#radical symbol but with nothing in it

[superectojazzmage]

Among my mounting bad/unsure feelings about Arcane season two is a feeling of... I don't know, weirded outness over how Jinx is being handled. Just the way they seem to almost be trying to pretend like she wasn't depicted in season one as basically a sadistic, bloodthirsty, would-be school shooter who did shit like shooting animals for fun or blowing up buildings to try and impress her dad.

Like, the narrative of this season seems to be going out of it's way to handle her with kids gloves in a way that season one didn't, treating her as if she's just a "lol so quirky" kind of character or even a genuine revolutionary hero to be idolized as Zaun's leader compared to season one's "oh this lady is genuinely dangerously unstable and a threat to everyone around her". She's not treated as a villain - albeit a tragic one - she's treated like she's a flawed hero at worst.

Hell, I mean, you see it with the whole plot of Zaun following Jinx as a symbol of revolt. Because all throughout season one, Jinx's relationship with Zaun in even the most charitable light amounted to everyone except Silco being fucking TERRIFIED of her or outright hating her guts, and with good reason as she did nothing but make everyone's situations worse by being a mood-swinging killer who attacks anyone and anything around her at the slightest provocation and constantly goes into violent, hallucinatory fugue states at even the most mild of stresses. But than she blows up the council and suddenly everyone is literally equating her with a god worshiped in Zaun? Imagine if you saw people claiming the Unabomber was the Second Coming and you get an idea of how bizarre that is.

Everyone regarded Jinx as a walking bomb in season one. Even a lot of Silco's allies - from Sevika to Marcus - spent said first season saying Jinx was out-of-control and that killing her would be doing Silco a favor, and that was objectively true, especially considering Jinx ends up directly murdering Silco in yet another fit of blind rage and panic. Now we get season two and anyone who seriously opposes Jinx seems to be treated like either a jerk or a burgeoning extremist for not liking a terrorist who kills people because the voices in her head say to do it, and some people who despised Jinx in season like Sevika now act like they're just mildly annoyed by her childishness and weird behavior (something else that was played in a very creepy light in s1, but now seems treated like it's harmless).

Her crimes from season one and even this season are kinda brushed over; there's tepid acknowledgment that she killed Caitlyn's mom and two other councilors, but that's it and nobody really dwells on the fact that she basically did fantasy 9/11. And likewise, Caitlyn is treated as if she's becoming a violent zealot for shooting at Jinx while Isha is near, but nobody so much as comments on Jinx outright murdering numerous children through Grey-bombing Piltover or literally shooting a teenage Firelight in the back in season one just because she looked like Vi.

Speaking of Isha, I hate to say it, but she really does feel like she has no reason for existing beyond making Jinx look better. No themes of Jinx perpetuating the kind of abuse Silco inflicted on her by raising to be the monster she is, no acknowledgment of how dangerous somebody like Jinx would be as a mother, no questioning of the ethics of Jinx's actions, and Isha watching Jinx murder people is framed in a silly, comedic light compared to season one's blunt depiction of how Powder being exposed to violence from a young age warps her. Isha throws straight KILLS HERSELF via suicide bombing and it's framed as a heroic, beautiful act and not a horrific sight of a child being so radicalized by the terrorist that raised her that she thinks killing others and eve herself "for the cause" is good. The series dangles her and Jinx being friendly with each other in front of you like a parent jangling car keys at an infant. "Oooh look at Jinx and Isha dancing and dying their hair haha it's so cute don't think about bad things, Jinx is nice now!".

I just honestly am not a fan of this "Harley Quinnification" of Jinx after season one went out of it's way to tear down that kind of character. Such a big part of Jinx's portrayal there was ripping apart the idea of this manic pixie terrorist who is Totes Awesomes and only hurts bad guys as part of it's larger themes of the ugliness of violence and the dangers of valorizing it. And I really feel like we're losing that. Not even just with Jinx, but with Zaun as a whole, this season feels like it's going full "everything is Piltover's fault, Zaun didn't do nothing wrong, those Piltover babies should just shut up and let themselves be attacked for being big stupid oppressor doodoo heads!!!!" which feels very counterproductive to the series' messages and like frankly shit writing.

[f1ghtsoftly]

the whole Khelif thing is such a nightmare, like the IBA has been found to have severe ethical issues that prompted their ban by the IOC and are unrelated to the sex testing issue so perhaps this is not a credible source and a bitter IBA is using this as a pretext to damage the IOC’s reputation like please do some research 😭.

Worst case, the IBA is being responsible about raising safety concerns in the sport (doubtful) and the two boxers in question have XY DSDs, ie: they are technically biological males but are observed and have lived their lives as women and are no doubt not intentionally cheating in the sport. Caster Semeya, another prominent intersex athlete assigned female at birth, has been banned from competition due to her high testosterone levels. It remains to be seem whether or not that decision by world athletics will stand.

But why do I call these people women when they are biologically men? Because these are intersex people who were raised from birth as women. By calling them women I’m not making a statement about biology or indeed the factual definition of “woman” or female. I’m recognizing that for all and intents and purposes, these people are socially women who have a DSD. They not ethically culpable for “violating” women’s spaces and deserve to preserve their dignity. Even if their DSD means they might not be eligible to compete in elite athletics. Or maybe they will, other athletes have bodily advantages that also make them faster. It remains to be seen what will happen.

So how!! HOW!! Did the conversation become about how these women are really trans women? Was it because Trump lied about them? Was it because JKR supported an assertion from an extremely dubious organization and called a woman with a potential DSD competing “male violence”. Or was it because thousands of women have been living in an echo chamber around trans issues that encourages invasive “transvestigations” and a destructive sense of personal persecution. Controversy around female sex at the Olympics is actually not a product of the trans issue and is in fact much older. The truth is, it’s a gray area around whether or not it’s ethical to allow women or biological men who outwardly appear as women with totally naturally occurring DSDs to compete. Biological difference among elite athletes is common and natural sex variation is a difference where the science is not always settled. Michael Phelps, for example, has several biological abnormalities that make him a better swimmer. No popular movement has been launched to bar him from competition.

Please take a breath and get out of the GC echo chamber, if you seriously consider yourself a radical feminist and an ally to intersex people, women and LGBT people, this is the wrong path to go down and the wrong issue to stake your reputations on. Most importantly, Carini, Yu-Ting and Khelif do not deserve to become symbolic faces of a debate they have nothing to do with. Khelif in particular is very vulnerable in a country, which is hostile to gender nonconformity/sexual difference, the public outcry could have negative repercussions for her at home.

[milfstalin]

[...] I have been thinking about this for a long time. It is not my idea -- Domenico Losurdo and others have written about how the fetish for defeat is one of the fundamental characteristics of Western Marxism and how this is a misunderstood derivative of Christian culture.

Many Marxists act the same way. Their biggest worry is the purity of the doctrine. Every time that historical facts challenge the doctrine or show the complexity of the practical operationality of elements of the theory, they deny that these elements are part of the story of Marxist theory and doctrine. This is, for example, what doctrines of betrayal are built on. Every movement that appears to stray a bit from these “pure” models that were created a priori is explained through the concept of betrayal, or is explained as “state capitalism.” Therefore, nothing is socialism and everything is state capitalism. Nothing is socialist transition and everything is state capitalism. The revolution is only a revolution during that glorious moment of taking political power. Starting from the moment of building a new social order, its over. [...]

[...] The subject takes pride in not having any relationship with the entire historic concrete movement of the working class socialist and liberation revolutions. They take pride in not having any theoretical or political connection to the revolutions in China, Russia, Viet Nam, Algeria, Mozambique and Angola. They are, instead, proud of the supposed purity that their theory is not contaminated by the hardship of exercising power, by the contradictions of historical processes. [...] This kind of Marxism has no critical power. It can produce and does produce a lot of good analysis of reality but it is incapable of producing a movement that is strategic and revolutionary that aims to take political power. Therefore, the process of rebuilding a revolutionary Marxism in the West has to recognize these symbolic elements, which have become ingrained in Western Marxism, that were smuggled in as contraband from Christianity. These elements have to be submitted to radical criticism and surpassed.

[intervex]

Three models of intersex

I made flags to illustrate different models of intersex, in the vein of models of disability.

At top: intersex human rights. The human rights model: intersex people are a minority group whose human rights are being violated. The dove symbol used in the middle of the intersex flag is a common symbol of human rights. Advocacy for intersex rights include creating legal protections for intersex people to ensure bodily integrity, medical autonomy, and anti-discrimination.

Bottom left: intersex liberation (interliberationism). The identity/radical model: there's nothing wrong with being intersex. Like other queer identities, intersex has been unfarily medicalized. Similar to how gayness has been de-medicalized and trans people are working towards de-medicalization, intersex needs to be de-pathologized.

The clenched fist is a common symbol of liberation movements. I posted this flag earlier - I took the fist from a transfeminist symbol, in recognition of the shared struggles between intersex & trans liberation.

Bottom right: intermedicalism. The medical model: intersex is a medical problem in need of treatment (and potentially: cure). The plus symbol is a reference to the transmedicalism flag. I wanna note that every intermedicalist I've met is against IGM and other violations of bodily autonomy. Intermedicalists advocate for better, *patient-responsive* care for intersex people.

The medical model and the liberationist model aren't really seen as compatible.

But the human rights model is compatible with *both* models: whether you understand intersex as disorder or not, intersex people deserve human rights. 💜

(Tagging for archival: @intersexflags @varsex-pride @radiomogai )

[radinclus-not-radqueer]

Radqueers are a cult.

I am a cult survivor, I have been one far before I was in the radqueer community. As a cult survivor, the radqueer community IS a cult. If you've never been in the community, and have only been an outside observer, it's understandable that you wouldn't realize this, but claiming radqueers are "just assholes" is a slap in the face to people like me who have been permanently traumatized by them.

Here is a commonly used model of how cults work:

If you go through every single point in this, the radqueer community checks almost every one of them. People have already pointed this out many times before, however I will explain it again for people who haven't seen those posts.

(Skipping over ones that don't fully apply or that I haven't personally experienced. Most of these are pretty brief because I don't think anyone will read an entire essay for every point)

Rigid rules - radqueers force you to include everyone and everything, and never question what you're accepting lest you get labeled as "not a real radqueer" and harassed. You must accept any and all predatory relationships, or you'll receive the same treatment as "antis". If that isn't "rigid rules", I don't know what is.

Rewards and punishments - you coin a term people like, or make an "I love pro-cs" post? Everyone likes you, praises you, sends you asks telling you how amazing you are! You dare to question anything about the community? You get cast out, banned from servers, harassed, sent death threats, and doxxed.

Dependence and obedience - radqueers make their victims believe that this is the only community that will accept them. They say that every other community will hate them for their identity, and this is the only "real radinclus" community. This causes people to feel trapped there, or in other words become entirely dependent on the community for validation and support. They convince people that if they leave, or do anything wrong that causes them to be forced out, they'll have nowhere to go. This forces them into obedience for fear of being left all alone and being completely abandoned.

Deception - this one is very, very obvious. There's a reason why radqueers label themselves as "radically inclusive", "pro-consent", "pro-bodily autonomy" - they are not just saying these things because they don't understand what they mean. They're intentionally using uplifting, inclusive language that sounds really great and supportive to deceive people into joining them. This is also why they use emoji codes, so other radqueers will recognize them but people who don't know what radqueers are will be lured into their trap.

Propaganda - pretty similar to the above. They label everything as "radical inclusion" and tell people that they have to support all these things to be "truly inclusive". They make cute flags and emoji codes to make grooming, abuse, racism, ableism, and transphobia seem cool and fun, to further lead people into their trap. By definition, propaganda is "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view". All these cutesy emojis, symbols, flags, and terms are propaganda.

Discourages access to outside sources of information - radqueers constantly say that all science, psychology, and medical information is "biased" and "bigoted". If you provide them with any information on how what they're doing is wrong, they pull out any number of excuses and then tell their "friends" how bigoted and exclusionist the source is. This makes it seem like radqueers are the only reliable source of information, and anything else is untrustworthy.

Insider/outsider doctrine - this is painfully clear with how they refer to everyone who disagrees with them as "antis". Even if you're just an outside observer, you pick up on this quickly.

All/nothing, good/evil, us/them dogma - once again, they refer to anyone who differs even slightly in opinion as an "anti" or "anti in training", and the second anyone decides to question why they're literally supporting nazis and blackface, they get labeled as an "anti" and "horrible person". They play the victim any time they get told that what they're doing is wrong, while crying and complaining about how much they're harassed and about how "mean" and "rude" anti-radqueers are.

Feeling chosen or special - radqueers very obviously convince themselves that they're so unique and special, which is why terms like transship or transhasapetcat exist. They want to seem really cool and special, and make completely normal things into obscure, "special" identities, like calling yourself translivesintheuk instead of just saying you wanna move to the UK. As someone who's been in their servers, they hoard identities like this because it makes them feel temporarily special and unique, which makes them convinced that what they're doing is right.

Guilt/manipulation - radqueers do this all the time. When someone says they aren't sure if they support something or not, radqueers immediately get all teary-eyed and upset, claiming that the person would be "basically an anti" if they decided not to support it. I've even seem someone cry and complain over being rejected by an anti-transnazi radqueer and claim that it was "ableist" that the person rejected them. Everyone defended and comforted the person who was rejected, immediately siding with them for fear of being "ableist", saying that it was wrong to be against literal nazis. This is very clear manipulation and guilt-tripping.

Phobia indoctrination - phobia indoctrination is where people in the cult make others terrified of leaving for fear of being hurt, killed, etc. As I've explained earlier, radqueers try to scare people into staying by saying that if they leave the community, no one will ever support or love them, and they'll never be accepted outside of it. People who went into the radqueer community after being anti-radqueer know firsthand how awful the harassment, doxxing, and death threats from radqueers are. People in the community who have doubts are very clearly too scared to leave, and people who don't have doubts have been convinced that no one will ever love them except for radqueers.

Anyways, I hope that this clears up how the radqueer community is a cult! Feel free to add on with your own experiences or additions, and please stop invalidating and shaming survivors.

[diddyrivera]

additional resources to marxist feminism:

living a feminist life by sara ahmed

the rise and decline of patriarchal systems by nancy folbre

this bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color by cherrie moraga and gloria anzaldua

delusions of gender: how our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference by cordelia fine

close to home: a materialist analysis to women's oppression by christine delphy

(pdf) the feminist standpoint: developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism

(medium) on women as a class: materialist feminism and mass struggle by aly e

(sagejournals) capital and class: the unhappy moments of marxism and feminism: towards a more progressive union

(substack) the marxfem pulpit by abigail von maure (earth2abbs on tiktok)

if anything else related to marxist feminism, just let me know :)

additional resources to eco feminism:

gossips, gorgons, and crones: the fates of the earth by jane caputi

parable of the sower by octavia e butler

neither man nor beast: feminism and the defense of animals by carol j. adams

bitch: on the female of species by lucy cooke

fresh banana leaves: healing indigenous landscapes through indigenous science by jessica hernandez

the intersectional environmentalist by leah thomas

right here, right now by natalie isaacs

feminism or death by francoise d'ealibonne

violent inheritance: sexuality, land, and energy in making the north american west by e cram

animal crisis: a new critical theory by alice grary

unsettling: surviving extinction together by elizabeth weinberg

land of women by maria sanchez

sexus animalis: there is nothing unnatural in nature by emmanuelle pouydebat

windswept: walking the paths of trailblazing women by annabel abbs

andrea smith - rape of the land

andy smith - ecofeminism through an anticolonial framework

carolyn marchant - nature as female

charlene spretnak - critical and constructive contributions of ecofeminism

heather eaton - ecological feminist theology

heather Eaton - The Edge of the Seat

janet abromovitz - biodiversity and gender Issues

joni Seager - creating a culture of destruction

karen warren - ecofeminism

karen warren - taking empirical data seriously

karen warren - the power and promise of ecological feminism

l. gruen - dismantling oppression

martha e. gimenez - does ecology need marx?

n. sturgeon - the nature of race

petra kelly - women and power

quinby - ecofeminism and the politics of resistance

rosemary radford ruether - ecofeminism: symbolic and social connections

sherry ortner - is female to male as nature is to culture?

sturgeon - the nature of race

val plumwood - feminism and ecofeminism

winona laduke - a society based on conquest cannot be sustained

if anyone has any other recommendations related to eco feminism, plz let me know :)

additional resources related to trans feminism:

the empire strikes back: a posttransexual manifesto by sandy stone

(chicago journals) trapped in the wrong theory: rethinking trans oppression and resistance by talia mae bettcher

(philpapers.org) trans women and the meaning of woman by talia mae bettcher

the transgender studies reader by susan stryker and stephen whittle

if anyone has other recommendations related to trans feminism, plz let me know :)

additional resources related to anarcha feminism:

the anarchist turn by jacob blumenfeld

we will not cancel us and other dreams of transformative justice by adrienne maree brown

burn it down: feminist manifestos for the revolution by breanne fahs

reinventing anarchy, again by howard ehrlich

anarcho-blackness by marquis bey

a little philosophical lexicon of anarchism from proudhon to deleuze by daniel colson and jesse cohn

joyful militancy by nick montgomery and carla bergman

wayward lives, beautiful experiments by saidiya v. hartman

we won't be here tomorrow and other stories by margaret killjoy

writing revolution by christopher j. castaneda

paradoxes of utopia by juan suriano

twelve fingers by jo soares

for a just and better world by sonia hernandez

if anyone has other recommendations related to anarcha feminism, plz let me know :)

[mariacallous]

Picture this, if you will: hundreds of grey-haired grannies ganging up to face down a group of neo-Nazi skinheads. Some of the skinheads have beer bottles in their hands. The grannies are armed with nothing more than umbrellas and hand-knitted woolly hats. It sounds like a corny sketch for a TV comedy show. But no. It’s election time in Germany’s eastern Länder (federal regions), and the grannies are out on the streets.

There’s no Granny Party. The movement, called in German Omas gegen Rechts (Grannies against the right), has grown into a national and international force since it was founded in 2017 by an Austrian psychotherapist and evangelical priest, Monika Salzer.

It is widely assumed here that apathy and low voter turnout will result in a far-right victory. But election posters showing a cartoon granny with a rainbow flag carry a simple message: “Granny says – go out and vote!” Apart from the rainbow, a symbol of tolerance, sexual liberation and diversity, there is no instruction on how to vote.

In between elections, the Grannies are busy knitting and babysitting. But they also raise funds, for example by baking and selling cakes, to finance the poster campaign and a set of beer mats that make up a pub quiz.

In Leipzig, my new home town, the Grannies have raised enough money to install three new Stumblestones (Stolpersteine). These are little brass plaques inscribed with the names of people whom the Nazis deported and murdered in the 1930s and 40s. The new plaques commemorate the Wesly family – Hermann, a Jewish publisher of music and books, his wife, Berta, and their daughter, Margot. Berta and Hermann were taken to Auschwitz and murdered in the gas chambers. Margot escaped to England – but the British authorities put her in a concentration camp too, as an enemy alien.

A violin and an accordion were played during the installation of the little plaques where the Weslys’ house once stood. The stonemason’s hammer punctuated the music with a slow beat. Then Granny Gisela read out a short account of how the family was persecuted and how we must never forget. Many spectators were in tears. The memorial is on the doorstep of the new building that now stands on the site – a kindergarten. Its head teacher joined the ceremony and promised to find a way of explaining the story to the kids “without scaring them too much”. I remarked that it was a very special moment. Granny Sylvia put me right.

“Sadly, it’s not so special. This brings the number of Stolpersteine in Leipzig to almost 800. There is one on almost every street,” she said, before inviting us all to join her for coffee and cake.

Later she shared a link to the Stolpersteine app in the Google Play store (also on Apple). It’s true – there are hundreds of Stumblestones. Many are not for Jewish victims, but for brave souls like William Zipperer who tried to stop the Nazis and save their neighbours. He was executed in January 1945 for plotting against the state. 

As a mark of respect, the Grannies regularly go out to polish the small memorials set into the pavements, to light candles and lay flowers.

There is another side to the movement. They are part of the Antifa, Germany’s radical ultra-left. Not quite as radical as Lina Engel, the antifascist activist who is serving jail time in Dresden for plotting physical attacks on neo-Nazi pubs and meetings. Nor have any Grannies been caught setting fire to building sites where executive homes are replacing the old affordable blocks of flats – a typical Antifa action. 

They upload videos to TikTok. And they are taking their campaign out of the city and into villages and suburbs where right wing parties recruit people who feel neglected or “left behind” by the Berlin government.

“Solidarity without borders instead of right wing propaganda,” says the Radical Grannies’ poster, urging supporters to join them in a mass demonstration. These are Grannies who don’t knit. 

[ayeforscotland]

Nicola Sturgeon was saying on ITV that given independence isn't really polling particularly lower than before, it should be a sign of the SNP being the main issue. What do you make of this? Given the number of Scottish MPs, to me the SNP seats in Westminster served mainly as a symbol, a statement, as they had very little practical ability/power other than steady advocacy and vocal opposition (personally this makes their loss particularly demoralising). Given the total absence of influence the SNP can even pretend to have now, the burden now surely falls on Holyrood policy to show that they can practically deliver. Is this feasible? Can we hope for some ambitious SNP devolved projects? All the best

All SNP projects have been devolved projects really so not sure what you mean?

Regarding the status of independence, I’m not about to let people who told me that sending a majority of SNP MPs to Westminster meant nothing for independence suddenly tell me that not sending SNP MPs to Westminster means independence is over.

I think the learnings of this election steer the SNP to being more ambitious and radical in their plans.

[drbased]

This is probably a little too personal, so I completely understand if you don’t want to answer, but I just saw a post of yours about how you were previously in the kink scene and how that strengthens your current stance on BDSM and the like.

I was exposed to that sort of thing at a really young age, and just accepted it as normal, but more recently discovered radical feminism. Do you have any advice on coping with previous relationships/ distancing yourself from that sort of thing? It’s really messed with my perception of relationships and sex and everything.

I'm not going to be able to answer this as fully as you'd like me too, I'm afraid.

Deconstructing the unspoken ideologies of BDSM are what has helped me the most. And it's fortunate that most of them can be summed up pretty easily:

forced orgasm, cnc, bondage: ask yourself to consider why it is that the idea of being a fully conscious, present, active and desiring human being isn't more erotic for you. feminist theory really helps with this - patriarchy says that the most 'erotic' thing is an erasure of our agency, our dehumanisation. patriarchy is necrophilic; it seeks death, and will accept symbolic death - that is, destruction of all things resembling living human agency, even when real death isn't available. instead, then, changing your mindset to recognising that the most erotic thing about you is that you're alive and vibrant and make choices and interact with the physical world and you're always you even when having sex; if that seems 'cringe' then you can embrace that, because in cringe lies true authenticity.

d/s roles: embrace the humility and vulnerability of true, unscripted interactions between human beings - bdsm for people is described often as 'safe fear' akin to watching a horror film, but unlike a horror film the 'safe fear' from participating in a d/s 'scene' replaces a much more potent fear of true human eroticism. additionally, doing kink in day-to-day life is another way to numb one's self to the chaos and discomfort of living.

punishment and rules: I've described kink as a form of symbolic state before, and this is why - bdsm, especially the whole concept of 24/7 d/s, is an opiate that substitutes the complicated chaotic world of real vulnerable human interaction where you are entirely responsible for your life choices is watered down to a set of rules you can follow for the rest of your life. you never have to worry if you're doing the 'wrong' thing, because your relationship path is laid out for you. And that fear of getting things 'wrong' is where the symbolic state begins to be formed - because there is no 'wrong'; there are only actions and consequences, and what you personally value. do you value the consequences of your actions? as with all symbolic states, there's a narcissistic childishness at play; you don't want to have to value the consequences of your actions - instead you want to believe that there's some external source of judgment you can always follow. because if you valued the consequences of you actions, suddenly you'd have to stop with the loathing of them - you either embrace them as truly a part of yourself, or you stop. the simplicity of that is hard but as with all hard things, it's deeply rewarding. the 'freedom' that people find in d/s is the escape from having to actually engage with their own personhood, but as with all symbolic states that's a trap. and especially as women, we recieve all sorts of mixed messaging and are punished much more harshly by society for our transgressions, so it's easier to give up and embrace that societal messaging. but it makes you vulnerable to it, and nothing beats the impenetrability of 'I don't care about x' vs 'I do care about x, so I will do something about it'

I'm not one of those radfems that will state with full confidence that all fetishism is bad in some ontological sense - I think the ubiquity of fetishes including those that seem to having nothing to do with dominance/submission, and those that start in childhood, says to me that there's something about fetishes that makes them part of the human experience. But then, as I often say, we don't live in a world where we got to have a healthy understanding of sex first: we live in a world where the default understanding of what 'sex' is for the majority of human history has been some form of rape; a man claims a woman, and her 'consent' is the point at which she submits to him, and as this consent is not an expression of her personhood it can be replaced with something as mundane as a legal contract (marriage) or financial transaction ('sex work').

Men know that rape is a perfect tool of mass terror to destroy the psyche, so it stands to reason that we feminists are not being hyperbolic when we acknowledge the importance of consent for true realisation of the self - and bdsm's hyper-focus on 'consent' seems to me a very liberal application of this idea; a deliberate refocus of excited feminist energy into something more palatable for society that still seems libertine enough to quash any sense of real rebellion (which, from what I've learned, has been a through-line of bdsm from the start). I've noticed that bdsm-ers talk a lot about how bdsm was the first time they were able to really recognise their own agency, and all I can think is how bdsm is offered to women specifically as a compromise: if you do all the sex things I want that just so happen to mirror real-life abuse and rape, then I will dress up for you, I will give you fun, spontaneous, adventurous sex, I will focus on your orgasm, I will make you the center of my attention always, I will discuss boundaries with you.

We should take with a huge grain of salt the ethics of any sexual norm in this society, including those which seem to go against the grain (remember that said grain is man-made, and thus any rebellion against it that men seem to embrace will always be more about their own rejections of the contradictions within the structures that they have built and actively benefit from; this is why feminist critique of bdsm and 'sex work' will always be more true and well-realised than any right-wing hatred of it). Even the word sadism is from the marquis de sade - a man who raped and tortured women and wrote propaganda on how being a true libertine means accepting rape. That's not an interpretation - that's literally what he did; there's no way that the women he was torturing were consenting or able to consent. And I think it says a lot about societal misogyny that you can look at what he did and see it as some sort of expression of secret liberty - it's so transparently misogynistic and patriarchal, once again inexplicably sold to women as freeing just in the same way that being a tradwife is freeing. There's a reason that there's a 1950s housewife kink.

So even if there's a version of fetishism that exists out there outside of patriarchial necrophilia and misogynistic dominance, rape and abuse, unfortunately we don't live in a world where we can find that out. The most basic, pg-13 symbol of kink - the fuzzy handcuffs - are a symbol of a woman being trapped and unable to escape. That is, whether or not anyone wants to accept it, a symbol of rape. And as for those childhood kinks I mentioned - I wrote a whole post a while back on how we seem to see a lot more kinks in kids' shows than anything else; the role of kink as another way to sexualise and exploit women and children, perhaps as punishment for a belief in the madonna/whore complex and assuming that our desire to be taken seriously as human beings means we're weakly protesting our purity, and there's an excitement in breaking those barriers down. So the question always remains; to what extent our supposed kinks that we 'consent to' in the bedroom are even our own, or how many of them are simply agreeing to entirely fabricated constructs of the male mind? And with that in mind, how meaningful can our consent ever be in that context? Or is 'consent' in a bdsm context perhaps a lot less like freedom and a lot more about that patriarchal understanding of consent as an agreement that can replicated? People laughed at 50 shades for the 'contract' but fail to recognise that d/s roles function in essentially the exact same way.

I would wholeheartedly recommend Pornography by Andrea Dworkin and Pornograph and Silence by Susan Griffin, as well as Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Susan Brownmiller for some background on the enormity of this subject and a sense of how high the stakes are.

[mask131]

Some times ago, I posted about the vandalizing of the Wall of the Justs at the Parisian Shoah memorial. The post is here if you are interested, and it got many, many notes, so I thank you very much!

But I hope this post will also get as many notes - because we found the guilty party. We know who did it and... gosh, it sounds like a fucking joke but it is not, and it just proves how complex the situation is, and how dangerous the times we are living are.

If you recalled the obvious guilty party, the first suspects, the ones that seemed to have done that were the so-called "pro-Palestinian" activists that in fact are just antisemitic people disguising their hatred under the pretense of "fighting for Palestine". It is well-known that the pro-Palestinan manifestations, events and representatives in France have all versed at one point or another into very antisemitic comments or actions, and the movement is currently being parasited by antisemitism - ranging from actual antisemites who use "Zionist" as a way to designate all Jews, including French-Jews who never saw Israel in their life ; to people who are taking back antisemitic slogans without knowing they are antisemitic in the first place.

The reason the investigation directly was aimed at them was very simple: the red hands, or red handprints, is a symbol that many pro-Palestine manifestants have been using recently. Which, in itself, sparked a whole new debate - about whether it is an antisemitic symbol or not. Because while for some it is the universal "You have blood on your hands" symbol, for others it refers to the blood of a soldier of Israel on the hands of his murderer, during the second Infifada... And while attacking the Wall of the Justs would have been a new low and a new step for these left-leaning antisemites (because so far they only attacked Jews, now they would attack those that saved Jews and assorted Nazi victims during World War II), it was in line with a new form of radicalization of the movement - see the "Block Out" phenomenon on Internet, a cancel culture aimed at those that did not support enough Palestine... As a personal note I will say: where was all this energy and effort when the it was time to defend the Uyghurs against their wiping out by the Chinese regime? It is still time today, their suffering is still going on... But as a prominent Uyghur activist said (I think it was Rebiya Kadeer, but I do not have my notes with me so I might be mistaken) - people care less about the Uyghurs than Palestinians for one simple reason "Because it isn't Israel that is killing us..." It is China, and as a result nobody really cares...

Anyway, I digress... So while it is known, confirmed and recorded that the so-called "pro-Palestine" activists in France are slowly oscillating and sinking into antisemitism, it isn't actually them who did these red handprints. No, they're not guilty this time.

In fact it is something I talked about when I made my original post: there was another very likely suspect which would have surprised nobody. Neo-Nazis. Because while the pro-Palestinian movement is currently crystallizing in France the entire antisemitism wave that has been on the rise for a decade now among the extreme-left, the extreme-right political groups have also been gaining terran and strength for quite a long time, and now, we have actual neo-Nazi parties very vocal and active today... Due to the ungodly amount of terrorist attacks France had to face, due to the frightening strenghtening of radical and extreme Islam in France, due to the whole endless debates about immigration in France, and due to the hyper-violent civil unrests that are clearly just to cause chaos and nothing else (like the riots following the death of Nahel Merzouk, which clearly were not about the Nahel case and just to cause as much destruction and steal as much things as possible)... Well of course, when these types of problem arise, who gains the upper-hand? The extreme-right.

And so now we have far-right candidates so popular they have a good chance of being elected as the representatives of France, and we have many groups of antisemitic Christian fanatics popping up everywhere, and we have neo-Nazi movements literaly returning like some perverted phoenix from their ashes... As such, it was thought that maybe these red handprints could have been the work of a neo-Nazi movement, who would use the current situation to perform their antisemitic deeds while blaming the extreme-left for it... After all, the two movements have been currently doing the exact same thing. Before the Hamas attack, far-right groups were defacing Jewish cemeteries and soiling Simone Veil's grave with Nazi swastika ; and today far-left activists are "denouncing" Israel by... tagging on Jewish temples drawings mixing the six-point stars with a swastika...

So, you know, the typical horseshoe effect. The two extremes are literaly doing the same things, and as such we have a hard time differentiatng one from another.

But no... Turns out it isn't them either! Turns out... it isn't even French people who did this.

And here's where the dark joke comes... You know who did it? FUCKING RUSSIA OF COURSE!

We forget to so easily that Putin is literaly sending his agents in every friggin' political or social event that goes on in the world right now... And in fact that's the whole point: Putin wants us to be so obsessed with the Israel-Hamas conflict and how Gaza is trapped in it all, so that we forget about how Russia is currently destroying Ukraine.

The investigation found out that the people who painted these red hands were three men that had recently arrived in Paris from Bulgaria... They were staying at an hotel and the very day following their crime, they left France for Belgium (Bruxelles to be precise). Now... You're going to say "So they're just Bulgarians? They're not Russians, nothing proves its Russia". Except for one thing... While yes the involvment of Russia has not been "confirmed", Putin's Russia is not known for its vivid imagination... And they have literaly done the same thing some times ago.

If you recall, I posted about it before... It happened last october. Right after the Hamas attacked the music festival, causing the whole madness we are into today, blue David stars were painted on buildings where Jewish people lived, echoing the dark times of the Nazi Occupation in France... Here is the post I made back in February, and I couldn't guess how far things would go back then... While everybody was getting scared about the return of French antisemitism turned out... It was a group of people from Moldavia that was paid to paint those stars everywhere. Paid by... a pro-Russian, pro-Putin Moldavian businessman, Anatoli Prizenko.

You can read more about this on my old post, but investigation concluded it was indeed an operation where Russian forces used the Moldavians as puppets. All to cause fright and chaos in France. When you consider that Bulgaria, like Moldavia, is unfortunately today one of the "screen-countries" Russia likes to use to shield themselves when doing their dirty chores... Blue stars, red handprints... This is clearly the same thing, done all over again.

And where the "joke" part comes out even more - in the sense of a perverse, venomous, fetid joke part of some putrid dark comedy... Russia has currently been truly harassing France through all sorts of operations, each more outlandish than the next, and yet all working in their own way to cause fear and chaos... More specifically two cases are regularly being brought up.

Case 1: The Doppelgänger operation

In June of 2023, the French authorities warned about what was called the "Doppelgänger operation". A massive campaign of Internet misinformation created by Russia. The purpose was simple: create mirror-websites to the official websites of French information networks, newspapers and TV channels. They were almost identical to the official news outlet of France, to the point many mistook them for the real thing - sometimes the only difference you could spot was in the URL. ".fr" became ".ltd", and ".com" became ".cam".

And all those fake websites shared articles about the Ukrainian-Russian war, articles written purposefully to spread misinformation about Russia. Some claimed that the Ukrainian population were in full distrust of their government and wanted to see it brought down... Others wrote that all the Ukrainian operations were disasters and failures. Some invented fake tragedies and disasters in Russia to try to paint Ukrainians as the villains. And others yet wrote about how the donations of Europe to Ukraine were either wasted by the Ukrainians, or would cause economic crisis in European countries...

Case 2: The bed bugs hysteria

In september of 2023, the discovery of bed bugs on several public places in Paris was shared on social media. Some were discovered in a movie theater, the presence of others was attested in some subway lines... The social media being what they are, it became a hot topic talked about by everybody, shared by everyone - and the facts were exaggerated, and rumors started spreading, and soon an entire mass hysteria started overtaking France. It wasn't just Paris anymore, but all the big cities that were supposedly infested by "bed bugs". People claimed to find them in every public places - every theater, every subway line, every hotel, even in hospitals...

Turns out, there wasn't as much bed bugs as the social media wanted us to believe. It was mostly a sanitary mass panic, echoing the fear caused by the Covid epidemic and fed by the worries about the upcoming Olympic games. And... and also fed by Russia. Investigations revealed that there was a lot of fake accounts, troll accounts and bots created by Russian servers and Russian URLs, and who spent their entire time spreading and sharing bed-bugs articles, writing fake articles twisting the facts, and spamming everybody with news of this mass hysteria..

This is the sore and infuriating conclusion. Remember, everyone, that this isn't just about Israel and Palestine... It isn't just about the Hamas or Netanyahu... And we already knew that, because already in Europe it was clear this wasn't truly about what happened in the Middle-East - it was also about the shadows of antisemitism and the wraith of the Nazi presence, it was about the extreme-left movement spreading from the USA university down to European ones, it became a fight about the Jewish and Muslim populations in Europe rather than in Palestine and Israel - and even more, a political fight between the far-right and the far-left across the continent... But it isn't just about that anymore, because now Putin is in the dance and Russia is gleefully putting oil on the fire in hope it will burn everything... This is a fucked-up chess game with many, many players... That all look the same in the end, somehow, so it becomes hard to identify which one does which move.

But at least we know who painted the blue stars, and who painted the red hands, and who pits the extreme-left against the extreme-right, and is trying to make sure the Jewish people of France are feeling scared in their own country. Putin and what he turned Russia into.

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

The devastating thing to contend with regarding Veilguard is that you are left with two choices:

1) You accept that the story we’ve been waiting a decade for to conclude ended with the lore retconned, our memorable characters flanderized and misused, the world itself far less impressive and interesting and unique than it had originally set itself up to be.

or

2) You disregard Veilguard. You pretend it doesn’t exist, and that means the story is forever incomplete. You don’t receive closure. You don’t receive that last wave of clever, intricate, intriguing, wonder-evoking dynamic writing culminating in a world-shattering conclusion that we’ve been building up for 15 years. Solas and Lavellan are never reunited. The question of Solas’s past, the true nature of the Evanuris, and Solas’s relationship with them remains unknown. The enslaved elves of Tevinter remain sitting in chains. The hinted-at fragmentation and divestment of certain pockets of Dalish and city elves to Solas’s cause remain a potential interpersonal culture war stuck in stasis. Your world state is in eternal limbo, sitting on the hazy precipice of a climax that will never trigger. You as a fan will never have the opportunity to thrust yourself into a rich, magical, poignant universe of political intrigue, culture clashes, historical grievances, metaphysical and philosophical arguments, and relatable moral and ethical struggles to rise from the dirt, dusty and panting, and feel that relief and bittersweetness and mourning of an epic finally reaching a long-awaited end.

It is the fact I have to lie to myself in order to keep what I originally enjoyed so much about Dragon Age alive in my heart. I have to actively delude myself and pretend this game doesn’t exist because it actively and aggressively subtracts and undermines from all that came before it and in doing so retroactively ruins all the enjoyment I derived from the series. The furious debates we had, the essays we wrote for each other analyzing symbolism, characters, personal motivations, the parallels to real life politics regarding classism, racism, colonization, imperialism, marginalization, the nature of power, the nature of memory and history, oppression, legacy, vengeance, justice, love, hate, ambition..

I am not saying that because we were ardent fans that we somehow spiritually or informally own the Dragon Age IP. I’m not trying to come off as entitled, but this is absolutely unacceptable. It is a slap in the face. To say it is a departure from the previous games in tone, feel, and writing is like saying bulldozing a ghetto with citizens still in their beds in order to make room for a heat-trapping super highway is a case of radical “urban planning”.

We were so hopeful. We were so optimistic. We needed to be, because the alternative was despair.

And they gave us this generic fantasy Action-“RPG” with Dragon Age as the negligible setting. It is negligible, because all of the uniqueness of Dragon Age has been filed down to appeal to potential newcomers who want nothing more than a vague fantasy setting with puddle-deep lore that they could easily ignore if they wished so they could get back to hacking away at mobs and demons with shiny combat mechanics; the romances are tacked on and shallow, the character writing as insightful and engaging as a 90s arcade Beat ‘em up. The “Dragon Age” in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a costume, an excuse, a misnomer. With this entry, Bioware/EA have established they care more for action than RPG, that deep, genuine storytelling that can make an IP a household name is not nearly as lucrative or worthwhile as endlessly chasing gaming trends and trying to appeal to new fans by being hip and cool.

But if you sit down and are honest with yourself, could anyone have been able to tie all the threads together in a satisfying way? The people currently left at Bioware certainly couldn’t, but could the entire old crew have helped steer this in the right direction? Was this story simply too epic, the plot threads too numerous, the concepts too far-reaching for adequate exploration to be satisfied with a single new game entry? It stretches belief. But perhaps if that 70% of effort devoted to combat had been instead implemented into the story (rather than the 7% it was allotted. The other 23% was on other bullshit) I’d be thinking differently. The story was what brought Origins to life. Character relationships and the direness of the moral shitshow of the mage oppression were what saved DA2 from being mediocre; the companion romances and the revelations from the Trespasser DLC were what saved Inquisition from being another honestly half-baked entry.

Writing is why Dragon Age fans accumulated. Writing is what made us stay. Writing is what made us hope and pray for a fourth game. And now writing is what has invalidated all of our collective time and efforts in ever daring to give a shit about this world and these fictional characters.

In order for my love of this series to not be snuffed out like a flame in a blizzard, I need to be delusional. I need to pretend this game doesn’t exist. And that means I need to live with a self-imposed false sense of mourning for something that never came to be, because what *did* come to be—what actually exists in reality—is more devastatingly heartbreaking and . It hurts either way. You just have to choose which hairshirt to wear and wear it.

All of our theorizing and hypotheses and headcanons are now retroactively emboldened by a newfound sense of superiority since we were positing them from a place of genuine desire to see a well crafted and thematically sound and intriguing story. But for people like me, no amount of headcanons and fan works can truly compare to a video game or comic or book that crafts a competent, even exemplary, addition to the Dragon Age story.

I am sad and disappointed that I wont be able to play that game and bask in the glory of good storycraft. It’s one thing to read it in a fanfiction, it’s another for it to be in an officially licensed piece of media. It feels more real that way, and because what we got is so lackluster, fanfiction has to serve as the less filling ersatz. It’s somewhat nourishing to me, but it isn’t what I truly crave. I WANTED the story and writing to have been good in Veilguard, but it ISN’T, and no there isn’t any way to just ask them to withdraw the game and come back with something better. This is what we got. This is what they decided to do with something so integral to our lives. It sucks how much it hurts because it is just a video game at the end of the day, but fuck if it doesn’t make the bugs crawl over my brain in lament over this monumental blunder of something I held so near and dear to my heart.

[homestuckreplay]

John, Rose, Dave & Farmstink 💙💜❤️💚

(page 760-769)

WE'VE COLLECTED THE SET!! Jade Harley is a cool ass name. Jade, the bright green precious stone plus Harley, the motorbike, makes her sound like an edgy punk singer, not a flute playing gardener.

Dave was so active in his introduction, refusing to take any of the player's shit, but Jade is strikingly passive, deciding she doesn't even need to stick around. Her sleeping radically alters the player-narrator dynamic. With awake characters, the narrator turns their sarcastic insults (and the 'you' pronoun) towards that character ('your ARMS are in your MAGIC CHEST, pooplord!') Farmstink is asleep and can't be made fun of, so the narrator's abrasiveness is turned in full force against the player. It's them (us?) who's stupid for not seeing the arms, or for threatening to drop a pumpkin on an innocent sleeping child.

(Thanks, WV, for saving her just in time. It's good to see the other end of this closed, non-paradoxical time loop).

I love the narrator's reluctance to call Jade 'Farmstink' - do they genuinely not know Jade's name? They don't seem totally omniscient; I think they can only hear characters' active thoughts (including dreams - see p.651), nothing forgotten, concealed or just not on their mind.

The player's cursor returns for the first time in a while - maybe since John and Rose started playing Sburb (but I haven't verified this). Apparently, it follows the same rules as the Sburb cursor. The cursor can select and move objects (Jade's note; John's magic chest), but selecting a player is forbidden.

So where are we in Jade's timeline? On p.652, Jade says 'see i guess i fell asleep for a while and..... lost track of time', which from our perspective has just happened. This puts Jade behind John in the timeline, but not all the way back at the story's start - their other conversations about packages and meteors must have already happened.

Jade's 'deep passion for HORTICULTURE' combined with her mystical knowledge make gardenGnostic an apt chumhandle. An anonymous asker suggested that the titles (Heir of Breath, etc) could relate to what characters will do in the future - could the same be true for chumhandles? We have yet to see John play with slime or Rose summon a tentacle monster. Jade is so connected to the future that her chumhandle and title (guessing Seer of Light?) are things she's already doing.

Other thoughts:

Jade's handwriting is somehow exactly like her typing, it's so bright, fun and bubbly.

Jade is either changing REALLY fast or she has a magic shirt. On p.665 her shirt symbol was a simplified atomic diagram, when she wakes it's a pumpkin, and a moment later it's a leaf.

Jade has plants labeled 'peas', 'squash', and 'asparagus', all of which are the contents of WV's cans. Another link between these two?

Jade's music is 'silly' - not 'haunting', like all the other musicians.

I'm so impressed by this flute panel and the number of different animations within. 'L' is my favorite. Where is she going

> Jade: Look out of window at frog statue.

[bangobeep]

Recent discovery/theory me and a bunch of other jazzpunkers have been talking about.

Considering the little crab at the beach congratulates Polyblank on his birthday, and the dates on the guestbook, we thought it'd be silly if he WAS actually on vacation ON his birthday. Which we left somewhere along the lines of the 6th of May. Polyblank birthday yay! :^)

Something else we noticed was how some of the people in the book didn't add a date, but a symbol, such as the encrypted one (that I'll get into later), milktruck, Hunter S. Thompson and The Editor.

First of all, who are the people on the guestbook?

RAYMOND SCOTT -> In our world, Raymond Scott is considered a pioneer for electronica music! He was an American composer, band leader, pianist, record producer, and inventor of electronic instruments.

ENOCH LUSTIG -> Not a person from the 20th century I could find, though the name Enoch does appear in the Bible. Though I don't really think it's a biblical reference, the character of Enoch is known for living 365 years alongside God, and ascending to heaven in life.

GERD ALBERS -> Though somewhat hard to find information about him in English, Gerd Albers was a german architect and urbanist, prominent in the 20th century.

TILO LYMAN -> A possible reference to Theodore Lyman IV! He was an American physicist and spectroscopist known for important discoveries made regarding ultraviolet light, among others.

DAVID COCKERELL -> A direct reference to the real world person of the same name: David Cockerell! He is an electronics engineer and designer. Regarding this first bit, he's known to have designed countless synthesizer engines which were revolutionary for the electronica community!

JOSEF ARNTZ -> Found genuinely nothing about this guy. Mystery!

PROHÍAS -> A very exciting one!! Antonio Prohías was a Cuban-American cartoonist, known and recognized for many artworks! Among those, is Spy vs. Spy!

黒川 紀章 -> Kurokawa Kisho, or Kisho Kurokawa is a Japanese architect! Probably in here because he's the founder of the Metabolist movement! It was a radical Japanese avant-garde movement pursuing the merging and recycling of architecture styles within an Asian context. This is the Nakagin Capsule Tower (which Luis Hernandez loves so much) guy!

XAVIER ESPERANTO -> Probably a reference to Esperanto, the language! It is actually artificial, and it was devised in 1887 as an international medium of communication, based on roots from the chief European languages. Not too sure what the Xavier bit refers to.

JOHNY THE ROBOT -> The one under Xavier Esperanto's is Johny (with one N, yes) The Robot's! It's written down in the international telegraph alphabet, which you can see here. The complete message says "HELLO MY NAME IS JOHNY THE ROBOT". The telegraph was a huge thing in the 20th century. Meant to be short and meaningful, it started getting used during the war in the place of letters to communicate messages regarding enemy attacks and positions.

B. MARY -> Bloody Mary or, as you may know her, the Lady in Red! She confirms her name is indeed Mary in one of her unused voice lines, which you can find here.

MILKTRUCK -> Explanation not needed. Love you, milktruck.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON -> A direct reference to the real life Hunter S. Thompson! He was an important American journalist and author known for "Gonzo", a journalistic style in which the writer becomes a central figure and participant in the events of the narrative. In Jazzpunk, you can see him as the confused guy hanging around, lost at sea, asking Polyblank for a date at the bar, and being confused about Why Polyblank is in his room (when he breaks in with the master key).

THE EDITOR -> Needs no explanation.

NOW, A FUNNY LITTLE DETAIL:

THESE. As you can see, they all have something different in the 'DATE' section.

As for Xavier Esperanto's, I am not too sure.

Johny The Robot's is unintelligible.

milktruck's is an n/a. Does this mean the milktruck doesn't want to date. Not Applicable. milktruck doesn't date. We love aromantic rep.

Hunter S. Thompson is confused about being asked to date. If you can recall, from the times he's seen in game, he's always generally confused about everything.

Finally, The Editor has a money symbol. The Editor will go on a date for money. LOL! Fitting.

[seiya234]

the haunting of ian beale, 2/?

uh this one got long lol. part one here.

---

Ian looked around him.

He looked at who was next to him, and what he was wearing and sighed deeply.

"Well, it's not the Symbolism Room at least."

Henry nodded. "It's the Symbolism Beach, which will obviously be better."

"Was that a joke?"

"Rest assured, I do not engage in any type of jokes, frivolity, japes or shenanigans."

"Well as long as that's settled."

The beach was... endless, sand in all directions on either side of him, water in front of him. Ian didn't look behind him; something inside told him that he wouldn't like it. Normally that would have had him immediately looking from sheer spite but his gut was telling him

he would see Nothing

truly, Nothing.

could he handle seeing Nothing? no, okay, let's move on then because

this chair was very comfortable.

Henry and Ian were in Adirondack chairs, and Ian knew it wasn't his mind supplying he beach because he had never heard that term in his life. Thankfully, something knew him well enough to pair his swim trunks with a shirt and sun hat.... though considering his trunks were covered in yellow triangles, and his shirt had a Radical Dude Doing Sik Sk8 Trix on it, he was still clearly being fucked with.

Henry, Ian was bemused to see, was still in his weird pre-Transcendence 'preacher' outfit, though tonight at least he had short sleeves on.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Ian looked out at crashing waves, water so dark as appear to black, a blue cloudless sky. It felt... calming. Meditative. The waves were just enough to provide sound, but not so violent as to actually disturb the sense of calm tranquility.

His brain, Ian realized, was quiet.

Quiet in that every time he felt the panic rise, it felt like a big fist came to kindly push on his chest until he settled down.

He should probably be worried about that but

oh. hey. A fruity tropical drink in his hand. Convenient, that.

"What brings you here this time?" Ian asked. "I"m not sure how many after school specials I can handle."

Henry frowned a bit. "I'm not entirely sure myself. Quite frankly I'm amazed I'm here spea-"

Henry disappeared. Ian took the opportunity to will his drink from a virgin pina colada to a margarita.

He looked out at the ocean.

He didn't look behind him.

"My apologies." Henry was still the same, though his glass had now turned into a mug that read 'World's Best Grandpa.'

"Not exactly fun being constantly in the midst of an existential crisis, I get it."

Henry looked around him. "This... this is my daughter's beach."

The mindscape of someone dead a thousand years. But

"You seem... relatively calm, about that," Ian finally ventured.

"You mean, as compared to Alcor?" Ian must have pulled a face, because Henry let out a bittersweet little laugh.

"No. I am sad my daughter is gone. But I am happy knowing since then she has had a hundred different life times to experience joy-"

"-and pain-"

"-and that too but one is not outweighed by the other. It just is. We see each other in-"

Henry kept talking but for a minute all that came out was radio static. Ian had a feeling that even if Bill or Alcor were here, they too would only hear that static as well.

"-also, with all due respect for my brother, it has been a millennium. Everyone and everything involved has moved on."

"But not him," said Ian with full disrespect.

"No." Henry took a drink and adjusted his visor. "in a way, I pity him, deeply. I think he will forever be locked in the trauma of losing everyone and everything he knows. There is a part of him that cannot change, cannot move on, and he knows it."

"Okay, but that's bullshit though?" and oh, was he mad? Okay, he was not only mad, but pretty mad, even with the chest pushing blanket on him.

"I'm sorry, but a thousand years, and nothing has changed? Seriously? Also have we forgotten that vampires also can live a very long time, or dragons, and I don't see them doing... doing-"

Ian waved a hand to indicate everything Alcor had done, ever.

"Vampires don't have infinitely expanding and growing power at their beck and call."

"And that makes a difference how?" Man the combination dreamarita, dream beta blocker, and the constant rage that bubbled under his skin was actually a really good combo, the words were flowing but the heart rate was not accelerating, 12/10 feeling.

"My life, Mira's life... they're different because Alcor is in them- and not always for the better."

"Bill might have happened anyway."

"Point. But would I be missing an eye, would-"

Ian stopped, because he didn't want to tell Henry about the pain, the sadness, the absolutely tremendous amount of stress on all of them, because the preteen with the power of a god decided to come into their lives and play with them like dolls.

He didn't deserve that truth, yet.

Everything was silent for a minute, save for the breaking of the waves and the cry of the gulls.

Finally, Henry managed to say, "I think, I am a little upset to hear you say that. But if I put my emotions aside for a second, I do not think you are entirely wrong, either."

Ian was still. He had seen Henry crush the plastic armrests under his hands, caught the hot iron tang of blood in his nose and a flash of meat in the antlers.

"Has he told you, about my children? His nieces and nephew?"

"No. He hasn't? I'm... sorry?"

For a minute, Henry disappeared. But this time it felt like it was because he chose to do so himself.

Henry blipped back in, now also holding a dreamarita. "My apologies. I did not realize how that would affect me. And I did not hold space for your extremely valid criticisms."

Looking at him, Ian felt a wash of pity come on him. What was it like- no, what had to have happened that even a thousand years later you felt the need to exert that level of control over oneself?

"Anyway," Henry went on. "We had triplets- Acacia, Hank, Willow. They were our everything. Alcor was their fourth parent." The math must clearly have not been mathing on Ian's face because Henry added "We also had my father-in-law with us. No but... I don't regret having Alcor with us, having Alcor raise the kids. He loved them, more than anyone or anything else-"

"-except Mizar."

Henry looked like he bit a lemon.

"Yes. Well. My point is, I don't regret it but thinking about it... we were all affected in some way, letting a demon into our homes, into our bed. And... it wasn't always all good." Henry paused. "But it wasn't all bad, either."

Ian thought about it, really, truly thought about it for a minute.

"It's not all bad," he finally agreed. "But he seriously needs to fix his shit."

"I'll have a talk with him-" Henry's hands and feet blipped, appeared quickly hanging from his antlers, then appeared back where they should be. "Or I'll try to anyway."

They drank their drinks. At some point, a goat wandered onto the beach.

Ian still didn't feel tempted to look back behind him. It felt like being fourteen. It wasn't a good feeling and oh, the calm down hand was pushing him down again-neat!

"I am a little embarrassed that I am just now having this realization," Henry said as he began his second dreamarita. "It feels like something I should have recognized a long time ago."

Ian was now three dreamaritas in and beginning to see 5-D colors. "I wouldn't sweat it, it's probably because your consciousness was violently ripped apart and the resulting energy used to power a demon and now the million fragments of your soul are slowly beginning to piece themselves together and wait, how do I know this?"

"You know the answer."

"Ugh. Him."

"But you are probably correct."

"Orrrrrr, and just throwing this out there- none of this could be real and it's simply my brain trying to process the absolute shitshow of the last few years."

"Perhaps. I know that I, personally, do not feel very 'real' right now, which is also very disconcerting."

They sat. They drank their drinks. The goat was eating a seagull, an image that Ian was almost going to immediately throw on a storyboard for the next episode when he woke up.

"Why are you here? Doing this?" Ian finally asked.

"I don't have anything else better to do. Dipper won't listen to me."

Ian was not going to touch that with a ten foot pole but he went on. "That's not your vibe, that's what assholes like me say."

"I am trying to be witty, but that has never been my strong suit."

Which was why Ian wasn't going to point out that that had been nowhere near wit but-

"-I thought you could use someone to talk to, about all of this."

"Okay, but we already had this conversation and I am pretty sure you are not a licensed therapist."

"Very much not; I was a librarian."

"That tracks."

"So no, I am not a therapist. I certainly can't 'fix' you, nor do I have any intent on doing so."

That flare of anger again. "Okay, but my life would be considerably easier if my brain wasn't constantly trying to crash into the ocean and explode, so I'd rather like some fixing, thank you very much."

Henry held his hands up in supplication. "My apologies, I was trying to go for more 'we are defined by our life experiences.'" He looked down. I'm not always the best with.. talking to people. Understanding them. That was all-"

"Mira." Unbidden, her name out of his mouth.

"Her."

On Henry's arms, Ian could see dozens of little round scars, up and down. His hands clasped his mug, and Ian could see that two or three of his fingers were crooked.

Ian had a feeling why Henry had a hard time with people. It wasn't a good feeling.

"But look. One good talk won't fix everything forever. I think you could use someone to talk to about this a little more regularly. I don't know all of what you've been through, our experiences aren't a one to one comparison but, I get it. Really. And I know in retrospect, I should have talked to someone myself."

"Wait. I'm sorry, you didn't have a therapist? Or anything?"

It was disconcerting to see a middle aged man who could instantly obtain and wear the mantle of Death blush beet red.

Ian could see where this was going. "Henry did you ever talk to your wife about any of this?"

"A... a tiny bit, I think. I hope. But, I think I didn't want to burden her... which in and of itself created a burden on her. I trusted her, more than anything else in the world, but I... I couldn't talk to her."

Henry looked down at the drink in his hands. "It was always so much easier to talk here, than it was in the real world."

Control.

Ian thought about the control it took to keep the anger at bay, keep the temper cool, keep everything inside, at all times.

Control, that was more akin to a prison.

Aloud though, all Ian said was "Oof," because honestly he wasn't sure how to handle this level of honesty from a guy he was only talking to for the second time ever, also who was super dead.

"My apologies, I know that was a lot of- as my kids used to say- 'oversharing.' But I just dont want you to make the same mistakes I did."

A chill trickled down Ian's spine. "Um, I'm actually emotionally available and talk to my fiance like a real person, thank you very much. To say nothing of the multiple therapists I am currently seeing."

Henry ignored Ian's barbs and went on. "I know you talk to Mira-"

"How-"

"I can see inside you," Henry said, nonchalantly.

Not even magic airborne anxiety medicine would keep Ian's heart from immediately jackhammering in his chest, stop his temper from instantly snapping like a twig."

Ian's voice was low. "I am sick and TIRED of people, especially people I don't know, RUMMAGING inside of my head."

Henry was flushing but this time there were stormclouds in his face, which tough shit.

"It all comes down to BILL, always and forever, and apparently that's a legitimate reason to invade my privacy? In the most violating way possible?"

"That was certainly not my intention, could I please explain?"

Ian was standing up now, albeit wobbly because those dreamaritas were hitting hard, and looked out to the ocean beyond. He resisted the urge to dump a devastating one liner and began to wade out into the ocean. He'd just swim until he woke up, and then put "learn how to lucid dream" on his calendar so he could peace out right away next time this happened.

"Wait, Ian you should not go out in that water-"

Ian flipped him the bird and kept going.

"No, seriously, I think that's a rip tide-"

Suddenly, it felt like two hands grabbed Ian's ankles and pulled and now he was flying through the water, further and further from shore. He tried swimming sideways, but the not-hands on his ankles held on tighter and pulled him under."

It was a dream so obviously, Ian didn't need to breathe.

But

Everything around him was wine dark and suffocating. Underneath his feet was tens of thousand of feet of water and more than that was a deep crushing M A W, a great big stingray's mouth that sought out pray and sucked it in to crush it between it's two great grinding plates and he was drawing closer and closer and

Something else wrapped around his waist. Something... wood? It wrapped and it Pulled

And the maw and the wine dark sea and the bird eating goat and the beach were gone, all gone, and it was just him, and Henry, in a blank white space.

"I'm sorry, I tried to take you to my space but-"

For a second, everything flickered around Ian and he was in a forest but flicker again and it was the blank white room.

"-but I think that part of me is gone, right now."

"So. Thank you for saving me, but counterpoint, what the fuck was that murder beach?"

"I did not realize that her beach had.. not quite gotten a mind of its own. Say was akin to a machine left on way too long, running the same processes until it burns out-"

"And those processes are?"

"Eradicate intruders by destroying them, and dispersing their energy."

"And," Ian said after a long minute, "that was your daughter's mind."

"She was going through some things." Henry paused. "In retrospect, quite a lot of things."

Ian sat down, and Henry next to him.

"I don't- it's not on purpose, I promise."

Ian sighed. "I had a feeling. Honestly, you don't give off that kind of vibe. It's just-"

"You've been violated. Several times." There was an edge to Henry's voice and for a second the air around him smelt of blood and pine and wait, was he getting mad on Ian's behalf? Oh, that was... unexpected. But cool, thanks!

Henry closed his eyes, took a breath, and the air cleared. "I want to let you know I am not reading your mind-"

"Oh my stars, is that one theory that souls just watch the living like TV true? Because I got to tell you, I am deeply not sure how I feel about that existentially."

"No. I mean, kind of but-" radio static, again.

"I didn't catch any of that but I'm guessing no one is watching grandma go to the bathroom from the afterlife."

Henry shuddered. "Absolutely not. I can just..." He paused, clearly trying to think of a way to phrase it so that mortals could understand. Finally, he just reached out and gently tapped Ian's chest.

"I see that."

"Are you telling me you can see my heart? Because that is unimaginably corny."

"I can see that you are a good man, who loves and is loved in return."

For once, Ian had nothing to say.

The room began to dim, and Henry looked around. "I think you're starting to wake up."

"Oh, uh... okay."

There was an awkward pause, but finally, Ian extended an olive branch. "It feels like you still have more to say."

"I do."

"Then, I guess I'll see you around."

----

A pillow smacked into his face.

"Dude, why are you groaning so much?"

"Love you too, starshine."

"Seriously though, you practically woke yourself up. Weird dreams?"

Ian's brow crinkled. He couldn't remember anything but-

"Did I drink last night?"

"Um, unless you managed to do it in the 2 minutes we were apart before bed, no?"

"Huh. It's weird but I feel... hungover?"

[intervex]

Some new, bright variants of the Disability Pride flag (with historic colours)

The diagonal stripe Disability Pride flag design by @capricorn-0mnikorn et al is flexible about the specific colours used for the red, yellow, white, blue, and green stripes - there are a variety of versions ranging from full saturation to reduced saturation.

For fun -- and to lean into my proposal for the stripe colours to be about different models & causes of disability -- I thought I'd make variant versions where the stripe colours come from historic flags and symbols made by disability organizers!

These are intended as supplementary variants of the main versions for circumstances where we want to talk about disability history. (I think the standard, desaturated version is the best general-purpose disability pride flag!)

The versions on the left have a silver grey (#cfd1d0) background from the Eros Recio disability flag. The versions on the right have the original black. The black/grey is to mourn disabled people who have died due to eugenics, violence, neglect, and illness.

Red: disability caused by violence and/or neglect (itself a form of violence). Also models of disability like debility and disabled black feminist theorizing which focus on how disability is used as a tool of violence to enact societal oppression.

The red (#f71d20) comes from the red AIDS ribbons (1991) used to protest the societal neglect of the AIDS pandemic. HIV/AIDS was ignored by governments for years because they either didn't care - or thought it was a good thing - that massive numbers of gay, black & hemophiliac people were dying.

Similar reds are now used by the Millions Missing (2016) campaigns to advocate for research and treatment for ME/CFS, another disease which disproportionately affects disadvantaged groups (mostly women) that has been widely neglected and dismissed.

Yellow: disability caused by natural differences. Models like the affirmative model and evolutionary models which view disability as providing positive benefits to individuals and/or society.

The specific golden yellow (#FDD70A): comes from the intersex flag (2013). Intersex is an umbrella term for natural bodily variations that don't neatly conform to ideas of "male" or "female". As a result we are medicalized when there is nothing actually wrong with us. (We intersex folks also belong to the queer community because of how we threaten binary ideas about sex/gender.)

Gold also appears on the Eros Recio disability flag (2017). More recently (2018), gold has become associated with autism, another natural difference.

White: disability caused by unknown or other factors. Models like the human rights model, which focus on how disabled people - regardless of how or why they are disabled - are deserving of basic human/civil rights and liberties.

The specific white (#FFFFFF) is from the neurodiversity flag. I have been unable to track down the first one from 2005 but a large variety of rainbow infinities on white backgrounds have been used ever since for neurodiversity.

Neurodiversity is a large umbrella category, and can be caused by many factors.

Blue: situational disabilities. Models like the social model and the radical model which posit there is nothing wrong with us. The problem is how society excludes us.

The specific blue (#009ee0) comes from the Deaf flag (2011). Many Deaf people feel there is nothing wrong with being Deaf, the problem is that the rest of society does not use signed languages, provide captions & transcripts, etc.

Green: disability due to natural illness. By "natural" I mean not socially imposed like how how treatable diseases are allowed to persist due to sociopolitical oppression/neglect. This is associated with medical models of disability.

Honestly I struggled for a historical flag for green - seems green is not a colour that disabled organizers seem to have been using until very recently(?). There are a bunch of green awareness ribbons from the 00s such as for kidney cancer, mitochondrial disease, hepatits B, and lyme disease. But I could not find evidence that any of them were made by the people with the relevant disabilities.

If anybody knows of any disability-led designs that prominently feature green that were used before ~2016 please let me know!

Green has been used as a colour for mental illness since at least 2013, and judging from my google image search results for "green ribbon awareness" this has been the most popular green ribbon awareness campaign.

But everything I can find gives me the impression this green ribbon campaign was created by sane people, though some celebrities who have been open about having mental health problems have backed the campaign.

The green sunflower lanyards used to indicate hidden disabilities started in 2016 in the UK, from which I got this green (#1f9a4b).

Purple: disability as a community. Models like the social construction model which focus on how the category of disability is socially constructed and maintained.

The purple (#82609b) is from the mad pride flag (2013). Mad pride has its origin in the psychiatric survivor movement, which has been critical of how psychiatry defines and punishes madness.

Madness in particularly has a long history of being socially constructed. For example, in how sociopolitical oppression can be twisted into individual pathology: black slaves who fled slavery were diagnosed with "drapetomania" rather than for society to understand slavery as oppression. More recently, terms like "climate anxiety" and "climate grief" have been used to individualize the climate crisis.

Including purple in the place of green in the flag is as a means to include mad pride & mutual aid communities when talking disability history. The five colours of the standard disability pride flag are to symbolize all of humanity, being the most common colours used in national flags.

Swapping out the green for purple for talking about disability history kind of represents how we disabled people have been on our own, not really represented by nation-states.

[autistic-mandalorian]

I've been having Thoughts about trans Maul (specifically tgirl/nonbinary Maul)...

So Maul's never been allowed to be his own person. He was taken from his home planet, had his people and family and culture stripped from him, and was molded into a tool to be used and discarded. His body wasn't his, and neither was his life or even his mind. His entire identity was constructed around self-hatred, pleasing his abuser, and violence. ("Always remember I am nothing.")

And then his body is radically altered against his will and he's abandoned for it, treated as useless and forced to rebuild himself in quite a literal way.

This is such a transgender story to me. Maul even changes his name, symbolically rejecting his old identity ("Formerly Darth, now just Maul.").

I think after emerging from Lotho Minor and getting new prosthetics, she changes her pronouns to she/it (thanks to @genderyomi for the boydyke Maul post).