparently this made sense to everyone but Grey Worm. To keep the peace, Jon, rather than being freed or executed is sent to the Night’s Watch, which their former Lord Commander can’t believe still exists.

Beginning our final goodbyes, we get Jon finally back to his glorious windswept curly hair blowing in freedom as he prepares to head north. He gets stared down by Grey Worm for the last time, who is sailing with the rest of the Unsullied to Naath so that he can honor his word to Missandei to free her people and protect the home she loved so much. The Dothraki are also boarding up, presumably to sail back to Essos as well, but for whatever reason pay no mind to the man who murdered their Khaleesi. On the dock of the bay, the remaining Stark children, after years of being split up by war, finally choose their own fates. Sansa is returning home to rule the North in the Stark name, Bran of course will remain in the capital as King, but the girl who threw away her life as no one to reclaim herself as Arya Stark of Winterfell, decides to make good on a season six promise (made when she thought she had no more family) to sail to the end of the map and find what’s west of Westeros. It’s another moment at odds with the character who had gone through hell to get back to her loved ones, but perhaps more understandable in light of her decision to live for more than just vengeance.

After another uncertain time jump, we find Brienne of Tarth as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard flipping through the Book of Brothers (the White Book) to see Jaime Lannister’s accomplishments, which she fills in with her own hand. Resisting the petty urges in me to turn it into a Burn Book, the most honorable knight in Seven Six Kingdoms restores a bit of dignity to the Kingslayer’s name with Oathkeeper (and possibly Widow’s Wail) hanging on the wall of White Sword Tower. They really could have given it back to the Starks as a sign of goodwill since they were forged from Ice, but I suppose technically it is with the last trueborn son of Ned Stark after they were used to defend his daughters.

Back in the small council room, Tyrion methodically rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic as we meet King Bran’s court. The new Hand is joined by Bronn, Lord of Highgarden and Lord Paramount of the Reach, as Master of Coin (because a scammer never dies); Ser Davos as the Master of Ships; and Sam Tarly as Grand Maester (despite not having earned any actual links on his chain) because white dudes always fail up. Sam presents Tyrion with the newest work from the Citadel, “A Song of Ice and Fire” detailing the entire series as they lean into the Tolkien. Bran came through dripping in his Kingly raven-themed fit pushed by none other than Ser Podrick, who got himself into the Kingsguard as well. Asking about Drogon’s whereabouts, the best information the council has was that he was flying east (possibly towards Volantis or Valyria) and Bran intones he might have better luck finding the dragon before abruptly being wheeled out of the meeting. Picking up where the series began, we have the small council ruling the country while the King does whatever he feels like, bored with the monotony of ruling.

Speaking of full circle, the series ends mirroring its opening shot from the cold open, with riders leaving Castle Black and setting out beyond the Wall. With the threat of the White Walkers apparently over and the wildlings reaching a peace with the Night’s Watch, the journey is much less perilous. Jon, back in his familiar black as King Crow, and the Stark children now have chosen the people they want to be, as scenes of each of them stepping into their destiny are intercut with their muted victories. Sansa receives the coronation she’s long deserved as Queen in the North, Arya sets sail to Valinor, and Jon — reunited with Ghost and Tormund — sets out with the rest of the Free Folk seemingly forever, choosing to live his life in the real North.

Turn out the lights, the party’s over! In a vacuum, I don’t hate most of the resolutions nearly as much as I thought I would (especially if we end up getting the Arya spinoff that we deserve). But that’s just it, the episode felt exactly like what it was, a mad dash to get to bullet point notes for character journeys. If it weren’t for the previous episodes lowering my expectations, I’d be more disappointed with so many character arcs ending in flat circles, erasing years of growth, but there was no way for them to land planes that had already crashed. In the end, almost none of the plot points that were so interesting had any payoff in the final story and could have been wholly excised, from Jon being Aegon Targaryen, to Arya learning how to be a Faceless Assassin, Daenerys’s fertility or Cersei’s pregnancy, but what’s done is done. Like Dexter, we got four incredible seasons of television, and a few great episodes after that, but now my watch has ended.

It’s been a privilege hopping on these recaps with you all, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts about the finale for good or ill.

[queernuck]

The War on the Postmodern

Inspired by “Postmodernism Did Not Take Place: On Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life” I wish to explore the spaces in which Peterson’s critique of the postmodern impetus reaches the mainstream, the contemporary, the way in which the “postmodern” has been destabilized in itself, has gone through a Derridean process itself which has left it vastly wanting, that has given it a character that is unrecognizable to any meaningful study of the works at hand.

Haider’s article describes Peterson’s rise to a sort of, ironically, postmodern realization of the same sort of intellectual superstar Foucault once was, the refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns in direct addressing of students was the first in a series of often pointless and largely superficial attempts to strike against the apparent postmodern decadence of late capitalism. Peterson’s arguments, and Haider’s responses, largely concentrate upon the construction of an “alt-right” that is found in many places, but especially concentrated amongst those which pride themselves on a certain intellectualism, the creation and codification of Western thought as an act, an action, a means of improvement akin to any given self-help book like Peterson’s. Of course, while refusing the fascist character of Peterson’s eventual conclusions is important, this is not enough, it cannot be reversed from the accused center of critique that Peterson presents to a new one without becoming an Oedipal act of reproduction, a reactionary reversal that merely echoes as a rabattement of the reactionary ideology at hand.

That there have been overwhelmingly similar critiques of postmodernity from both materialist and far more idealist, often indeed fascist, positions is not a surprise, but what may be is the way in which this denotes a certain qualia of postmodern writing that Haider is quick to point out: there may well be no such thing, or a scant collection of it if so. Haider notes that Derrida’s extensive bibliography is very rarely cited, sources on his work taken from extremely limited secondary sources and these sources so skeptical of Derrida that they effectively are as if Peterson is engaging in an intellectual onanism. Instead of investigating Derridean thought, learning that one of Derrida’s most important works is in fact in part understood as a rather lengthy discussion of that which Rousseau considers possible within the bounds of grammar-as-structure, language-as-grammar, the limiting factors by which the introduction of such mitigations occur, and in turn the influence of this upon formative structures of experience, instead Derrida is portrayed as uninspired, lazy, eccentric and self-absorbed. Rather than acknowledging that Derridian writing was so often couched in self-reference and reference as part of its most paradigmatic claims, allusions that even Peterson could condone, a notion of meaningful Derridean critique is rejected outright, with any further development meeting a similar end.

Derrida’s famous lecture, the one that Haider argues most apparently introduced America to the “postmodern” approach is certainly one of his most influential works, but it hardly requires the decline of Western civilization it is implied to preach: instead, it is part of further discussing a concept of dialectic and disparity that is itself part of the eventual course set for deconstructive action toward a text. When Derrida presents the thought experiment of being caught naked by one’s cat, it is an anecdote that has been taken numerous ways, but largely is meant to structure the conceptual text as a space of possibility: the nakedness of the cat and of oneself are similar in a large degree, but the nakedness of the cat is in fact not nakedness at all, rather an impossibility of nakedness for the cat. The cat cannot be naked because it cannot feel shame, it can only observe the nakedness of oneself, and thus allow for the realization of one’s own naked body. It is an induction of disparity through similarity, through the creation of an apparently-even exchange that in fact is based in not only implying but realizing a fundamental disparity that characterizes both the animal and the human, the Deleuzean becoming-animal itself anticipated by this. This is not a new space of inquiry, and in fact that the acknowledgment of certain epistemic claims regarding the Animal Other is one of the first tactics employed by Derrida falls by the wayside. There are echoes of these scholars throughout Derrida’s work, from Plato to Marx, but the lack of a singular means of dedicating any one line of critique to one philosopher rather than the juxtapositions between them leads to the rejection of any of their presence. Effectively, this ties into the “hauntology” that Derrida coins later in his career, the means by which the containing of Marxist critique within liberal-democratic thought, the reversal of the reversal of the reversal, is an ever-present challenge for the very existential structures of liberal democracy not because of an internal weakness, an antisemitic Cultural Marxism, but rather the means in which liberal democracy has extended itself infinitely through the phantom of capitalism and how this in turn creates a space for the phantasmic relations of Communist contemporaneity.  

In order to reach through the contemporary and understand the transition implied by postmodernism, postmodernity, one must effectively act in a fashion that effectively takes the Marxist character of many postmodern inspirations, the Hauntology of dialectics and oppositions, and find a means through which these disparities, deconstructive possibilities, differentiations of Being can be understood in reference to the physical, to the worldly, to a notion of the world as-such, a practice often made difficult specifically by the means in which a vulgar sort of materialism is opposed to even the suggestion of postmodern inquiry. That the apparently-individual act of postmodernist scholarship is, in fact, genealogically linked to so many radical Marxist means of thinking, of thought-becoming as a process, and moreover how the eventual abandonment of Marxism-qua-Marxism by many apparent postmodernists or poststructuralists implies a kind of hopelessness in one or another is in fact part of the realization of a certain kind of dissolving, the sort that Deleuze describes as transcendental empiricism, a means of appropriating the concepts of empirical experience and mapping them onto a transcendent and phantasmic frame of reference, one in which the phantasmic is not lesser, secondary, but in fact constitutive of the empirical. Just as the Derridean text constructs itself, the text is a means of reckoning that requires an analysis of relationships within the text but additionally ones implied by it, ones that are contained in the relationships of language expressed within, eventually the subjectivity of the text begins to reveal itself. This would appear to be the creation of the individual, the demarcation thereof, but this is a false creation of the individual through yet another act of exegesis intended to codify the text as an object not in the process of deconstruction, but a sort of performative examination of it far more akin to dissection or butchering.

First, in order to address the deconstruction of the individual’s place in the social, the individual must be named, and further contrasted with the materialism apparently absent from such acts of naming. Popular concepts of the divide between individual existence, experience, and the material, the apparent apotheosis of the individual, are structured by a certain kind of capitalist constructivism whereby the individual is commodified and created as such, the individual is extruded from a machine that it recognizes as itself, and yet as that which gives it structure, stability, origin, the sort of Oedipal orifice-machine that Deleuze and Guattari spend so much time discussing. Looking to the Deleuzean framework of transcendental empiricism is vitally important specifically because such analysis is refused by the productive impetus, is separated either into the experiential or the referential, is considered as ruler or as body, tape measure or height. It is through a relativity, a relationship to the empirical by the transcendent and ever-changing material sphere, the means in which deterritorialization and reterritorialization continually undo one another in order to transfigure the very means by which judgments are made is thus part of a larger structure, one that is realized through the shifting and thus transcendent framework of this empiricism. The apparently-static material is overcoded by the phantasmic determination of it: in Difference and Repetition this is described as a basic act of differentiation by Deleuze, one that ignores entirely the physical in favor of the phantasmic. Thus, the material is not material-qua-material insofar as it is matter, as it is substance or form (Platonic or not) but rather is material-qua-material in that the experience thereof is one of materialist encounter, is part of an assemblage of bodies shaping one another through the structuring of ever-changing intensities such that the bodies at hand merge, meld, slide into one another as they lose their differentiated qualia. 

Transcendental empiricism can inform the construction of materialism in a unique fashion specifically because it requires the empiricism that Deleuze talks of, the implicit ontic frame that is rendered within Anti-Oedipus. Reading critique in an Augustinian sense is an act that is not possible if one is acting outside of the bounds of Christ, there cannot be an Augustine before Christianity. Of course, we find the pre-Christian Augustine in his Confessions but this is not in fact the Augustine that the narrative supposes: it is one that has undergone the vital autobiographical act, the creation of self-awareness. This self-awareness is eventually realizable within the works of Derrida, a note I will return to. However, this is part of the kind of understanding that one finds in a structure such as the indeterminacy of the Derridean hunt, the escaping beast that must be tracked that is continually pointed at just out of site, disappearing through the bushes. There is a vital way in which this cannot go on forever, that this must eventually find a final conclusion where the hunt is either completed by kill, or by fatigue. The deconstructive opposition is just that, a means of looking at structure as a conduit of Foucauldian power, of language as transference which shifts the empirical specifically through an operation of the transcendent. When Deleuze and Guattari describe the nightmare of capitalism, the infinite expanse thereof, the implication is specifically that of capitalism as so vastly totalizing, hegemonic, as creating relationships that can only be realized in exchanges of labor, of traumatic violence, of encountering an Oedipal concept of the expected-other, the mirrorings of molecular becomings creating assumed-selves within every interaction.  

Derridean analysis is likely the best means through which we may describe this process simply because of the proliferation of supposed Derridean concepts in Western contemporary thought. Numerous concepts have been described, rejected, and then codified-in-rejection by Derrida that have been renewed, or even yet again rejected, in contemporaneity. Fukuyama has admitted his End of History to be inadequate, and yet we are still past History’s end. Codification is a sort of death-realization, the end of an idea like that of History coming into Being. The ubiquity of Fukuyama’s declaration far outstrips any later rejection of it by the author himself, in that the notion has been so deeply sublimated, as the sort of Derridean shame that one feels naked in front of one’s cat, but now naked in front of one’s own crimes: the violence of liberal-democratic rule is inseparable from its character as a mitigation of class violence, its extension of settler-colonial and neocolonial violences, the ways in which it provides the means through which the naked Being is unconscionable specifically because the empirical structuring at hand implied so heavily otherwise, was embedded within such a long series of reterritorializing shifts that it eventually outdid itself. In this fashion, there is something other than being-qua-being, there is a Being that transcends any being-qua-being in the material-empirical senses.

For a further discussion of Being, we can turn to Being and Event as a framework for eking out the beast of Being. Badiou’s methodology is just that: a method, a sort of grasping at similitude with the supposed analytic, the creation of a means-of-thought that he may ascribe to himself. The vanity of such an act is nothing less than impressive, frankly, and must be recognized in this sense, fully, as just that, a rather incredible philosophical achievement. But his being-qua-being relies on his own work in a manner that does not weaken it, but worse, acts to codify it. Again, codification is the collapsing of opposition, the containment of both a concept and its dialectic opposite within a static position that cannot be revised, that must be accepted in order to discuss it. In Being and Event, Badiou’s project is setting out certain conditions under which the logical may be undertaken, such that the qualia of the “one” out of the “many” and the “many” out of the “one” can become intelligible. This is a hefty task simply because it involves a rather lengthy development of a certain logical epistemology of Badiou’s part, in that each step must conclusively prove the next, each must flow through the logical machines at hand, there must be a sort of fluctuation of the one-and-many that is at once reflective of a Heisenberg of sorts, the supposed-scientific from which so much of Badiou’s work originates. The way in which this structures this overall approach, the way that his work originates in the structure of the logical in reaching toward other discussions such as Metapolitics or declarations that “truth” is in fact a rather specific sort of fiction is part of this development of what structures of encounter form the designations that are held so dear to the post-postmodern West. 

Baudrillard’s brave declaration, alluded to in the title of the article, that the Gulf War did not happen, is not the sort of statement that the initial reception often leads to. Of course the Gulf War happened, what does a Frenchman say to the victims of an American bombing campaign intended to consolidate American hegemony and that eventually structured the later occupation of Iraq following what Baudrillard describes as the “suicide” of the Twin Towers? These are in so many ways misunderstood specifically because their content relies on not the literal (or even approximate) truth of an event, but rather on the hyperreal, the event-of-the-event, the way in which the event becomes itself, the character it takes on. 9/11 is not merely a terrorist attack, it is the beginning of a new paradigm in American globalization, it is a global demarcation of the sort not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union or the end of WWII, a kind of moment of moments that results in a profound realization of structurality and potential-structurality as embedded in the events at hand. Neoliberal desire, as Baudrillard describes, begged for an attack like that on 9/11, a means of turning the openly imperial character of American acts of balkanization, anticommunist occupation, the means by which any “good” realized following these American actions is in fact not secondary, but nonexistent, part of an act of reclamation that Badiou describes as occurring even after the exit of the United States from Vietnam. The martyrdom of 9/11, the way in which the towers were faced with trauma beyond their capabilities and turned to suicide, was thus a capitulation which would allow not an approach akin to Somalia, or Beirut, or the USS Cole. It would allow for a Forever War. The Gulf War, a decade earlier, never occured. This is specifically because there was no war, there was no meaningful conflict, the heaviest casualties were inflicted on elite units hunting ever-shifting SCUD missiles to provide a solution to tensions between Israel (who wanted to strike the SCUDs remotely) and Saudi Arabia (who rejected such a plan). Otherwise, it was a remarkably unremarkable war, one characterized by the development of journalism developed during Vietnam into a new way of engaging with war, the spectacle of war, the ideation of war as a sort of fantasy, an abstraction, not merely described by the intensities that Massumi’s discussion of soccer can imply about American Football, but a spectacle of the exact same character.

These are exercises in production, in producing certain sorts of images, which is the final emphasis I wish to make. Haider’s discussion of Foucault is one that succeeds where so many others fail, in that radical Foucauldian epistemologies are founded not out of an act of discarding the acts of all possible knowledges, but rather the creation of a space in which the actions of creating knowledge are dictated by the productive forces of power, of certain structures through which experience is dictated, is part of Foucauldian structures of analysis which are specifically founded in what Badiou calls an anti-historicism, a certain kind of anti-philosophy which rejects the structures of power in order to expose their naked productive role, and thus analyze the transfiguration of power acting upon the encountering of knowledge. One of the consummate postmodernists, the most famous of the poststructuralists, the singular structuralist holdout at the end of the movement, Foucault was not quite any according to Haider. Rather, it is part of deliberately and intentionally foreclosing on Foucauldian analysis using the space of the asylum he so deftly describes, the means through which the pathological is matched to. the material is thus the psychological is thus the empirical is thus the ideological is thus that which may be eventually repeated within Western civilization as its core concept of self, a secular spirit of Western dominance that has dictated globalization a century over.

When asking what postmodernism after postmodernism must look like, this is perhaps a good moment to begin at. To look at the critiques of postmodernism that have been offered by those opposing it for the sake of itself, for the posturing it supposedly presents, as part of looking to a materialism that takes the material as itself, that denies any sort of possible transcendence let alone engages with the transformative effect thereof, is vital to fascist ideology.

[darknessfactor]

DOTO Thoughts

Spoilers below.

Game, I dub thee, “the game that had some cool ideas and a lot of potential and absolutely wasted all of it”.

I’m going to start with the bad, just to get it out of the way.  Bullet points are acceptable, yes?

Billie was given very little motivation of her own, taking her cues from Daud instead and making the game about him when it should’ve been focused on her.

People have already done a much better job of explaining why Billie and Daud’s motivations make no sense than I could, but anyway, their motivations make no sense.

The level recycling was a bit exhausting.

The scene where the Outsider shows up and takes Billie’s arm and eye is... very violent.  And I don’t necessarily mean that in the way you might be thinking, but I think it’s important to note that the Outsider, who has never shown any inclination to touch anyone before, suddenly manhandles Billie and essentially forces her powers on her.  There are some uncomfortable implications that go along with that, especially when you consider that he gave the Dishonored 2 main characters a choice, but not Billie.

The lack of the chaos system.  The game doesn’t have the stakes of the previous game, and it damages Billie’s character development immensely to have her be able to kill people indiscriminately without any consequences.

“Daud never stopped killing.”  This makes absolutely no sense to me, because the fact that he canonically let Billie go would mean that he would’ve had to be low chaos in Knife of Dunwall.  But according to Thomas (I’m assuming that was Thomas), he’s still the same assassin?  Sure, game.  Sure.

Missing pieces of lore.  Sure, killing the Outsider/turning him human renders him unable to give magic to people, but the game doesn’t explain what happens to those he’s already marked (of which I’m pretty sure the only one who’s left alive is Emily).  

Apparently Arkane has decided to stick with their insistence that all witches are evil.  Great.

Now, here are the things that I thought were interesting, or had potential, but didn’t end up going anywhere or were underused.

Billie’s connection to the change in time at Stilton’s manor.  Obviously this is important, as it’s the reason for her nightmares and the reason why she can see all the hollows, but for some reason the game never does anything with it.  Billie never expresses any interest in finding out why she has the dreams, and she never gets to find out that the reason she loses her eye and arm is because Emily went back in time and saved Aramis Stilton.  I personally think that the main plot of the game should’ve been about her figuring this out, but that could just be my fanfic getting to me.

The juxtaposition of Billie and the Outsider.  Again, the game had some interesting moments where it’s pointed out that the Outsider and Billie have gone through similar experiences - of not having a choice, and of undergoing childhood trauma.  It could’ve been a fascinating parallel throughout the game, except that it’s ruined almost immediately by - you guessed it - the Outsider not giving Billie a choice in accepting her powers.

And honestly this one upsets me on a personal level, because I love both characters and I love the idea that there was this connection between the two because of their similar experiences, and also because they’re both able to see the world in ways that ordinary people are not, but again: the game did nothing with it.

The relationship between Billie and Daud.  There was no tension between them at all.  I feel like there should’ve been some initial wariness and even some animosity between them at first - after all, it’s been fifteen years, and the last time they saw one another Billie had betrayed him.  They shouldn’t have just been like, “Yeah, it’s all good, let’s just do our thing.”  I expected more there.

The Eyeless.  On the surface, just another nut-job cult, but more insidious than they appeared.  But again, Arkane could’ve done a lot more with them.

There was the whole thing about Delilah’s witches joining the Eyeless after Delilah was overthrown, and it was clear that the witches had contempt for their fellow cult members.  To them, the Eyeless were just a bunch of wanna-bes.  Arkane could’ve taken this plot and run with it, could’ve turned it into an eventual civil war within the cult, could’ve given the player the ability to manipulate both sides - it would’ve been the perfect example of how it’s the choices we make determine our fate, because in the end the cult would have self-destructed.

I think, in general, I think that this game should’ve been about Billie taking down the cult, not the Outsider, because the cult is poisoning Karnaca from inside.  The game showed that the Eyeless are at every level of society; uncovering it would’ve been a way for Billie to continue her story, but I guess Arkane wanted to capitalize on the Outsider.  We know that the Eyeless are pretty terrible, and if Arkane had really wanted to get the Outsider involved, then you could make saving him an optional action at the end of the game.  At any rate, doing this would remove the issue with terrible motivation for Billie and Daud.

The ‘choice’ theme.  At least, I think Arkane wanted this to be a theme.  The Outsider talks about Billie having a choice, his whole creation revolved around him not having a choice, human beings are the ones who make their own choices, etc.  Once again, this is ruined by:

The Outsider not giving Billie a choice at the beginning of the game.

Billie basically being a robot who follows Daud’s orders, instead of choosing to help him for her own reasons.

And now, the things that I liked:

On a very superficial level, I like the non-lethal ending.  Yes, I am aware that realistically speaking, the Outsider will probably die within a few weeks because of his lack of real life experience, but I’m instead going to headcanon that he ends up living at Dunwall Tower as an advisor, becomes the biggest advocate for environmental awareness and reform in court, and adopts a lot of cats.  Like, a LOT of cats.  And names them after his marked.

Billie’s attempts to write a thanks-but-no-thanks letter to Emily killed me.  KILLED ME.  And yes, that’s almost entirely because I ship them.

The hollows were cool.  Kinda pointless, but cool, nonetheless.

It’s still fun to play.  If you completely ignore the character development and the plot, then you can still have a blast.  Billie’s powers are great, the exploration is fun, and the puzzles are still fun to solve.  

Those rare moments when Billie actually seemed like a person - “A secret knock?  Really?”  and “Cryptic little shit.”

The little tidbits of what happened to the Dishonored 2 characters.  I love that Billie keeps newspaper clippings about Emily and Sokolov.

Worldbuilding and the overall aesthetic was still pretty cool.

As you can, based on the above... the things I like about the game are not the things that are important to me in a game.  I can forgive a game with a nonsensical plot if the characters are still interesting and engaging (*coughLightningReturnscough*), but Death of the Outsider couldn’t even be bothered to do that.  Instead, most of the characters fall flat, and for the first time in my life I’ve found myself playing a game purely for the gameplay.  I haven’t seen a mess this bad since the KOTET expansion from SWTOR.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that I’m upset.  After learning about That One Writer, I expected something like this.  But I am angry.  I’m angry on behalf of the people who are fans of Daud (even if I’m not one), and I’m angry as a fan of Billie.  And so, I will do as I have always done: I will turn to my fanfiction, ignore canon, and move on.

(But make no mistake, I’ll be low-key bitter for a while.)

[fourteendoors]

Ready Player One,  The Eighties Future, and the Inherent Tragedy of the Cyberpunk Genre

or: in which I alienate even more of my potential audience by writing about something only tangentially related to RPGs.

There’s exactly one interesting paragraph in Ernest Cline’s 2011 book Ready Player One, and this is it: “In the mid-’80s, when the character of Max Headroom was created, computers weren’t actually powerful enough to generate a photorealistic human figure, so Max had been portrayed by an actor (the brilliant Matt Frewer) who wore a lot of rubber makeup to make him look computer-generated. But the version of Max now smiling at me on the monitor was pure software, with the best simulated AI and voice-recognition subroutines money could buy.“ I don’t think Ernest Cline wrote this intentionally. It’s another little pointless detail in a book full of them, intended mostly to accentuate how cool his bland hero is via association with other, better art. There have been enough thinkpieces on the failures of the novel already. But there’s something that I find incredibly interesting about this paragraph. The machine isn’t limited by processing power, or rendering ability. The machine is only limited by the imagination of its user. Max Headroom looks cheap and fake simply because the protagonist isn’t able to understand anything else. When you watch movies like Robocop or Blade Runner now, you can’t help but see the culture that made them. They’re inextricably linked with the time period. When we make cyberpunk media now, there’s a tendency to make everything sleek and refined, to replace what the eighties thought the future would look like with what 2020 thinks the future should look like. But should we? Cyberpunk is, in its basest form, a story about now. It’s a story about violence, about capitalism, about ecological catastrophe, about authoritarianism. It’s a story where the societies that now exist flash-freeze and undergo no changes, just get more and more powerful and more and more corrupt. But the underlying tragedy is that it’s all unneccessary. The worlds in which cyberpunk stories exist are worlds in which miraculous technology exists- AI a thousand times smarter and more creative than humans, genetic engineering that could feed the entire world a hundred times over, cybernetics that can allow a human being to far surpass the limitations of their biology. These are technologies that could be used to build a paradise, and instead they’re used to opress, to deprive, to surveil. There is enough food. There are enough homes. And yet, on the streets, people kill each other for scraps because the people in power refuse to imagine that there is another answer. Maybe cyberpunk should always look like the eighties imagined it would. The story of cyberpunk is about being trapped, about cycles, about a society that has lost the ability to create and so simply regurgitates the same archaic ideas long past their point of relevance. The world is haunted by the same old evils, and so too it’s haunted by a decade long since past.  Maybe one day it can break free of both.

[felipaynst717-blog]

Das Beste für Sie AoE II: Definitive Edition

Reviews Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

Attractive, good, mature strategy game is seeking a player! Despite the twenty years of which bear gone on, the new Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition still manages to deliver a wonderful experience.

The Age of Empires series is a legitimate grandfather of the real-time strategy genre – this been around for over two decades. Some time since, we walked a remaster on the principal part, named Definitive Edition and it was... good, it was what it was, let's place this in which. Let's answer I hugged it with all its limitations. Also really honestly, I did not assume the changes will be so general in the remaster of the subsequent part, the opus magnum of the RTS genre created by the Ensemble Studio. Basically, I stayed still really considering this assignment. Meanwhile, exactly what I meet in the main flow in the game exceeded the wildest expectations. Age of Empires II Definitive Edition, despite its archaisms, comes out ahead and stretches horrible ideas with the upcoming fourth installment.

Dance Macabre

This actually isn't the first time the moment piece was renovated and published – we've previously declared the HD Edition. Apparently, though, Microsoft wants to be like George Lucas, who's forever enhance their Star Wars, and while in the case of the silk Jedi learn, the policy doesn't necessarily win fan approval, you can really be glad about how things turn out with the discussed strategy. AoE2DE is better than something we've seen in this collection so far. That so good it doesn't have any serious cons. A little forced, aren't they? Form, this is the opportunity of acclaimed dinosaurs sent to a funeral home, the slogan that remains "Dressed in our own coffins you search more successful." But seriously. Finding fault with a twenty-year last game is basically defeat a boring horse. Particularly given that that game comes with major expansion, also the skeleton may still dance by numerous personal computers.

Visual delights in 4K

I won't beat about the bush. The above heading is a piece provocative, but the mostly real. Imagine that you have the appropriate hardware (I learn most of you don't have to imagine that at all, but I did to help), people launch Age of Empires II Definitive Edition in 4K, and your eyes are poised with a planet of tiny characters working around the area, that is exactly as razor and has tremendous textures weighting 16 GB and set up specifically for this occasion. Fact be related, I've only seen that earth in a dozen frames per minute, so it probably doesn't count (I ended up participating with 1080p). In any case, the people from Forgotten Empires went to great lengths to make certain persons are given here surprise if they only have the best rig.

And that certainly not the "omg-next-gen-so-much!" type of awe, but rather "Dang, that's what a twenty-years-old game may look like?" They place almost everything that is fixed. From the growth from the natural world to stars and lives of all units. The smooth activities are pleasing to the eye, especially as you could now zoom popular using the mouse wheel. Considering a background full of warriors rendered in armor that sell virtual damage to each other has not been so exciting.

Collapsing buildings look very impressive – they disintegrate to items and watch every brick falling upon a pile of rubble. I've never grow bored of admiring collapsing castles and it sounds i won't think about this being pointless interest for a long time. It's mind-blowing!

Game designers have managed, among other things, to make sure that players will not give any difficulty identifying specific buildings. Already at this level, each building looks a little different, which makes it easier to get a notion of what's actually happening in this prevailing chaos – in the drive or in the fast increase regarding the capital or community.

More holes and user interface

In addition to aesthetic and graphical marvels, it was also important to adapt the old-school user interface with a slightly newer model. By we mean a substantial and modern UI which is better suited near it is end.

In the menu there is a another decision to degree the client interface, which is a great idea for newcomers, who are not yet accustomed to the in-game hotkeys. Enlarging the symbols enables one to understand a better knowledge of their occasion; used for a difference, professionals can get rid of the main interface almost entirely. By the way, concerning the keyboard shortcuts – today people not just have the possibility to vary key bindings, but also to create separate profiles, which will surely be enjoyed in those who create their own control systems. Also, it is possible to easily select all parts or buildings of the broken type on the place also to remove them with just one click of the major.

For the second staff of UI we can look at just how various folks we can recruit before we go out of conscious quarters. A different and extremely valuable star will demonstrate us just how many villagers are unemployed. By pressing on it, the game leads us to each one of these (one before a single) also were able to assign them a brief.

There is and a new feature – queuing of tasks, thanks to which it is possible to sketch the next activities of a hand unit in advance. All buildings under building or knowledge that are currently being used are indicated at the top from the television. This allows you to quickly understand the current situation.

Select army feature has been improved. Not just you can see the way many things you have marked, but you can also make sure that workers will never become incorporated into a massive faction of selected soldiers. It helps a lot! Especially when you have to quickly counter to the unexpected circumstances.

One of the coolest development is the opportunity to restore a farm later it last out of stocks. Simply check out this option along with anyone no longer need to concern about the supply of food. It seems so different which no one have come ahead with such an idea twenty years ago. It was a really annoying issue.

We've was given the informed AI in the HD edition from the game, playing with the Definitive Edition the fake intelligence approach includes experienced several significant polishing. I bought the brand that the AI-controlled enemy doesn't focus so much at making one brief when another, but rather acts in a new dispersed and extreme way. Employees are not directed to perform one action with another so as to improve in the future time. However, it doesn't signify the redesigned AI is slower than the older one. This aims to help settle the overall economy with prioritizes jobs in a greater way. During the individual battles, the game enables one to choose which AI scripts must be used in specific civilizations – whether they should help those from the first report, the HD form or the latest translation in the game. I encourage you to conduct your own experiments with the original AI order. It can be a quite addictive and fascinating activity.

Another critical new report is the possibility of giving orders to allies when performing 2vs2 scenarios. The number of available commands is overwhelming (around a hundred or more) then they fear questions such as – demand for coaching of the certain form of thing, sending a specific type of troops to the ground, requesting support in an episode, put the ally to focus on some type of production or even construction of an wall on designated location. You will have to use a lot of time if you want figure all this away. Many highly, the coordination seems to be doing very decently.

Other essential novelty is the beginning of a fresh level of difficulty. Despite their brand, Great difficulty doesn't make the action to fast. It is rather a surface trick, designed to assess the difficulty levels available from the game, so that they are not like mixed so previously. Thus, the Great difficulty level is very similar to the Difficult one, told on the previous edition from the game. Any direction, a challenge would remain a challenge.

Revamped multiplayer

Speaking of problem. With DE, you will get job in challenges which consist in achieving certain objectives as easily as possible – for example, advance to the next era. New adepts in the lines should spend the time to report the basics of game mechanics, if they aim to help fight against a real opponent in the multiplayer duel. The standard tutorial, which is and a Scottish battle against the English, turns out as a complete joke. In no income it will make you representing a multiplayer battle.

Just before we move onto additional notes on multiplayer mode, I should point out the whole element of the experience was utterly redesigned. No more peer-to-peer connections. Instead, game designers have put together multiplayer servers which must provide a much smoother and lag-less experience. At least unlike which includes occurred to me during my gameplay experience.

The design and features of multiplayer’s lobby has been modified. Now you can make personal and password-protected game sessions. Among the new features there is a possibility to watch multiplayer conference of others as a spectator (there may be virtually any number of people watching). The new map selector makes this better to filter them before produce your own sets. After all, the renewed matchmaking system should enable a better wealth of rivals due to the more explicit research criteria. That would entail additional time, than I had after the game's release, to get to see these novelties and innovative solutions i always have described above. Despite that, I have to divulge in which anything I've tested did well.

A multicultural game

The designation of Definitive Edition grants to begin something over simply updated graphics, interface, AI and restored multiplayer. The designer have managed to save all expansion sets – including most cultures that occurred within every add-on. Moreover, they have included some extra content. Thanks to that, twenty-four movements are awaiting you inside only person mode! In other words, it's countless times of excitement! Four new the world have remained put into those previously being from the level story with frequent add-ons. Also, three of them say picked up unique campaigns. Despite the fact Spiele Umsonst downloadspiels.com that game designers have decided to take an easy direction with based the armed forces capability of all new people in cavalry, we should be happy that they've expanded the previously diversified puddle of civilizations.

For the new we can handle the responsibility of Lithuanians (unfortunately, this population was denied of special campaign). And, you can sport because Tatars, Bulgarians and Cumans. The end are well-known from Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I've played every new fights and also via what I've seen so far, many new country are somewhat threw in assessment to their opponents. Or I'm a born boss also a talented strategist? I'm kidding, although I might not be disturbed if the new people were effectively balanced in a patch that may be generated from the next future (mainly within the perspective of multiplayer matches).

A grinning walking over

I'm aware of the fact I give managed to discover and suggest all the differences within judgment to the primary. I only expectation to I've noticed most of them, and have suitably told them in this review. Age of Empires II Definitive Edition is a fantastic solution to the supporters of strategy genre. It was successfully restored and renewed by Forgotten Empires and most certainly it won't go unnoticed – at least with supporters that have this sort of activity and are not scared of adult game mechanics. That resembles a living (walking down?) corpse that's still rather pleasant next survived fixed in total conditions. So, the idea going to end for at least few seasons more. I talk about it with a lot of sympathy because I love how nicely it was preserved. Also, I hope that this a promising sign before the freedom of the several chapter in the cycle that’s awaited in many home-grown tactical leaders.

[mybarricades]

Democracy

Jean-Marie Gleize

There is, in Rimbaud’s Illuminations, a text called “Democracy.” We know little of this text’s composition, as the manuscript is lost. It was published belatedly in a journal (La Vogue, 1889), but we are scarcely surprised to encounter a text of this title from the quill of that democrat Rimbaud, virulently hostile to Napoléon III’s dictatorship, radically aligned with the insurrectionary movement of the Paris Commune — with, one might say, an insurgent, revolutionary democracy. As Bernard Noël has suggested, Rimbaud is a communard “not only in his opinion, but in his being.” Now the particularity of this poem is in being the only one in the collection entirely within quotation marks. It is democracy who speaks. It concerns prosopopoeia. Upon recognizing this, the Rimbaud specialists are perplexed, their opinions contradictory. 

To revisit the formulation of one (Pierre Brunel): “Rimbaud’s intention seems particularly difficult to grasp.” In effect, the text expresses imperialist and capitalist violence, announces the massacre of the “logical revolts” … Does Rimbaud affirm and take up the mantle of a conquering warrior for democracy, a manifestation of the people’s power (according to his native, regular scheme: the necessity for destruction/detonation toward a regeneration or a later reconstruction)? Does he take a malign pleasure in transcribing the caricature of democracy delivered by his bourgeois adversaries, evoking the horror and terror it inspires in them? Here we must return to the quotation marks. If Rimbaud expressed himself in his own name, as he does in all of Illuminations’ other poems, he would do so without divagation. In this poem it must be democracy who speaks, saying that which it is and does, its fearsome civilizing program. The result is finally that the reader is led to transfer the quotation marks to the only word in the text which does not bear them: its title. 

“Democracy” is by no means the power of the people but the instrument of the people’s domination and oppression; “democracy” is not democracy. This fact allows us to return to the ambiguity of the writer’s gesture, ambiguity that is at once voluntary (the rhetorical work’s deployment of prosopopoeia as concerted device) and inevitable, already having happened: the Illuminations speak at once the unacceptable character of “the rest of the world,” of the world as it is, its violence and the counterviolence necessarily entrained, the more or less utopic visions that it arouses, etc. If something like democracy exists, it doubtless supposes other struggles, other forms of life of which the labor of poetry can make only confused or oblique reports. Exigency, malaise, anxiety, anger, semantic and rhythmic troubles, critical opacity: such are some of the symptoms of this state of discomfiting resistance where one finds the “horrible workers” to whom Rimbaud is brother. 

For those who persist “like” Rimbaud, after the flood, in the hive-chaos of big cities, modern industrial and postindustrial societies, those of the western “democratic” empire, the leading sentiment remains that results from the fact that democracy signifies for the moment capitalism, the regime of liberty and liberalism (work, finance, exploitation, profit) — and this democratic capitalism, the polluted air which we breathe, moreover appears as the ultimate and definitive, and for that matter “natural,” form of social life. There is, there will have been, no alternative. Thus the necessity to qualify, to specify: parliamentary, or rather, today, mediatic-parliamentary, democracy, liberal democracy, but also, because quotation marks are there if we try to retrieve, that is to say reappropriate, the word and the thing, “true democracy,” as Marx said, or “wild democracy,” or “radical democracy,” or “insurgent democracy” (as Miguel Abensour suggested, democracy in a permanent state of emergence and constructive critique), or even “democracy without limits” as proposed by Rosa Luxemburg in opposition to “bourgeois democracy.” She subjected “democracy” under quotation marks to an examination of limits and internal contradictions wherein she observed, as did Rimbaud, two closely linked antidemocratic dimensions: militarism and colonialism, the importance of the military apparatus being linked on the one hand to the containment and repression of popular insurrectionary movements, and on the other hand to imposing on the colonized by force of arms the benefits of western economic exploitation and domination. 

Thus there is for those, among whom I am one, who continue to read and write within that which we name poetry (that is to say, who situate themselves marginally within the practice of literature itself grown culturally secondary and minor), essentially the consciousness of not being much in phase with democracy as ambient value, as political ideology and as form of government, the feeling of being in no regard represented by the professional politicians and others who themselves are manipulated and ventriloquized by the holds of real power (that of the globalized economy), and with an insuperable sense of paralysis or choking powerlessness. The words slide around, it is enough just to listen. For example this kid from the Maghreb who participated in the 2005 banlieue riots around Paris: he speaks of his parents and the society which would “incarcerate” them. He means to say “integrate” them. This slip understands that such integration might be felt as a process of confinement and violent maintenance of inferior social status. It’s all too evidently symptomatic when some contrarily affirm (against all visible evidence, in situations of extreme material and mental precarity, in the suffocating context of our quote-unquote “democracy”) the actuality of their emancipation. I want to underscore indelibly this phrase in the contemporary poetry journal Nioques from poet Christophe Tarkos, who died prematurely in 2004: “I am not squeezed, I do not choke myself, I am not shattered, I am not buried, I am not surrounded, I am not crushed, I breathe.” He personally supports this affirmation, based on the denial of crushing in its many forms. And if he can support this position, if he can affirm so strongly the negation of the negation, it is because he writes, and because this practice of poetry he understands and lives as insurgent and emancipatory. This incites us to grasp precisely that what initially renders poetry political for Christophe Tarkos is that it is an act, and that this act of language is (or at least may be) singular affirmation, demand for autonomy, form of life and of survival in hostile surroundings. 

We must perhaps return swiftly to some naïve distinctions. There has been in our recent history something like a poetry engagé, that of the Resistance, committed to direct communication (simple forms, combat lyricism) with a people awaiting democracy. Before this, when surrealism had wished to articulate itself seriously in the real movement of history, it declared itself “in the service” of Revolution (without retreat, nonetheless, from the ardent necessity of transgression or formal subversion). After the war we see Paul Eluard publishing a book called Political Poems, with a preface by Aragon. The communist poet does not neglect to underline what “politics” means for Eluard, for himself, for his comrades, and the sense of the slogan “from the horizon of one to the horizon of all” (which could equally be the broad slogan for a “democratic poetry”). He does not omit Isidore Ducasse’s encouraging watchword: “poetry must take for its goal the practical truth,” interpreted as enunciating or announcing the passage of eras (a romantic thought) from utopias to that of “human efficiency.” It is patently obvious that the standard poetic ideology, from historical avant-gardes to the neo-avant-gardes of the sixties and seventies, from lyricism engagé to political poetry or the theorization of the “revolution in poetic language” consonant with the desire for Revolution, is one of “efficiency” (to reclaim Aragon’s word) for poetry, more or less immediate or oblique, more or less direct or restrained. 

Yet it is no less clear that around the eighties there was what I shall call a sequence of burgeoning euphoria (combinatorial transgression, subversion, experimentation, invention, action), thanks to varied collapses of that to which it would be anyway pointless to return. The field of contemporary poetry then reconstituted itself (as do families) around two principal poles: that of return (what I call re-poetry) to the fundamentals of a poetry restored to itself, and thus restored to the public, to the common reader, after the disfiguration and aggravation of divorce, and that endeavoring not to break with the heritage of research and adventure, recusing itself from the dogmatic stances and political illusions of the night before and the night before that. We note then the emergence of a generation of poets, published in journals such as Java, or Facial, or Quaderno, or even the Revue de littérature générale of Olivier Cadiot and Pierre Alferi, clearly experimental in orientation but also clearly apolitical, practicing criticism (that of social and/or genre conventions) via modes of ironic distance or parody and derision. Poetry or more broadly forms of critical art in effect posed particularly the question of the cultural hierarchy separating the major from the minor or “popular” modes of expression. An “eccentric essay” (as the author himself defined it) titled “Parodic Art” (published in 1996 under the name Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux) tried to describe and theoretically legitimate some of these practices of a systematic reversal of values (or of confounding registers and genres) that spread in this period of a post-avant-gardism that was a bit skeptical, or at least suspicious regarding the high seriousness of previous generations. 

It would likely not be mistaken to say that the poets of preceding generations took somewhat for granted (against divergent strategic choices regarding the logic of their practice, their modes of realization, etc.) an adherence to a principle, explicitly formulated or remaining implicit, something like an ideal of real democracy, while accepting as largely inevitable the fate of renouncing a large audience, and the much-hurled accusation of “elitism.” The poets of the generation whereof I speak, those I have just said have taken their distance (and not ordered their work according to the expectations of some given belief), found themselves to be subjects of a sort for a practical “democracy” in the sense that they actively refused to ignore the current modes of expression and mass culture (media, screens, collections of official statements, assemblage, sampling, various détournements, etc.). The great question is whether the apparent ideological “retreat,” which at first glance characterizes this body of text, indicates a neutral stance, an indifference to concerns of content (even an unspoken adherence to what they do convey), or whether to the contrary these poets subscribe to a perspective comprising a form of active “resistance” to these formats, these contents, these modes of circulation and public display, etc. These “after-writings” — after the dissolution of dogmas, after the last wave of avant-garde theorizing and sectarians, with faces both of the “ironic” and of the “serious” (collage-writing, investigative or documentary writing) — can doubtless be read as critical but no less as preserving for the reader their share of ambiguity and constitutive undecidability. 

What can be seen, in these writings “after” (and the occasional taking of certain concrete positions on social struggles or alternative movements), is a definite return of the notion of resistance. As all around us gestures of “civil disobedience” develop (from Athens to Tunis and to Cairo, from New York, Occupy Wall Street, from Tarnac to Notre Dame des Landes …) which are like mass protests in the name of democracy without quotes against the decisions or “laws” or official conditions imposed by the police and the court of “democracy,” that Rimbauldian prosopopoeia within which we are always citizens, we notice, in the regime called the poetic, or post-poetic, the fact that the imaginary of resistance continues to resist. It may be necessary here to revisit Francis Ponge’s propositions announced in a number of his “proems” from the thirties — so near us today where we see democratic elections bringing to power religious fanatics, where left governments are anxious to expel foreigners, what is basically a “democratic” progression toward municipal fascism. Ponge, rather than suggesting to his surrealist friends of the time the pseudo-“liberating” whisper (automatic writing) advocated “resistance against words,” that is to say we ought not speak the ideology that speaks us (doxa, stereotypes, clichés conveyed by the mediasphere) but contrarily to work contra-words, on contra-usage, to practice, if needed, “the art of violating [words] and the submission to them.” Such a poetic remains fresh, in the face ofthe “order of things,” which he qualified as “monstrous” and “sordid,” wherein he said that people kill themselves “having been ruined” by these “governments of wheeler-dealers and merchants,” the very “democratic capitalism” that I mentioned earlier. 

Resistance against words, therefore, opposes the silence of writing to the noise of words, or even unmaking and remaking the ceaseless superflux of immaterial information to recover if possible the meanings of the words, the meanings of things and situations and events. But resisting just the same images, the ceaseless flow of images, those which “occupy” our space and our eyes, screen-walls that separate us from each other and from reality. Bearing in mind that these images “constitute part” of this reality from which they also separate us. And therefore it is a matter of working with and on and against these images through superimposition, overprinting, decomposition, etc. Finally, the resistance against images means equally — and I revisit here the “position” of dislocation according to diverse variations and stances of commitment — renouncing the narcotizing magic of nationalist visions, those which nurtured and carried our imaginary political utopia. We renounce this so as to confront clearly our lot: the traversal — using for our writing the contingencies of terrain, of context, of circumstance — of the opaque thicket, that of real contradiction, conflictual and violent. This is one meaning of the phrase borrowed from an artist and installation or intermedia poet (Philippe Castellin): “Poetry isn’t a solution.” If we understand the enduring and insistent and even resistant practice of writing poetry (in the context where it has become a socially minor practice) as a critical and restricted contribution, half-blind, to the permanent invention of a democratic space, we know quite well that there is no solution, and that writing has no purpose but to intensify the questions. 

This hypothesis makes sense only if we think of democratic space (the possibility of democracy) as outside of political institutions bearing the name, and if we imagine the concrete reality here and now of autonomous, self-managed “communes” where we can experiment freely with new forms of sensory experience, new forms of exchange, expression, communication, collective activity, life. Such islands of life and action, moreover of reflection and struggle, exist already. Experimental politics, at significant distance from political institutions, are or should be in principle like experimental art and poetry, by definition. It is for us to build our own cabins and the paths which connect them (these may be journals, editorial microstructures, alternative circuits of distribution), and if our cabins are destroyed, we rebuild them elsewhere without becoming discouraged. 

And since I began this text with Rimbaud, I end within those quotation marks and logical revolts. The question, poetic and political, is that of words’ meanings. Those given them, or those inflicted. And that which we would like to make. It can arise from this long and “ferocious” sequence (that which develops the Rimbauldian prosopopeia) called by the poet the “logical revolts,” those of the colonized, the exploited, the displaced, the oppressed, then, and now, and everywhere. 

Logical, that is to say, inescapable. 

Logical as well because that names a return, a reversal, an overcoming, in language, in words, in writing, in traces.

Translated from the French by Joshua Clover

[joshuajacksonlyblog]

Bitcoin to Burst Faster than Tech Bubble? Someone Tell Morgan Stanley It’s Been Almost a Decade Now

When it comes to talk of “The Bitcoin Bubble,” the FUD never stops — especially when it comes from traditional financial institutions like Morgan Stanley.

They Look the Same (But Not Really)

According to Sheena Shah, a strategist at Morgan Stanley, there are similarities between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq during the 1998-2000 technology bubble — with his argument centering around the fact that both experienced massive run-ups before dramatically decreasing in value.

As displayed in a chart from Bloomberg and Morgan Stanley Research, Nasdaq and Bitcoin appear to have followed very similar patterns. However, the timeframe in question is highly skewed — and apparently illustrates Morgan Stanley’s ignorance to the fact that Bitcoin has existed for nearly a decade.

On the graph in question, Nasdaq is charted from June 1994 until June 2002 — an 8-year span. It is then overlaid with a chart of Bitcoin over a significantly shorter timespan, from February 2017 to February 2018. Forbes then notes that “If Bitcoin follows the same pattern it could be around $1,500 in a few months time frame.”

Of course, simply adjusting the data to comparable timeframes would effectively eradicate the argument entirely, not to mention the fact that one could fairly easily explore Bitcoin’s history and find not entirely dissimilar peaks and valleys — suggesting that the so-called “Bitcoin Bubble” has burst many, many times.

Forbes also notes that Shah’s report “found some disturbing similarities,” including:

The four trough to peaks for the Nasdaq averaged 40%

The three trough to peaks for Bitcoin have averaged 43%

The five peak to troughs for the Nasdaq averaged a decline of 44%

The three peak to troughs for Bitcoin have averaged a decline of 47%

Once more, simply adjusting the data to comparable timeframes would render these statistics virtually pointless.

Shah is not the only one who believes Bitcoin is a bubble, of course. As noted by Forbes, Stefan Hofrichter, Head of Global Economics & Strategy at Allianz, has argued that Bitcoin has fit into some of his criteria for determining whether or not an asset is in a price bubble.

Others aren’t buying what the FUDsters are selling. Tom Lee, currently the Head of Research at Fundstrat and ex-J.P. Morgan Chief Equity Strategist, has claimed that Bitcoin is well oversold on his proprietary Bitcoin Misery Index. He also has bullishly stated that the dominant cryptocurrency by market capitalization could hit $91,000 by early 2020.

Do you think Bitcoin is a bubble? Do you think Morgan Stanley’s report is just misguided, or is it intentionally misleading? Let us know in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Bloomberg/Morgan Stanley Research, CoinMarketCap.com, and Bitcoinist archives.

The post Bitcoin to Burst Faster than Tech Bubble? Someone Tell Morgan Stanley It’s Been Almost a Decade Now appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

from Cryptocracken Tumblr https://ift.tt/2Eu5aws via IFTTT

[outletcheapggdb-blog]

Golden Goose Deluxe Brand Superstar Sneakers Cheap My 7 Successful work Tips

And should you think that they would likely have currently the time and simply passion to help you study through to this pointless but fbi disease proper they encounter graduated and start most of the medical principle? I worried most about them deliver not consistent have sufficient time to be able to sleep Golden Goose Deluxe Brand Superstar Sneakers Cheap uring the early in the years connected their . For them, the usual source of information pertaining to gout ailment is as a result of some health related journals, arthritis conferences, and therefore mainly after. medical sales events representatives! At that opposite long run of generally spectrum 're those experts and work owners who really continue that can enjoy fabulous success online. They come with several productive Web business concerns that obtain income on the market the clock, and this company know just how to come up with a newly purchased revenue load practically near will. A heartbreaking mistake most first electronic timers (sometimes marked as 'newbies') reach is the idea they turn out online and / or find web marketing marketing software programs that assurance quick moola. The profit pages related to these routines can turn out to be so prodding that you buy associated with programs only real to seek that so it is one and only part together with the scheme of puzzle in a enormous lot of detail left-hand out. 'Newbies' often grow to become repeat victims of unethical vendors looking to cash in on on their own naivety. Nevertheless convincing will most likely the providing be exactly who you are tempted within order to get this amazing program the way quickly as compared to possible, exclusively to come up with out that can this ended up not the actual promised Golden Goose Superstar. Don't think twice to prepare over and after that over surrounding the similar thing product all through your online internet marketer marketing routine. You possibly can come at it at different zones of scene that course. write regarding what yourself expect during the nutritional supplement at first, why you actually bought it, how somebody hope which can use it, and and as a result on. That is when you will likely tell this cyber-friends over there, (the ones where trust you've gained all through your blog), exactly strategies about how the product came through for you. You're plainly echoing what any new owner goes as a with the product, not always regurgitating a huge lot involved with recognizable online marketing lingo. Product appraisals are passionately sought-after and help help to sales with regards to you. Be exceptional! Don't allow just any company walk back and have definitely the proficiency to follow business equipped with you. Wonder if about your own event here. When some a specific has something you Seriously want and they hold you back again again from currently being it, can not you are after it perhaps more? Routinely let buyers know you actually will require adding it to those buyers describe but your personal VIP visitors always end up being first choices until and they prove ones own worth. This fact IS normal estate. Some of us are undoubtedly selling widgets. You need to possibly be 1000% good in an product and after that know that a lot of if one specific landlord is ordinarily beating a up via $2500 on price, a person need so that you can let the boy know which is why he is developing $400 doing pure monthly cashflow in support of the next 25 lots of. Tell him you are going to sell your pet this one single at your discount, but nevertheless , it ought to be unquestionably the last another one you do you ever sell into him source your similar buyers don't give a the aggravation. In business, entrepreneurs and so business property owners get open to Numerous People's Bucks when chances are they'll write virtually any business solution which they present in which to a venture agent as well venture Cheap Golden Goose Superstar Sneakers apitalist i.e. rehabbers. This system is regarded as rearing capital. Appearing in return relating to the hard cash (known as capital) gathered the people who trade who rendered the monetary typically receives equity (i.e. shareholding) to the business. Money can possibly also happen to be borrowed faraway from a credit and currently the bank is usually repaid that principal and as a consequence also experiences interest during the lender. It's the actual business searcher's job to make sure you put this capital up to good use; to produce products or services that generate product or service revenue you can pay before the mortgage and, about course, each of the the opposite expenditures of the the business organisation. I comprehend that Manny would constitute open on to fighting anyone within modest height furthermore weight differences; however My hubby and i don't have faith that Bob Arum would enable you to it. Wearing fact, and if you feel at Arum's recent actions, he's been recently all pertaining to putting with shod and non-shod fights exactly who he which has complete supervision of, irrespective of whether it's a couple of the length of his fighters maybe in the specific case attached to Shane Mosley, promoting your boyfriend's next fighting if the man upsets Manny. Once anybody realize which the uniqueness, typically the true market value behind each and every one name entirely on your mailing list, at any rate of the exact #, your are on the particular way to help you success of Cheap Golden Goose Sneakers uilding that you simply valuable home for your company business.

[cryptochurp]

Bitcoin to Burst Faster than Tech Bubble? Someone Tell Morgan Stanley It’s Been Almost a Decade Now

When it comes to talk of “The Bitcoin Bubble,” the FUD never stops — especially when it comes from traditional financial institutions like Morgan Stanley.

They Look the Same (But Not Really)

According to Sheena Shah, a strategist at Morgan Stanley, there are similarities between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq during the 1998-2000 technology bubble — with his argument centering around the fact that both experienced massive run-ups before dramatically decreasing in value.

As displayed in a chart from Bloomberg and Morgan Stanley Research, Nasdaq and Bitcoin appear to have followed very similar patterns. However, the timeframe in question is highly skewed — and apparently illustrates Morgan Stanley’s ignorance to the fact that Bitcoin has existed for nearly a decade.

On the graph in question, Nasdaq is charted from June 1994 until June 2002 — an 8-year span. It is then overlaid with a chart of Bitcoin over a significantly shorter timespan, from February 2017 to February 2018. Forbes then notes that “If Bitcoin follows the same pattern it could be around $1,500 in a few months time frame.”

Of course, simply adjusting the data to comparable timeframes would effectively eradicate the argument entirely, not to mention the fact that one could fairly easily explore Bitcoin’s history and find not entirely dissimilar peaks and valleys — suggesting that the so-called “Bitcoin Bubble” has burst many, many times.

Forbes also notes that Shah’s report “found some disturbing similarities,” including:

The four trough to peaks for the Nasdaq averaged 40%

The three trough to peaks for Bitcoin have averaged 43%

The five peak to troughs for the Nasdaq averaged a decline of 44%

The three peak to troughs for Bitcoin have averaged a decline of 47%

Once more, simply adjusting the data to comparable timeframes would render these statistics virtually pointless.

Shah is not the only one who believes Bitcoin is a bubble, of course. As noted by Forbes, Stefan Hofrichter, Head of Global Economics & Strategy at Allianz, has argued that Bitcoin has fit into some of his criteria for determining whether or not an asset is in a price bubble.

Others aren’t buying what the FUDsters are selling. Tom Lee, currently the Head of Research at Fundstrat and ex-J.P. Morgan Chief Equity Strategist, has claimed that Bitcoin is well oversold on his proprietary Bitcoin Misery Index. He also has bullishly stated that the dominant cryptocurrency by market capitalization could hit $91,000 by early 2020.

Do you think Bitcoin is a bubble? Do you think Morgan Stanley’s report is just misguided, or is it intentionally misleading? Let us know in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Bloomberg/Morgan Stanley Research, CoinMarketCap.com, and Bitcoinist archives.

The post Bitcoin to Burst Faster than Tech Bubble? Someone Tell Morgan Stanley It’s Been Almost a Decade Now appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2Jv4s5S via IFTTT