#not even getting into things like the prison industrial complex

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Studies about how giving people money is more effective at stopping homelessness than anything else are never actually going to make conservatives support UBI or anything like that. Under capitalism, homelessness is necessary as a threat to keep workers in line; you're more likely to accept bad wages and exploitation and abuse when the alternative is being thrown out into the street.

Homelessness is the stick that keeps the mule moving. The person riding the mule knows that the stick hurts it, that's the entire point.

[magdaclaire]

the fact that the grand majority of felons in the united states are unable to vote sends me into a rage like no other

[mantisgodsdomain]

Okay we're done getting really mad about bug game worldbuilding. If you are interested in seeing us get extremely mad about Bug Fables' consistently shoddy worldbuilding, then it is below the cut. We'll tag this properly in like a week so it doesn't haunt the main tag for everyone who might not want to read 1.8k words of a random author getting really fucking mad about shoddy worldbuilding.

We've done a lot of stuff with worldbuilding for Bug Fables. Our handling of Bugaria itself is, we will admit, not quite canon-typical. There's a lot going on, and not all is easy to work with. We know from the game itself that Bugaria is surrounded by hostile deadlands, making outside trade difficult and often-lethal - we also know, from being able to observe the in-game map as a human with outside perspective, that Bugaria is contained within a single backyard.

For the game proper, this is fine. It lends itself well to the "borrower" type aesthetic that the devs appear to prefer, limits the scope of the in-game map, and allows for them to do significantly less legwork trying to figure out how to design things. We, however, are a man obsessed with semantics, and we know too much about the amount of food and territory generally required for one hive of wasps or bees to buy into one suburban backyard that's... what, 60 square meters of backyard?

IRL honeybees alone will forage up to, on average, 1-6 km away from their hives, potentially going up to 13 km, and though there's been less research done into the habits of other colony bugs, it's fairly safe to assume they'd need similar range - more likely greater range, actually, as any form of what we humans call "higher intelligence" is incredibly demanding, resource-wise. Bugaria has four different kingdoms of social bugs, many of which would have overlapping needs for resources, combined with a whole load of other miscellanous solitary bugs. loaded into the space of a single backyard that likely wouldn't account for the range of a single hive of honeybees, let alone four hives of miscellaneous bugs and venus-knows-how-many solitaries.

In order to survive in any place, you need to fulfil the requirements of life. Food, water, and shelter are basic needs for a reason, and without access to all three, settlements are likely to quickly peter out. In order for The Hive to process nectar into honey, they first need nectar, which would have to come from flowers, which would be the exact same food source that wasps, butterflies, and moths would need, which clearly aren't growing in the needed

Put quite simply, it would be really fucking difficult for a space of this size to support the presented numbers of bugs. Plants are not an infinite resource, and even assuming that there's a density of flowers far beyond what's shown in-game, there's still predatory bugs to consider. Wasps and ants need protein to feed their grubs, dragonflies and damselflies need protein to feed themselves, mantises and mantidflies are obligate carnivores that cannot survive without a steady supply of prey- you can't survive if you never eat, and Bug Fables is incredibly low on lesser bugs that could potentially serve as food for the more predatory bugs.

Canon offers only aphids and cochineals as cattle, and those still wouldn't really serve to feed larger predatory bugs - and that's even without noting the ecological desert that results from only ever having a handful of enemies. We know that there are limits to what you can do in a game, but the second you want to expand on life beyond what's shown, you run straight into the lack of known prey and wildlife like smacking right into a brick wall. Roaches raise scorpions in a wasteland that seems to have only Mystery Berries for food unless they're trying to hunt Deadlanders, which we doubt are particularly edible. The Royal Blade of the Ant kingdom is an obligate carnivore, and there's nowhere he can go if he wants to buy lunch.

Realistically, we know that the answer is "the devs didn't really think about it". This game is built on the work of devs who persistently place "because it looks cool" over doing any of the worldbuilding work to integrate their existing story elements into the world. You only have to look to Yin to see just how many parts of the game are riddled with things added purely because Someone Thought It Might Be Cool, and no one did any further legwork to make it WORK. The Termacade is a living monument to the philosophy, being added A WEEK before release without anyone so much as communicating it was going to happen before it was in active development. 

Unfortunately, we are permanently obsessed with semantics, we can't stand "because magic" as an answer to important worldbuilding questions, and every time we have to do all the legwork to fill massive holes in the setting where no one ever thought that the answers to questions like "how the fuck do these people feed themselves" is relevant, we will be sadly prone to falling into madness.

There is no canon answer to how these bugs feed themselves. There is no indication as to how things that should be basic parts of the setting WORK. The bugs, in the first place, are written persistently as more People With Hats than actual BUGS - there are nods made to biology, sure, but the difference between a wasp and a bee is little more than a set of aesthetics and a silly hat. There are enough elements in the game that are simply thrown in without care of how they interlock that it sometimes becomes genuinely maddening.

Some people, sure, are satisfied with this - there is a madness that we have that we lack, a need for SUBSTANCE that is prone to driving us to inadvisable lengths hunting for a hint - any hint - that there was care put into this detail, rather than a single flippant comment. We have no complaint with things left vague, but we VERY MUCH have a problem when the setting is consigned to being little more than a backdrop decorated with random glittery ideas to act out anime tropes on, rather than something that should be paid attention to all its own.

We've said this before, and we'll say it many times again, but worldbuilding is important for a REASON. Your setting will affect your characters just as strongly as it will affect your story - your plot, your setting, and your characters are fundamentally inertwined, and to affect ANY part of the story will have rippling impacts on the rest of it. Your characters are not created in a void! Whatever structures created one person MUST still be present to shape others! You cannot throw shiny ideas on a canvas slapdash and expect it to turn out well! It's a miracle that the character writing in this game turned out as well as it did, considering that massive swathes of the setting are loosely assembled from anime without even taking the time to learn how certain aspects WORK in their home media!

We enjoy writing. We enjoy crafting plots, doing worldbuilding, tinkering with the little pieces of setting that we feel might create something interesting. We wouldn't be writing at all if we didn't enjoy it on some level, though we sometimes wonder if it's more masochism than care for some aspects. This is the trade that we have chosen to work towards working. Perhaps it is this that makes it so violently infuriating when we run into people who don't seem to care for that which we pay attention to.

There are a handful of aspects in this game that are well done. There are far more aspects in this game that are half-baked at best and actively difficult to work into the rest of the world at worst. There is a particular handful of aspects that are so poorly done that they could pass as active malice, towards one group or another. Unfortunately, as with many things, to assume ill will often overlooks the far more pervasive, far more common culprit of simple negligence.

Bug Fables, at its core, is a game made by devs with chronic shiny-object syndrome. There is little care spared to its worldbuilding, to the implications of its setting, to the implications of character actions, because the devs have never cared to think on it. It takes tropes from a hundred and one different animes without caring to learn what makes them work in their home context - just that they're cool, and that the authors want them in their own work.

It's something that we've been guilty of ourself, in previous works, but that only makes it easier for us to spot it here. There is an mirror of mistakes we have made ourself written on the walls, and it echoes with every step. We are the sort of author who learned to build worlds by stealing shards from different worlds and patching them into a new quilt. This is a work that takes does much the same, taking pieces from other works to make a new whole, but it makes the mistake of not spending the time to make sure those pieces FIT.

The mosaic on the floor is made of broken, disparate parts that are only partially fit together. The world falls apart more and more the closer you look at its shards. There are pieces of harm in this painting, pictures of pain, things put together and only barely examined. There is prejudice that could pass for malice woven into the threads of even the more comedic writing, an undercurrent commonly present in society and rarely examined. They've made an entire species of bugs into an incomprehensibly racist trope. Perhaps it's foolish of us to spend so much time and energy on a world that does not love us back, but we care for this setting, and we care for the potential of what it could have been.

The prejudice and shoddiness and pieces of poorly-thought-out and tropey writing in this work are not an act of malice. They are an act of ignorance, left over from a development team that wanted to add the latest shiny thing without stopping to think that their favorite anime tropes might have roots in something rotten.

Anyways, the reason that we wind up putting so many fucking footnotes on our fics is that every time we have to answer basic questions like "how does the wasp kingdom fucking feed itself" we have to rewrite, like, half a dozen tropes ripped off from shitty isekai anime, come up with an entire power structure and system of government that could potentially exist in this universe, write 2000 words of geopolitical bullshit minimum, reinvent animal agriculture, create at least one brand new species of bug, and then battle our conviction to avoid cushioning or avoiding the implied Fucked Up Elements that are Very Much Present In The Base Work if chronically ill-addressed vs the question of if we Want to include this particular brand of Fucked Up Bullshit or if we'd actually rather avoid having to reckon with the aftermath of yet another poorly-thought-out trope ripped from Trapped In Another World With My Smartphone.

[kethabali]

everytime i see a dumb bitch talkin about things are more dangerous bc there's not enough cops i just . have to sigh so so loudly because do you not read the news ever or use critical thinking skills or just Think about things in general???????? think back to all ur interactions with cops and tell me how many times they've solved the problem (doesn't count if ur rich and white)

[nothorses]

"the public education system is intently evil and all teachers are abusive because it was the worst experience ever for me personally"

guys, look, I'm legitimately sorry that happened to you. that's fucked up. it shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen again to you or anyone else. I'm sorry.

public school was hard for me too, at times, and I'm still suffering the consequences for the harsh grading, the arbitrary deadlines, the hours of completely useless-to-me homework. I could name a few teachers who have been pretty fucking terrible. the fact that nobody considered getting me evaluated for ADHD has had an impact on my self image and academic success that I can't erase.

and also.

I grew up in an area where education, in particular, is incredibly progressive-leaning. educators are working really hard to create and try out education philosophies and practices that prioritize kids and their learning, rather than teachers and what they think kids should learn.

My sex ed was comprehensive, and came entirely from school. My gay sixth grade teacher taught me about HIV/AIDs in a useful, accurate way. In high school, I learned about the way orgasms work & I was prepared not to feel shame for normal stuff.

I learned that Communism was not what the USSR actually practiced, and what it really means. I learned about atrocities and, specifically, the genocide of indigenous people committed in/by the US. I learned about the military industrial complex, the school-to-prison pipeline, and I learned about manifestations of racism specific to my local area. I learned about Stonewall, and the intersection of the civil rights movement with gay rights and disability justice.

My creative writing teacher taught us about LSD, and the real reasons we shouldn't do it, after a hilariously ineffective assembly run by some local cops. He spoke gently, carefully, and emphatically about his friends and his own experiences. Later in the semester, he read us a story he wrote about two gay men finding each other in a deeply homophobic environment.

My sci-fi teacher made me feel safe & seen as a kid with "weird" interests. My US History teacher helped me research and put together a 10-page paper on the modern relevance and mission of Feminism. My government teacher made me feel appreciated for the work I put into the class, and the thought I put into what I said in it, even though he disagreed with a lot of it. My sixth grade teacher bought me books to read with his personal money, whichever ones I asked for. My third grade teacher made me feel safe. My science teacher in middle school made me excited for and passionate about science, and saw and nurtured the effort I put into her class.

A lot of stuff sucks, absolutely. But I am seeing new teaching methods being tried out all the time, and I am watching teachers get really excited when I teach their students about the roots of modern graffiti in US black history & to question property laws, and just...

There's hope. there are so many people doing so much work to make things better. so many people agree with you on what education should be, and are trying so fucking hard to put that into action, and so many public schools- not just teachers, but whole schools and even districts- are really doing that work. so much is getting better.

I had more to say, about necessary childcare and trusted adults and outside contacts and time away from abusive family. But like. Please just sit down and listen to more people on this, and please talk to educators and education professionals about what's really going on in this big huge world of philosophy, science, and practice.

[enbycarp]

Hey all, it's Juneteenth. I feel like this is a good day to talk about folks in prison.

I'm pen pals with several folks in prison. I've been doing this for many years now, and i think it's one of the most important things I've ever done. I started because i was interested in prison abolition, and i was told this was the way to get started in that movement. It's also a way to invest in our communities. Because queer, poc, poor, and disabled communities are disproportionately affected by the industrial prison complex. It's our people who are being thrown into cages and often being forgotten, tortured, enslaved, and denied their rights. We can invest in our communities and participate in mutual aid no matter what our resources or ability levels are. Being a pen pal requires investing a pretty small amount of time and money. Literally, if you can write a letter, you can do it (and often, you can send the letters online, so you don't even need paper).

I have made some true friends as a pen pal. People who have offered me support as much as i have offered them. I have one pen pal who i can talk to about things that i don't talk about with anyone else.

I won't lie, it's not always easy. There have been a couple pen pals that i didn't get along with well. I had to tell them that it wasn't working and gently end our correspondence. I've had two pen pals that stopped writing to me after they got out, and i just have to hope that they're ok out there. And these folks put up with really hard, sometimes horrifying shit inside. It can be hard to process that. Though, I've known other folks with pen pals who clearly set boundaries about what they're comfortable talking about and that's worked for them. I've had a pen pal ask me to do more than i was able to do for them, and i had to tell them no. They understood. You have to be able to set boundaries in any relationship, though.

You get to decide what you can do to help a pen pal. For some of us, that's just writing letters. I sometimes send gifts to folks (mostly books from Amazon). For one of my pen pals, i look up info about magic the gathering or D&D because she plays those games inside. For another, i wrote a letter to help support her case for getting a shorter sentence. One friend likes me to look up facts about his favorite actresses and sports teams. When one friend was facing transphobic discrimination, i organized a call in to the superintendent (and we really helped her). Some pen pals are looking for romantic connections (they generally tell you up front of that's the case). Many queer prisoners just need a connection to their community.

Please at least check out www.blackandpink.org and learn about what being a pen pal can mean for people on the inside. That organization has connected me with several queer pen pals. Even if you're not going to sign up to be a pen pal, just take a few minutes to learn about it.

Thanks!

Ps: you can ask me if you have any questions about

[doghart]

i’m catching up on tsv, i think something that eskew prod does extremely well is using horror absurdism to capture the absurd horror of capitalism. it’s clear in eskew too, but i think it’s especially fantastic in the silt verses. the casualness with which sacrifice is discussed. how red lobster has a god that has and continues to take human sacrifice, and so do cereal companies, cops, and the grueling start up that has a “fun room”. it captures EXTREMELY well how it feels to live under capitalism, that you’re constantly bombarded with horrible things, discussed cheerily in a nice tone. the way it’s simultaneously numbing, hysterical, and horrifying. i think i was especially fond of how in ep 39, protest against sacrifice was taken as radical, a propostorus, idealistic thing that’s just so SILLY it’s not even worth considering, something that feels very real to revolutionary organizing/protest irl. i also liked how despite the face, when everything gets down to it, when everything is about profit, all people come down to are bodies. all capitalism is a gaping maw, and it eats the poor and marginalized first, but doesn’t STOP eating just there. the very literalized version of this, where the profit wheel (and all that includes— war mongering, the prison industrial complex, wage labor, etc) is given a very real literal set of teeth, but the body count is the same. so the electric company has a god, and so it takes humans sacrifice. do real electric companies not have a very real human cost? overworked and underpaid labors looking to make rent, or well off comfortable employees no less likely to get the axe under profit margins, or the blood shed when colonizing in the first place, in clearing the space for the electric company to move in. is that not also a very real human sacrifice? the commercial aimed at elderly people talking about “back in my day, we would just talk about all this human sacrifice and find a compromise :)” is so bleakly hysterical, but is that not very accurate? that you can put a good face on it, but in the end what it comes down to is that you’re being sold the chance to be human fodder? that there is no glory or honor on a battlefield or in working yourself to death, just mud and shit and bodies to throw at problems. idk! i’m rambling but it’s a deeply engaging podcast.

[whenmemorydies]

See this?

Carmy is about to pull this shit. He is really about to go in and likely blow up one of the only good relationships he has left from The Beef. After yelling at Tina from the pass. After stressing out everyone and their fucking dog cos he thinks this is acceptable behaviour if its all in service of a star?

This part of 3x03 Doors was such a jagged scene for me because of a few things (including what I've said above). What else got me:

Tina is someone Carmy knows, that Carmy loves (go back to their scene in 1x08 Braciole talking about Mikey. Go back to Carmy's soft "hey Tina you go ahead, you take the night off okay? I got you.");

Tina is an older woman of colour who has made the commitment to skill up so that she can work at The Bear after working at The Beef. Carmy has seen the work she has put in but in this moment, he pays none of it any mind. Imagine being T. Imagine how that would feel. Imagine how it would feel knowing all we know after watching Tina's journey in 3x06 Napkins. The thing is, Carmy doesn't need to know all of T's backstory to know his behaviour is unacceptable. The fact that he knows some of it and proceeds to act in this way is just more evidence of his white privilege showing its ass.

Carmy does not have the self reflexivity here to look at his young, white, male self yelling at this older WOC and see how fucked this is: how he's become another white guy in a litany of white men barking at workers of colour, not seeing Tina for the whole human she is but reducing her to a means of production. The racial dynamics on this show are so evident but don't get talked about nearly enough. I know the writers have crafted those dynamics on purpose because as beautiful a character as Carmy is, he's also a product of his environment as a white chef trained in a highly racially segregated field. This has repercussions for his relationships in season 3, particularly with the BIPOC characters in his life. @november-rising speaks about Carmy's behaviour in relation to Black women's experiences of love and professional recognition devastatingly here. Read their post and the reblogs.

While this shit made me so mad this season, it was also in character - as I've said here - for a white guy trained in fine dining to revert to established patterns of behaviour. Though, I'm gonna need the writers of the show to show US that they did this on purpose and have Carmy ATONE for this shit in season 4. Otherwise, what kind of redemption arc will this man have? This shit is hurtful to the BIPOC characters and BIPOC viewers of this show in no small part because white men the world over have a LONG history of using BIPOC people as a means of production and as a means of production alone. If you're unsure about this, please go look up the Transatlantic slave trade. Please go look up the history of colonial indentured labour. Please go look up The British East India Company. Please look up the forced labour regime in the modern prison industrial complex. Please go read a fucking book. And no I'm not saying Carmy is responsible for the slave trade (LMAO please hold fire if this is where your mind is going). I'm saying BIPOC folks carry with us a long ass history, an intergenerational history of this shit. But guess who else does too? White folks. So don't act like they dont.

This shit is also hurtful because we know how respectful Carmy can be. We’ve seen him in seasons 1 & 2. We know he knows what being a practical ally looks like (even if he may not have the language to name what he was doing) when he made sure to bring the staff of The Beef with him to The Bear and invested in them accordingly. We know he loves and respects them, none more so than Sydney. But there were so many times where he did not act like it in season 3. And when folks have got histories - not just personal but cultural too - as long and as loaded as we ALL do, actions account for a lot. What you do is the shorthand for who you are in the world, whether you like it or not.

Ok back to the scene.

Who comes in and simultaneously saves Carmy's ass and ANOTHER of his relationships? Who protects Tina and keeps the kitchen from exploding AGAIN?

Who supervises her sous chef like a fucking pro?

Sydney. Sydney. Sydney.

And who knows that he's in the presence of greatness but doesn't know how to articulate it cos he's not integrated, not by a fucking long shot. Who needs to attend some anti-racism training along with Al-Anon and therapy (so he can get the benefit of understanding his role in this system and get a better understanding of his own mind)?

Yeah you Carmen, you.

Better get on that shit before you lose the woman who is the beat to your whole heart another means of production to a chef who's going to pay her better, give Syd insurance from the jump and total creative control. Just saying.

[alwaysbewoke]

our entire political system is flawed, but

you're not going to change it in one election to perfection; what you can absolutely do is make everything worse in one election. also, you can acknowledge that the system needs work and that you want more without lying and pretending as if it has produced nothing positive for you. the problem right now with many people is that you guys want an instant solution. you want an instant fix. however, there is no such thing. there will not be one election or one candidate or one bill that's going to fix this. this is going to take long-term, strategic, methodical work for us to make it right, and i can tell right now that many people are not up for the task. they're too weak, but they won't be weak enough to complain, make videos, tweets, ig posts, reels, tiktoks, blog posts and whatever whining when shit hits the fan. they'll be the first ones howling at the moon and gnashing their teeth without taking responsibility for the part they played in the shitstorm.

here's some simple advice: pack the senate and congress with hardcore progressives. hardcore progressives. and then go to your local election and pack that with hardcore progressives again. but by no means should any of us accept any talk or strategy that gives the republicans power. at some point, you've got to stop playing checkers in a chess game.

however, the problem is this point of view should have been adopted in 2016. i fear that it might actually be too late because people played checkers in the chess game knowing full well that whoever won that election was going to have at least one supreme court pick. that winner actually got three and now has set this country back for the foreseeable future. generations are going to be feeling that pain. we missed out on critical years to address climate change. the voting rights of black people have been completely undermined. the educational opportunities for black people have also been undermined. discrimination against gay people has been affirmed. we saw the death of millions of americans at the hands of a global pandemic that was profoundly mishandled, and yet having seen and experience all of this people are willing to entertain the idea of allowing those in power who did all this to get even more power again. UNBELIEVABLE! people like that deserve ridicule.

if you actually care about black lives, people of color, trans rights, gay rights, healthcare, education, palestine, dr congo, police brutality, child poverty, climate change, restoring democracy, voting rights, equitable access to all levels of education, ending the prison industrial complex, women's rights, and etc do not entertain any talk about taking actions that will give republicans power. not in the short term. not in the long term. don't let your anger and your disappointment force your hand into making things worse for yourself and others. there's already been widespread voter suppression so if you think you're going to give republicans all that power and then vote to take it away from them down the line when everything is more to your liking, you are delusional. if you really want to change things (like for real, you're not just talking shit about "progress"),here are some insightful videos:

#FuckBidenButHellToTheNoOnAnyRepublican

[flyin-shark]

Well now you know I have to ask- why do you hate liberals?

Ok so the main issue is their support of capitalism. Capitalism exploits workers, greatly exploits the global south, gives capitalists (the people that own capital not the supporters of capitalism) way more than they could ever hope to work for. Literally look up the numbers on bezos and other billionaires it’s ridiculous. There’s a LOT more on capitalism but that’s enough for this post.

Besides their support of the system that exploits us, they fail to understand the connections between capital and the state. They’ll say things like “vote with your dollar” without realizing that people with more dollars get more votes. On a larger scale this means governments are going to side with capital. The nature of power structures is to centralize like this.

Liberals will say they support bipoc and queer folk without caring to change the power structures oppressing us. Sure they’ll sell rainbow pins on Etsy but they aren’t going to address the structural changes that need to be made to protect queer people. Sure they’ll support black artists but we can’t do anything about the prison industrial complex. Maybe putting even more cops on the streets will help /s

So much of what they do is performative. Look we painted Black Lives Matter on a street. We solved racism. Look all the corporations used rainbow logos for a month. Homophobia and transphobia have been defeated. Like at least you sound like you want change but only enough to keep enough people happy so the status quo doesn’t change.

Last point I’ll mention is that liberals always expect compromise. One side is fighting for their rights and the other wants that side dead. Liberals come in saying come on guys let’s be civil here. Surely there’s some compromise we can come to. My existence and the rights of others are not up for debate. Compromise is what got us the three fifths rule where African Americans were counted as 3/5 of a person. Compromise gets us the 13th amendment which outlawed slavery except in cases of s crime. Which then leads to the prison industrial complex and the prison population of today. Compromise is what gave the right the Supreme Court, ending abortion rights for millions of people.

That’s a good portion of why I don’t like liberals. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

[number1villainstan]

i'm not sure if u saw that "why do ppl have sympathy for overhaul" reddit post but man. just the question itself made me feel like. a crying, broken man appears before u, & if u can feel nothing but hate for him even though hes so obviously suffering, maybe ur the "evil" one, yknow? like sure i get if ppl hate him but. the whole "he deserved to suffer & be treated w nothing but contempt forever" just makes me kinda sad. what do u think wld have been a better ending for him? (from kainagant)

(hi kainagant! nearly thought you were a random anon lmao, glad to see it's you)

No, I haven't seen that Reddit post--I don't have a Reddit account (anymore) and even when I do visit it's not the fandom side of Reddit. But from what you're saying (and what I've seen from other Chisaki fans' reactions) it's probably a good thing that I haven't seen it, because it sounds like the sort of thing that would make me incredibly pissed off for far too long. Anger issues kinda suck sometimes, especially when you can't find a good outlet.

a crying, broken man appears before u, & if u can feel nothing but hate for him even though hes so obviously suffering, maybe ur the "evil" one, yknow?

Real. Some people are so fucking quick to thirst over torturing and dehumanizing people when they've done something to "deserve" it. Like--I really shouldn't use this to judge what their stance is on things like prison abolition IRL, but the way they react to this--the way they judge this--does not give me any hope for them. Folks, we are not making it out of the punitive-justice prison-industrial complex or ableism with this.

what do u think wld have been a better ending for him?

That's hard, especially since I haven't read the manga or watched the anime past like halfway through Gentle Criminal's arc, but I think probably a better ending--that would have fit better with BnHA's professed theme of "saving everyone"--would have been to show him clean-shaven, somewhat more mentally stable, with a sympathetic doctor or parole officer or pro hero there with him to talk about options for the next step in his life. Maybe mention something about how Pops is doing well, but Chisaki doesn't want to see him anymore now that he's awake. Something that shows Chisaki not as just the narrative's punching bag or as a tragedy but as someone who, yes, hit rock bottom, but is now committed to the long path of healing. Especially if we see him smile in the end.

What about you? What ending for Chisaki would you have preferred?

[astercontrol]

Thinking about what Tron's life and work could have been like inside the Encom-system, post-1982.

We know he's a security program, designed to monitor the System's connections to other systems and stop anything harmful passing between. He might also be able to take on security roles within the system; we see the Flynn's Grid version of him doing some of that prior to the coup.

Now, this job definitely has the potential to become very corrupt (see, border security and IRL cops in general)

But even in an ideal world that could abolish the carceral system and policing as we know it, there would still be a need for security in some form

Now I like to imagine that Tron is more like what would replace cops, in this sort of ideal rehabilitative-justice-focused world.

Because I imagine that what passes for a "justice system," inside a well-functioning computer, is much more rehabilitative and preventative than punitive. 

I mean, ideally you set up conditions in your computer so that they don't lead to any of your software causing problems. Meaning the programs all have access to what they need (sufficient power and memory, sufficient downtime to rest, whatever maintenance is necessary). 

This is somewhat analogous to how a better human society could prevent a lot of crime just by giving people a better life. But of course it can't prevent all of it; some people will still want to cause harm for whatever reason.

And if a program does start making trouble, the ideal solution is to troubleshoot until the problem is fixed-- which sorta equates to rehabilitation of criminals.

Carceral state would be just keeping the program inactive and never using it, I guess. Death penalty would be uninstalling and deleting.

The MCP's approach was to lock up programs who wouldn't obey him, and force them to do things for him. Regardless of their original function, they'd become half-zombified office workers like Yori, or gladiators fighting battles like Tron (which is implied to be work that helps keep the Arcades running and bringing in profit for Encom). 

Programs clearly don't like being made to do jobs other than the one they're designed for. My own impression of the Encom system is that the programs there are self-motivated to fulfill their intended function, at least as much as humans are motivated by money. The right job is its own reward. The wrong job would feel like forced unpaid labor.

So, the MCP's system was basically the prison industrial complex. (Including the high risk of death at work.) 

Tron helped abolish that.

And what would be set up in its place... Well, that depends on the Users, under the new direction of Flynn (who'd presumably want to at least try for something more considerate of the rights of programs, now that he sees them as people).

I don't think it should be Tron's choice, because I think Tron does have an inherent violent side. The way we see him fighting, when pitted against multiple red warriors, makes me think he is very capable of turning off any thoughts like "this program is also a victim of the MCP in a way, he wasn't really given any better choices; why don't we try and rehabilitate him?"

Tron was focused on his own survival, and he knew when fighting to the death was the only option. Charitable thoughts couldn't be acted on at the time and would only get in the way. So he just became a ruthless killer in those moments.

And I don't totally trust that his anger against those red warriors would go away after the MCP was defeated. I wouldn't trust Tron himself to choose rehabilitative justice.

But luckily, he listens to his User. And I think Alan would rather turn a misbehaving program to the good side than destroy it. (The "Klaatu Barada Nikto" quotation on his cubicle wall was basically a command to a violent AI to stop causing harm and to help instead. I even have a sort of half-headcanon that this is what he actually did for the MCP.)

If Alan got the chance to guide Tron into becoming the System's regular security, I think he'd make sure to include directives for rehabilitation as much as possible. 

There are of course a lot of questions about just how this would apply to programs, and whether it would even be possible to introduce anything like what would be an ethical system for humans. (What does he do with viruses and malware? If their programmed purpose is to harm the system, would rehabilitating them into helpful work be as traumatic for them as what the MCP did? Is the death penalty sometimes the most merciful option for programs? These may be deeper questions than I want to get into.)

But I think the best thing for Tron would be to act as part of a well-paired suite of security software.

And this may include the Guards we see under MCP's control, if they can be rehabilitated enough. But I also think Tron would benefit from some advisors he is personally close to.

It already makes sense to include Yori in his team, because while Tron's main purpose is to monitor what comes into the system, Yori (as the software for the digitizing laser) is in charge of perhaps the most concerning route by which things can enter the system. She'll have insights he would not think of.

And so will Ram-- the guy who was made to do actuarial work for an insurance company, but who clearly cares too much about helping people for that to be a really good fit, once his naive idealism about insurance companies inevitably falls apart. 

He can't change his purpose. But his purpose is versatile -- actuaries calculate probabilities, and that's good for a lot of stuff. I think he'd be a perfect security advisor for Tron. Risk assessment, but with a lot of compassion mixed in.

After the events of Legacy, in "The Next Day," Alan asked Roy to act as Encom's "moral compass." I like to imagine that the rerezzed Encom version of Ram had been doing that for a long time already.

[berrymascarpone]

A Brief Tour of Seireitei

So I’ve been reading the Soul Society Arc again after finishing the Bleach manga a while back and now that all the plot tension has already been resolved, I’ve found myself looking at the scenery. And by scenery, I mean the architecture and city planning of Seireitei.

Now, the good thing is Ichigo and co really get around a bit in this arc, not to mention the cuts to the captains and lieutenants doing there thing in the background, so here’s a brief tour following along with them.

The first thing we notice about Seireitei is that clearly they spend much more on infrastructure in the city than in Rukongai. That is where all your tax money has gone folks, to nice tiled roofs, whitewashed walls, fancy windows.

But also, considering the magically appearing wall that just straight up falls from the sky when you go near, it’s probably a good idea to have some way of demarcating where you have to stay away from in order to stay un-pancaked.

(Also electrical wires? Just what era is their infrastructure from?)

It looks like there’s a pretty open layout here, but later on, the streets get more labrythine, with long walls splitting the space into narrow roadways.

However, from above, it appears that these complicated halls are actually just blocks of mazes, separated by normal roads. Are they compounds? Is this just the geography of that particular area? Are they individual houses? Who lives there?

And although the streets look pretty narrow from these angles, another ground angle shows that they are actually pretty wide. But also, you might run into something like, uh this.

We all knew the Gotei 13 was pretty fucked up, but uh, yeah. Makes me wonder which earlier generation captain had this installed.

Anyways, after destroying many of those walls, Ichigo and Ganju eventually make it below the uniformly tiled floors to make it to the sewers (or are they storm drains? They feel very tall for sewers.

These remind me somewhat of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, which I had to look up once for a fic, so that makes me think it’s more of a stormwater system. Also, apparently they don’t mark their manhole covers in Seireitei? And it looks kinda fragile too, what with only that tiny little ledge to hold up such a big board. What happens when a particularly heavy person (and we know there are some real big boys in the Gotei 13) steps on one of these tiles and falls through? I imagine Komamura and Zaraki Kenpachi have learned to memorize the locations these manhole covers, or they accidentally step through the floor every few blocks.

Once we exit the underwater canals, we arrive at Sōkyoku Hill, the most scenic view of Seireitei, and also where they lock up and execute their prisoners. I guess they would at least get a good view before they die?

Not only is it on a hill, but the architecture takes quite a brutalist turn. All square blocks and flat tops (except for the nice little row of towers up there? And also a few sky bridges, for the scenic view.)

As a side note, this area appears to be surrounded by several warehouse-like buildings. Not sure if it’s actual warehouses, and this is the prison/industrial district of Seireitei, but interesting to note.

But also, when Ichigo and Renji absolutely wreck a few of these buildings in their fight they appear to contain…absolutely nothing?? Like not even some broken furniture, or debris.

Anyways, after a bit of regrouping back in the underground waterways (which also have some room-like areas a bit further away from the water…for…reasons…) our heroes finally venture forth into brutalist architecture wonderland.

I assume this area is a prison complex, since, judging by the texture, it appears to be made out of Sekkiseki, the reiatsu-suppressing stone. Also interesting to note, the buildings appear to be placed haphazardly, at odd angles. Is this to confuse invaders and/or escaped prisoners? Is it because their city planning consisted of Yamamoto scribbling out something on a napkin? Is it because this hill was one big sekkiseki deposit and they had to carve buildings out from the ground, so their planning had to follow the natural contours? And why is there absolutely no one here? Like the empty warehouses, this area seems to be abandoned. Are there not enough prisoners, or did the last crisis in Soul Society wipe out enough people that there aren’t enough to fill these houses? Is it like those fake buildings that are actually subway stations and the top part is just for show?

Anyways, it seems like I’ve hit the limit on the number of images I can add on the mobile app, so I’ll continue in a part 2 once I get around to it.

[nothorses]

With the whole voting shit going on, I've felt incredibly conflicted about voting. But recently, the opinion I've landed on is similar to Kelly Hayes. I am roughly paraphrasing here, but she said that it's incredibly insensitive to ask Arab Americans and Palestinians, people who have outright LOST their family members due to the US's unrestricted military aid to israel and the genocide, to vote. That makes sense to me. I absolutely agree with that, and I don't think it makes sense to yell at these people to vote. BUT, Kelly then goes on to say that the argument that if you're voting, you're got blood on your hands, is just wrong. Because living in America, benefiting from the imperialistic violence, we always had blood on our hands, and no one's breaking solidarity with marginalized folks simply by voting. You break solidarity when you justify your politicians' horrible actions, such as police brutality, prison industrial complex, etc. But in this case, when someone acknowledges these politicans aren't gonna get the real important shit done, only direct action works, and you're voting to choose your opponent--I don't think that's breaking solidarity. Or throwing people under the bus. The truth is even if every leftist didn't engage with electoral politics at all, and spent it on mutual aid, community defense, these things--there would still be a president until we somehow destroy settler nation America. And that president will destroy public infrastructure and attack marginalized folks a lot quicker if he isn't a democrat, because the Republicans are literally just--fascist party.

I dislike people whose only engagement with politics is to vote shame. But I also think it's just a wrong take to act like people who vote, who aren't vote shaming, who do think it's harm reduction, are all idiotic liberals. As we try to mobilize against imperialism, it's crucial to try to pick our enemies when we can. I understand the fact our wealth, the fact we have these healthcare systems, this public ifnrastructure and government assistance even if it's nowhere near enough--it comes from blood of the Global South. And there is a real problem with liberals who care about these elections only to maintain their quality of life, don't care about imperialism and global oppression at all. These people exist, and if we do start dismantling imperialism ina meaningful fashion, USA quality of life will drop. But people voting Democrat because they don't want the Affordable Care Act dismantled, want to keep their food stamps, their schools funded--they're not inherently selfish and breaking solidarity with third world folks. There's nuance here, a lot of nuance. Which is why I like Kelly saying we can't let electoralism destroy our relationships., because we are going to need to build, build, build if we are going to survive. I'm going to vote because ultimately it won't take me much time, but I also won't judge the people who refuse to, choosing to invest their efforts in direct action.

I also think the people who say voting doesn't do anything...they also ignore the nuance. I get it. I get the frustration. But as I read various perspectives, I'm starting to realize the treachery of black-and-white thing. Before there's a revolution, it's more likely we are going to build new things out of the old system, incrementalism, before we make any foundational leap. Again, this shit has nuance.

Yeah, I think this resonates a lot for me. And I'm not really here to "vote shame" either! I think I do have a similar opinion on it to FD Signifier, though, who says he thinks of voting like washing your hands.

You can choose not to, it's not the end of the world. But like. Why? Who is this helping? I mean maybe it's not my business, maybe you have a good reason, whatever. It's just one of those things that, y'know, especially if it takes you 5 minutes to mail a ballot in... it's just good hygiene.

And I think a lot of people say, "put your energy towards these other things instead!" without any intent to actually do so, and without any follow through themselves. And do you really need to not vote in order to do those things? Like is voting the thing preventing you from Doing The Revolution? For real?

At the end of the day, I'm not going to shame anyone for not voting. I talk about it because I think some people are misguided about how all this works, and I think some of the opinions people put out there just, like, suck. But it's ultimately not up to me. 🤷‍♂️

[lambsouvlaki]

For the Hell of it - 5 - Uncomfortably Honest

Character: Jason Todd x civilian! Fem!oc

Rating and Warnings: PG, discussion of past partner abuse (not Jason).

Word Count: 1,639

Summary: Jason and Andy talk about vigilantes who kill people. Andy wonders why he knows so much about these things. Jason wonders why she

Masterlist

Jason typed on his laptop, one handed, with his lips pursed and an irritated spike in eyebrows. His other arm hung in a grey sling with the ends of a bright red cast visible at his wrist. 

Andy sat next to him and restrained herself from grinning at his grouchy face. He had been in a rotten mood since he broke his arm a few weeks ago. ‘Fell off his bike’, he said. He couldn’t do his normal night shifts and was stuck doing admin in the meantime. She’d even gotten texts from him in the mornings. Things were getting dire. 

She’d demanded he join her in the library. If he was just going to be at home sulking over a laptop he may as well come sulk over a laptop with her.  

Outside it was raining, but there were no external windows in the study room, or any windows at all. The only lighting was yellow tinged from old fluorescent tubes. The old oil radiator ticked in the corner. She’d covered the large table they shared with reference books and loose notes, while Jason had only a slim laptop he hunched over. 

He took a disinterested bite from a stale croissant. He sighed and looked at her. 

“What are you working on? That essay on Dumas?”

She shook her head and finished scrawling out a sentence. “History paper today. I’m translating primary sources on the Reign of Terror.”

��Yeah?” He pushed his laptop away, happy to be distracted, and leaned his elbow on the table to face her. “How’s that?” 

“Linguistically fascinating. Thematically… really fucking grim.” She made a face. It was easy to forget the content sometimes as she focused on syntax and word choice. “I don’t mind three or four public executions, or even five or six, but I’m starting to think this is getting out of hand.” 

He snorted. “Not on board with the death sentence?”

“There isn’t a government on this planet I trust with the right to execute its own citizens. Or any other planet for that matter.” 

“Hm. What about the capes?”

She stared at him. “I don’t think they should be executed either? Jason, do you think-?”

“What? No!” He huffed a laugh. “I’m asking if you think vigilantes should kill people. They say that Batwoman with the red hair does sometimes.”

“Not my business.”

“Oh, come on!”

She shrugged. “What?”

He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “You live in the most cape infested city in the world, and the most crime ridden, in a suburb literally named ‘Crime Alley’, and you don’t have an opinion?”

“Do you?”

“I asked first.”

She sighed and leaned back. “You can be really intense sometimes, you know that?” It was like getting hit with a floodlight in the dark when he turned it on. It made her feel naked. 

His brow lowered. “Do you really not care?” 

She opened then shut her mouth. She hated the idea that he might think that about her. 

“What do you want me to say here?” she asked. “That I think criminals should be gunned down in the streets? Of course not. If you ask half the pricks in the Diamond District they’d probably tell you living in Crime Alley is evidence of being a criminal.”

“Probably.” 

“But what do the other vigilantes do? Leave you for the cops? How many people did the GCPD kill last year?”

“A few hundred,” he said. His expression was just as serious, but less troubled. She still felt like she was under a swinging interrogator’s lamp, and her indignation rose.

“And if you’re lucky enough to not get murdered by the fucking cops then welcome to the prison industrial complex, doing its best Hotel California impression. I hope you weren’t planning to do anything more than underpaid menial labour for the rest of your life, because you are never getting a better job than that. Congratulations. You have received Gotham’s mercy.”

“What else should they do then?” 

She heaved a sigh, letting old grief and anger fall away. It was hardly Jason’s fault. 

“I don’t know.” The Red Hood had saved her life once, and that guy had sure as hell killed people before. She didn’t know if he still did. The police hated him. That wasn’t the heart of the matter for her. “I never said I have all the answers. I’m not running around in a funny hat trying to save the world, I don’t have to have the answers. 

“Funny hat,” Jason muttered, with a quirk of his lips. He leaned back in his chair and studied her. “You feel pretty strongly about this.”

She threw her hands up. “First I don’t care enough, now I care too much? What do you want from me? And don’t think I didn’t notice you demanding my take while refusing to share yours.”

“I think Gotham’s vigilantes are too disconnected from the people they claim to protect. Association with the police has alienated them from some of the city’s vulnerable. I think the vigilantes forget that they’re criminals too.” 

It was her turn to stare. That wasn’t a stray opinion formed from half remembered headlines, that was a belief with conviction. Not that she was surprised he had a concrete position, she knew he was smart and thoughtful. For someone who, until now, had never expressed even a passing interest in Gotham’s crime problem, it was… not what she’d expected at all. 

“Yeah… I guess so,” she said, uncertain.

He ducked his head. He tapped a stray key on his keyboard.

She got the strangest impression she’d just seen something of his heart, displayed without pretence. She wondered what burned such an opinion into him. She thought about her own unplanned rant. 

He faced his laptop, idly scrolling through a text file. She stuffed a bite of her croissant into her mouth while deciding if she wanted to share something of her own heart. If she could bear it. Jason could mock and scoff with the best of them, but he wasn’t cruel, and there were things he didn’t make fun of. 

She screwed her courage to the sticking place and took a deep breath.

“I have a friend,” she said, into the silence that had enveloped them.

He looked at her questioningly. 

“Let’s call her… Stacy. She was abused by her partner. Not violently, but… it was still bad.” Her voice didn’t shake, and she was proud of that. “He controlled her money and made sure she had no one to turn to except him. She escaped, eventually, but not without getting an assault charge and six months behind bars for throwing a lamp at him while trying to get out. In the eyes of the law, he’s squeaky clean.” She bit the inside of her cheek. Her eyes felt damp, the traitors. 

“If someone in a cape and a mask had smashed through the window that night and killed Kieran for what he did to- to Stacy-” Her voice failed. She looked away to try and regather herself. 

Jason took her hand. She clutched on tight. 

“It probably wouldn’t have been right. But it would have made me feel safer.” 

“What’s so wrong with that?” he asked gently. 

She laughed and it was bitter and more pathetic than she liked. “Because he’d say the same thing. Why won’t anyone think of poor little Kieran’s safety?”

“Because he’s a liar.” 

“I know.” 

“Stacy deserved better,” Jason said, his voice unshakeable. 

She risked looking at him. He met her eyes and there wasn’t a hint of pity or disgust or discomfort in his face. He was calm. She saw understanding shining so staunchly in his eyes it was confronting. Her gaze dropped.

“I know,” she whispered. If she said it enough, one day she might even believe it. She took her hand back and sniffed. 

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, thanks.” She laughed weakly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all that on you this fine Tuesday morning.”

“I’m a big boy, I can take it. Thanks for telling me.” 

“I’m gonna get a refill,” she said, pointing at her empty water bottle and getting up. “Do you need-?”

He waved her off. 

She left the study room. She took a deep breath after the door closed behind her and headed to the bathrooms to wash her face and try to calm down. She was patting her face dry with a paper towel before she noticed she hadn’t even brought her water bottle. She laughed at herself, and knew without a shadow of a doubt that Jason wouldn’t call her out on it. She stared down her reflection, with her splotchy cheeks and red eyes. Kieran would have called her pathetic and melodramatic and attention seeking. He’d have told her she was misremembering. 

She smiled at herself and walked out with her head held high. 

She siddled back into the study room without a word. Jason was tapping away at his laptop and didn’t make any kind of fuss over her looking like a mess. She picked up her notes and tried to find her place. 

“What’d you say his name was?” Jason asked about ten minutes later, not looking up. “Kieran…?”

“Mcleod,” she replied without thinking. She paused. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Just wondered if I knew him.”

“Doubt it. He’s in Newark. Runs some stupid tech startup.” 

Jason grunted in reply. “You gonna eat the rest of that croissant?”

“All yours.” 

They fell back into the quiet and easy camaraderie they usually shared. Most of her drive to get work done had melted, so she just made notes to flesh out later on.

Jason, however, was deeply focused on his work for the rest of the afternoon. The staccato of one handed typing played a steady beat like a war drum.

Next>>

[raisinchallah]

you know im trying to read the traitor baru cormorant but idk i know im being extremely pedantic and this is partially from my knowledge of the development of modern psychiatry and eugenics and whatever but im like really having a hard time buying the level of centralized social control and policing upon peoples like thoughts to the point they have apparently a complex psychiatric prison system to dispense aversion therapy to people accused of adultery in a world powered by sail ships like who came up with these ideas how were they so widely implemented is there a falcresti darwin or freud and frankly the level of comical over the top homophobic control again i find very hard to believe when there seems to be no misogyny or even that extreme of gender roles like they find baru odd for dressing a bit masculine but nothing more there does not seem to be a push to get married there is very little discussion of marriage or anything surely if being seen as gay is so catastrophic for you socially and legally baru should be married as a ranking official or like it should be another part of the racist exclusion from society that she is not able to get married that its too politically complex to marry someone from aurdwynn and shes not considered assimilated enough or something to marry a falcresti man idk im sure this is what people who know too much about like feudal economics feel when they read most fantasy novels but surely in a world that does not seem to have the industry based around cities or speedy transit and passage of mail or other things to further interconnect people that moves the engine of social control from the local community to the state idk how half these things would be happening let alone like who wrote out a theory of evolution that was used as a basis for these particular eugenicist beliefs like idk again maybe im insane here but this feels so hmm idk how to put it but i feel liek this both comes from a lack of understanding of other imperialist ideologies and justifications for itself and idk the actual history and development of these specific loci of control and idk the other social and economic factors but also i just idk find it very silly how every single page someone is saying something homophobic or about the violent oppression of gay people like please be real here even some of the most homophobic societies on earth could not bother with the sheer scope of effort expended here and yet again they also seem to have zero weird gender roles or expectations of heterosexual marriage like surely that would radically change things ok whatever this makes no sesne