#other than censorship but that’s just a whole other can of worms

[aftout]

“The people coming from reddit are sooo much better than the people coming from twitter” blows you up with my mind ten million times . and then blows you up again .

[tangibletechnomancy]

Neural Nets, Walled Gardens, and Positive Vibes Only

the crystal spire at the center of the techno-utopian walled garden

Anyone who knows or even just follows me knows that as much as I love neural nets, I'm far from being a fan of AI as a corporate fad. Despite this, I am willing to use big-name fad-chasing tools...sometimes, particularly on a free basis. My reasons for this are twofold:

Many people don't realize this, but these tools are more expensive for the companies to operate than they earn from increased interest in the technology. Using many of these free tools can, in fact, be the opposite of "support" at this time. Corporate AI is dying, use it to kill it faster!

You can't give a full, educated critique of something's flaws and failings without engaging with it yourself, and I fully intend to rip Dall-E 3, or more accurately the companies behind it, a whole new asshole - so I want it to be a fair, nuanced, and most importantly personally informed new asshole.

Now, much has already been said about the biases inherent to current AI models. This isn't a problem exclusive to closed-source corporate models; any model is only as good as its dataset, and it turns out that people across the whole wide internet are...pretty biased. Most major models right now, trained primarily on the English-language internet, present a very western point of view - treating young conventionally attractive white people as a default at best, and presenting blatantly misinformative stereotypes at worst. While awareness of the issue can turn it into a valuable tool to study those biases and how they intertwine, the marketing and hype around AI combined with the popular idea that computers can't possibly be biased tends to make it so they're likely to perpetuate them instead.

This problem only gets magnified when introduced to my mortal enemy-

If I never see this FUCKING dog again it will be too soon-

Content filters.

Theoretically, content filters exist to prevent some of the worst-faith uses of AI - deepfakes, true plagiarism and forgery, sexual exploitation, and more. In practice, many of them block anything that can be remotely construed as potentially sexual, violent, or even negative in any way. Frequently banned subjects include artistic nudity or even partial nudity, fight scenes, anything even remotely adjacent to horror, and still more.

The problems with this expand fractally.

While the belief that AI is capable of supplanting all other art forms, let alone should do so, is...far less widespread among its users than the more reactionary subset of its critics seem to believe (and in fact arguably less common among AI users than non-users in the first place; see again: you cannot give a full, educated critique of something's failings without engaging with it yourself), it's not nonexistent - and the business majors who have rarely if ever engaged with other forms of art, who make up a good percentage of the executives of these companies, often do fall on that side, or at least claim to in order to make more sales (but let's keep the lid on that can of worms for now).

When this ties to existing online censorship issues, such as a billionaire manchild taking over Twitter to "help humanity" (read: boost US far-right voices and promote and/or redefine hate speech), or arcane algorithms on TikTok determining what to boost and deboost leading to proliferation of neologisms to soften and obfuscate "sensitive" subjects (of which "unalive" is frequently considered emblematic), including such horrible, traumatizing things as...the existence of fat people, disabled people, and queer people (where the censorship is claimed to be for their benefit, no less!), the potential impact is apparent: while the end goal is impossible, in part because AI is not, in fact, capable of supplanting all other forms of art, what we're seeing is yet another part of a continuing, ever more aggressive push for sanitizing what kinds of ideas people can express at all, with the law looking to only make it worse rather than better through bills such as KOSA (which you can sign a petition against here).

And just like the other forms of censorship before and alongside it, AI content filtering targets the most vulnerable in society far more readily than it targets those looking to harm them. The filters have no idea what makes something an expression of a marginalized identity vs. what makes it a derogatory statement against that group, or an attempt at creating superficially safe-for-work fetish art - so, they frequently err on the side of removing anything uncertain. Boys in skirts and dresses are frequently blocked, presumably because they're taken for fetish art. Results of prompts about sadness or loneliness are frequently blocked, presumably because they may promote self harm, somehow. In my (admittedly limited) experiment, attempts at generating dark-skinned characters were blocked more frequently than attempts at generating light-skinned ones, presumably because the filter decided that it was racist to [checks notes] ...acknowledge that a character has a different skin tone than the default white characters it wanted to give me. Facial and limb differences are often either erased from results, or blocked presumably on suspicion of "violent content".

But note that I say "presumably" - the error message doesn't say on what grounds the detected images are "unsafe". Users are left only to speculate on what grounds we're being warned.

But what makes censorship of AI generated work even more alarming, in the context of the executive belief that it can render all other art forms obsolete, is that other forms of censorship only target where a person can say such earth-shaking, controversial things as "I am disabled and I like existing" or "I am happy being queer" or "mental health is important" or "I survived a violent crime" - you can be prevented from posting it on TikTok, but not from saying it to a friend next to you, let alone your therapist. AI content filtering, on the other hand, aims to prevent you from expressing it at all.

This becomes particularly alarming when you recall one of the most valuable use cases for AI generation: enabling disabled people to express themselves more clearly, or in new forms. Most people can find other workarounds in the form of more conventional, manual modes of expression, sure, but no amount of desperation can reverse hand paralysis that prevents a person from holding a pen, nor a traumatic brain injury or mental disability that blocks them from speaking or writing in a way that's easy to understand. And who is one of the most frequently censored groups? Disabled people.

So, my question to Bing and OpenAI is this: in what FUCKING universe is banning me from expressing my very existence "protecting" me?

Bad dog! Stop breaking my shit and get the FUCK out of my way!

Generated as a gift for a friend who was even more frustrated with that FUCKING dog than I was

All images - except the FUCKING dog - generated with Dall-E 3 via Bing Image Creator, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[chacolachao]

Wait, quick question: Does Sonic know Infinite, since in previous pages, Infinite's face was... Looking rather odd from Sonic's POV. And in the new page, he called him "Mister Mysterio" rather than Infinite or a pun of that name. Or has things changed and he just calls him that for the sake of it. Either way, something I noticed

He knows him now, starting a gag of Sonic calling him any kind of nick name to poke fun at him lol. In my head I call him Infy (cuz it sounds like Anthy which is a whole other can of worms) and other than Finny I couldn't think of something cheeky Sonic could call him. So now it's changing every moment. As far as Sonic's POV censorships.... well, you'll see

[circular-bircular]

Mmm. I caught a few free minutes today to sit down and respond, so let's unleash this one, shall we?

Below the cut is an ENORMOUS ask, and a (incredibly long, as much as I may try otherside) response. It's about the recent "censorship" (???) drama.

TL;DR: Everyone is allowed to be angry in life, and policing that is kind of outrageously infuriating, especially in spaces where people struggle with things like emotional regulation! I'm allowed to be upset and express that upset, just as much as anyone else. Me expressing frustrations isn't "demonizing" people or attacking them, and I'm sorry if it comes across that way. If you feel I'm attacking you by posting on my own blog how I'm upset about something, or feel I'm attacking you by reblogging posts on tumblr to dissect ableism in articles you yourself posted... Figure out that feeling, or block me? Good lord.

I am not posting anything more about this topic. Please don't send asks about it, or I will simply be deleting them.

Okay. For context, these two asks (combined below) came in about 3 days ago. I was wondering if I should post them in a different format to slim them down, but genuinely, I think I want to present this as I received it. Here it is (with your system name censored, anon -- I recognize your concerns about harassment):

abt frameaclouds post :: politely + trying to come to the table not to argue but to point this out I dont think you can blame a blogger for seeing people reblogging their post from you legit screaming "how dare you" or "fuck you" at them and them then assuming that it's probs best to just block and keep back from that whole group of folks. I liked some of your additions and thought they were interesting as one of frameaclouds followers.... but the way you and others focused almost entirely on nitpicking LB Lee's stuff and some ways things were phrased (ex. - like point 3; all frameacloud said was that DID does not require trauma. you then... agreed and shouted at them?), and the way a lot of you jumped to calling it censorship and silencing when frameacloud refused to engage afterwards, really kind of makes it look like you're interpreting their post and actions in the worst light possible. it makes it seem like you're coming from a place of bad faith. you mentioned some cool perspective in your reblog, where you talked about how it came off to someone who had your specific background and knowledge and what u found the issues to be, but you haven't done the reverse: you haven't considered how your reblog was going to come across to an otherkin whose been around for a really long time and who is probably used to dealing with tons and tons of trolls who are going to take what they say in the least generous way possible, twist their words, + use it to belittle and harass them. like this is an otherkin who's been around since the grilling times and usenet days. and a bunch of people who seem to be in ur circles citing back to the post and kind of beating their chests about it even tho frameacloud is making a point not to fight or argue about it and to just block and move on...and u urself described ur response as a 'rant' which has a pretty diff connotation than 'discussion' or 'criticism'...well its likely to just project that kind of image further, that ur just here to flame war, even if thats not what ur doing or how u want to come across. ik that's how it came across to me and even after seeing some of ur past posts on ur blog that i really liked im still a little skeptical that this ask isnt gonna be either trashed mocked or taken out of context by u or someone who follows u. and also i want to remind people that like......... u r not owed access to anyone on socmed. frameacloud and any other blogger is allowed to block anyone for any reason. and its unhealthy to say that ur owed other ppls blogs and posts to platform on. respect other ppls boundaries without villainizing them cuz otherwise ur just opening up a can of worms to lie in. and ik u said in a later post that theyre well within their rights to block u but u also reblogged a post before that calling it censorship. so like... this is what i mean about coming off as disengenuous and troll-y, stuff like this is why even if i liked some of ur reblog i wont rb it. if i rb it and end up deleting it later am i gonna be told by others that im 'censoring' u? if i make a mistake and say something wrong in a tag am i gonna get jumped with a 5k word essay from four different ppl telling me how much i suck? its a hypothetical but only sorta with whats been happening on ur blog and elsewhere in this discussion. its bad form and its not super fair to frameacloud who still hasnt done legit anything yet but block ppl and i really cant say enough how much i dont blame them with some of whats been said n what sort of conclusions ppl r jumping to abt them. (also now that im thinking of the context if u did come across as bad faith engagement to frameacloud then they probably didnt respond to ur ask because it screamed BAIT to them cuz ik in their shoes id think the same. i mean their blog 99% runs on queue...the last post they reblogged that wasnt on their queue was ONE post on the 11th from their boyfriend and be4 that ONE on the 9th...all while u have someone gossiping in a prev ask that they 'often do this'. i can see frameaclouds POV)

like i swear im not trying to start a fight but can u see how this comes off. claiming u want a discussion and then thanking someone who is calling blocking censorship, saying that theyre in their rights to block but then posting an ask that says this blog that makes maybe like two or three original posts a month "does this often", the original aggro all over the reblogs that stem from ur first reblog in the reblog chart... like frameacloud is the one who blocked first but u have to srsly consider why they did + why they refuse to engage at all + what it looks like to ppl outside of the type of syscourse ur used to, like them and like me. if u want ppl to listen, then this isnt a good way to promote the kind of discussions u say u want. it just drives ppl away and maybe it feels temporarly vindicating but its not helpful. i want to see the things ur talking abt talked abt more but if its always going to be like that and theres no way for it to be less like trekking thru a field of mines where someone might blow up at u for something u dnt even realize is wrong at the time then i dunno

...

So, first off, I apologize profusely to everyone for how long-winded I am. I write a LOT, a habit I have always, always tried to break, and I now realize just how much it is to see thousands of words in response to things. This is nearly 1k of words I woke up to right before leaving for my vacation. Talk about wild to read right after waking up. (I also apologize because what follows is similarly so long winded and I cannot figure out how to not do this).

I attempted to write up my response. Took a full day and a half, writing and writing and writing. And here's the thing, I wrote around 3k words trying to explain my perspective, trying to acknowledge what I agreed and disagreed with from your asks, from your perspective, and just...

Dude, I am so fucking done with this shit. Not your asks in particular, but with syscourse in general.

This ask presents me with a damned if I do, damned if I don't scenario. I could leave it to rot in my inbox, but then I'm a hypocrite for not engaging with discussions about things, which is what I say I want people to do. I could finish writing up my 3k+ word response, but then my words are going to be twisted as they always are because I'm long winded and I am just trying my best to (probably over)explain myself.

Or... I can just. Explain as briefly as possible here what I'm feeling, thinking, and doing.

So... Here goes my best shot.

One:

First and foremost, I could care less at this point about frameacloud. Good fucking lord, I have tried to keep their username in my head through all of this, but it's genuinely so hard and I just end up scrolling up. I have never interacted with this user before this, and I clearly won't be again. My beef is not with them. I could care less about this user or their business; they are a tumblr user who exists. Wow!

My upset was about how the conversation was cut off. That's all. That's it. Wow, it sucks how all conversations are cut off when people block others for any reason. I hate how long MY blocklist is, strictly for my mental health. I hate how many people I have to block to keep myself healthy, because it cuts off communication. Is it... condemning myself to saying, "It's a shame that they cut off communication like that" when I've blocked plenty of very vocal syscoursers?

No. As I've said numerous times through all this, people should be able to block whoever they want. Even if I talk about how upsetting that may be, I mean absolutely no ill will to the person who literally should not know I'm talking about how upset I am, because said person has me blocked.

Two:

I don't care why they blocked me. Maybe they personally hate me, maybe they heard about me from who-is-page or whoever (I know I've bumped heads with them in the past once or twice before), maybe they thought I was a troll, maybe they thought I was overly angry, whatever-

That literally means nothing to me other than " :( Fucking goddamn it, that means my response will be hidden."

What I am upset about isn't that they blocked me; I'm upset that the conversation was cut short and hidden in all aspects. By that I mean, I don't care I was blocked and hidden; I care that every single user who reblogged either me or SAS's reply was also hidden. Like. Every single tag was. I don't know if that's tumblr's doing, or OPs doing, or what have you, but again -- it doesn't matter.

All I'm saying is "damn, buddy, that sucks."

Three:

They didn't respond to my ask, and I mentioned that in my follow up post to show I tried to reach out genuinely. I didn't want people to think I was posting this without trying to reach out originally. That was all. It was once again me complaining that the conversation was completely cut off, regardless of the reason why it was cut off.

And here's where I'll address the elephant that I see, or at least the first one.

I'm allowed to be however angry I want on my blog, on my posts, and in my life. I'm allowed to shout, curse, and be pissed off. And no, they don't need to engage with it, and no, I don't need to be happy about that fact.

This is a tumblr blog, sir.

I'm not a medical professional or a debater on a stage in front of a podium. I'm a 26 year old trauma survivor who got upset about a fucking severely ableist post. I think I should be allowed to be a bit pissy about it.

Being told so frequently recently that I need to "be nice to convince people" is such whiplash, because less than a year ago, I was that person. I was the person telling everyone to let go of their anger, to be nice to convince the other side, that everyone needs to be polite. I did this so much that I literally was known as the Respectability Politics Syscourser. That was a legitimate label I used. I was told so often that I was a filthy centrist and that I was worse than homophobic bigots because I was trying to get everyone to just be nice to each other. I got fucking harassed for simply posting "Everyone should respect each other" to the syscourse tags.

Is that healthy?

A topic I discuss most frequently with my therapist at the moment is reclaiming anger. I struggle severely with loyalty and fawning, convinced that if I show any negative emotion whatsoever, I'll be hurt and shoved aside and abandoned by those I love. (Ouch). Here's just a few things I've learned in the past year or so:

Anger is the part of you that knows you deserve better.

Anger is a form of self-love.

Anger is a secondary emotion; what emotion lies under it? (This is the one I struggle with the most)

In... Fall of last year (the exact month escapes me), I ended up blowing up due to how long I had kept myself censored and kept myself "polite" for others. Due to how much anger I'd shoved aside and kept under wraps for the benefit of others. Because being angry would "reflect badly" on me and my friends; because it would make what I had to share less accessible to others.

... I'm done with doing that. Therapist's literal orders. In fact, if my therapist had his way, I would not have a system blog, be part of any system servers, or talk to anyone online who has DID, because the fact fucking is, none of you are safe to talk to. It will always be a triggering space. (Thankfully, my therapist also acknowledges that he is a singlet, doesn't know my brain, and that I am my own person who can make my own choices).

If OP of the post decided to make a big huge post blowing up in anger and frustration at how horrible I am, good for them. If you block me out of anger, good for you! I do not care, because I will be happy you are doing what is best for you. I am happy OP did what's best for them.

And equally, upset that a convo about ableism was hidden.

That brings me to:

Four:

Out of all the shit said and reblogged through that little single blip on the syscourse radar (I think around 10 posts out of 20 in that single 24 hours), I do regret posting that ask about OP "doing this often". That one is on me, and tbh, I'm gonna delete it. It was drama, and I do try to avoid that. I hardly added anything to it, and while I know my perspective on why I posted it, I also acknowledge that it'll do literally jack shit to explain why. So I'm just gonna delete it and move on.

But in everything else, I was only lamenting the fact that every response was hidden beyond those agreeing with OP.

I thanked Candlelight (the first user to call it censorship from what I can see) for stating that the responses were all hidden, but moreover, for mentioning that they didn't agree with everything I said. I spoke on that post primarily driven by anger at Lee's ableism. I KNOW it was not a perfect post. That's because I'm not a Perfect Debater(TM).

All I wanted was A DISCUSSION ABOUT ABLEISM!

(Note: This is commonly seen as yelling; for me, via text, I see this as EXTREME EMPHASIS. Sorry it apparently comes across as yelling! I see it as yelling a bit in my mind, but I can see how the TONE is lost in those cases. Right now, my tone is exhausted frustration, but I see no need to ACTUALLY raise my voice at you.)

I think that's the thing that's pissed me off the most. Everyone and their brother wants to either agree or disagree with me about censorship. I have my own thoughts on censorship (it's basically always bad, but there's nuance on all things, is exclusion censorship, etc etc) but those are not relevant because nobody has even fucking addressed the ableism.

The articles -- linked by OP, but who gives a shit at this point -- came off as ableist. I reblogged OP's post because they are the ones who posted the ableist articles to the DID tags. That is how tumblr is used, is it not? And yes, I expressed my anger... at the articles... on the post that had the articles...

And OP hid those critiques for their own reasons... and I lamented that they were hidden... so I made a post about it while explaining the context ('Hey if you're wondering why I'm making this big huge long post AGAIN, OP blocked my response and everyone elses, and yes I have tried to resolve it, but this one's plan B for getting the word out that these articles and ideas are really harmful online')

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. You see why this is so hard to keep short, right? I surely hope so. There's a LOT to tackle here, and a lot of emotions, and a lot of different topics/nuances.

FIVE: RAPID FIRE ROUND (With Review!)

I don't care about otherkin spaces or know shit about them. They're triggering for me. Bluh.

I don't blame OP for blocking me.

I don't hate you or want to attack you for this ask, sorry you feel that way.

If someone deletes a reblog, I just assume they made a mistake reblogging it? Do people attack others for this shit?

I nitpicked Lee's response because Lee's response was the most ableist shit I've seen in a bit, and I did that on OP's post because they're the one who posted it.

I didn't agree that DID does not always need trauma? I explicitly said it is always trauma based? I'm so confused about that point.

Is "Ranting" seen as trolling now? I use "rant" to mean "Shit, I went on for a LONG time." It's synonymous with ramble for me.

I don't know how to break it to everyone, but posting online means it is inherently unsafe, and someone may attack you or blow up at you. It's the world wide web. It sucks. (That doesn't mean it's deserved or that I endorse that behavior; it's just... life).

Ugh.

At the end of the day, I just want to be able to have my fucking disorder and scroll tags about my disorder without seeing:

It doesn't need trauma to form

Traumagenic systems are 'obsessed with suffering'

Endogenic systems are 'healthy' forms of plurality (As opposed to DID)

Yknow. Syscourse in general.

And similar shit.

Is that too much to ask??

Anon; I know this doesn't address all of your points. I KNOW I haven't gone point by point like I wanted to. My original draft did that, but I only got halfway before hitting 3k words, and you seemed... really adverse to a long ra- ramble, not rant. Sorry? Ugh.

Just take this, and I hope this topic doesn't come back to me, because I'm kinda done with it entirely at this rate.

[amplesalty]

Halloween 2020 - Day 20 - Night of the Creeps (1986)

What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here

This is one I had marked down in that sort of horror-comedy genre akin to Return of the Living Dead but it branches out into sci-fi as well and is a bit of a love letter to that 50’s B-Movie era. Even the character names are all nods to famous horror directors, something that I was suspicious of when I heard the name ‘Raimi’ come up but it became increasingly obvious when the lead girl is called Cynthia Cronenberg. But you’ve also got Romero, Hooper, Landis and Craven thrown in. And speaking of directors, Fred Dekker directed and wrote this and he is famous for also doing the same for The Monster Squad just a couple of years later in 1987. I keep meaning to watch that again but I think I’d have to look into some sort of import for it because I don’t think it came out over here.

You know things are silly when the film opens on board a space ship with some sort of pink alien on the run with a canister in his head that he jettisons into space. These things look like E.T’s demented cousin and we get lots of shots of them from behind with their rubber arses hanging out. The canister crashes to Earth in the year 1959 and a slug like creature shoots out and into the mouth of a guy investigating the crash site. Meanwhile, his girlfriend who is waiting in the car becomes the latest victim of an escaped mental patient who butchers her with his fire axe.

Cut to modern day and a couple of geekwods who are trying to hit on the ladies in their college and figure they’d have a better chance if they were in the cool fraternity but they’re told they have to help pull a prank in order to gain admittance. This prank takes the form of dumping a corpse on the steps of a rival house so they stumble on the cryogenically frozen body of the guy who got his body invaded back in 59 who comes back to life and scares them off. The guy then wanders off to help spread the brain worms and set off the horrifying events of the rest of the movie.

Cue Detective Ray Cameron, played by blog alumni Tom Atkins who we’ve seen in The Fog, Creepshow, Maniac Cop and Lethal Weapon. Plus there’s Halloween III...oh, we’ll get to you...

This guy is great, he’s like a grizzled veteran who’s always got some sarcastic comeback or stupid nickname to call people when he meets them. That or his signature catchphrase of ‘thrill me’ whenever he wants to get the details on a case. He’s a bit of a fish out of water in this movie though as he’s very serious but to a absurd level where it feels purposefully overwritten for effect. He has this one scene where he’s confessing to tracking down the axe murder in the 50’s and blowing him away with his shotgun before burying the evidence. It has the same vibes as Phoebe Cate’s monologue in Gremlins as it comes a bit out of nowhere and the people reacting to it don’t really know how to react.

He’s ready to kick some ass though when the alien parsites somehow manage to find the dead body he buried and bring it back to life. It manages to not only dig it’s way out of it’s shallow grave but also punch through the floor of the house that was built on top of it, right in front of an old lady watching Plan 9. Tor Johnson, rise from your grave! It’s unusual for him to be making an appearance here for something other than censorship, even if it is just a cameo from archive footage. I don’t know why Cameron would bury him with his weapon though.

Turns out the best way to get rid of brain slugs is through fire so Cameron is able to get a police issue flamethrower through the station’s armory which is run by one Dick Miller. He has a history of being in charge of weapons that guy. Just be careful of anyone asking for an Uzi 9mm. Just why would they have a flamethrower back there though?! Is this the same police force as the one from Santa With Muscles where they had bazookas? No wonder people want the defunding of police.

I feel, like Tar Man in Return of the Living Dead, this guy is a bit of an iconic image. I’ve seen him around with his face ripped off.

This whole stand off at the end with the zombies being fended off in front of the frat house with the shotgun and flamethrower tag team is cool. Makes for a very neat poster as seen above and the overall look of it with the elegant building and everyone dressed in their pretty dresses and smart tuxedoes is in stark contrast to the carnage and bloodshed unfolding.

Pretty fun movie overall, the detective character helps a lot with his at times nonsensical one liners juxtaposed with his haunting past that he’s having to relive. I keep mentioning Return... though as I feel that edges the contest of horror-comedy as it actually brings a lot of the actual horror to proceedings with that intese feeling of dread that all the survivors are just fighting this losing battle, that they’ll never be able to overcome these indistructable zombies. Here though, with enough bullets and fuel, you can finish them off in the end.

OR CAN YOU?!

[nobodyownsland]

What is the problem with Trotsky? Would the USSR have been better off with him instead of Stalin?

I was asked this recently on another website, and wrote a whole-ass wall of text addressing it. I figure it might be a good idea to post it here too, for all you comrades out there (and Trots who are hopefully willing to listen):

So, for starters, Stalin wasn't authoritarian. Lets get that out of the way right now. Democracy very much existed in the Soviet Union and would have been even more expansive if Stalin had his way. I'd go so far as to argue that the Soviet Union was more Democratic, even during its decline after Brezhnev, than the United States has ever been. If you doubt this, then I encourage you to read the literature I just linked, because if you want to debunk me, you’ll have to debunk them.

When it comes to Trotsky, the problems with him and his ideas run a lot deeper than being simply "domineering" or “aggressive”. He had a nasty tendency to hold no real solid positions on anything, with Lenin once exclaiming:

"The obliging Trotsky is more dangerous than an enemy! ... Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion, and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators."

One moment Trotsky would be calling Social Democrats "fascist" allies of the Communist International, and then next he would be criticizing the Comintern for not forming a united front with them. One moment he'd say "Comrade Lenin has not left any “Testament”... All talk with regard to a concealed or mutilated “Testament” is nothing but a despicable lie, directed against the real will of Comrade Lenin" and the next he'd be saying "Stalinist censorship had placed a ban on Lenin’s Testament as well as upon hundreds of his other works". The dude was all over the place, to put it mildly, and really couldn’t be said to be a trustworthy ally of any revolutionary group.

But wait, it gets worse. In his book Black Bolshevik, Harry Haywood sums up the issues with Trotsky's theories themselves, from the perspective of someone who was physically present to witness the power struggle between him and Stalin:

"Trotsky's theories were thoroughly defeatist and class-collaborationist...

At the base of this defeatism was Trotsky's view that the peasantry would be hostile to socialism, since the proletariat would "have to make extremely deep inroads not only into feudal but also into bourgeois property relations." Thus Trotksy contended that the working class would:

"... come into hostile collision not only with all the bourgeois groupings which supported the proletariat during the first stages of its revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad masses of the peasantry with whose assistance it came into power. The contradictions in the position of a workers' government in a backward country with an overwhelmingly peasant population could be solved only ...in the arena of the world proletarian revolution."

Therefore, it would not be possible to build socialism in a backward, peasant country like Russia. The mass of peasants would exhaust their revolutionary potential even before the revolution had completed its bourgeois democratic tasks-the breakup of the feudal landed estates and the redistribution of the land among the peasantry. This line, which underestimated the role of the peasantry, had been put forward by Trotsky as early as l 915 in his article "The Struggle for Power." There he claimed that imperialism was causing the revolutionary role of the peasantry to decline and downgraded the importance of the slogan "Confiscate the Landed Estates."

Trotsky portrayed the peasantry as an undifferentiated mass. He made no distinction between the masses of peasants who worked their own land (the muzhiks) and the exploiting strata who hired labor (the kulaks). His conclusions openly contradicted the strategy of the Bolsheviks, developed by Lenin, of building the worker-peasant alliance as the basis for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Further, they were at complete variance with any realistic economic or social analysis.

Trotsky's entire position reflected a lack of faith in the strength and resources of the Soviet people, the vast majority of whom were peasants. Since it denied the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, the success of the revolution could not come from internal forces, but had to depend on the success of proletarian revolutions in the advanced nations of Western Europe. In the absence of such revolutions, the revolutionary process within the Soviet Union itself would have to be held in abeyance, and the proletariat, which had seized power with the help of the peasantry, would have to hold state power in conflict, with all other classes.

Behind Trotsky's revolutionary rhetoric was a simplistic social democratic view which regarded the class struggle for socialism as solely labor against capital. This concept of class struggle did not regard the struggle of peasant against landlord, or peasant against the Czar, as a constituent part of the struggle for socialism. This was reflected as early as 1905, in Trotsky's slogan, "No Czar, but a Workers' Government" which, as Stalin had said, was "the slogan of revolution without the peasantry."

So basically, Trotsky believed that it would be impossible for socialism to be achieved in a "backwards" nation and instead it had to arise specifically within Western Europe or the United States before spreading to other "less developed" nations. As Haywood states this is inherently defeatist, as he's literally saying that the entire revolution that the Soviet people had just fought for was essentially for nothing so long as western Europeans remained capitalist and didn't come to fight their battles for them. This idea of "We need white developed nations to come fight the revolution for us and give us socialism" is especially problematic when applied to colonized nations and oppressed peoples. It's dangerously close to the "white man's burden" ideology that dominated western Europe and North America at the time. As Haywood later says in this chapter:

"Trotsky's scheme of permanent revolution downgraded not only the peasantry as a revolutionary force, but also the national liberation movements of oppressed peoples"

Knowing this, it's not surprising to learn that Trotsky was a massive racist, looking down on Stalin as "of Mongolian blood", basically calling him the equivalent of "white trash" in his 1940 biography of Stalin. Like seriously, the first thing he does in that book is go out of his way to paint Stalin as anything but white, or at least not European. Thing is, he considered all of Europe to be a unified "nation", both racially and culturally, similarly to today's European "identitarians". Yet, despite this, he mysteriously doesn't consider Black people in the Americas or Africa to have the same nationhood, expecting Black people in the United States to develop leaders for Africa:

"The Negroes are a race and not a nation. Nations grow out of racial material under definite conditions. The Negroes in Africa are not yet a nation but they are in the process of forming a nation. The American Negroes are on a higher cultural level. But since they are under the pressure of the Americans they become interested in the development of the Negroes in Africa. The American Negro will develop leaders for Africa, that one can say with certainty, and that in turn will influence the development of political consciousness in America."

This is an incredibly eurocentric (or at least ignorant) view of Africa, as there are and have been countless African nations that were all either destroyed or attacked by Europeans. Many parts of Africa had established cultural identities that were systematically destroyed. His view completely lacks any kind of consideration for Africans as historical actors, instead clearly seeing them as a people for whom "civilization" is just beginning, and who aren't ready to have their own indigenous leadership, instead having to import it from the more “culturally advanced” Black people in the US. Also "Nations grow out of racial material under definite conditions" seems to imply that national and cultural identities cannot cross racial lines, and I hope I don't have to explain why that's a really scary and problematic view.

Now, to be clear, that last quote is the view of Trotsky himself, and not all Trotskyists. So I am not calling all Trotskyists racist, I'm simply saying that Trotsky was a racist, chauvinistic ass-hat, and his supporters need to be doubly vigilant of that attitude persisting within their ranks. Trotskyists do have a history of promoting problematic people and views (See: Marcyism), and had Trotsky and Trotskyists risen to power in the USSR instead of Stalin, it's doubtful that the USSR would have remained socialist for so long. Trotsky's thinly-veiled bourgeois and social democratic ideas, and the contradictions therein, would have inevitably led to a capitalist resurgence and the eventual collapse of the entire Soviet bloc. Should it really be any surprise then, that this is exactly what happened when Soviet leaders such as Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and to a lesser extent Khrushchev started parroting his ideas again? (See: Khrushchev Lied)

[cleaduvalls]

i watched “spy kids” 4 times in 1 week and here are my thoughts

carmen your nightgown is like 200 years old, get a new one

you clearly know this story by heart, you’re saying parts of it. why are you questioning what “take him out” means

a double wig should be more obvious than that

we can see that that’s a glass elevator. people can see you changing, ingrid

nice hat

why did you kill the swan

is that paul rudd???????

how are jets ripping pages out of a book

heart shaped parachutes shouldn’t be working that well

why is there a guitar on your bed. how do you sleep

i think the kids would have seen the track in the floor at SOME point

why is there a jungle gym in their house. i know they’re spies but who has a jungle gym.... in their HOUSE

carmen you’re a frog

i think juni just legitimately try to kill carmen

why are both parents going to school. is that like, a Thing????

juni how do you do that

who puts a video screen in the front seat

hey look its floop. love that guy

they’re not picking on you for the bandages, it’s cuz you brought the toys OUTSIDE your backpack. always put them inside. trust me

did his mirror just.... zoom in?????

h*ck yeah beat him up greg

do all the other kids hate him too??????

dang that hurt

“chief” that’s so white

stupid kid. his dads a spy

that floop doll isn’t even close to accurate

hey look its floop again. love that dude

Big Willy Wonka Energy

oooh skipping numbers i see. love that

why do the subtitles have “mr. floop” as his name. its just floop, yall

“sometimes in order to think big you have to think small” pretty inspirational tbh

oh hes fidgeting!!!!!! love that

woah what are you doing this is rated pg ingrid

i wish my uncles would tell me im shrinking. they just make small talk abt school 😔

this gradenko lady looks like jan from the office

hey its floop again!!!!! love that dude

yes juni. its a fire drill in your own home

these dudes have a jungle gym AND a pool. what the h*ck

why did you pull off your mustache to prove you’re not related. if anything that makes you more related. greg does that too

why did he put the mustache back ON

where did those boats come from

carmen says manual weird. man-yull

right, cuz adrenaline causes warts

“don’t touch anything” *immediately touches everything*

basic boat ettiquette: don’t shit in the boat. those toilets can’t handle anything

is that globe..... punched in???????

floop!!!!!!! love that dude

feet on the desk????? i dunno seems pretty gay

since when did carmen get keys to that

i might be wrong but i dont think thats every country

what does pressure have to do with positioning a laser

this floor is the best mechanic in the whole movie. reminds me of a richie rich comic i had as a kids

why did they not run into the wall. i wanted to see that

is the slide there when floop films his show????

HEY ITS FLOOP!!!! love that dude

theres a bunch of normal food like.... sour worms. why did they pick the slime from charlie and the chocolate factory when johnny depp finds the oompa loompas

thats a sick coat. best one in the movie

that was a good snap. nice acoustics

God what a power move. something thanos would say

listen floop i love you but thats not how you say research

fELIX NO

and hes gone. cool

did she kick the camera?????

haha author unknown. cuz hes a spy

why did you take that one specifically????? plot convenience????

he can still be a spy, just not a good one. learn to read

is that supposed to be a question?????

FUN FACT if you listen closely when carmen says “like felix said” you can hear a weird cut in “said”, almost like its a new clip

theres no keyhole

i think juni can read. why are you spelling it

did you have the floop toys in your pocket????

OKAY THIS SCENE WHERE THEY PLAY IT BACKWARDS?????? THAT MESSED ME UP AS A KID 

what do those things do?????

i can feel the pain from the fan blades

how did that break the chain????

why would you annouce that. they can hear you. just because they’re thumbs doesn’t mean they’re deaf

that’s a thing, not a place

FLOOP!!!!! ON A BILLBOARD!!!! love that dude

how are you slipping. shes holding YOU

YOU DROPPED HIM GENIUS

how do people not notice the jetpack dudes

DOES NO ONE CARE THAT CLOTHES WERE STOLEN

that’s a cute coat

why is the lady cool with carmen just... doing that

HEY I LOVE THIS SONG!!!!!!!!! AND THAT DUDE!!!!!

ofc you can’t think “straight enough” you’re gay

why is mexico sepia tone

when do you think juni had time to change and learn a new language

IF IT HURTS TO HIT HIM, S T O P

i wanna be on that merry-go-round

HOW DO YOU K N O W THAT HIS CODE NAME. WHY “MUST” IT BE HOMBRE

i love how junis just like “we already got a fake uncle”

LOOK AT HOW FLOOP IS SITTING!!!!!!!! THATS GAY!!!!!!! HE IS A HOMOSEXUAL!!!!!!!!

ALSO MORE FLOOP!!!! say it with me, LOVE THAT DUDE!!!!!!!!!!

minion looks like barry from friends

wait i lied this coat is better

we DO have uncles like that!!!!!

if your inventions are so good why is your font so BORING

hey wait carmen said that. hmmmmmmmm 🤔🤔🤔

glowsticks dont help you see like at all

the map looks like gallifreyan but its not. spy kids is older than the doctor who reboot

they go ZOOM

THATS NOT HOW YOU SAY MANUAL!!!!!!!

great job carmen YOU wrecked the plane

WHATS A REGULATOR

oh its just a breathing thing

haha pee joke. funney

where are the brains coming from???? that factory is Not Correct

if i were juni i would look back over all the floop’s fooglies tapes and see what the agents were saying backwards. once the mission was done, ofc

it took me like 5 minutes to figure out what sknaht meant the first time

SEE THIS MECHANIC IS GOOD BC NOW THERES NO PLEXIGLASS

WHY DOES NO ONE RUN INTO THE WALL

F L O O P  I S  G O D

love that dude

you discussed with the spy parents that juni watched the show. he just told you that you took his parents. you KNOW this is juni, why are you surprised that he watches it????? you already know!!!!!!

tbh i kinda want some of those colorful chains. they’d look cool somewhere

haha voice crack

no wonder your shows not doing well. those are awful times

why is there a sexy thumb nurse. why did floop make the thumb nurse sexy

use her first name?????? you’re clearly dating

!!!!!! THEY USED THE SAME TOOL MULTIPLE TIMES!!!!!! UNHEARD OF!!!!!!!

he cares so much about this show!!!!!! its so sweet!!!! love that dude

YEP THIS COAT IS BETTER, LOOKS A M A Z I N G IN A RUNNING SCENE

haha you killed carmen

ok this scene with the acid crayon is like my absolute favorite. something about using a crayon to escape and then floop (love that dude) opening the door a second later and then doing a double take. FAVE

wheres belize

ok so apparently its a country by mexico

no you CANT tell her you need to ESCAPE

we finally got a clean outside shot of the castle.... that place is wack

haha minion can’t sit in the hand chair correctly because hes STRAIGHT what a loser

hey juni HOW DO YOU DO THAT

minion you know what the robot costumes look like AND what juni looks like. dont be stupid

what..... what do you want carmen for, exactly, minion??????

floop is supportive of others’ art!!!!!!!!!!! love that dude

HE SAID “WHERE’S MOM AND DAD” LIKE THEY’RE HIS OWN PARENTS THAT’S SO C U T E

ALSO ANOTHER SCENE WITH THE GREAT RUNNING COAT

he says doppelganger beautifully

“its too late” that timing was BEAUTIFUL

you COULD take 500 brains out if you just TRIED HARDER. still love that dude

his control panel has buttons that spell “floop”

WHY CAN MINION TALK NORMAL

if its reversible why do you have it in later movies

carmen fights fake juni and juni fights fake carmen because they didnt have the fancy clone (?) technology

THREE TIMES!!!!!! THEY USED THE SAME TOOL T H R E E  T I M E S THIS HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!!!!!!!!!!!

nice censorship

HOW DID MACHETE SMASH ONLY THE CLEAR WINDOWS AND A L L THE CLEAR WINDOWS THERE ARE NO MORE CLEAR WINDOWS!!!!!! ANYWHERE!!!!!

wow nice 3 buttons thats totally how you hack

oh look they have all died

oh. guess not :((

machete you better rip off your mustache

HES GOING TO JUNIS LEVEL TO TALK TO HIM!!!!!!! HE RUFFLED HIS HAIR!!!!!!!!! HES GONNA MAKE A GREAT DAD!!!!!!!

wow no shit ingrid

did he leave his wart bandaid on the kitchen counter?????

ALAN CUMMING!!!! ON A CEREAL BOX!!!!

ok CLEARLY other people watch floop’s show, he’s rated number 2. kids at the school are gonna recognize juni and carmen. they better get popular

is that george clooney

well that’s not how it works in spy kids 2. or 3. or 4. or the tv show

[virtuesvaluesandsins]

Is there a sort of selection process for how the seven main sins are chosen? What would cause one to be hired/why would they decide to step down?

Well, most are picked via the classic interview process!

Satan, being the more casual sort of leader despite what most mortals would view him as, tends to keep an eye out over Hell to see which demons are fueled to punish those who have committed crimes against the moral code of living. The ones that aren’t just fueled by their own selfish wants and pleasures to cause havoc to anyone that breathes.The demons that Satan deems worthy of getting a spot within the Seven Deadly Sins realize that there are sinners in the world that need to be punished for their crimes against others who walk the mortal plane, but also realize that there are some poor souls who have been mistaken to be one of those who need to be punished as well.If there were to be a sin who just so happened to be trigger happy with punishment, even with those who at MOST would end up in purgatory for a bit, they would immediately be taken out of their position. Be that by word of mouth or by force (and god forbid they challenge Satan’s final word on the matter.)

In a nutshell: For hiring, Satan prefers those who take a moment to think about the crimes each sinner has done.

However, there are some outliers on this matter of hiring.Sometimes, Satan will take it into his own hands to create someone for the position he’s looking to fill. This would happen to be Wrath’s case. He was forged from obsidian and brought to life through hellfire and many months of (quite literally) carving his personality. He was made for his position as Wrath.

Pride is another outlier in this as well as he was a last minute pick off the street because Satan was simply running out of time and patience to fill the old Pride’s position. He was picked because of his prideful nature, obviously, but there was also something else that brought up his attention: demons somehow paid attention to this four eyed egoist. For better or for worse.See, Satan isn’t exactly a popular leader in Hell. He’s seen as too nice or too uncaring for the upkeep of the 7 Realms (which is FAR from the truth.) He came up with the plan that if he simply gave Pride the ability to just…entertain or keep demons occupied, he wouldn’t have to deal with constant backlash from everything in Hell. So…that being said, Pride was set up to not only be the “new Pride” but also Hell’s new “Media Censorship and Entertainment” demon.

Now as for retirement, that’s a whole new can of worms. Sins retire when their original meaning begins to change. What I mean by this is that what may have been seen as sinful in the 1700′s, wouldn’t be considered sinful in the year 2020.

An example: Gluttony originally was considered to be the overindulgence of food and other edible things because in the early years, food was in fact a scarce thing. Those who were considered “gluttonous” then refused to share food with those who were starving, thus killing the person who needed food the most.However, in 2020, Gluttony has become a much more broad spectrum than just food (I’d even go as far as to say that it’s no longer related to food at all.) Gluttony falls under if someone in general deprives someone of what they need the most.The reason why current Gluttony is the leader of a pharmaceutical company is because those who go there to be punished are generally those who saw the ill, the sick, and the suffering and decided to turn a blind eye to it and not give what the ill needed the most: medicine. Instead, those sinners placed a price tag on it and hung it over their heads for god knows what reason (I’d also like to add that this is also why Greed works hand in hand with Gluttony. Not only is this depriving of what people need, but it’s greedy to put such a high price on something that so many people are literally dying to have.)

Hopefully that makes sense…? (This will definitely be tweaked if this comes across wrong and such, so…)It’s a little hard to explain in text, really. Overall, sins retire when their meaning changes with the times, if you get my drift!

[joyofcrime-elinorhigh]

RWBY REVW:

** Disclaimer: When I do reviews, I make it my mission to point out both the good and the bad in whatever I'm reviewing. And I want to make it clear that me doing so is in no way meant to be taken as disrespect to anybody who worked on the show, especially the late Monty Oum. He was a visionary animator and it's a tragedy that he was taken from this world so soon. Anyway, with all that out of the way, let the regular review commence. **

**  **Hello everybody, my name is JoyofCrimeArt, and I've always had a particular fondness for web series. There's just a certain charm to online content that I don't think can be repudiated with other more conventional mediums. Unlike other mediums, web series have the most creative freedom to do whatever the heck they want. They don't have to adhere to studio notes, focus groups, or censorship guidelines. It's just a group of people, or sometimes even just one person, deciding to put something out there into the world. Simply because they want to see said thing exist. And I think that the freedom that can comes from that can result in some very unique and creative piece of entertainment that may not have been approved if they had been pitched to a more "main stream" outlets. Not to mention the fact that web series, when compared to film and television, are definitely the underdog. And who doesn't love a good underdog story?

 I've talked about several web series before, (like _Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared _and _Camp Camp) _and I'm defiantly going to talk about more in the future. However, today I wanna talk about a certain web series that managed to do something that very little other web original series have done. And that's break into main stream through sheer force of will. And that series is RWBY.

 RWBY, created by the late Monty Oum and produced by Rooster Teeth, is an anime inspired online series that premiered in 2013. Now in the middle of it's sixth season (Oh, I'm sorry. Not seasons. Volumes? Cause we have to be all different all of a sudden.) it is still going stronger than ever. Now Rooster Teeth had always been one of the biggest companies out there for online content, and have had plenty of success with their very popular Red vs Blue machinima series, along with other projects. So RWBY doesn't exactly have the same underdog story as most other web series out there. It was made by a studio, and had a decent budget behind it from the start. However, the thing that I find noticeable about the series, and the thing that drew me into the series in the first place, was just how different it looked compared to so many other web series out there.

 Animated web series as a genre is very much a dying breed. Sure, they were all the rage back in the early 2000's on sites like Newgrounds, and with shows like Homestar Runner and Eddsworld. But ever since the rise of Youtube and the algorithm shift they've become a bit of a dying art. (Outside of the "Animated Storytime Video" genre but that's kinda it's own separate thing.) Why spends weeks or even months on a three to five minute animation when you could just record a let's play or vlog in a fraction of the time, and get way more views in the process? And if you do decide to devote yourself to web animation than you gotta find a way to make it cost effect. This usually means short, comedic, easy to animate sketches. Often with some kind of parody element included to help get the viewers in. That way the series would (hopefully) become financially viable enough that more animations could be made. (Like How It Should of Ended as an example.) And this isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with the shows that follow this formula. But I bring this up to show how much of a contrast RWBY is by comparison.

 A fully original action anime inspired series, not based on any pre-established i.p, where the animation was the main focus. Rather than being animated in flash it was animated with motion captured CG. And despite all of that the series had new episodes coming out on regular basis and getting millions of views with every released. This series broke every rule in the book, and somehow ended up becoming insanely popular in the process. There wasn't very many web series like it. Now, I've brought up this series several times in other reviews. Sometimes I praised it, other times I made fun of it. Which is why I think it's time to finally put the jokes aside, and give my honest on RWBY.

 Now there is a lot to go over with this series. Like, I said earlier, there are six sea-VOLUMES out as of the writing of this review. And given that this is a story based show with a changing status quo, it makes reviewing the show a bit tricky. And since I wanna have this review act somewhat as a introduction to the series for people who are on the fence about watching it or not, I'm going to try to keep spoilers somewhat light. But there will be some things I'll have to talk about, so if you want to go into the series COMPLETELY BLIND without knowing anything, you should probably drop off now. And if there's enough support in the comments (or if I just decide to at some point) I may come back to this series at a later date and do a more spoiler heavy review focused on events of the newer volumes. But with all that said, let's dive right in.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x9zjk2MgVQ

The plot of RWBY is actually pretty simple. (GASP!-)

 The series follows a young teenager names Ruby Rose. She's a protege when it comes to the art of combat and dreams of being a huntress. What a huntress you may ask? Well hunters and huntresses are warriors who's job is to protect humanity from the Grimm? What are Grimm you may ask? Well Grimm are monsters that are manifestations of humanities negative emotions. Try to keep up. Anyway, Ruby, along with everyone else in this world, has aura. aura is used to channel there semblances. _WHAT ARE SEMBLANCES you may ask?! _Well there basically superpowers powered by aura used by hunters to fight Grimm. But then there's also Dust, which is not the same thing as a semblance or aura and is DEFINITELY not magic. Magic is a whole separate can of worms that comes up later. Dust is energy (not aura though) that hunters put into there weapons to fight Grimm. RWBY semblance is super speed and her weapon is Crescent Rose, which is a scythe that's also a gun. Understand that? Good, cause that's just the first three minutes. Don't worry, it's all very well explained, and not convoluted in the slightest. Anyway-

 Basically, the world functions like an JRPG. That's all you really need to know. There are random monsters everywhere, everyone has weapons and abilities, and they can equip the weapons with special elemental attributes attributes. After a chance encounter with some mysterious villains Ruby, despite only being fifteen, is selected to attend the worlds top school for hunters and training. Weapon Meister Academy, I mean Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, I mean UA Academy, I mean Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, I mean Beacon Academy! Yeah, that's the one!

 Ruby ends up getting sorted into her house-err, I mean-sorted into her team, Team RWBY. (convent, I know.) where she is joined by her half-sister Yang Xiao-Long, and her new teammates Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna. _Can these rag-tad team of huntresses in training learn to harness there abilities, and just maybe learn friendship along the way?! _Well if you've ever seen a piece of fiction before, you probably know the answer.

 Now, I know I just got done taking a ton of jabs at the shows premise for having so many similarities to so many other popular piece of media. But all jokes aside, I don't think that any of that is actually a problem. As they say, there are no original ideas. So taking some inspiration from other works isn't really an issue as long as you have your own unique execution and spin to it, which RWBY thankfully does. RWBY has this unique style and flair to it that's all it's own. And it really does help it stand out as it's own thing. Also, since it borrows from so many different genres and franchise, the series ends up being this really bizarre melting pot of concepts that I haven't really seen done in tandem before. There's elements of action, drama, fantasy, magical girl, superpowers, coming of age stories, giant robots on at least one occasion...and THAT'S pretty original.

 It's like the people at Rooster Teeth decided they wanted to make an anime, but couldn't decide on what kind of anime they wanted to make. So they just said, "Screw it!" and decided to do them all, And while that might sound like a criticism, it really isn't. I love how over the top and crazy this show can get. It's kinda part of the charm.

Now let's talk about the characters. I've seen a lot of people (mostly hard core anime fans) argue that the characters in this series are cliche and uninspired. And in my opinion at least, there both kinda right and kinda wrong. It's true that a lot of the cast do fall into the somewhat standard "anime" tropes. Ruby is the typical wide eyed genki girl who's greatest skill is her kindness and optimism. Weiss is the stuck up snob tsundere from an upper class family who has to learn the power of friendship. Blake is the quite bookish girl with a dark and mysterious past who learns to open up. and Yang is the hot blooded action girl slash cool older sister archetype. Basically, there's a waifu for every flavor.

 But like the series itself, the series makes up for some of these more cliche elements by adding more elements to the characters as the series goes on. These developments start fairly basic with things like "Oh, Ruby has to learn responsibility and leadership" or _"Oh, Weiss has to learn to stop being a fu*king BITCH for like the fifteenth time this week." _But as the series goes on we get much more complex and serious themes. From Ruby's history with her dead mom, Yang's struggles with PTSD, Weiss' broken family, or Blake' history of racial predigests. These are all themes that are tackled, and they are tackled well...for the most part. For a show that starts out pretty light it ends up in some dark places. But despite this it never deviates so much that it loses it's root, and becomes unrecognizable from where the series started. The series ages with the audience and the characters.

 In addition to Team RWBY we also have Team JNRP (Juniper). They're kinda like the "B-Team" of the series. However, they become more important as the series goes on, and are basically main characters in their own right too. They're's Pyrrha, a prodigy huntress, gifted with natural talent. She's smart, kind, popular, and a skillful leader, and is literally selected as the objective best student by the school's headmaster in volume three. But she's not a Mary-Sue or anything...she has problems! Like how people are intimidated by her because she's so perfect and...she's not a Mary-Sue I swear! We also have Jaune, the leader of the team. He's a pathetic loser who has no skill, no semblance, and literally had to lie his way into the school. So of course he's the one who Pyrrha has the hots for. Because wish fulfillment. There's Ren, a stoic but sensitive ninja warrior who, judging from his hair and season four redesign, really seems to like the color pink despite being...y'know, a ninja. And Nora, a hyperactive genki girl who's job is to hyperactive and generally genki when Ruby's not around. Also, there all named after cross-dressers for literally no reason.

 Like Team RWBY, while they all start kinda cliche they become more and more interesting as the series develops and we get more into there development. From Jaune's arc (Heh, get it?) of becoming a competent warrior to protect the people he cares for. To Ren and Nora connected tragic upbringing. To Pyrrah...being too perfect. Y'know, all good character arcs that really helps develop the cast.

 I don't know why I keep making fun of Pyrrha. I really do like her as a character, and her arc with Jaune is very captivating...She is a Mary-Sue though. 

 These arcs end up being just as interesting as the arcs the members of Team RWBY go through, an help make these "side characters" all the more interesting and human. Even if there not the stars of the show, I ended up finding this team just as interesting as our main protagonist, if not more so on certain occasions.

 And sure, the characters may rely a bit on common tropes, but it's all about the execution of these tropes that determine the quality. I'm not going to act like their the most complex characters ever made or anything, and a lot of the darker themes I talked about before have been explored better in other series. But that doesn't mean the cast is bad, by any sense. I was still invested in there stories, and felt suspense for them when I was suppose to. There's a real comradely with the teammates, and they good chemistry with each other. They feel like real friends, and that's what matters the most.

 Let's talk about the animation. I've seen a lot of people either really love or really hate the animation of the series, and I noticed that the difference seems to often be based on what standard it is being judged by. People who judge RWBY as a web series seem to be really impressed with the visuals and action scenes. While people who judge it as an "anime" seem to think that the show looks cheap and uninspired. And while I can understand the later viewpoint I do tend to find agreeing more with the viewpoint of the former. RWBY isn't an anime...

 _-**YES IT IS! SHUT UP! **_

 ...And while Rooster Teeth is a big company, but it's still not as large as other major anime productions. They obviously were on a budget, especially early on. And they were taking on a project on a scale much larger than anything they had done before. It's an all CG motion capture web series, featuring entirely new and original assets that had to build from the ground up from scratch. So yeah, or course it's not going to look as good as other animes. But I don't think that should be held against it to much, given the circumstances. Plus honestly, it's still probably one of, it not the, best looking web series I've ever seen. It's definitely one of the most ambitious.

 That being said though, I'm not going to be one hundred percent nice here. Looking back at early episodes, yeah, they look kinda rough. They still look good, especially by the standard of web series. But you can definitely see the budget show in some parts. It's clear they were biting off a bit more than they could chew in some respects. That being said though it is remarkable to see how much the shows animation has improved overtime. By the time we get to volume four, where a new animation engine was introduced, the show goes from "looking good by web animation standards." to "looking genuinely good by animation standards in general." I honestly really like the shows visuals a lot.

 And don't forget the action scenes! This is the part of the show that you can tell the most amount of effort was put into, and the part that the shows original creator, Monty Oum, was the most personally involved in. From the animation to the choreography, the action scenes are what gives the series it's sense of style. The action scenes are over the top, flashy, stylish, and such an array of pure insanity, and it's hard not to be blown away by them. And in a time where so many western cartoons are so comedy oriented, it's really a breath of fresh air to see an american action show with fight scenes as hype as the ones this show presents.

 The voice acting is also pretty good. Starting out with a cast mostly reusing actions known from Rooster Teeth's other works. I admit that there were some growing pains early on with the cast, but they really did grow into there roles pretty fast. And as they series goes on they get a lot more "high profile" actors. From the likes of Vic Mignogna, Aaron Dismuke, Chris Sabat, Yuri Lowenthal, and Cherami Leigh among others. All the actors do really good jobs preforming there characters, for the most part. If I had to nitpick any performances though, and these are nitpicks mind you, would be the performances of Ruby and Pyrrah. Maybe it's just me, but I never felt like either characters sounded like the ages they were suppose to be. Regardless, these are nitpicks, There more of just an observation rather than a "fault" in the series.

 So the show has good animation, good characters, amazing action scenes, and a pretty all star voice cast. Sounds like the show is pretty awesome show, right? Sure they've been some nitpicks and complaints here and there, but it's mostly been over all pretty minor stuff. Nothing that would impact the show that much.

 So, Let's talk about the shows writing.

 So remember when I said that this show was convoluted? This is a serious problem. Things in this show are often not explained very well. For example, in most stories where a character has a special powers, there powers would be shown off or explained right when the characters are introduced. We'd learn how they work, and what there limits are. There are several characters in RWBY who's semblances I still don't fully understand. Like Ruby's super speed. Does Ruby turns into roses peddles when she uses her super speed or is that just an artistic license thing? And there are some characters who we don't even figure out what there semblances do until WAY late into the series. Ren for example, who's introduced in volume one, semblance isn't shown until volume four! And it's not like he only unlocks his powers in volume four or something, he's always had them. It's just never mentioned or came up before, and you'd think it would be. Things like "How are characters powers work." are things that should be established early on!

 The show is also REALLY bad at set up. (Don't @ me!) They'll have these moments where a "big twist" is suppose to happen that's suppose to catch the audience off guard. And they do, but only the twist are set up in such minute ways, there's no way the audience can realistically be expected to see it coming. I know the idea is to help make these twist surprising, but they don't give the audience enough hints to piece things together. They'll be a minor, one off line in one episode, that'll be a major plot point volumes down the road, with nothing to imply that said line was significant. And since these twist aren't set up very well, a lot of these twist just end up feeling like, "um, okay. This is a thing now." I know it's probably all planned out from the beginning, but it's not properly set up. It sometimes feels like the people behind the show are just like "Hey, you know what would be cool?" and just throw things at the wall until they stick. This can work sometimes but other times it just feels random. The shows acts like "They got us." when really it's a problem with their own writing.

 The show also has a major problem with focus. I listed Team RWBY and Team JNPR as the main characters. That's EIGHT different characters to divide focus between, which is already a lot when you only have twelve to fourteen episodes per volume to work with. And while those eight character are the closest thing the show has to "definitive main characters" there are so many other side characters who  that I didn't mention in order to keep this review spoiler free/not ten thousand words long. addition to Team RWBY and JNPR, there's also _(Slight Spoiler Warning) _Team SUNN, Ozpin's circle, Cinder's group, Salem's group, the White Fang, Raven's tribe, the various teachers at the school, the characters extended families, That useless rabbit girl that the fandom likes for some reason. etcetera. (Spoilers Over) There's just too many characters to keep track of! And while there's nothing wrong with having a large cast, (personally I tend to gravitate more to shows that do.) it can defiantly be hard to juggle all that screen time. Sure these side characters are often interesting, but they end up distracting focus and taking time away from the main cast, and side characters shouldn't do that.

 Often, characters will only have a few moments per volume to really shine, due to just how much screen time they have to share. And sometimes it can make big character moments feel a bit undeserved, as there just isn't enough build up to make the moments feel as powerful as they should. And this is a problem that has gotten more and more prevalent overtime as the series has become more ensemble. But I'm hopeful that, given the series extending it's length from twelve episodes per volume to fourteen, as well as the episodes getting genuinely longer, this problem may be able to be fixed in the future. Maybe. Please...

 So to sum up, is RWBY a perfect series? No. It is a very flawed show. VERY FLAWED. Particularly in the writing and the story department. However, I do not think that the show is as bad as a lot of the more vocal hatedom seems to think it is. Just because a series is flawed, doesn't mean you can't enjoy the elements that do work. Even when the flaws are extremely glaring. And that's how I feel about this show. Sure it has problems, but in my opinion the positives out-way the negatives. The action is still done very well, the characters are all pretty fun to be around. The world, while a bit overly complicated at times is interesting. And more importantly, the series never feels like it's being lazy. You can feel the passion that went into the series, and the show can be a lot of fun. There are just some parts where you might need to turn your brain off for a bit. There are plenty of worse series out there that don't try as hard and provide a lot less. But overall, the element I think I enjoy the most about RWBY is what the show represents.

 What RWBY shows is that it is possible for a web animated series to hit the main stream. You can get RWBY T-shirts and merch easily, not just online, but in actual retail stores without much effort. The series can be watched on Netflix and Cruchyroll._ _There are not one, but TWO tie in manga's. There's a spin-off comedy series that's on it's third season. It's one of the four franchises represented in _Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle! _And most importantly it is partially responsible for transforming Rooster Teeth from a fairly successful internet company known for video game parodies, to a studio that is seen in the same light as the likes of more main stream television outlets! Never in my life had I seen a web animated series see this level of success. And sure, you could say that all that just means that the show is just good at selling out or whatever, but I like to have a more positive perspective. I think the show deserves to be respected for it's accomplished.

 And to me, that's inspiring. It's like the weeb equivalent to the American dream! And that's why I have a RWBY poster hung over my work desk. As a reminder that there is no limitations to how far an online content can go. With just some hard work, determination, a studio of about three hundred employees, a stellar marketing team, a close connection to the anime dubbing industry, and a ton of money, you too can make your dreams a reality. And that's motivational...I think...maybe. And if they can make it, maybe I can make my own weeaboo dreams a reality...

_  **SPIRIT WARRIORS COMING OUT TWO THOUSAND AND NEVER!~

**_  So that's my review of RWBY. What do you think of the series, and would you like me to do another review of the series in the future? Maybe on volume six or something, kinda like what I do with my Dragon Ball Super reviews? Tell me all this in the comments down bellow. I'd love to start a conversation, even if you disagree with my points I made here. Please fav, follow, and comment if you liked the review and have a great day.

(I do not own any of the images or videos in this review all credit goes to there original owners.)

https://www.deviantart.com/joyofcrimeart/journal/RWBY-REVW-775726477 DA Link

[ultimate-muscle]

Hi! I have a question to ask about Nisei! I haven't read the manga and honestly it's kinda hard to find here, but you seem to know a lot, so can I ask what happened to Jaegar/Jade's arm? In the match where in the anime he still has both, I had someone tell me that in the manga it got rip off? But then...he has it again? How does this work? I'm so confused...

You were told correctly! 

In the manga, Jade has his arm ripped off by Mars. This effectively ends the match and secures Mars his victory, and it’s presented as an extremely serious injury, including the usual gore you come to expect within the series. The injury can be seen below, and surprisingly Jade is still conscious:

The official explanation in the manga is that it was a clean cut. He is able to thus get reconstructive surgery, which apparently works so well that he’s still able to use his arm in future matches and competitions. Well, arguably in this timeline only, as I think we have three official timelines now … four if we include the other Nisei series? Eh, that’s a whole other can of worms. Here is the fix:

The manga is a little … inconsistent. 

You’ll see sometimes wounds stick, other times they don’t, and sometimes a chojin can fight on a specific type of wound, but other times they can’t. It also goes along with ‘death’; not just resurrections, but in terms of who we saw pretty much die and what should logically kill a person, and what … doesn’t. 

It’s been a while, but in Ultimate Chojin Tag Tournament we see that Brocken Jnr. loses his arm and it stays lost (I can’t remember if a reason was given, however, but it’s possible that their medical technology has advanced since that moment). You’ll see a few characters lose their teeth to Muscle Millennium, but then have a nice full set of teeth just a few arcs later, too. 

Everything is “merely a flesh wound” … 

Everything. 

Well, unless the plot demands otherwise. Kevin loses half his body weight at one point, gets electrocuted until he loses consciousness, and even starts to slowly fade from existence … one chojin has his arm snapped until bone pokes from skin, another gets his neck broken … I think Meat was dismembered entirely twice that I can remember, too. Somehow -? They’re all super fine. 

Chojin do have a higher strength, pain threshold, healing ability etc., which may contribute to why logically they can survive so much (or be healed so easily from such severe wounds), and medical technology - and technology in general - is much more advanced than the real-world, too, which may also contribute.

The manga essentially is a little more extreme … 

Which - ironically - does lead to the suspension of disbelief being broken more often, but there are pros and cons … the censorship in the anime can sometimes be worse and more confusing, but in other times - like with Jade - it can actually make more sense and clear things up, too. 

[afanoftheglassscientists]

Comments on The Glass Scientists Chapter 7 Page 28 (Discussing Chapter 7 Pages 10-28)

So my comments are being detected as spam on the comment section of The Glass Scientist page, which from what I can guess from searching through various Disqus threads is because my comments are split into paragraphs and are really, really long.  And although they automatically have a “we’ll work on getting this corrected” thing the moment it gets marked as spam I hear some comments taking months to get released from spam jail. 

Which is annoying, because for one Disqus doesn’t set any clear ground rules for commenting beside the obvious ones regarding bullying and is vague about why things might get marked as spam by accident, and for two I had to go through some threads where people were complaining that SOMEHOW it was the sjws fault that the system was so bad and how its censorship to mark their comments as spam.  NO DAWG, ITS A BAD SYSTEM OF AUTOMATICALLY MARKING THINGS AS SPAM WITH VAGUE RULES LIKE PARAGRAPH BREAKS.  WHY CAN’T YOU PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT LEGITIMATE WEBSITE ISSUES WITHOUT MAKING IT A BAD FAITH FREE SPEECH DEBATE NONSENSE PARTY GUUUUUAAAAAH

But I’m not here to just complain about that.  What I’m here for is to share my riveting and thought-provoking sentiments on Sabrina Cotugno’s The Glass Scientists such as “Jasper is the best” and “Jasper is a good werewolf scientist” and “Did I mention how great Jasper is yet?” and anything else I mentioned in the dark forbidden comments I wrote.  I’m not re-writing everything word-for-word, and I’m only doing the for the ones that are spammed.  I’ll probably leave my longer thoughts here from now on if I feel like gushing more and leave my comments on the Disqus page to a paragraph. 

If you want to see my older comments that range from okay to downright embarrassing here is my profile.  I’ll mention putting my blog (the one you’re look at) in my disqus profile next time I comment if people from the glass scientist discussion want to join me in this hellsite.  So without further ado...

Jasper’s the Best.  The End.

...okay i had more than that to say.

Jekyll and Lanyon were a Thing.  Mood of the Day is “We Been Knew”

In all seriousness its nice to have it in canon as it were, but if you’ve ever looked through the author’s blogs and her previous page descriptions it was pretty clear they had some history together.  So it wasn’t so much a “oh my gawd they WERE roommates” moment as much as a “oh worm” moment.  Its nice to think about the happy time they might have had together, even it did get cut off unceremoniously.  Could it be that their break-up just HAPPENED to be in the same year Jekyll decided “Do you know what would be cool?  If I just like...plucked out the bad, naughty feelings.  Just.  Make a nasty little man from my mind and toss my bad no good feelings there.  Yeah.  That’d be nice.”  Hmmmmmmmm????  Maaaaaaaybeeeeee?????

Lanyon the Super Sleuth

Jekyll - “Oh yeah, Lanyon.  He’s great isn’t he?  He’s the best.  He taught me how to dance.  Jasper I need tell how great Lanyon is for like an hour.  In this room.  With the door closed so no one can come IN while I gush about my friend.  Just a good...long...chat.  About Lanyon.  My best friend who would definitely not go snooping through my private paperwork behind my back.”

Lanyon holding a very important page belonging to Jekyll that he’s definitely not supposed to have while hiding behind an office desk -

*silent screaming*

I Can’t Think Straight on the Hyde in Jekyll Gentlemen Jail Part of the Chapter So I’m Going to Set That Aside for Now

I don’t know why.  I just can’t have any other clear thoughts aside from “Hyde is a stinky rat man” and “oooooooh pretty mindscapesssss.”

Frankenstein and Jekyll are doing JUST Fine and They are Not Hiding ANY Underlying Issues With Bravado and/or Sparkles (They’re Not Fine)

So the thing that just clicked with me is that Jekyll and Frankenstein have the same struggle with being vulnerable and dropping their guard around others without it feeling wrong.  If they realized they had this in common they’d hate it.  I’m just going to copy the part of my comment on Frankenstein’s issue here-

She hates vulnerability.  I mean, she's definitely not a woman who bit more than she could chew and in the process lost everything she held dear until all that was left was the creature she made that led to her destruction no no no. She’s a legend. She's THE mad scientist. She made the impossible possible. She can't be vulnerable nooooo. For people as brilliant and ingenious as her vulnerability does not exist. Its not an option.

It’s good to know her history (or as I called it, “The Frankenstein F***** Up Real Bad Story”) is relatively the same as the original story’s Frankenstein, because like...Frankenstein did a real bad there.  And Jekyll is in the midst of biting more than he could chew with his whole “oh sure just split my mind its fine” thing about to get him in trouble with his best friend/ex and soon with his other friends and probably the cops somewhere along the line so its almost like Frankenstein’s life mistakes and the way she copes with it...is a reflection of Jekyll’s past and future mistakes, and how he copes now and what he might do to cope in the future...hmmmmm... symmmbolismmmm...mmmmmaaaaybbbbeeee....

Okay I Behaved Myself Now Let Me Talk About My Good Good Science Wolf Jasper Please

HE’S BACK!  HE’S BACK!  BRING IN THE MUSIC!

...okay in retrospect he was there at the beginning of the chapter so it hasn’t been that long since we last seen him.  But I haven’t caught up reading for like six months so it felt really long to me. 

Jekyll’s been having it rough and his tears are entirely reasonable.  Here’s another part of my comment that I was VERY proud of because its almost readable-

TFW you have to care for a involuntary patient who discouraged all of your lodgers to no longer participate in the exhibition which you absolutely need to succeed in order to keep the place open and also you have a part of you that you use to hide "dark desires" locked away and currently attempting a jailbreak in your mind AND YET in what might feel like the worst week of your life you find one good werewolf country boi trying his best for you and the lodgers and he might need a lot of work on presentation and cleanliness but good lord you were able to find SOMETHING to feel happy about. 

Its funny because I predicted Jasper wasn't exactly with the Frankenstein IN crowd because he's not a crowd person in general and he's got creatures to feed and large chicken legs to eat, but I was surprised that Jasper is putting effort into the exhibition without Jekyll pushing him. H-he's so good! What a good and smart man he is. I'm so proud. So strong. So sweet.

It also shows that Jasper can push himself to work on projects without outside help, even while the others around him slack off without consequence (for now.)  Which in hindsight makes sense, considering he was by his lonesome collecting critters and data for like months before he met Jekyll.  Obviously he still needs a push when it comes to socializing, which is good for Jekyll because he really, really needs someone to depend on him that doesn’t hate his guts (You hear that, Frankenstein!?)

It’s like having a class where the professor doesn’t punish anyone for ignoring his lessons so most of the class considers it free time but there’s that one student who not only takes the lessons seriously but actually works on the assignments.  Like wow!  Someone still cares!  Amazing!  Miracles still exist folks.

Its interesting how Jekyll is so willing to give away his “trade secrets” when it comes to presenting himself as a gentlemen to Jasper.  He doesn’t sugarcoat his philosophy on how people only look for the surface and don’t care what’s underneath.  He did this a little during the second chapter when he was trying to encourage Jasper, and he’s continuing it now in more detail.  Also between the sparkly lecture on how to gussy up a presentation he like...talks about himself?  Like has a chat with Jasper that isn’t exactly following the code of gentlemen sparkle-speak where he either tries to flatter people, convince people of something or find ways to improve his image.  There’s a solid line between when he’s just having a conversation and gettin’ along with new werewolf pal Jasper, and when he going into sparkle mode to give Jasper advice.

Also on the author’s twitter she revealed that Jekyll never told anyone about the dance lessons until now, which wasn’t surprising.  Jekyll is Tired enough to reveal he has an accent and is Tired enough to let his guard down a little and talk about how he learned to be sophisticated through his REALLY GOOD FRIEND LANYON WHO’S TOTALLY NOT HIDING IN HIS OFFICE.  I feel like if you really want to hear his accent you need to knock him out and hope he mumbles in his sleep because I find it hard to imagine him being even more Tired than he is now.

I think it’ll be interesting to see which aspect of their relationship moves further forward - the aspect of a growing friendship between Jasper and Jekyll that could help both of them open up or the aspect of Jekyll continuing to pass down his philosophy to Jasper (which I’m positive will have absolutely no unintended consequences hahaha and teaching Jasper the ways of the sparklemen.

Okay that’s all I’ve got to say from the comments I made.  I was going to make a list of predictions but I think I’ll save that for another day.  For now I’ll leave you to imagine Frankenstein with a steampunk-style electric guitar in her bed screaming singing heavy metal music about mad science, with a Tired Jekyll behind her going, “Ma’am please...take your medicine...”

[nautiscarader]

So, Voltron season 7 was...

...pretty good!

The last four seasons gave us only half the experience (or if you want to be even more picky, a quarter of it), so I welcome the return to the 13-episode format. It gave us precisely the right amount of filler and plot-driven episodes, and I’m glad season 8 will also be self-contained (it will also be the last, from the amount of episodes ordered).

(spoilers ahead, duh)

I’m not going to lie, from episode 7 onwards, I watched the whole thing without going into tumblr... with one exception, to which I will come later. First six episodes were a mix of serious flashbacks and much needed bonding with some light-hearted moments.

Or, light-headed in this case. Yeah, episode 4 is quite possibly the weirdest one yet, and I’d like to remind you, this show took us on a shopping spree that ended up with a retro console powered by altean technology and a cow. 

But once Earth came into place, it was, colloquially speaking, serious business. 

It was heart-breaking to see Paladins discover Earth conquered by Galra, and the multitude of obstacles Earth rebels had to conquer. I was glued to the screen for the last seven episodes, and they gave us one incredible spectacle. 

I loved how certain characters were portrayed in this series. Hunk, my favourite paladin already, was given a truly painful arc regarding his family. Veronica, Lance’s sister was a truly badass fighter of the soldiers defending Earth’s last base. Commander Holt was put through mind-numbing, and ultimately lost battle against the bureaucracy and military protocols, separating him from his family and denying him the control over the situation he knew the most of. Bonding between Shiro and Keith from the first episode was a great conclusion to the scenes we’ve seen in the last season.

It was a great pleasure to see these characters put through those challenges, and for that I will truly cherish this season.

Those were the positive elements of the new season. Now onto the bad ones. 

Well, I guess I have to address the elephant in the room: Adam’s subplot. It was... weak. If I didn’t know (from the creators’ tweets and whatnot) that Adam was Shiro’s boyfriend, then I wouldn’t learn that rom the show. It is almost cliche for heterosexual people to point at a gay couple and say “oh, look, how close friends they are!”, but yeah, judging by just the show alone, Adam and Shiro could have been just close friends. Not a word about them being gay/bi. Was it a cowardly move? Something to do with censorship, going the safe route? I don’t know, and I’m not the one to judge. 

Deaths. There were a couple of scenes where I thought the show would pull off a death of a semi-major character. Veronica was shown to - supposedly - sacrifice herself from the Galra attack in the old World War 3 tunnels. But then, surprise surprise, she’s alive, and found a whole heap of people living underground there!

  Veronica then nearly dies again when helping Lance, but she gets out of it safe and sound too! 

Even the very last scene of the space battle shows the blast from the explosion engulfing faces of Paladins, and for a moment, I thought they were gone. 

On the other hand, we had a chilling scene with the pilots being sent to their death, dying one by one, by commander Traitor McTraitorFace’s order, and of course her death gave Paladins those few extra minutes to command their lions. The fact that pretty much all of the Blades are dead was a blood-freezing revelation too, so I guess those strong scenes balanced the weaker ones out. 

And finally, the last episode.

Seriously, what the fuck was that. 

Even Allura was shouting “oh come on! we just saved Earth” when the giant mecha-Perfect-Cell appeared. 

And yeah, this is Cell from Dragon Ball Z -  It absorbs enemies’ life forces and is virtually indestructible, taking way, way, waaaaaaaay too long to kill. 

So much so, they had to make a new Voltron.

I...

I don’t know what to say about Atlas - a spaceship, the pinnacle of human engineering, last and humble (compared to Galra’s standards) way of defending Earth - suddenly turning into a mecha.

Now, we had one case of that before, with Lotor’s ship. But this one was constructed under his supervision, so that transformation, while still cheesy, was at least understandable. 

With Atlas, it felt cheap, honestly. I feel this could have been achieved without overusing the already completely unexplainable altean magic. Think about it: how cool would it be if Atlas’ crew figured out that the Mecha Cell’s weak point is his heart window and damaged and immobilised used some ion cannon, or whatever they had to shoot it? They could even use Shiro’s super vision he used to turn Atlas into the mecha to achieve it, I would have bought it. With Voltron disabled, it would have been Earth’s forces that saved the Universe. 

I should also mention that I’m getting drawn more and more to Lance’s and Allura’s romance. They had a few important moments in the last season, and now they almost acknowledge the crushes they had, but.... shipping in voltron is a can of worms I don’t want to open too much, and I;m not going to classify it as bad or good.  

That being said, I am more than pleased with this season. More episodes, more filler storylines, and a gripping second half was exactly what I wanted to watch. I can, however, see how some people could be seriously disappointed with it  

[conservativefreepress]

New Post has been published on Conservative Free Press

New Post has been published on http://www.conservativefreepress.com/congress/graham-dems-better-not-open-can-of-worms-by-calling-witnesses/

Graham: Dems Better Not Open “Can of Worms” By Calling Witnesses

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In remarks about Donald Trump’s upcoming impeachment trial, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that Democrats had better think twice before “opening a can of worms” by calling witnesses to testify against the former president. Graham said that if Democrats call even a single witness, Republicans will respond by bringing the FBI onto the floor to speak to lawmakers.

“If you open that can of worms, we’ll want the FBI to come in and tell us about how people pre-planned this attack and what happened with the security footprint at the Capitol. You open up Pandora’s Box if you call one witness,” he said.

Graham also took a shot at Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who is pushing the Senate to holding a confirmation hearing for Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland the day before the trial is scheduled to begin.

“Democrats do not get to score political points in an unprecedented act of political theater on one hand while also trying to claim the mantle of good government on the other,” Graham said.

One of Trump’s impeachment attorneys, David Schoen, told Sean Hannity this week that Senate Democrats are going into the trial having already decided the former president’s guilt.

“This process is completely unconstitutional and it is a very, very dangerous road to take with respect to the First Amendment, putting at risk any passionate political speaker which is really against everything we believe and in this country,” he said.

In addition to arguing that the trial itself is unconstitutional (because Trump is no longer a sitting president), Schoen and co-counsel Bruce Castor say they will present evidence that some Capitol rioters had already planned to storm the building long before Trump spoke that morning, making the Democrats’ case entirely irrelevant. They will also challenge the charges on First Amendment grounds, saying that an impeachment conviction would have vast ramifications when it comes to the censorship of political speech.

Frankly, we don’t understand why they don’t go with the simplest argument, which is that Trump never incited anyone. He never told them to set one foot on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. He certainly didn’t tell anyone to go through the barricades. He absolutely did not tell them to push past police and take over the exterior of the building. And he didn’t even come close to telling them to break inside and stop the certification proceedings.

On the other hand, seeing as how a majority of Senate Republicans have already voted to call the whole trial unconstitutional, we don’t really understand the point of going through with it in the first place. This is nothing other than Democrat showboating.

Just like it was last time.

[lumisequence]

Week 4 - REPRESENTATION

When should games be banned or censored, if at all? Empathise with the different perspectives of this game and its promotion. 

Subjective. What one may claim as “censorship” is someone else’s idea of “censored for good reason”. For example, a game featuring blatant cruelty may generally be considered as one of these “censored for good reason” games, however there would definitely be someone out there who thinks the game is perfectly fine and has been unfairly censored. 

For Cannon Fodder it declares its anti-war message by being extremely blatant about war is unforgiving and futile. Soldiers die in one hit, and upon death they sit there choking on blood before they finally collapse; at the end of a round the fallen are purposely named, driving home the fact that each solider was their own person, not just a number in the death toll. 

I definitely agree with the game’s message, but on the other hand releasing the game right on London’s Remembrance Day was perhaps a bit too much. The day is meant for honouring the dead and the move was perhaps a bit on the nose and maybe even disrespectful for potentially taking the attention away from those who have served - especially how as the review noted some people missed the point and saw Cannon Fodder as another one of those mindlessly violent wargames. 

Choose one of molleindustria’s games to play. Describe your experience and how the designers have used the game mechanics to get their point across. 

I played Free Culture, a game about the struggle between copyright and commons. The game takes place on a white circle, representing the common, where knowledge is created and shared; and an outer grey circle that represents the market, where knowledge is commodified and sold.

The distributor (the cursor) distributes knowledge-dots to the people in the common

The vectoralist sucks the knowledge-dots into the market to create scarcity. 

People who can’t access knowledge in the common stop producing ideas and become passive consumers in the market

Consumers who don’t receive commodified knowledge will return to the common

The distributor works in a herding, “repel” mechanic, where it scatters the knowledge-dots in all directions and makes it impossible to be accurate with. The people in the commons also will only absorb knowledge through a certain direction on their head, meaning the player has to go to quite the length to even distribute one knowledge dot. Meanwhile the vectoralist moves fast, freely, and with extreme accuracy, sucking up 4 dots in one go and moving right above each consumer to ensure the sold knowledge reaches them directly. It’s a struggle to even defend the dots against the vectoralist, as the only way to click rapidly to counter the vectoralist’s magnetic field with the cursor’s own deflector. This was possibly intended to give a sense of desperation and struggle. 

The answer to “winning” the game turns out to just sit back and not interfere and let the game play out itself. Eventually all the people turn into consumers and the Vectoralist sucks up all the knowledge. With no one left to produce ideas and the Vectoralist unable to give all these consumers their commodified knowledge, all the consumers return to the common again to produce ideas themselves.

However this is no true end state - very quickly the Vectorialist takes away this new knowledge in the commons and the people revert back to consumers as they cannot access the knowledge. An endless cycle of struggle. 

Consider the attributes and intentions of the Eurogame genre, and compare these to Loring-Albright’s assessment of the Settlers of Catan. 

In Eurogames players compete for resources, have social initiatives such as negotiation, require long-term planning, and are usually won by whoever racks up a certain amount of one thing. Intention-wise this seems to have manifested as storylines where the player exploits or profits from the system. Unfortunately while fine(?) with a game like Monopoly (whose controversy is another whole can of worms), combined with story elements that concern historical events like in the game Puerto Rico where the aim of the game is to run a plantation, this make them concerning in the way that they glorify western settlement and exploitation of people of colour. Such is Loring-Albright’s assessment of Settlers of Catan. Quote: “It became clear, at least to me, (...) Settlers of Catan re-tells the American myth of White European settlers stumbling upon a fertile land that was theirs by right, encountering no meaningful resistance, and acting on behalf of God and Country to develop economies, settlements, and cities in this “New World.”

Apply this author’s line of thinking to other playful situations: video games, sports, etc. Do you see your values and your personality more clearly when you play? Provide an anecdote if you can. 

Mostly yes, but depends on the person and the game. While I think narrative and NPCs have an influence on this, I never really played board games myself, so I don’t think I have the experience to talk about. Hence I’ll be taking Animal Crossing and Undertale as examples instead. 

I personally always choose the nicer option or choice no matter if the consequences are serious or not simply because I feel bad if I do anything that would upset the characters - I would say this reflects how I am in real life as well. However one friend who is extremely shy and non confrontational in real life would purposely choose provoking responses in AC just to see how the character would react. Though in Undertale she did not do an all-kill run because she felt bad. 

Notably, AC is a very kind game where even if a villager does get upset with you they forget it by the afternoon, whereas in Undertale killing even one monster alters the dialogue from the main cast, and if a player insists on going ahead with killing every monster they meet, the game makes a point to drive home how the player is a coldhearted murderer.

So while there’s the net of “it’s just a game”, how “telling” it is of how someone plays a game depends on how seriously the game makes an issue - while UT puts a big emphasis on death, games like FPSes where the whole point to slaughter enemies do not. This isn’t to say that people who play an all kill run of UT are actually murderers, but I do think it says something about their level of empathy. 

Following this line of thinking I’d say games like sports and Monopoly where you interact with other people rather than NPCs would alter how people act as well. The magic circle would come into play - acting on motivation to win, sportsmen are more aggressive on the playing field and Monopoly sends otherwise good relations into utter chaos. 

(Problem Attic) Attempt to understand what the game designer is trying to communicate with the symbolism and mechanics.

Seeing how the game describes itself as “a game about prisons, both real and imagined”, I imagine the clash of colours, faked barriers and invisible ones alike, and general confusion are all on purpose to simulate the feeling of one being trapped and trying to navigate their own mind - in extremely abstract levels, there are no instructions other than the instinctual movement rules, and mechanics are learned by trying again and again and again, much like how navigating inner troubles might be like: you know you have a problem, but how the problem works exactly you have no idea, and you can only get yourself out of it by trying repeatedly (or seeking outside help, ie, google). Following this, I’d guess that the crosses represent traumatic experiences, seeing how it chases the player and causes the camera to convulse when it collides, and at times completely immobilises. 

Frustration seems to be a core part of this game, such as slippery controls, platforms moving out right beneath you - one of the levels even has a purposely coded “fail”, in which every third or fourth time the player hit the jump button it would fail to activate, hindering the player especially as you’re trying to outrun a cross on this level. I’d think this represents trying to navigate life with all of these “prisons” weighing down on the player’s mind.

(Seeing how the game’s name can also be read as “problematic” I wonder if the game could also be about unhealthy coping mechanisms?)

[dapperfvck-arc]

🔥 The TV show... (Because I really want to know exactly why you don't like it [or hate it?] because i'm so freaking curious. Also I think in general a Constantine TV show would do best on AMC rather than NBC... FEEL FREE TO COMPLETELY RANT. I WANT TO KNOW. Please.)

Unpopular Opinion Time!

Oh boy. Hooooo boy. I’m still going to be relatively gentle, because honestly, I’m saving my true vitriol for the times that I must defend my choice not to RP it or for the hysterical consensus opinion from the fandom that TV show was an improvement over the film (lol nope, aside from Matt Ryan “looking the part” but that’s a whole other can of worms). 

Note: Cut for length and maybe a bit of brutality in my honesty.

*sighs* Ok, I’ll first preface this with that I still have like four episodes to go. Obviously, I have massive issues in the needless changes made to the adaption of comic canon. It was unnecessary to make Chas American while retaining the fact that he’s John’s oldest and best of friends. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but who knows. Maybe it’s explained a little better in one of the last few episodes, but you know. My hopes aren’t high. I don’t like Chas’s virtual invulnerability, not just because it takes away the stakes of the danger he’s putting himself in, but also? It’s a plot device scarcely used? So why make that choice if it’s not going to be capitalized on with meaningful frequency? I hated that Zed was portrayed as a novice, and that the teeth were taken out from the Newcastle Incident. Now obviously, I understand why they’d have to alter a bit of it due to Network censorship, but at the same??? I mean child abuse and sexual violence are nothing new on shows like Law and Order: SVU and Criminal minds so…Idek, it kind of comes off as an excuse. It’s not a child’s show. Maybe it could be argued that it was marketed toward teenagers, but it’s not like they’re ignorant to those horrors in the world. I’m not asking them to show Astra’s rape, just to acknowledge the true horror of the situation instead of making it all about John’s failure. So yeah, I was annoyed by the occasional attempt to adapt source material and completely mucking it all up.

Now to begin with, I completely get the SP/N’s fandom bitterness more than ever. Before watching it I thought they were just trying to be like “whaaaat, another show about magic and exorcism? Of course it’s a ripoff because don’t you know our fandom invented those things?” I honestly believe the crux of the issue is that NBC clearly wanted their own SP/N as well as to cash in the popularity of comic book based media, so there’s that. To me, it comes off as a shameless cash grab. I honestly believe if I felt like there was some kind of passion from its creators, I could have dealt with some of those changes, but I don’t get that. It’s been a soulless experience overall. Like it’s not been a matter of me nitpicking like “oh this is wrong, this has been changed, boo hoo, it’s not all existential horror and fucking and drugs.”

Because frankly...I just think it’s a bad show. It’s poorly written, poorly made, poorly researched, poorly acted, it’s just bad. The main issue I have with it is that it’s a lot of telling and not showing. There’s not a lot of tension or foreshadowing, just “boom this is how it is” and so much exposition. John, for example, about half of his dialogue in any given show is verbal exposition. It’s frustrating, tbh. Like, it doesn’t make sense for me in this day and age for a TV show, even on a network channel, to be this bad. Over the past several years, television series have improved exponentially in content and writing. It’s not shameful anymore to start off on TV anymore. We’re in a very exciting time that television and cinema are almost completely on equal par of perceived quality. So yeah, it’s been an even greater disappointment for me because it’s not just that they fuck with the source material but because on top of that it’s literally a bad show. I’m not one bit surprised that it wasn’t renewed because there just...Isn’t enough to like about it. It’s not faithful enough to the comic to secure that base of fans and it’s not good enough to be taken for face value. 

The other massive issue I have is the portrayal of magic, which honestly extends to DC’s handling of Hellblazer and John as well. See, what you have to understand is that predominately, throughout the Vertigo series, it’s clear to me that most of its writers either have some awareness of how magic works or at least have done their research. I can follow the logic and ritual in what he’s doing. ​Let me tell you a little something about magic. It's all about focus and will. You can do and say whatever the hell you want as long as you're putting your intent behind it. The ritual of spell work, use of candles, crystals, incense, chanting, incantations, etc. are meant to be the focus of a magician's energy and will on a particular result, but it could be attempted without as well. To explain it in more fantastical terms, in Harry Potter casting without a wand is considered impressive. This implies that the wizard's focus and will is so strong that they no longer need a wand to draw out their intent. Now I get it. By this understanding magic doesn't make good TV viewing (I guess...), but my main concern with this series is there's no attempt to portray an iota of witchcraft's reality along with the fantastical. Now part of this problem is that they've removed a great deal of John's innate ability. He can no longer see spirits/ghosts and there is no mention to his connection to synchronicity (as far I’ve seen, mind). Instead of happening to end up where he needs to be or what have you, he's following a map, and he uses a lot of artifacts and other implementation to get the job done. Which bothers me on a few levels. For one, it imbues the focus, not the caster with the power, which is not how magic works (at least in the sense of portraying gritty urban fantasy), and for two, it's very much against character. Let me give you an example: In the two part story Newcastle Calling, at the end of it, John hands a dying man a twig, telling him it's the finger bone of St. Cavartigan and that it's known to bring relief to those in need. He tells him to squeeze it tightly and focus on the pain going away. Near the end of the scene, the young man tells John that it's working. A couple things can be taken away from this scene: John's will was that the dying man would believe as he was told and his instructions were rote ritual. By contrast, in the series, John would probably had actually given him a Saint's fingerbone. You see the comparison takes the power of the scene away, as well as the mystery. Is the power of John's suggestion so strong that he could make the guy believe by holding that twig his pain would do away? Or was he so desperate to believe in order to not die in pain? You can interpret it either way. Hell, I could invent other interpretations, but going by what I believe would happen in the show, it can only be interpreted in the most literal sense. Now, to be honest, most television shows portray magic poorly. Even movies do a better job while keeping fantastical elements. The Craft, for all it’s 90s cheese, is a great example of this. So I suppose I could be blamed for getting my hopes up to be dashed because it’s just following the formula of 95% of all TV shows that feature a magical element or theme, but I mean...it’s not like Buffy or Charmed that was working without a script, so to speak. The TV series had a ready made blueprint and still chose to take the mumbo-jumbo bullshit route. Now, I have a lot of theories on the why for this, but that’s another post altogether and this has already gone on for way too long and I still have more to say.

Now, I guess I should, at least briefly, touch on the elephant in the room: Matt Ryan as John. What did I think? Because a lot of people have told me that he’s the shining beacon of this show, even literally admitting that yeah, it’s a poor representation of Hellblazer but that Matt Ryan man, he’s great! The problem that I have is that it’s not a good a show, and so no, I don’t like him in the role. I’m not going to compare him to Keanu because that’s not fair for a number of reasons, and maybe I’m a little biased because I adore Keanu (there’s also that can of worms I mentioned earlier, which is honestly yet another separate post lol). The way John’s written for this show, he’s positively insufferable. He’s not charming at all, which is find the most offensive, because one thing that can be said across all series and iterations of the character is that John is magnetic even despite xyz (he’s dangerous, he can be an asshole, he’s unreliable, etc.). Here he’s just a know-it-all, condescending prick. Now I do think with better writing, in a better representation of John’s character and Hellblazer in general (and maybe with a voice coach or director to discourage that Welshy intonation because yeah, his accent does irritate the shit out of me, but I’ve been very vocal about that before and honestly, at this point, I’ve come to realize that Ryan’s vowels are the least of this show’s problem), I think he has potential to be a fine John. As it stands in the media he’s portrayed John in so far (idk, maybe he was good on Arrow, but I’m talking the TV Series here and the JLD animation, which I’ve admittedly not seen, but I hated the comic so I’m not real likely to give that a chance considering my disposition toward the source material), I’m not entirely sold on him. Like if they tried another TV series for Hellblazer and didn’t cast him in the role, I wouldn’t be upset over it. 

I do agree that it probably could have been better on another channel, but here’s the rub, all the blood and gore and sex and loose censorship in the world could not save that show without better writing and direction. It could have been a fine show even on network if it had been crafted with some degree of caring. Let me give you an example off the top of head, namely the handling of the Newcastle incident. It was laid out pretty plainly within a few episodes. Alterations from canon aside, it doesn’t portray the horror of it at all and is one of the show’s many missed opportunities to really play up the scarier, more mysterious elements of John’s backstory. For example, instead of laying it out in a sloppy flashback with a laughable puppet, picture this scene instead: ​John is having a chat with someone, maybe Zed or Chas or some b-plot character. Something reminds him of the Newcastle incident and he gets a far off look in his eyes. The folly drops away to an eerie silence as the camera comes in tight on John's expression. Filling up the silence is a little girl's scream, then the voices of his friends, perhaps some sounds of violence, an inhuman sound or voice, it all blends together to become a hellish cacophony of sound as John's expression becomes more strained. Then suddenly the other person calling his name snaps him out of his reverie. The screams stop, the folly returns, and the scene appears jarringly normal. John shakes his head, makes a joke, and they move on. Yeah, that kind of scene has been done before, but the reason for that is it’s effective without giving away the whole story. It shows that this is a man haunted by something horrible. It’s also cheap and doesn’t necessitate straining the no doubt thin budget of a TV show that has yet to prove itself worthy of having more money thrown at it. 

Honestly, the issues I have with this show are innumerable and I’m just scratching the surface here and laying out my biggest problems. I could nitpick for days, and that’s the reason I’ve stayed mum about my opinions. There are people that follow me and that I write with that really like and care about the show, and I don’t want to make them feel...you know, bad about it or that they can’t talk to me or whatever. You know, if they found it enjoyable more power to them. I just didn’t and that’s maybe on me. By no means am I trying to bash the show here (because lord if I wanted to, I could), but to offer up what was requested, and that’s my undiluted opinions and feelings about the series. Of course I’m sorry that I couldn’t share the joy and that I couldn’t even like it on a similar level that I do the film (as a very solid AU, which people have tried to sell the show as to me, knowing my previous understanding of some of the changes made that deviate strongly from canon. As I said, maybe if it had been better made and written, I could, but as it stands currently, I can’t and unless real changes are made in the future, I’m unlikely to alter my opinion of it).

So yeah that’s it. Apologies that this got so very long, but as you can tell, there’s been a lot that I’ve been holding back.

[cowboylikedean]

In regards to this whole “safe mode” thing, i just think more conversation should be on the ethics of censorship.

Forcing minors into a censored experience of tumblr is morally and ethically wrong. I understand the premise... minors legally shouldn’t consume porn and sexually explicit material and some stuff (like violence, I’ve seen a lot of things censored because of guns and swords - like a gifset of Amy from Brooklyn 99) for “various reason.” But 1) those various reasons are flawed and not scientifically proven (i.e. watching violence leads to violence) and also 2) are morally flawed. The flaws come where you assign only one mode of consumption to a broad thing like “sexually explicit material” and give only one narrative for it (further flaws come when you let a computer program determine what fits that criteria - which is a whole ‘nother can of worms for a different post).

The idea with blocking sexual explicit material from minors is the idea that 1) it is illegal to consume this material as a minor and 2) consumption of this material harms minors. 1) is true only because of perceived truth of 2). Now it’s true, consumption of sexually explicit material can cause harm to minors, but not all consumption of sexually explicit material causes harm to minors. For example, sexually explicit material could be fanfiction and a great way for minors who are just growing into their sexuality to explore and understand. Another example could be a 16 year old looking to have (consensual age appropriate) sex for the first time who looks up some porn to try to understand the mechanics of how bodies fit together or looks up diagrams and descriptions of sexual positions. These situations of minors consuming sexually explicit material aren’t harmful and could even be seen as helpful! It’s wrong to withhold these ways of consuming sexually explicit material from minors because it could be harmful.. because it could also be helpful.

It all comes down to the fact that censorship is wrong. Censorship is someone deciding for someone else what their consumption of material looks like... And push, pull, shove.. I don’t care.. At the end of the day, the only person who knows best if consuming a given material is okay in a give situation, is the person consuming it. 

I’ve said for years we’ve all that that one movie we were too young to have seen. Mine was American Beauty. I knew as I was watching it that I didn’t understand it and that I was too young and that it wasn’t sitting right with me and I should turn it off. Others I’ve talked to about this statement (this is a party topic of mine) have mostly had similar experiences of knowing it was wrong and that they were too young and should stop. What we need to be doing is fostering this ability in minors and telling them to listen to it. We need to teach them how to know if something’s okay or not and how and why they should stop when it isn’t. That’s far more helpful to minors then letting a bot decide what they can and cannot consume.

And I’ll mind you, the minors in question are 14-17 years of age. These are the formative years of sexuality. These are the years when minors consuming sexually explicit material could be very beneficial. Furthermore, during these years, other censorship rules lighten on you. For example, you can see an R rated movie at 17 and at 14 you’re one year into your life being able to go to a PG-13 movie. You can see guns and violence and drug use and yes, even sex, legally at the movie theater. How in the world does it make sense that under censorship rules of “minors” they are forced into, a 17 year old would be able to go to the movie theater, buy a ticket to and watch an R rated movie with full frontal nudity, several sex scenes, heavy drug use, and copious violence, and then come home and get on tumblr and have images of it censored??? It doesn’t.

Bottom line - censorship is morally wrong and it doesn’t make logical sense either. I am, of course, outraged by the censorship of LGBT+ material (which I’m sure is because of the issues with letting a bot decide what is and isn’t acceptable rather than a conscious effort on the part of the staff to censor and shame LGBT+ people)... but I’m also outraged by the censorship in general.. 

I want to protect tumblr’s minors from censorship because they deserve the right to regulate their own consumption of material. And yes, they have to be taught... But that’s our job as adults. To teach and foster them. 

Adults do not get to decide what is best for minors without the minors’ input. We are to teach them how to decide that for themselves.