#riding on the coattails of a stronger force

[logwire]

"Riding on the coattails of a stronger force" by Yuna ISHIDA

[randomfoggytiger]

How would you rank the seasons of TXF from first to worst. I know canon ends for you at S8 so you don’t have to include the other seasons if you don’t want to. Mine ranking goes like this (first to worst)

3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 7, 2, 1, 11, 9, 10

Hot take (kind of) = S10 and S11 are not canon… I hate what CC did to the mythology, William, breaking up M and S, etc…

Extremely hot take: IWTB > FTF. I have reasons but I’m not going to get into that right now

I have four answers for this: the seasons ranked by mytharc, the seasons ranked by MOTW, the seasons ranked by quality, and the seasons ranked by favorites.

(Beware: I flame all garbage herein, including my own. ...And there are bound to be typos-- will ghost edit later~.)

Breaking down each season by its characteristics, two main strengths stand out: their narrative or MOTW focus. Each season plays more heavily with one facet than the other (except Seasons 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8, which blends them to varying degrees of success.)

In order of consistent theme-- if not, at times, quality:

The Narratively Strong Seasons: Fight the Future, Season 8 (I know, hear me out), Season 6, Season 3, Season 2, Season 4, and Season 9. Each entry is held together by the backbone of one (or several interconnecting) ideas: Fight the Future quite literally functions around the mytharc, and is stronger for it; Season 8 punctuates almost every. single. episode. with one or more characters trying to either find Mulder or the answers to his disappearance; Season 6 rides the coattails of FTF as the leads find a mytharc resolution and begin to iron out the wrinkles in their personal relationship; Season 2 never forgets the duo's loss of the files and Scully's abduction, peppering his and her struggles into most of the episodes; Season 3 mostly deals with Scully's abduction memories, Melissa's death, and the unfolding mytharc; Season 4 is half cancer arc and half well-written filler, only returning to the main theme here or there; and Season 9 supposedly follows cop-style casefiles and Scully's single motherhood (but is really about Scully weeping on and off while events just happen to justify the next surprise twist.)

The MOTW Seasons: Season 1, Season 5, Season 7, Season 9, Season 11, IWTB, and Season 10. Each season is punctuated by its monsters rather than its mytharc, with the latter taking a backseat to the former. Season 1 is the epitome of the MOTW formula, saving mytharc for a whiff here and there but mainly focusing on the monsters always around; Season 5 is chockful of cryptid excellence and mid-to-fleeting mytharc narrative impact; Season 7 pulls its head above water with each good MOTW episode; Season 9 would be solid if Scully's characterization hadn't been so heavily butchered; Season 11 is iffy on the quality of its characterization and its casefiles; IWTB is appalling in MOTW quality; and Season 10 is the worst, with very little making sense, even in the MOTW moments.

Ranking the quality of each season is a hard and nuanced task. Because I am but a mere mortal with only so much time for contemplation, it's one I shall leave for the individual. Objectively-- the total quality of the product, not just one's favorite parts of it-- though, I think we can all agree that S1-S6 were the best, and that S7-S11's writing wheezed a long death rattle. While enjoyable in parts, perhaps even narratively satisfying at times, the latter's execution iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis bad.

Ranking My Favorite Seasons: Season 8, Season 6, Seasons 1/2, Fight the Future, Seasons 4/5, Season 3, Season 7; then descending order of the sloppily written (S9, S11, IWTB, and S10.) For the fun of it, I'm going to go a little more in-depth on my choices.

Season 8 is a HOT mess, and I won't even attempt to deny it. The MOTWS are mid and the mytharcs are worse. Its strengths, however, lie in how tightly wound the narrative is to Mulder's abduction, which forces the characters to introspect more openly on-screen. Which is great. ...However, the writers lose interest in that angle after Mulder's return; and jump right back into mytharcmytharcmytharc without taking a moment for Mulder to process his own trauma, as well. What separates Season 8 from Season 9 is its characterization: Scully and Mulder stand strong as themselves. While S9 Scully wilts and becomes a background character in her own narrative (which began in Essence-Existence, AHEM, ahem) and S9 Mulder breaks his character off the bat by leaving (even if Scully asked him to... which she wouldn't, given what happened in Essence), S8 Scully doesn't put up with anyone's condescension, making her own-- good and bad-- choices based on established personal work and growth; and S8 Mulder keeps the core of his character in tact-- regressively and progressively-- as he works through the fresh angle of abduction PTSD. We can track Scully's determination, fire, doubts, and fears exactly where Season 7 left off; and we can watch her stretch and grow as she's forced into Mulder's shoes-- so much so, that it's harder for her to walk away from the files to an extent, than her former partner. Meanwhile, DD came back to the season fresh from other acting jobs and injected Mulder's (neglected) trauma with as much nuance as he could. (The lack of exploration for Mulder's PTSD is, by far, the season's largest demerit; and that hinders-- read: butchers-- the finale two-parter because none of Mulder's actions and reactions are properly explained.) I thoroughly enjoy Doggett: his introduction as Kersh's operative and his journey to overcome his mistakes was one I would happily rewatch any day. He's a great character that the writers misused, too-- creating one-off, "going nowhere" episodes just to "explore" him more (which were wastes of screentime, by and large.) By far, his best moments were alongside Skinner (who he becomes tight with), Scully (who he advocates for), Mulder (who he keeps trying to understand), Kersh (who he loses respect for), and Monica (who is here-and-gone; but provides an interesting dynamic, nonetheless.) Skinner is gold in every scene (and that stays strong, no matter how badly written the seasons or movies are); Monica is okay, though not a strongly defined character; Kersh is perfect to hate.

Season 6 is great, great fun; but, unlike Season 7, it doesn't lose focus on what beats are important to maintain (and DD hadn't burnt out completely, so there's that.) My preferred cup of tea is MOTW over mytharc; and this season wraps up the latter decisively. (Perhaps that's factors in this decision.)

Seasons 1 and 2 are just wonderful; and, lo and behold! The mytharc is kept to a minimum-ish. Season 2 mostly revolves around the narrative of Mulder and Scully working through their issues on-screen (...and, now that I think of it, I'm beginning to see a pattern.)

FTF is spectacular, no notes.

Seasons 4 and 5 aren't a particular favorite-- angst isn't my preferred rewatch material-- but I do love their early (and one or two middle) MOTW episodes. I acknowledge, however, that the episodes are in these seasons are incredible; but, again, objectively great, subjectively eh. (Great fodder for analyses, though. ;)) )

Season 3 is so tightly knit to the mytharc that it falls into a greater "meh" category for me. (It's not incredibly satisfying when I know said mytharc falls apart, reinvents itself stupidly, then self-destructs only to reinvent itself even stupider. Over and over and over.)

Season 7 is the slapdash "we're almost done!" season. It has some great-- though cracked here-and-there-- moments; and Mulder and Scully had fun having fun. But the MOTW quality really suffers, and that's the bread and butter for this season. Not to mention the mytharc quality, which really suffers; and if not for the acting, S7 is narratively unsatisfying.

The Slop, as I shall call Seasons 9-11, are just so, so poorly handled. Most agree Season 9 has some great MOTW; but Scully's characterization is broken, and she becomes a sidekick to the Doggett and Monica Show instead of a lead on The X-Files. (I'll forever wish GA had stuck to her guns and not renewed a contract for Season 9; but CC kept asking her to, so, here we are.) I put this before Season 11 only because I haven't watched it (though I know each plot point in its entirety.) Season 11 is incredibly hit-and-miss. The good MOTWs always run into a snag that unravels the logic of the episode; and the bad MOTWs (and both mytharc episodes) are bad. Mulder and Scully haven't grown or progressed as characters, despite their age and relative experience-- in fact, they become less intelligent; and are given impossible abilities and impossible chances to escape death without proper explanation. (The main series put Mulder and Scully in impossible situations many a time; but always set up another logical factor or explanation to get them out of it. When they didn't, that was a pronounced failing, too. The main series, however, did not dim their established intelligence for plot-convenient reasons.) IWTB's MOTW is abysmal (my rants are here and here); and Mulder and Scully whiplash between in-character hesitations and mean-spirited unintelligence. Season 10 is by far the worst of the batch: no internal consistency, be it characterization, plot, or narrative follow-through. (You can find my rants under the Revival Reviler's first-time watch through hashtag.) A failure on all levels. Sidenote: but let me be clear-- if we compare Season 10's worst episode (one of the Struggles) to Season 11's worst episode (My Struggle IV), the faultier season for characterization would be 11, hands down, because it has a higher fall from grace.

Anyway! Those are my thoughts. :DDD Always open to change them if I hear better alternative reasoning~.

[s3raph1c]

I need to truly take the faith into myself and make it my own, with my own individual prayers and devotions. It is so easy for me to ride on the coattails of my husband's much stronger faith, and completely neglect building up my own. But when I am by myself, out of the house, just going about my day, I do feel the love of God and warmth in my heart at the knowledge that Christ died for me, too. My husband has a much more forceful and overt approach to the faith, whereas that does not really work for me. So when my only prayer is with him, and my only spiritual discussions are with him, I find that I don't really profit much. I love to pray with him, but I'm understanding that if I do not put my own work in and make it my faith too, I am only hurting myself. I suppose I should talk to other women more, but I am not often inclined to talk to others.

How to phrase it to my spiritual father? I've mentioned it in confession before but I don't think I've really been clear. I guess I just feel a bit stifled, or overshadowed, or I guess just like there's no room for my own spirituality when his is so firm. I feel discouraged from trying. Which is no excuse, but I do feel that there isn't much room for me, even though he has his own prayers and such totally separate from me.

[dogsrotten]

"if all this was true , why even waste your time ? why be with me in the first place ?" she didn't do relationships , either . not really . mostly hook ups , something to forget -- to pass time , to quiet the demons in her head telling her that no one loved her , so much so , that her mother left her permanently because she couldn't handle taking care of her . took all of two years of effy being alive and that was enough for reid to go -- that's what it felt like ; a bad aura , like anything she touched would disappear and leave her forever . death was always riding her coattail and now here he was , telling her that going with him would have been worse . supposed he was right . she was never a good person to begin with . tongue pushes to the roof of her mouth , fingertips gnawing at the sleeves of her shirt , "you and i have that in common ." gestures towards him , "we both aren't shit ." squares her shoulders to give herself a sense of direction , like she was stronger than she looked , but she just felt lost and confused . always taking the wrong turn , looking for things in the wrong people . the wrong substances . "sorry isn't going to help you ," still remembers waking up the next morning and finding him gone . called and he never answered . "you left me !" voice gravels as it raises an octave , "you left me all alone !" she couldn't forgive that . swallows to wet her mouth , forcing the boulder that seemed to nestle in her esophagus down . "you made your bed , now go lie in it ."

"  it  would've  made  things  worse  ,  if  you  did  "  ever  the  pessimist  ,  but  he  had  what  happened  with  his  parents  to  show  for  .  all  their  calls  he  declined  day  and  night  ,  the  conversations  he  refused  to  participate  in  and  even  the  arguments  he'd  start  with  one  of  his  dads  simply  because  he  couldn't  deal  with  his  feelings  .  it  had  turned  him  mean  ,  grief  .  it  was  a  turmoil  every  single  time  he'd  wake  up  and  another  one  when  he'd  go  to  bed  .  his  sister  was  everywhere  and  nowhere  ,  at  the  same  time  .  leaving  town  was  the  best  choice  for  himself  ,  surely  he  could  see  that  now  ,  but  the  way  he  went  about  it  would  never  appease  the  voices  in  his  head  .  "  i  was  not  going  to  be  a  good  boyfriend  then  ,  or  a  good  anything  "  had  barely  made  friends  for  the  first  six  months  he  was  on  the  team  ,  his  voice  unknown  to  his  teammates  until  he  slowly  started  opening  up  .  "  i'm  sorry  ,  for  leaving  and  for  not  saying  anything  after  that  "  tears  in  her  eyes  send  a  shiver  down  his  spine  ,  emptiness  building  up  a  hole  inside  his  chest  to  make  it  impossible  for  him  to  breath  .  "  i  am  sorry  for  everything  ,  effy  .  "  and  much  more  ,  much  more  he  could  even  put  into  words  .  "  i—  there's  no  way  to  change  what  i  did  ,  i  know  that  .  "  feels  pressure  behind  his  eyes  ,  shifting  his  gaze  to  the  floor  out  of  cowardice  —  never  one  to  be  fine  with  people  seeing  him  cry  ,  even  if  it  wouldn't  be  the  first  time  for  them  .  "  i  just  wish  i  could  still  have  you  in  my  life  "

[lostinwoods]

Sunrise meant it to be really view altering when they decided to pit themselves with making Moroha into a green-screen character in order to uplift the twins. They probably wanted to return the favour to Sesshoumaru, how he was used at one point to uplift Inuyasha’s legitimate empathy towards the human race. But was Inuyasha truly an all empathic guy? No, he wasn’t! He started out as an equally selfish guy as did Sesshomaru. But what did make Inuyasha look good was the on-field comparison between the brothers in the first few episodes.

How Sesshomaru, very heartlessly ripped out Inuyasha’s eyes when the boy infact had nothing to do with hiding the pearl.

How Sesshomaru’s desire to monopolise the Tessaiga’s power was equally contradictory to Inuyasha’s desire to not wanting the heirloom.

How Sesshomaru’s blatant display of power rendered the audience questioning whether his desire for the sword was even justified when Inuyasha clearly needed it more.

But was that really all that it had to it? I still truly feel Toga had highly neglected Sesshoumaru. Ya, many would argue that the guy had all power and needed things to happen that way in order to make his character grow, and probably Toga saw it that sams way. Still, was giving a rejected and discarded technique in form of Tensaiga really necessary? Was it truly necessary to force Sesshomaru’s neck into protecting his brother by riding on the coattails of his respect towards Toga? I still think and will continue thinking that was really low of the Taisho. He truly disrespected Sesshōmaru.

So now was it really so barbaric for Sesshoumaru to go out and seek for an heirloom which would have made him into an all powerful guy? I mean, wasn’t Inuyasha also gonna use Shikon for a powerful demonic existence?

Still all the above comparisons actually faded out more when Sesshoumaru miraculously changed into a character that would be revered by a lot of fans. Was he still not grey on the edges? Yes, he was, period! But that is what really made him into the anti-heroic existence all of us fans loved so much. Yet so, was Inuyasha’s character or popularity compromised? No!

Why is that?

Because that guy also grew along with the rest of the cast. He became that one guy who accepted his shortcomings and wanted to grow stronger to protect his comrades, making him equally respectable.

But what did Yashahime do?

If they truly wanted to return the favour to Sesshoumaru by making Moroha a bleak paper character in order to uplift the twins, then they miraculously failed. Because honestly it felt like Moroha was the one who grew up the most, had the most honest personality and truly had some serious OP powers. Shit, seems like Taisho once again favoured Inuyasha. He actually passed down his powers to Moroha,

Now, that is what we call a slap to Sesshoumaru’s face.

Sunrise spectacularly failed in making a hero out of the twins and in return absolutely crushed all their purpose in making them shine on Moroha’s expense. Because to me it seemed, Moroha shone the brightest!

[anxtheroliveinthehouse]

Bathed in Flames.

Hello, I wrote a little something. I also posted it on AO3 if you’d rather see it there.

rating: G || no warnings || fandom: atla/atlab || character(s): Zuko, Mai || 

additional tags: other main characters mentioned, vignette, angst, Zuko-centric, Zuko’s scar, angst and feels, teen angst, guilt, dysfunctional family, family issues, personal growth, bending, Iroh is a good uncle, meditation, dreaming

summary:  Three vignettes written about three of my favorite parts Zuko's character arc: where he came from, what he did, and who he became.

There were times when he didn’t dream. His sleep was left unmarred by troubling visions of destiny or night terrors of dishonor. However, this wasn’t a night of blissful awareness, as most nights were. He was only half asleep, one part of his brain could still hear the crackling of the fire in the center of his chambers as well as the sound of the water sloshing against the sides of the ship. The air was tainted with the smell of coal burning deep within the belly of the ship. The blazing hot life inside the engine called out to him, the flames he could clearly feel licking up his legs and torso, arms and back, until it entirely engulfed him.

It could have been terrifying for someone else to experience. However, it was only natural for him. Firebenders could sense their element when it was in close vicinity, and of course the stronger the source, the more it made itself known to the benders that controlled it.

This was perhaps the only time of the day in which his bending abilities and his sense of fire did not soothe or calm him, ground him or give him balance. When he slipped into his own dreamworld where he couldn’t hold back his ridgid control on his memories, he fell into the deepest pits of despair. The sound of the crackling fire and the sloshing of the water on ship and the sense of the great roaring fire within said ship only brought him back to the day of his Agni Kai.

The torches that filled the viewing benches around the arena crackled the same as the one in his room. The water in the moat around the arena sloshed against the stone structures that confined it as did the sea against his confining ship. The engine rumbled . . .

Zuko distantly felt the rumbling through his bed from the floor. It wasn’t enough to rouse him from his half-aware state because of how long he had been on this Godforsaken ship. Regardless, the rumbling only further enhanced his painful memory. The rumbling was the way the crowd stomped and cheered for the fight between father and son. It was the sound of the searing flames his father unleashed upon him even when he begged for mercy.

The pain was all he could remember after looking up to see the fire reaching for him. The agony remained for days and days afterwards. It smarted him for weeks to come, the skin always sore and hurting. It would never feel normal, always tight and dry like leather. He was lucky to make it out with his eye and eyesight.

Barely aware he was doing it, Zuko reached for his scar, covering it from any further harm. It was a pathetic attempt. His father could sear through his hand and probably his skull as well. The threat always lingered with him. His father was clear that if he were to return to him, Zuko would be killed.

Banging on his chamber door startled him out of his sleepy brooding and into his fully awake brooding.

“What is it?” He snarled.

“Prince Zuko, we have reached the Southern Water Tribe.”

Cruel excitement swirled in his gut. “Gather your men. We disembark as soon as the ship’s nose crosses into their village.”

*

Zuko dreamed pleasant visions for once when he was back inside the Fire Nation’s capital, he was home . It felt right to be there. There was always the bonus of having Mai in his arms. Her hair brushed against his chin and her breathing against his throat. Something about those feelings lulled him into a sense of security.

The dreams, while happy and contented, were sure to bring anguish to Zuko when he woke. He dreamt of the Avatar, alive and well. He dreamt being on the shores of the Fire Nation watching the kid sail through the wind off the ocean on that contraption of his. He kept happily gliding without a care in the world, whooping and laughing all the while. It was almost like the scene took place a hundred years prior. When there was no war and the Avatar had visited the Fire Nation as a normal boy. He had friends here and a good relationship with the people.

Of course, Aang was enjoying himself, as were the other three. Toph had busied herself trying her hand at sand bending a sandcastle, though Zuko could tell she wasn’t a huge fan of it. Katara and Sokka were out in the water with Sokka trying to surf but ultimately failing, eventually Katara bended a wave that was easy enough for her brother to ride on. This only boosted his ego.

Zuko smiled, genuinely smiled, at the scene. Maybe this was paradise? Some idyllic world where the crown Prince of the Fire Nation was friends with the Avatar.

As soon as the vision began, it was swiftly taken away. Zuko stirred, feeling the coattails of happiness in its wake. He opened his eyes to the choice he had made. He chose not to fight with the avatar, but against him. His sister had shot down the boy with lightning and killed him, yet gave Zuko the credit. It wasn’t long afterwards that the guilt set in. A myriad of emotions crashed over him. Anguish was the best descriptor. The Avatar’s words echoed to him as he laid there watching his girlfriend as she slept.

If we knew each other back then, do you think we could have been friends, too?

*

It was the day of Zuko’s coronation. He was dressed in robes that reminded him of his father. They were heavy on his shoulders. Or perhaps it was the weight of the responsibility that he now carried. Even though he had not been officially crowned as the new fire lord, he had inherited the position after his father had been forced out. As Ozai’s oldest child, Zuko was set to be crowned and carried the burden of the entire fire nation.

Not even a week ago he was still on the run with the avatar, fighting and sneaking around. He had been starving, imprisoned, shunned, and beaten the first time he had been away from home, right after the Agni Kai. And since then, Zuko has been at his lowest in the past year. He hadn’t even thought he could go lower. Then to be humbled when he joined the avatar’s gang and redeemed himself.

What a journey he had been on.

When Zuko found his own eyes in the mirror of his dressing room, he couldn’t believe the contrast in what he found. He recognized himself, but he had changed so much that he was unsure. He had aged and lost weight, leaving his cheeks hollow and his face gaunt. He was wearing the fire lord’s robes, a sight he never thought to be possible. His hair had grown long enough to be put into a top knot which a hair piece would be placed signifying his new status. It was almost too much to comprehend.

The scar was the only thing that grounded him. It made it unquestionable who Zuko was seeing in the mirror. The person he saw was a product of their journey. Whether the wounds were physical as the scar on his face or invisible as were the ones on his heart, they were testament. They would be his legacy.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He faintly felt the candles and low embers of the incense burning in the room. When he took a breath, the few sources of fire flared and grew brighter. Then, Zuko meditated. Everything he was worried about was being pushed aside in his mind. He thought of Iroh and his tea to help.

The first thing Zuko came across in his thoughts was his sister. Azula was still wailing and fighting for escape. This particular thought was unexpectedly painful to deal with. There was so much driving force between them from their father that once he had been removed, it left this awkward, empty space. He always loved his sister, but it wasn’t like how Sokka loved Katara. It was a cold and distant concern. At times, Zuko questioned if he did actually care. He was afraid that maybe too much time and pressure had permanently estranged them. It felt like they could never be able to pick up the pieces or try to have a semblance of normalcy, but he knew he had to try and bridge the gap. Though, in the state Azula was in, that would be completely impossible. Maybe the healers Zuko sent to her would be able to help her.

He pushed the thought away and made it smoke in his mind. It drifted away.

Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph were all going on more adventures. Really they were supposed to be helping people in their transition out of the fire nation’s hold. However, Zuko was sure they were prone to stir up trouble. Deep down he worried for their safety, especially now in the midst of great change. There were already reports of rebellions both in and out of the fire nation. Secret groups were being formed and threats on his life were being sent out. He could only imagine what hung over Aang’s head.

The thought became mist, and drifted before settling on another worry.

His mother was still alive. It was a thought that had been pushing for attention in his mind even when he needed to stay focused. He missed her so much at times he felt like he would implode. The first thing he did when he had the power to was order an investigation into the whereabouts of Ursa. Even so, he was planning a visit to see his father. There was a chance the previous fire lord would at least give him something, but Zuko wasn’t optimistic.

The thought turned to rain. Curiously when he opened his eyes to find the rain he began to feel, he found fat tears rolling down his face.

He wiped them away. They had caught him off guard. No more would his emotions catch him unaware. He needed to be comfortable in his ability to feel them, name them, and, to an extent, control them. His empathy was the tool he needed in becoming a great fire lord. One that Ozai refused to acknowledge during his time in power. Hopefully, Zuko would be able to hold onto it.

Hopefully, Zuko would never become his father.

[duskgathers]

so, my harry potter is no longer epilogue friendly, mainly because i no longer ship hinny. for the most part, i will have harry and ginny try dating harry’s sixth year and ginny’s fifth year, but after their break-up, they realise that they do better as friends, and, also, ginny deserves a better guy than someone who would really break up with her just to “protect her”. 

canon divergent notes post-voldemort’s defeat: 

harry, hermione, AND ron return back to hogwarts for their “seventh” year. while both ron and harry would have been fine not going back to school ever, hermione pointed out that harry hates riding on the coattails of his success and getting a job after defeating voldemort without sitting for his NEWTs would essentially be that. so, all three of them decide to return to hogwarts, which is necessary, as they don’t all know NEWT level stuff ( hermione does, but, well, it’s hermione ). 

that entire generation of hogwarts students are a little bit delayed in classes by one year. essentially, everyone has to retake the year, so half of the first years are new students and the second half of the first years are returning students to retake their first year, etc. 

there are a lot of funerals and trials that go on during harry’s “seventh” year. harry makes sure to visits every single one of the funerals, but some of the trials take place while he’s in school, so he doesn’t feel the need to go to all of those. 

he does go to the hearing for draco and narcissa malfoy, and he gives testimony that allows narcissa to escape azkaban and draco to go to azkaban for only one month ( as much as harry doesn’t want draco to necessarily go into azkaban, draco did do crimes that he had to do time for, but harry’s testimony changed one year to one month + fines ). lucius malfoy returns to azkaban for several years, but harry doesn’t offer testimony to help him get out of azkaban. 

during this time, he also gives testimonies to make sure severus snape gets an order of merlin, first class, and is exonerated for dumbledore’s death considering it was more of an assisted suicide rather than murder. he also makes sure to clear sirius’s name since that is very important to him. 

after they sit down for the NEWTs, hermione goes into law and harry and ron go into the aurors as harry still feels a responsibility to catch the death eaters still at large. harry and ron get accelerated training in the auror program so that they only train for six months instead of the required one year. 

it takes harry and ron one and a half years to capture all of the death eaters who fled. harry quits the auror force after the last death eater is caught as he’s done with fighting for a lifetime, while ron continues on as an auror. 

after harry quits working for the aurors, harry isn’t quite sure what to do, so he decides to travel for a bit and to just... stop being so totally involved in the ministry and find himself. so, he goes on a journey, sometimes joining luna on her travels, for about two years. 

harry, of course, manages to find danger every so often and helps out people often, and manages to learn a lot of new skills and how to deal with things that he didn’t know before he went on his journey.

harry also finds his powers grow exponentially as ( he realises this later ) his mother’s love protection that kept voldemort’s soul fragment inside of him from influencing him too much was also running on his own power, so about half of his magical power was tied up into fighting off voldemort’s soul fragment. without it, his power started to grow and grow faster and much stronger. 

by the time he’s thirty-five, he’s long-since surpassed albus dumbledore and voldemort in pure power, helped along by the fact that he’s also still the master of death.

after travelling for two years, harry returns back to britain and becomes the DADA professor at hogwarts. he also bites the bullet and partially becomes a politician, mainly to help out hermione ( who doesn’t really need help but values it anyway ). 

[yoakkemae]

so, my harry potter is no longer epilogue friendly, mainly because i no longer ship hinny. for the most part, i will have harry and ginny try dating harry’s sixth year and ginny’s fifth year, but after their break-up, they realise that they do better as friends, and, also, ginny deserves a better guy than someone who would really break up with her just to “protect her”.

canon divergent notes post-voldemort’s defeat:

harry, hermione, AND ron return back to hogwarts for their “seventh” year. while both ron and harry would have been fine not going back to school ever, hermione pointed out that harry hates riding on the coattails of his success and getting a job after defeating voldemort without sitting for his NEWTs would essentially be that. so, all three of them decide to return to hogwarts, which is necessary, as they don’t all know NEWT level stuff ( hermione does, but, well, it’s hermione ).

that entire generation of hogwarts students are a little bit delayed in classes by one year. essentially, everyone has to retake the year, so half of the first years are new students and the second half of the first years are returning students to retake their first year, etc.

there are a lot of funerals and trials that go on during harry’s “seventh” year. harry makes sure to visits every single one of the funerals, but some of the trials take place while he’s in school, so he doesn’t feel the need to go to all of those.

he does go to the hearing for draco and narcissa malfoy, and he gives testimony that allows narcissa to escape azkaban and draco to go to azkaban for only one month ( as much as harry doesn’t want draco to necessarily go into azkaban, draco did do crimes that he had to do time for, but harry’s testimony changed one year to one month + fines ). lucius malfoy returns to azkaban for several years, but harry doesn’t offer testimony to help him get out of azkaban.

during this time, he also gives testimonies to make sure severus snape gets an order of merlin, first class, and is exonerated for dumbledore’s death considering it was more of an assisted suicide rather than murder. he also makes sure to clear sirius’s name since that is very important to him.

after they sit down for the NEWTs, hermione goes into law and harry and ron go into the aurors as harry still feels a responsibility to catch the death eaters still at large. harry and ron get accelerated training in the auror program so that they only train for six months instead of the required one year.

it takes harry and ron one and a half years to capture all of the death eaters who fled. harry quits the auror force after the last death eater is caught as he’s done with fighting for a lifetime, while ron continues on as an auror.

after harry quits working for the aurors, harry isn’t quite sure what to do, so he decides to travel for a bit and to just… stop being so totally involved in the ministry and find himself. so, he goes on a journey, sometimes joining luna on her travels, for about two years.

harry, of course, manages to find danger every so often and helps out people often, and manages to learn a lot of new skills and how to deal with things that he didn’t know before he went on his journey.

harry also finds his powers grow exponentially as ( he realises this later ) his mother’s love protection that kept voldemort’s soul fragment inside of him from influencing him too much was also running on his own power, so about half of his magical power was tied up into fighting off voldemort’s soul fragment. without it, his power started to grow and grow faster and much stronger.

by the time he’s thirty-five, he’s long-since surpassed albus dumbledore and voldemort in pure power, helped along by the fact that he’s also still the master of death.

after travelling for two years, harry returns back to britain and becomes the DADA professor at hogwarts. he also bites the bullet and partially becomes a politician, mainly to help out hermione ( who doesn’t really need help but values it anyway ).

sometimes he does do consultations with the aurors or helps them out with missions, but, with the latter, it’s very rarely.

[idolizerp]

[ LOADING INFORMATION ON POIZN’S LEAD RAP, LEAD DANCE ZEN…. ]

DETAILS

CURRENT AGE: 26 DEBUT AGE: 20 SKILL POINTS: 02 VOCAL | 13 DANCE | 15 RAP | 10 PERFORMANCE SECONDARY SKILLS: Lyric writing

INTERVIEW

ZEN is made of contractual obligations and tightened puppet strings stitched to every joint in his body, invisible ties piercing bones, making him move to the whims of those who hold all the power. all because he signed his youth away, thinking he’d get a shot at making it big. alone. solo. a one-man act.

what he gets is a group. baggage. expectations to be a team player drilled into his head since the announcement of poizn’s lineup so many years ago.

for someone so selfish, so determined not to let anyone in, it’s a wonder how 99 ent. managed to shatter his resolve and replace it with a ghost of a boy, who would do anything they say to keep his ugly past buried, kept under lock and key, and confidentiality.

do as you’re told and we will make sure no one knows who you were. disobey and you will never get a chance at that solo you desperately want.

so he drowns himself in silent threats, fashions himself a persona for protection. (after all, ZEN is more shield than sword.)

ZEN is a collection of almosts. caught in between white lies and bits and pieces of the truth. every word he says is borne out of a calculation—a subconscious scheme—to memorize people’s shortcomings, their desires; to dig out their secrets and exploit them when he’s finished.

variety shows like his go-getter attitude. appreciates the way he chuckles at lame stories, encourages and draws from him exaggerated (often fabricated) stories about his members and their lives as trainees and as full-fledged idols. they like his sharp wit and clever savagery, praise his comedic timing and his natural capacity to read the atmosphere and gauge reactions.

so he digs himself a niche in the handful of appearances he makes on network tv during promotion cycles. smiles like his life depends on it. smiles until his cheeks hurt. smiles until the cameras turn off and he bows his farewells. smiles until he’s enveloped in the darkness of his room in poizn’s dorms and he writes himself sick.

he makes a name for himself until, one day, he goes off-script. disobeys. he steps over the line and says something he shouldn’t have. makes a joke about someone whos off-limits and way out of his league (practically untouchable) that falls flat—is misconstrued and taken as full-on offensive. it doesn’t matter if it was intentional. a mistake. the backlash he gets comes on the heels of fans turned antis, people who used to tolerate his edgy attitude and borderline controversial remarks, excusing it as him being witty and sarcastic. it’s part of his charm is not enough of a blanket phrase to save his hide or his damaged reputation.

99 ent. releases a statement, forces him to write a letter of apology and self-reflect. behind closed doors, he’s told to lay low. not show his face. so he does what he does best—he goes into hiding for several months, haunts the practice rooms in an attempt to pull himself back up. all the while the public divides itself cleanly into two: those who forgive and forget and those who remember and are out for his blood.

five years have passed since his juvenile blunder and he wonders if he’s safe. wonders if he’s forgiven. wonders if he can keep pretending this monotonous life is something he still wants. if the stage and the lights and the screaming fans are worth the way exhaustion creeps underneath his skin, seeps into bone, poisons the nerves.

wonders if anyone is capable of seeing through him at all.

(to the lost, lonely boy he keeps locked in his rib cage, in the tiny sliver of a bleeding heart he houses in the confines of his chest.

a boy buried under a man named ryu sungki, who is all too consuming, too much, too dangerous—a predator.)

SUNGKI wears danger like a second skin. walks a fine line between pure nonchalance and vague belligerence. uses people like pawns. tosses aside has-been’s and groupies like yesterday’s trash after he’s done. drapes layers and layers of distorted versions of himself that people love (to hate, to fuck)—he is whatever you want him to be. until the sun rises and he’s gone, as if he’d never been there at all.

he’s neither here nor there. an perpetual in-between. always lingering on this precarious divide.

SUNGKI cares for no one—not even his members—but himself. the climb to the top has always been a one-man war and he’s long since abandoned his comrades (those trainees back in the day who thought they could ride on his coattails, use him, exploit him. fools.) in favor of surviving. self-preservation nothing more than pure instinct to remain the last one standing.

he has no sympathy for the weak. can’t fathom setting himself aflame to keep others warm. he’s got chaos in his bones. he’s a storm in human skin and all those who stand in his way will always get caught up in his mind games.

don’t try to shape him into something pure. don’t try to save him. don’t play with hellfire if you don’t want to get burned. and, most of all, don’t fall in love with him.

because he will love you raw, broken, and dirty.

because he will kiss an i love you into your skin and murder you when he leaves and never comes back.

(haven’t you heard?

he’s the bad boy mothers warn their daughters away from.

he’ll love you like you’re his first, touch you like you’re the only thing that matters. he’ll turn your body into an altar, your mouth a confessional, and he will worship you like a sinner trying to find something holy—redemption—inside your body.)

BIOGRAPHY

ONE.

he’s born on a blazing summer day to two barely adults out of wedlock.

his mother cries. his father curses. and the nurses slip away, turning a blind eye to the sudden makeshift family of three.

the second time he wakes, he is home. and home is a tiny apartment in dalseo-gu, dirty dishes piled high in the sink, and week-old leftover takeout growing mold in the refrigerator.

home is also the cradle of eomma’s arms and a soft, tremulous whisper calling, sungki. sungki-ya~

for two years, it’s just the three of them in their little corner of the world and they try to make it work. his father juggles two part-time jobs to make ends meet: when the sun rises, he’s got his hard hat on and all sungki remembers is the hunch of his shoulder and the bend of his back; when the sun sets, father leaves dinner half-finished at a quarter to six, commuting his way to a gs25 in the heart of daegu for his closing shift.

his mother stays at home, trapped inside a dingy apartment with a fussy baby boy who doesn’t understand that she’s human too.

they scrape by stretching won to won. eat enough to call themselves half-full. sleep enough to trudge through another monotonous day. love each other enough to stay together for a little while longer.

TWO.

happiness comes in fragments.

it’s the sound of eomma’s soft humming, singing about canola flowers and the riverbanks of nakdong, of a love that caresses and warms the soul, of bygones and fleeting youth. it reeks of nostalgia and lost time—of a life she no longer gets to live.

it’s father smiling, lulled half to sleep by her gentle voice and sungki’s offbeat clapping and nonsensical babbling. it’s endearing. all kinds of tender and soft.

it’s endearing, still, when he starts to crawl, starts to walk, little legs struggling to hold him up, his voice stronger and louder. his babbles now strings of sentences and fragmented lyrics. he sings eomma’s sad ode to her younger self once in a voice made of honey and ripe with emotion he doesn’t quite understand and she cries.

it’s the first time since birth that eomma cries like that: all brokenhearted and hurting. sungki-ya, sungki…my beautiful boy.

it’s the first time sungki cries too.

don’t cry, eomma. it’s okay. sungki is here. sungki loves eomma. don’t cry, please.

THREE.

he’s three when he learns the saddest words in the dictionary. it’s stay followed by please don’t go trailed after a whimpered, half-choked eomma is sorry.

three and still a boy (just a boy) when he learns to associate abandonment with the sound of the door clicking shut in the dead of the night, to dial tone, to come back come back come back’s left unanswered.

father tells him in drunken rages not to miss someone who won’t miss them. tells him with a fist to the face that he was not enough for someone like eomma to stick around for.

tells him, after, cradling his bruised body to his chest that he can’t deal with loneliness by waiting next to the phone, by the door, by making excuses, by praying. (because what’s god to a non-believer. what’s god to powerless people.) eomma is never coming back, boy. you chased her away.

sobriety comes in ripples; its effect turning every day into a perpetual hangover. a rinse-wash-repeat cycle that always ends with sungki taking the brunt of his father’s addiction to the bottle, watching him try to find solace in the bottom of a glass, grasping at redemption with cracked hands and blood in his mouth.

home becomes a cesspool of false hope regularly beat out of him. home becomes a dumpsite of bodies—all his; year round, for years to come. home becomes a space. just a space. void of happiness but full of struggles.

home is just home. until it’s not.

FOUR.

he leaves this hellhole inside four walls behind on a sunday.

abandons a man he no longer recognizes as his father. (hasn’t even called him that since the day he cracked his head open on the kitchen counter. the scar’s a nasty reminder; a permanent blemish for him to reminiscent about when insomnia and his father’s guttural sobs keep him awake at night.)

because the day the authorities come for him is the day he loses what’s left of a flimsy thing called family. child protection services come swooping in like belated grace and the courts deem his father unfit to care for him. mother is nowhere to be found—she hasn’t been in his life for the past decade, so he’s shuffled along an assembly line of cold and distant relatives who want nothing to do with a troublesome boy like him. who wash their hands clean of him by claiming too much responsibility, financial burdens of an extra mouth to feed. shuffled along until someone finally gives in. takes the plunge.

like this, he’s sent straight to the heart of the big city to live with his grandparents, people he’s never seen hair nor hide of; who were only mentioned in passing since his mother showed up on their doorstep pregnant and afraid.

seoul is a collection of bright lights, white noise, and too many people.

harabeoji is stern and righteous. nothing like his own father, who is wasting away, lost in the aftermath of failures and the monotonous routine that’s his life. sungki never saw him coming. never expects to be taken in with kind intentions and gentle hands. never knows what to do with his own hands but clasp them in his lap as he’s gestured to sit at the table by the stoic face of his grandfather and the kind eyes of his grandmother.

dinner is a simple affair: a heaping bowl of rice, a mountain of kimchi, a big pot of seaweed soup, and a whole thing of galbi. he must’ve made some sort of noise—animalistic and pitiful, perhaps—because suddenly, there are arms wrapped around him, warm and safe, and halmeoni’s voice saying, it’ll be okay. you’ll be okay, child.

it’s only then sungki realizes he’s crying.

brokenness is the scars the old couple notice littered and scratched along his back. a decade of untold horrors and bottled up pain.

loneliness is quivering hands slipping ‘round halmeoni’s waist, bunched around soft fabric and choking sobs of grief.

(eyes empty, face haunted. he’s just a boy who’s seen too much. felt too much. hurt too much. still a boy. broken, bleeding, and blue.)

FIVE.

harabeoji tells him to channel his anger—the innate violence—into something else. tells him to shape the tremor in his bones and the adrenaline in his veins into hypermotion. you must learn to control your temper. turn that negative energy into something positive—something that drives you, something that will help you in the future, harabeoji says the first time sungki tells him he’s a whole mess of pent up anger, a body full of hatred towards the world (towards fate and circumstance—for the life he’s been dealt. how unfair it all seems).

he’s thirteen and starving. wanting to put this twisting shard of despair and bleeding cruelty somewhere. anywhere. (he doesn’t want to be like his father. wants to learn to be good. better. stronger.)

so he finds himself a makeshift home in hard-hitting lyrics that speak of injustice and the world’s cruelty, that remind him that he’s one of many who don’t live in the lap of luxury, who don’t have the privileges that those who are more fortunate are born with. drowns himself in loud music and gravel-like voices who are just as angry as he is at the world.

soon, every day is a fight to build up his walls, his defenses, encasing his heart in maximum security. warning: danger ahead. no trespassing allowed.

halmeoni approaches things differently. handles him with care. his salvation comes in the wonky radio sitting on a dusty bookshelf; the only thing keeping him sane when he wakes up at the ass crack of dawn to deliver porridge to people’s doorsteps for what amounts to pocket change and comes home from the monotony of academia, shoulders heavy under the weight of meritocracy and sky-high expectations.

exhausted, sungki dreams of a language powerful enough to fracture jaws, punch through hearts to ignite the soul. dreams of stringing together words that can heal, that can hurt, that can make people feel.

he’s thirteen, still, when he uploads a faceless, free-styled cover of drunken tiger’s good life on youtube. it doesn’t garner much views—just a handful of comments noting the timbre of his voice, the swell of emotion, his potential. the views never go higher than four digits, but sungki makes do with the occasional passing encouragement for more. thrives on it.

one cover becomes two. then, three. five. eventually, he begins covering remixed western artists like jay z and kanye west. his english is mangled at best, his r’s still sound like l’s no matter how hard he tries and his accent still bleeds right through. gruff and rough around the edges. but he finds he likes it—sounding less polished, made of raw potential. a diamond in the rough.

SIX.

halmeoni passes on a spring day and harabeoji stops smiling. (he never stops caring, though. still present, still there. just merely existing now. drowning in his grief.)

sungki stops talking. stops. just stops.

he’s fifteen when he falls through the cracks of society. slips right through harabeoji’s fingers. sungki’s lost now, floating adrift in a sea made of sorrow and hatred for stupid things like fate and circumstances. bullshit. so sungki falls. lets himself plummet straight down. because when someone like him hits rock bottom, there’s nowhere else left to go but up.

at school, he turns himself into a loner; all sharp gazes with an intent to kill aimed at all those who dare to approach. defends himself against schoolyard bullies who picks fights with him, who don’t understand the meaning of do not disturb. defends himself against the harsh tongues of teachers who take one look at his face and his don’t give a shit attitude and declare him a lost cause, lecturing him in and outside of classrooms. like this, rumors start to whisper through the grapevine—ryu sungki’s a bully. he’s bad news. stay away from him. heard he’ll kill you if you even looked at him. heard he beat up someone for stepping on him. heard he talked back to kim seonsaengnim. heard he—all untrue. unfounded. missing context and his side of the story.

but when has anyone ever even bothered to ask him if all this was true. when has anyone ever tried to uncover the truth. when has anyone even cared enough to consider there is more than meets eyes with a boy like sungki?

never.

so sungki doesn’t try to change the narrative. because you can’t convince people to change their minds when they’re so set on believing what they choose to believe.

and a social pariah he becomes.

forever not belonging. forever feeling out of place. neither here nor there.

fitting nowhere.

SEVEN.

sixteen and sungki finds himself underground.

it’s where he finds a niche; a collective of misfits, outcasts, and the resentful strays. fits right in with his newfound allies in a world that spits upon them for not being book smart and upright.

creates himself a language, finally, that breaks the bones of his innocence. fractures souls, tearing hearts wide open.

he writes himself a storm. shaping feelings into words, into hard-hitting metaphors about fucking society and battling fate with a bottle of whiskey, numbing pain by chasing adrenaline, the heady kiss of skin-on-skin, and reckless teenaged rebellion.

his handful of faithful fans on youtube gobble up the once-in-a-blue-moon amateur cover made of a sultry voice crooning love, oozing sex, in the thrum of bass and a deep, raspy voice rapping about size zero and double standards, spitting fire about the disenfranchised and the little people constantly stepped on by the privileged. finds himself a small following seduced by his face cast in shadows and the mystery of a teenager who’s just a survivor, fighting fire with fire.

in the heartfelt, emotional-ridden lyrics he pens in the dead of the night, he digs himself a graveyard, fills it with the remnants of a lonely abandoned child of three and the ashes of a boy barely seventeen.

EIGHT.

he’s scouted leaving his part-time job bussing tables at a hwae restaurant one busy saturday evening. scoffs in the agent’s face when he’s handed a business card, crisp and clean. logo blazed all pristine and perfect across the front. scoffs at the thought of getting streetcasted for his visuals (puberty was a blessing in disguise; his body elongating, filling out nicely, his face losing the roundness of a child and becoming sharp cheekbones and a jawline that could cut. he’s all rough masculinity wrapped up in a leather jacket and ripped jeans, despite smelling like barbecue and raw marinated fish). wants nothing to do with the idol industry. doesn’t want to be a dancing monkey, molded and shaped into something beautiful and perfect in the eyes of the public, singing manufactured songs about bad girls playing hard to get and sex disguised as euphemisms made of clever wordplay and blanket phrases of love sung to generic beats.

he waves them away, shakes his head no, and wanders back home.

it’s only later that he finds the business card tucked innocuously into the back pocket of his jeans and another hiding inside his jacket pocket.

open invitations. temptations.

he sits on it for weeks. months. until harabeoji finds them tucked inside a dog-eared notebook filled with ballpoint ink and smudged lines of poetry and half-finished songs.

it comes as a surprise when sungki’s told to give it a shot. he’s doing nothing but cruise life, anyway. there’s no judgment. just plain fact. sungki has no intentions of going to university. of trying to climb his way up the corporate ladder or save lives with his bare hands. of working a good ‘ol nine-to-five day in and day out.

and with one year to go before he must decide which fork in the road to take, harabeoji asks him to give it a shot. go. do something. anything. you’re just wasting away, sungki. your halmeoni wouldn’t have wanted life to turn you into a ghost. not like this.

so he obeys. because harabeoji asked. because he thinks it’s what halmeoni would’ve wanted him to do—try, to live life, take chances.

he auditions at seventeen with halmeoni’s picture tucked inside his wallet, a microphone a centimeter from his lips, and a song with lyrics about building a home in someone, trying to find peace in the shape of their body, salvation in the press of their lips, redemption in the curve of their spine, love in the sound of their voice.

he makes it in. and it feels like victory.

congratuations, ryu sungki. welcome to 99 entertainment.

(he should’ve known it wouldn’t be this easy. should’ve known once inside, there would be no exit. not without leaving all damaged and bent out of shape.

should’ve known survival was never a one-time battle, but a lifetime of war.)

NINE.

trainee life is torturous. his friends from the outside more hauntings than they are people. the draw of fame and fortune turning them heinous and cruel. harabeoji is his only remaining pillar as sungki struggles year after year to weather the storms of evaluations, of the times he sings himself hoarse and dances himself broken.

he imagines it would be worth it when he finally debuts with the small handful who has bled alongside him. imagines somewhere down the line, the stage and the spotlights and the stadium of fans waving blinding lightsticks would be worth the fracturing of bones and the momentary losses of his voice and the blisters on his feet and the bruises on his skin.

one year into a life made of a revolving door of talent hopefuls and the diehard tryhards, he’s pushed into more intensive training and thrust further into the dog-eat-dog world of rap. it’s reminiscent of his wretched teenaged self—the empty threats, the penetrating i’m better than you, trash gazes of his peers. resentment is palpable and he feels it in the burn of their stares every time he makes gradual progress, makes splashes big enough to garner some praise and recognition from his trainers. he’s got an amateur foundation from youtube days, after all. his accounts now gathering dust, laid to rest in the aftermath of closed doors training and verging on three years of blood and sweat. (no tears. not yet. never.) they must have known about them—his potential, his meager repertoire.

he doesn’t shine so much as ignites under harsh criticism, his temper constantly held at bay (control, harabeoji’s stern voice whispers in his ears every time he catches a backhanded compliment or the passing insult over his improvement by those who’s been here longer, trained harder) by sheer willpower.

as much as he’s doing this because he sees no other possible future for him, he still has his pride. still wants to have something of his own. and he’d be damned if he fucked it all up because he couldn’t take the obvious goading, the taunts, the jeers, the not-so-subtle instances of sabotage.

no, sungki was much stronger than that. petty seniors in this closed world game of survival had nothing on the years he spent curled in on himself in the corner of a dirty apartment, wondering if he’d ever see the light of day. if he’d ever get to stand on top of the world. if he’d make it another day.

a decade and some years now and he’s made it. older, stronger, and meaner. selfishness and his greed to live—to be better than everyone—keeps him going, even as he raps himself hoarse. even as he pushes his body to its limits.

two years in and those who thought he wouldn’t make it past year one are long gone—cut because they couldn’t handle the pressure, couldn’t take the day-to-day scoldings to do better, to work harder, with their backs ramrod straight, their expressions schooled into something resembling obedience.

three years in and sungki’s still here. finds himself living in the practice rooms, his only companion are the booming loudspeakers playing the same song for hours on end, training his body to recognize the ebb and flow, the rocking rhythm of beats.

he’s not a born dancer. had no real foundation in the mechanism of dance. so day in and day out, he watches the choreographers’ movements like a hawk, trains his eyes to watch for every subtle movement, every roll of the body, every pop of his limbs. learns to mimic after weeks, months, of trials and errors—of forcing his body to twist, to pop and lock, to grind, to ride, the beat of the music.

it’s hard—he’s not going to lie. his body wasn’t made for endless days of practice and countless hours of repetition. he knows he lags behind, knows all he’s got is his anger and his notebooks filled with handwritten lyrics (half-finished songs he’s sure will never see the light of day. he’s a nobody, just a trainee. what power did he have to ask them to cultivate this skill left rotting in the wake of molding himself to a precise design, turning himself into something wicked and dangerous, yielding to every demand and command because he wants to make it. needs to make it.), so he works himself to the bone, trying to break his body’s resistance to moves that bend his spine too far, hurts his waist a little too much, makes the joints of his body ache.

he bites back every retort building at the tip of his tongue, pressing at the back of his throat, and grits his teeth.

even as sweat drips into his eyes, down his face, drenches his entire body. even when his voice is nearly gone. even if the exhaustion turns his eyes bloodshot and his temper near catastrophic, he holds himself back on tight reins.

because, perhaps, being a tenacious trainee with both bite and bark and raw potential is the only chance he has to ever making it in a cutthroat world like this.

and if sungki is anything since he’d been born, it is a survivor. do or die trying. and sungki had no intentions to die. so do is all he knows. all he is.

he trains and hones and breaks and climbs back up not knowing he’s being shaved to the wick, all his lingering bits of naivete whittled away to make him sharper, jagged and edgy. it makes him a target. an outlier. unpredictable and dangerous.

-

he trusts no one when he’s selected alongside a fellow trainee and thrown to the wolves in a rap survival show. expected to adapt and mold himself to the rules of the jungle. expected to take the heat and scrutiny with sharp wit and a charming smile.

their success comes with consequences. rumors that 99 ent. bought their near-winner positions sour their reputations, mars their impressions. but sungki doesn’t bat an eye. he’s no longer soft and vulnerable to the opinions of others.

his first taste of fame tastes like sin. like addiction. and he’s hooked.

when poizn debuts in 2011 with him in the lineup, sungki’s no longer the lonely boy of three who wasn’t enough for his mother, who wasn’t strong enough for his father. not the reckless youth who dabbled in the sins of sex and the burn of booze and cigarettes.

not an unmarred saint made to be put on a pedestal.

ryu sungki is more than that—he’s a guilty sinner pulling on the skin of a rogue with his face streaked in shadows, a wicked grin on his lips, and his voice crooning love.

TEN.

one year into poizn’s debut and he already hates it.

hates the flashing cameras. hates the delusional fans. hates being under 99 ent.’s thumb. hates pretending he’s got this nostalgic history with his members and a bright future where they’re all chummy and brothers and are in this together when sungki doesn’t feel an ounce of camaraderie. when all he cares about is how angry he is at being fooled by praises and encouragements. how he was tricked into believing he had the potential and the opportunity to debut solo, only to be shoved into a lineup with four other boys just as ravenous as he is.

hates everything about how he has to watch his mouth. watch his goddamn image. like he’s nothing more than a puppet moving on invisible strings. like he’s just a caricature made for pure entertainment, for the fans and the world to lap up.

rugged, roguish, and reckless. sungki seethes on the inside, even as he forces his body to bow at everyone and everything. the picture of obedience—a dog of this godforsaken industry.

this is what he sacrificed his youth for.

and he reaps what he sows.

-

two years in and he fucks up big time.

and 99 ent. retaliates by removing the possibility of a future solo debut they’d been dangling since the tail-end of his trainee years and threatens him to keep his mouth shut.

of all the things sungki thought he was incapable of, begging was one of them. and yet, in the aftermath of a stormy public waiting for him to show his face so they can pelt him with proverbial eggs and vitriol, sungki had found himself on his knees. head down, tail tucked between his legs, his dignity in shambles.

please, he remembers saying (remembers loathing) with a voice too small, too boyish. ragged. help me. please fix this.

and fix they did.

in return, they asked for absolute obedience. creates in him the very image of a faithful lapdog, a yes man, who doesn’t talk back. who answers at their beck and call. who does as he’s told, commands and directives followed to the letter.

sungki’s reputation is barely restored. he thanks them.

(inside, the hatred for his own weakness tears him apart.)

-

three years ghost by and he does nothing to attract negative press. lies as low as he can. makes the needed variety show appearances during promotion cycles. circumvents any subtle prompts about his juvenile mistake back in the day, apologizes over and over again with sheepish ducks of his head on camera, words twisted to form repentance to convey his reflection and his past immaturity. vows not to make the same mistakes again.

vows to shape himself into someone better.

vows revenge and comeuppance on a company who repeatedly baited him, using his ugly past, his past scandal, and his greed for a solo as ammunition.

he keeps his head down.

(all the while, he holds back a cruel smile. biding his time, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. to rise up.)

-

years four and five are formative.

he meets someone who levels the playing field. who sees through his facade and his chipped masks of tell-tale obedience. see the darkness wrapped around him like hapless shadows. sees the wicked curl of lips and calls him out on his bullshit.

it’s the first time someone does.

it’s the first time someone tries.

and somewhere deep down, sungki rejoices. just the tiniest bit.

because all these years of pretending and, finally, someone is smart enough to notice there lies a crack in his foundation.

smart enough to recognize a predator for what he is—cruel, cold, and callous.

you’re dangerous, she whispers brokenly into his neck as he cradles her close, skin-on-skin. full-on sin and dirty (not) love-making. but i’m not scared of you.

you should be.

so should everyone who dares to approach him, thinking he’ll love them all tender and sweet.

so should the world.

-

seven years in now and the masks are starting to fall one by one.

the lapdog business is getting old and he’s getting restless. jittery.

he’s tired of the years passing by relatively the same. monotonous. all routine. aches for change. aches for chaos. for a little bit of fun. drama. danger.

he tests the waters by goading his members. pushes boundaries, tests patience. drops the act little by little. on camera, he does his best to act as if years spent sweating it out in the practice rooms has forged a brotherhood no conflict can shake. behind closed doors, he ignores them. pretends they’re nothing more than colleagues (aren’t they?). scoffs at the label of family—he doesn’t have one. just harabeoji waiting in the wings, patient and waiting as he’s always been for sungki to soar, to make a name for himself.

that bit of bite begins making an appearance in magazine interviews and one or two variety show appearances where he’s asked the cliched question of where he sees himself in five years, of his goals and ambitions.

he drops hints about the desire to go solo, his intentions on becoming a household name. seven years being muzzled comes undone and, for the first time since the mistake that cost him his pride, sungki disobeys. deviates.

i want to be known as more than just zen, poizn’s charismatic lead rapper and lead dancer. i want something for myself. something to call my own. i want people to know me as ryu sungki.

(want the world to bow at my feet. want the world to chant my name. want them to see me.)

slowly but surely, he creates himself a storm and he the eye.

because his days of being obedient are coming to an end.

[crimethinc]

How Anti-Fascists Won the Battles of Berkeley–2017 in the Bay and Beyond: A Play-by-Play Analysis

The perilous politics of militant anti-fascism defined 2017 for the anarchist movement in the United States. The story in the Bay Area mirrors that of the country at large. It’s a narrative full of tragedies, setbacks, and repression, ultimately concluding with a fragile victory. Yet there was no guarantee it would turn out this way: only a few months ago, it seemed likely we would be starting 2018 amid the nightmare of a rapidly metastasizing fascist street movement. What can anti-fascists around the world learn from what happened in Berkeley? To answer this question, we have to back up and tell the story in full.

Fascists chose Berkeley, California as the center stage for their attempt to get a movement off the ground. The advantage shifted back and forth between fascists and anti-fascists as both sides maneuvered to draw more allies into the fight. Riding on the coattails of Trump’s campaign and exploiting the blind spots of liberal “free speech” politics, fascists gained momentum until anti-fascists were able to use these victories against them, drawing together an unprecedented mobilization. As we begin a new year, anti-fascist networks in the Bay Area are stronger than ever. Participants in anti-fascist struggle enjoy a hard-earned legitimacy in the eyes of many activists and communities targeted by the far right. By contrast, the far-right movement that gained strength throughout 2016 and the first half of 2017 has imploded. For the time being, the popular mobilization they sought to manifest has been thwarted. The events in the Bay Area offer an instructive example of the threat posed by contemporary far-right coalition building—and how we can defend our communities against it.

2016: A New Era Begins

Clashes escalate outside a Trump Rally in San Jose on June 2, 2016.

The clashes between far-right forces and anti-fascists that gripped Berkeley for much of 2017 were the climax of a sequence of events that began a year earlier. On February 27, 2016, Klansmen in the Southern California city of Anaheim stabbed three anti-racists who were protesting a Ku Klux Klan rally against “illegal immigration and Muslims.” The rhetoric of the Klan echoed the same vulgar nationalism that the Trump campaign was broadcasting. Under the banner of the alt-right, many white supremacist and fascist groups began to use the campaign as an umbrella under which to mobilize and recruit. They aimed to build an ideologically diverse social movement that could unite various far-right tendencies within the millions mobilized by Trump. A reactionary wave had steadily grown across the country in the last years of the Obama era. The combination of continued economic stagnation, proliferating anti-police uprisings of Black and Brown people, and rapidly changing norms related to gender identity and sexuality had spawned a violent backlash. This was the wave that Trump rode upon and his campaign had broken open the floodgates.

Trump rallies became increasingly contentious in cities such as Chicago (March 11) and Pittsburgh (April 13) as protesters held counterdemonstrations to confront these open displays of bigotry. On April 28, 2016, small-scale rioting erupted outside a Trump rally in the southern California city of Costa Mesa. The next day, in the city of Burlingame near San Francisco, large crowds disrupted Trump’s appearance at the convention of the California Republican Party, leading to scuffles with police.

Days later, on May 6, a newly-formed fascist youth organization, Identity Evropa (IE) held their first demonstration on the other side of the Bay—an ominous portent of things to come. This initial experiment was organized by IE as a “safe space” on the UC Berkeley campus to promote “white nationalist” ideas and their particular style of business-casual far-right activism. Inspired by European identitarian movements, IE worked to coopt the rhetoric of liberal identity politics and use the contradictions inherent in those politics to build a new white power movement. Their strategy was part of a larger effort across the alt-right to recruit young people and legitimize white supremacist organizing as an acceptable form of public activism. The rally brought together Nathan Damigo, the founder of IE, with members of the Berkeley College Republicans and the alt-right ideologist Richard Spencer, who flew in from out of town to attend. Although the event was barely noticed, the participants declared it a success and a first step towards building a new nationalist street movement.

The most violent clashes outside a Trump campaign rally unfolded in San Jose on June 2. A handful of experienced activists attended the counterdemonstration, but the vast majority of protesters were angry young people of color from the South Bay unaffiliated with any organization. The police response was slow and confused; clashes between the crowds raged into the evening. Photos of people punching and chasing Trump supporters spread online, leading to calls from many on the far right for revenge.

On June 26, over 400 anti-racists and anti-fascists converged on the state capitol in Sacramento to shut down a rally called for by the Traditionalist Workers Party, an Ohio-based neo-Nazi organization. The rally was initially billed as an “anti-antifa” rally organized in response to the protests at recent Trump events. It was also an attempt to build bridges across various far-right tendencies. The majority of the anti-fascists wore black masks; other crews represented various leftist cliques. Together, they successfully prevented the rally from ever starting. Comrades held the capitol steps, chasing off scattered groups of Nazis and alt-right activists.

About three hours after the counterdemonstration began, two dozen members of the Golden State Skins, geared up in bandanas and shields decorated with white power symbols and the Traditionalist Workers Party emblem, suddenly appeared on the far side of the capitol and attacked the crowd from behind. Nine comrades were stabbed, some repeatedly in the neck and torso, while riot police watched impassively. Nearly all those targeted in the attack were either Black or transgendered. Miraculously, all of them survived.

Members of the Golden State Skins attempt to kill anti-fascists in Sacramento on June 26, 2016.

After the bloody clash, many people urgently felt the need for a new politics of militant antifascism. Over the preceding decades, one rarely heard the term antifa among anarchist and anti-capitalist movements in the Bay Area. Previous generations of anti-fascist and Anti-Racist Action (ARA) organizing in Northern California were largely situated within subcultural contexts. Much of the work these activists accomplished in the 1980s and ’90s focused on kicking Nazis out of punk and hardcore scenes.

The events in Sacramento helped usher in rapid transformations of the local anarchist movement. A network of comrades formed Northern California Anti-Racist Action (NOCARA) to research and document increasing fascist activity across the region. Other crews linked up to practice self-defense and hone their analysis in the rapidly shifting political terrain. Antifa symbols—the two flags and the three arrows—quickly became as ubiquitous as the circle A in the Bay Area anarchist milieu. Some lamented this as a retreat from struggles against capitalism and the police into a purely defensive strategy singularly focused on combatting fringe elements of the far right. But the majority understood it as a logical step necessitated by the rising tide of fascist activity around the country and world. They aimed to situate an anti-fascist position as a single component of the larger struggles against capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy that comrades had been engaged in for years. Most participants had cut their teeth in various rebellions and movements in the Bay area over the preceding decade, including Occupy Oakland and Black Lives Matter. They saw antifa as a form of community self defense against the violent reaction to those struggles for collective liberation. Many were also eager to use anti-fascism as a means to open a new front against white supremacy and the state.

On November 9, the night after Trump’s electoral victory shook the world, a march of thousands followed by the most intense night of rioting in recent memory took place in downtown Oakland. Fires broke out in the Chamber of Commerce, the Federal Building, and the construction site of the new Uber building. Angry crowds of thousands fought police with bottles, fireworks, and even Molotov cocktails as banks were smashed, barricades blocked major streets, and tear gas filled the air. Other cities across the country also saw significant unrest; rowdy protests in Portland, Oregon lasted for days.

This made 2016 the eighth year in a row that serious rioting took place in Oakland. 2017 would end that pattern. The locus of street conflict in the Bay was about to shift up the road to the neighboring college town of Berkeley.

Starting the Year off with a Bang

Thousands swarm San Francisco International Airport to protest Trump’s “Muslim Ban” on January 28, 2017.

The tone for 2017 was set on the cold morning of January 20 in Washington DC. As mainstream media pundits nervously reiterated the importance of a peaceful transition of power, a black bloc of hundreds chanting “Black Lives Matter!” took the streets to disrupt Trump’s inauguration. In the course of the day, hundreds were arrested, a person in a black mask punched Richard Spencer as he tried to explain alt-right meme Pepe the Frog, and video of the incident went viral.

That same evening in Seattle, Milo Yiannopolous spoke on the University of Washington campus as part of his “Dangerous Faggot” tour. Milo had made a name for himself over the previous year peddling misogyny and Islamophobia in his role as tech editor for Breitbart News under the mentorship of Steve Bannon. He had become a leading spokesperson for the alt-right auxiliary known as the alt-lite. The logic behind his tour was similar to IE’s strategy of targeting liberal university enclaves using a provocative model of far-right activism rebranded for a millennial audience.

[Hundreds turned out(https://www.thestranger.com/open-city/2017/01/23/24818869/what-really-happened-at-the-milo-yiannopoulos-protest-at-uw-on-friday-night) to oppose Milo’s talk in Seattle. As scuffles unfolded outside the building, a Trump supporter drew a concealed handgun and shot Joshua Dukes, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, in the stomach. Milo continued his talk unconcernedly as the critically injured Dukes was rushed to emergency care. Fortunately, he survived, though he spent weeks in the hospital.

Despite the unprecedented degree of tension in the air, Oakland was quiet on J20. A few small marches, mostly departing from high school walkouts, crossed downtown. But by nightfall, the rainy streets were empty; hundreds of riot police deployed for the anticipated unrest packed up their gear to go home. This new year was not going to play out along familiar lines.

The next day, millions across the country marched against Trump in the Women’s Marches, many of them wearing pink “pussy hats.” Oakland was the location of the main Bay Area march and tens of thousands walked through downtown in a staid and orderly display of disapproval. Later that week, Trump signed executive order 13769 suspending US refugee resettlement programs and banning entry for all citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries, including people with valid visas. By the following afternoon, a spontaneous and unorganized national mobilization was underway as tens of thousands swarmed the international terminals of every major airport in the country to oppose the “Muslim ban.” Loud marches and blockades continued for two days inside San Francisco International Airport.

In many ways, the airport protests marked the high point of the year in terms of mass action that undermined the regime’s ability to carry out its agenda. The mobilization immediately disrupted the implementation of the executive order and provided momentum to challenge it in the courts, where legal maneuvers continued throughout the rest of the year. Nevertheless, the protests did not coalesce into a more sustained sequence.

The Real Dangerous Faggots

Sproul Plaza outside Milo’s cancelled event on February 2.

On February 2, Milo arrived in Berkeley for the final talk of his tour, hosted by the Berkeley College Republicans. Days earlier, his talk in nearby UC Davis had been successfully disrupted by student protesters; all eyes were now on UC Berkeley campus.

Berkeley is an upper-middle-class city of 120,000 bordering Oakland, defined by the prestigious flagship campus of the University of California system that sits adjacent to downtown. The city’s history as a national hub of countercultural movements and far-left political activism stretches back to the early 1960s. In 1964, student radicals returning from the Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi set up tables on campus to distribute literature about the growing Civil Rights movement. The administration cracked down on their activities, sparking a wave of civil disobedience that came to be known as the Free Speech Movement (FSM). In many ways, it was the beginning of the student activism against racism and imperialism that proliferated across the country throughout the 1960s. Yet by the turn of the new millennium, Berkeley could be more accurately described as a hotbed of liberalism, not radicalism. The legacy of the FSM had been successfully coopted and rewritten by the university administration for their prospective student marketing materials. Students can now sip cappuccinos as they study for exams in the Free Speech Movement Café on campus.

On the south edge of campus sits Sproul Plaza, site of some of the most important demonstrations of the FSM and subsequent waves of activism. As the sun set on Sproul that Thursday evening, between two and three thousand students, faculty, and community members filled the plaza in a rally against Milo, the alt-right, and Trump. Layers of fencing surrounded the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union as platoons of riot police watched the chanting crowd from the balconies of the building and the steps leading down to the plaza.

Milo’s talk was about to start. Despite the large protest, it appeared that the massive police presence would enable it to proceed without a hitch. Then a commotion on neighboring Bancroft Way drew the attention of the crowd. A black bloc of roughly 150, some carrying the anarchist black flag and others carrying the queer anarchist pink and black flag, had just appeared out of the neighborhood and was busy building a barricade across the main entrance to the student union’s parking garage. As the barricade caught fire, the bloc surged forward to join the thousands in Sproul.

The sound of explosions filled the air as fireworks screamed across the plaza at the riot cops, who hunkered down and retreated from their positions. Under cover of this barrage, masked crews attacked the fencing and quickly tore it apart. Thousands cheered. Police on the balconies unloaded rubber bullets and marker rounds into the crowd, but ultimately took cover as fireworks exploded around their heads. With the fencing gone, the crowd laid siege to the building and began smashing out its windows.

Antifascists rip down fences on UC Berkeley campus on February 2.

“The event is cancelled! Please go home!” screamed a desperate police captain over a megaphone as the crowd roared in celebration. A mobile light tower affixed to a generator was knocked over, bursting into flames two stories high. YG’s song “FDT” (Fuck Donald Trump) blasted from a mobile sound system as thousands danced around the burning pyre. Berkeley College Republicans emerging from the cancelled event were nailed with red paint bombs and members of the Proud Boys, the “Western Chauvinist” fraternal organization of the alt-lite, were beaten and chased away. Milo was escorted out a back door by his security detail and fled the city. A victory march spilled into the streets of downtown Berkeley, smashing every bank in its path. Milo’s tour bus was vandalized later that night in the parking lot of a Courtyard Marriot in nearby Fremont.

The cover of the next day’s New York Times read “Anarchists Vow to Halt Far Right’s Rise, With Violence if Needed” below an eerie photo of a hooded, stick-wielding street fighter in Berkeley. “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump tweeted that morning before threatening to withdraw federal funds from UC Berkeley if the university could not guarantee “free speech.” Milo had been stopped and militant anti-fascism was now a topic of national conversation.

But a confused controversy over free speech was just beginning. Liberals quickly fell into the trap set by the alt-right. UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich, who had been Secretary of Labor under Clinton, went so far as to embarrass himself by groundlessly claiming that “Yiannopoulos and Brietbart were in cahoots with the agitators, in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown.”

From organizing “white safe spaces” to pretending to represent a new free speech movement, the ascendant fascists understood that the hollow rhetoric of liberalism utilized by hacks like Reich could be weaponized against anyone opposed to white supremacy and patriarchy. Liberal enclaves were especially vulnerable to this strategy. They had become the chosen terrain on which 21st-century American fascism sought to step out of the internet to build a social movement in the streets.

Meanwhile, Milo’s days were numbered. Despite liberal commentators’ assertions that paying attention to Milo would only make him more powerful, Milo’s career imploded two weeks later. Under the intense scrutiny that followed his spectacular failure in Berkeley, a conservative social media account circulated footage of Milo condoning consensual sex between underage boys and older men. His invitation to speak at the American Conservative Union’s annual conference was quickly rescinded, as was his book deal with a major publisher. The next day, Milo was forced to resign from Breitbart. While emblematic of the rampant homophobia of the right, none of this had anything to do with his views on sex. After Berkeley, Milo appeared to be an increasingly controversial liability that conservatives could no longer risk associating with.

A Repulsive Rainbow of Reaction

Based Stickman (left) leads the goons on March 4.

While many celebrated Milo’s downfall as a blow to the alt-right, various far-right and fascist cliques hastened to take advantage of liberal confusion around the emerging free speech narrative.

On March 4, modest rallies in support of Trump occurred across the country. In the Bay Area, vague fliers appeared calling for a Trump Rally in downtown Berkeley’s Civic Center Park. There was considerable confusion among local anti-racists and anti-fascists over who had called for the rally. Many assumed it was just right-wing trolling that would never materialize in public. Nevertheless, various small crews of anarchists, members of the leftist clique By Any Means Necessary, anti-racist skinheads, and an assortment of unaffiliated young people converged on the park to oppose any attempt to hold the Saturday afternoon rally. They found a bizarre scene that few could have previously imagined.

A grotesque array of far-right forces had assembled from across the region to celebrate Trump and defend their ability to propagate various forms of nationalism, xenophobia, and misogyny. One man in fatigues and wraparound sunglasses carried a III% militia flag. Another man with a motorcycle helmet, tactical leg guards, and a kilt sported a pro-Pinochet shirt depicting leftists being thrown from helicopters to their deaths. Still another right-wing activist happily zipped around on his hoverboard while taking massive vape hits and live-streaming the event via his phone.

Many in the right-wing crowd were not white. The alliances being formed through public activism had brought together a range of fascist tendencies, some more interested in defending violent misogyny or building an ultra-libertarian capitalist future than promoting white power. MAGA hats and American flags were everywhere as the crowd of nearly 200 attempted to march into downtown Berkeley. Fistfights broke out, flags were used as weapons, and pepper spray filled the air as anti-fascists and others intervened to stop the march. A masked crew of queer anti-fascists dressed in pastels, calling themselves the Degenderettes, used bedazzled shields to defend people from the reactionary street fighters of this strange new right-wing social movement. Chaotic scuffles and brawls continued off and on for three hours.

Riot police located around the perimeter of the park made some targeted arrests; yet as in Sacramento, they largely avoided wading into the melee. Ten people were arrested altogether, from both sides of the fight. One of these was alt-right sympathizer and closet white supremacist Kyle Chapman. Chapman had helped form the vanguard of the right-wing brawlers throughout the day. He wore a helmet, goggles, and a respirator while carrying an American flag shield in one hand and a long stick as his weapon in the other. News of his arrest combined with footage of his assaults immediately elevated him to celebrity hero status within the online world of the alt-right and alt-lite. Memes of Chapman went viral under his new nickname, “Based Stick Man.”

Tactically speaking, there were no clear winners in Berkeley on March 4. But the nascent fascist street movement was energized and ready for more. Anti-fascists had underestimated the momentum of this new far-right alliance and were quickly trying to figure out how to play catch up.

On March 8, a group of revolutionary women and queer people in the Bay Area organized a “Gender Strike” action in San Francisco as part of the national “Women’s Strike” planned for International Women’s Day. The strike was called for as a means of moving beyond the liberal feminism of January’s massive Women’s Marches against Trump. From Gamergate trolling to Trump’s gloating over his sexual assaults, from the Proud Boy’s valorization of traditional family values to the bizarre right-wing alliance manifesting in the streets of Berkeley, the rise of neo-fascism was being fueled by misogynists intent on preserving and expanding patriarchal power relationships as much as it was being fueled by white supremacists. The organizers of the strike aimed to connect radical tendencies within the growing feminist movement with various anti-racist and anti-fascist struggles. Nearly a thousand protestors marched on the downtown Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in a demonstration of support for San Francisco’s sanctuary city status and solidarity with those targeted by surging xenophobia. An even larger crowd of Women’s Strike demonstrators marched in the streets of downtown Oakland that evening.

The Alt-Right Strikes Back

DIY Division (left) and other fascist thugs on April 15.

Two weeks later, on Saturday, March 25, over two thousand Trump supporters held a “Make America Great Again March” in the southern California city of Huntington Beach. Marching with the large crowd was an imposing squad of athletic white men clearly looking for a fight. These were members of the openly neo-Nazi group known as the DIY Division or the Rise Above Movement. When a handful of anti-fascists attempted to disrupt the march, this squad assaulted them and beat them into the beach sand. The fight was broken up and the anti-fascists fled as the crowd joined the DIY Division fighters in chanting “Pinochet!” and “You can’t run, you can’t hide, you’re gonna get a ’copter ride!”

To the horror of many in the Bay Area, another alt-right demonstration in Berkeley’s Civic Center Park was announced for April 15. Billed as a “Patriots’ Day Free Speech Rally,” it featured a lineup of speakers flying in from out of town. As the date grew closer, it became clear that every crypto-fascist wingnut, weekend militia member, millennial alt-right internet troll, alt-lite hipster, civic nationalist, and proud neo-Nazi from up and down the West Coast wanted to attend. The growing movement got a critical boost when the Oath Keepers militia announced two weeks ahead of time that they would be mobilizing from across the country under the name “Operation 1st Defenders” to protect the so-called “Free Speech Rally.” The Oath Keepers are a right-wing militia composed of active duty and veteran military and police officers that claims to have 35,000 members. The “operation” was to be led by Missouri chapter leader John Karriman, who oversaw the armed Oath Keeper operation to protect private property during the Ferguson uprising of 2014. Oath Keepers’ founder Stewart Rhodes would also be on the ground.

Bay Area anarchists met regularly during the weeks leading up to April 15 in hopes of developing some kind of strategic response to what was shaping up to be the most important showing yet of this far-right popular movement. Many comrades believed it was necessary to find a new approach in order to avoid spiraling into a violent conflict with an enemy that was better trained and better equipped than anti-fascists and anti-racists could ever be. A general plan was hashed out through meetings and assemblies that prioritized reaching out to the broader left and other activist circles in hopes of mobilizing large numbers of radicals who could drown out the alt-right rally while avoiding the kind of conflict that would strike the general public as a symmetrical clash between two extremist gangs. There was no specific call for a black bloc, which by this time had largely become synonymous with militant antifa tactics. Instead, fliers and posters began to circulate promoting a block party and cookout that could occupy the park at 10 am with large crowds listening to music and speakers before the “Free Speech Rally” started at noon.

Early in the morning of April 15, these plans collapsed disastrously. Dozens of Oath Keepers in tactical helmets and flak jackets established a defensive perimeter before sunrise alongside riot police who sectioned off various zones of the park with fencing and checkpoints. The organizer of the rally, the Oath Keepers, and the police had coordinated for weeks ahead of time.

Riot police surrounded comrades arriving in the park for the counter-demonstration; they confiscated trays of food for the cookout, musical instruments, flags, and signs. Police intervened to stop small scuffles as members of the DIY Division, in town for the rally from southern California, began to exchange taunts with anti-fascists. As noon approached, the 200 or 300 anarchists and anti-fascists who mobilized that day realized with terror that their attempts to reach out to other activists had fallen on deaf ears. They were alone, badly prepared for a fight, and were quickly becoming outnumbered by hundreds and hundreds of right-wing activists led by a street-fighting fascist vanguard and protected by a disciplined patriot militia.

Chaos erupted as the first speakers at the rally began to address the MAGA hat-wearing crowd inside the Oath Keeper perimeter. In a desperate attempt to give momentum to the demoralized and scattered anti-fascists, a crew with a mobile sound system in a street next to the park began blasting “FDT” to the cheers of many counterdemonstrators. People coalesced around the sound system and began moving around the edge of the rally. Some threw M80s into the park; others tried to breach the fencing. Most simply tried to stay together.

Chaos erupts outside the Free Speech Rally in Civic Center Park on April 15.

The police withdrew from the streets as fascist squads of young men emerged from within the rally to go on the offensive. Bloody fights broke out. Kyle Chapman, flanked by similarly geared-up brawlers including one man wearing a Spartan helmet, led a series of forays that split the crowd and left comrades bleeding on the ground. In one such attack, an anti-fascist was beaten by masked white men and dragged behind enemy lines to be stomped out. It was only through the intervention of the Oath Keepers and others functioning as “peace police” for the alt-right rally that the beating was interrupted; the comrade was shoved back across the skirmish line into the hands of friendly street medics. During the short pauses between clashes, fascists chugged milk and screamed as they pumped themselves up for the next assault.

Though outnumbered, anarchists and anti-fascists fought as best they could. Many Nazis and their sympathizers left that day bruised and bloodied. But the counterdemonstrators could barely hold their own against the fascist street fighters, let alone the Oath Keeper presence maintaining the interior perimeter. The rally of hundreds continued uninterrupted. As fatigue set in, the fascists made their move led by Chapman, members of DIY Division wearing their signature skull bandanas, and members of IE including Nathan Damigo. They blitzed the remaining counterdemonstrators and pushed them away from the park through a cloud of smoke bombs and into the side streets of downtown. A cautious retreat became a hasty run as the remaining anti-racists and anti-fascists were chased off the streets by Nazis. The fascists had won the third Battle of Berkeley.

Kyle Chapman, DIY Division (right), and Identity Evropa (far right) prepare for their final offensive of the day on April 15.

The fallout began immediately. Emboldened by the victory on the ground, an army of alt-right internet trolls on 4chan’s /pol thread and elsewhere began a doxxing witch hunt to identify all those who had opposed their shock troops in Berkeley. Within hours, they had used footage to identify a woman who had been brutally beaten by Damigo and others during the final assault of the day. Louise Rosealma had previously worked in porn; a misogynistic campaign of harassment against her began immediately. Oversized posters showing her naked next to Damigo’s smiling face with the words “I’d hit that” soon appeared on the streets of Berkeley.

Eric Clanton, a Diablo Valley College professor, became another doxxing target. Trolls claimed to have identified him as the masked anti-fascist caught on camera hitting a man in the head with a bike lock. The man on the receiving end of this blow wore a “Feminist Tears” button and had been seen attacking people alongside members of DIY Division throughout the battle. Eric received a slew of death threats; his online accounts were hacked and angry calls poured in to his employer that would eventually cost him his job.

On April 23, Kyle Chapman formalized his new role as leader of the militant vanguard of the alt-lite. He announced the formation of the “Fraternal Order of Alt Knights,” which was to function as the “tactical defensive arm of the Proud Boys.” Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys and co-founder of Vice Magazine, had helped promote the “Free Speech Rally” and had welcomed Chapman to his show multiple times.

On April 27, McInnes joined another far-right rally in Berkeley’s Civic Center Park. The rally had been organized to coincide with Ann Coulter’s visit to UC Berkeley, which she cancelled at the last minute. Nonetheless, a large crowd of Trump supporters, fascists, and reactionary goons of various stripes flocked to Berkeley that day to get their piece of the action. They found themselves unopposed. Anarchists and anti-fascists were still licking their wounds; they had collectively decided to avoid a confrontation that could lead to another painful defeat like the fiasco of April 15. Later that night, the windows of the Black-owned Alchemy Collective Café were shot out. The café is located just blocks from Civic Center Park and its windows had been displaying posters in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and indigenous struggles.

A bullet hole in the window of the Alchemy Café on April 28, the day after another far-right rally in Berkeley.

Soon after, Eric Clanton was arrested by Berkeley Police in a house raid and charged with four counts of assault with a deadly weapon. During his interview at the police station, the detective expressed appreciation for 4chan’s /pol forum and informed Eric that “the internet did the work for us.” Eric’s case is pending and he faces years in prison.

The Turning Point

Solidarity demonstration with Charlottesville, August 12.

In chess, a player is said to “gain a tempo” when a successful move leaves their units in a more advantageous position while forcing their opponent to take a defensive move that wastes time and derails their strategy. The growing far-right social movement had gained a tempo at the expense of anti-fascists during spring 2017. The February victory against Milo and the alt-right in the first days of the Trump presidency had played an important role in disrupting attempts to normalize a dangerous new form of far-right public activity. Each attempt that fascists made to materialize in public risked extreme conflict. But anti-fascists’ success had helped to spawn an ugly reaction, which anarchists and other militant anti-fascists were unable to handle on their own.

There was nothing normalized or “respectable” about the armored and belligerent fascists who were determined to mobilize in Berkeley. Yet on a tactical level, they had proven they could leverage the necessary resources and foot soldiers to hold the streets in enemy territory. Anti-fascists had been forced into a downward spiral of responding to each new move without a strategy of their own. Paranoia, anxiety, and self-criticism characterized the local anarchist movement during late spring and early summer.

Yet important changes were underway. April 15 had caught the attention of many Bay Area activists who had remained outside the fray thus far. They were not convinced by the “free speech” rhetoric that had confused so many liberals. Militant anti-fascists had no interest in giving the state additional repressive powers to criminalize or censor speech. That was never what this struggle was about. Confronting fascist activity in the streets to stop its normalization and proliferation is a form of community self-defense. Increasing numbers of anti-racists understood this. Bay Area movement organizations such as the prison abolitionist organization Critical Resistance, the Arab Resource Organizing Committee, white ally anti-racist groups such as the Catalyst Project and the local chapter of Standing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), and the Anti-Police Terror Project, who had played a leadership role in the local Black Lives Matter Movement, began to work with those who had been in the streets throughout the first half of the year to build a coordinated response.

Many of these groups had previously been at odds with anarchists. Some of the most bitter disputes revolved around issues of identity and representation within the various social movements of the preceding decade. Many anarchists rejected most forms of identity politics after seeing them used time and again by reformist leaders from marginalized groups to manage and pacify antagonistic movements. Liberal city officials, organizers of non-profits, and some social justice groups had regularly dismissed local anti-police and anti-capitalist rebellions in Oakland and elsewhere as the work of white anarchist “outside agitators” corrupting otherwise respectable movements led by people of color. This paternalistic and counter-insurrectionary narrative intentionally obscured the diversity of participants in these uprisings and erased their agency.

Things had begun to change in 2014 as anti-police rebellions spread across the country and the forces of racist reaction mobilized in response. Despite unresolved tensions, the anarchist movement played an important role in helping sustain struggles against white supremacy and other movements of oppressed people. Increasing numbers of activists and movement organizations supported the uprisings and understood the necessity of working together as part of a united anti-racist front. This convergence helped lay the groundwork for the unprecedented alliances that arose out of anti-fascist organizing.

The urgency of building these coalitions was tragically underscored on May 26, when a white supremacist cut the throats of three people who had intervened to stop him from harassing a young Muslim woman and her friend on a commuter train in Portland, Oregon. Two of the men died. The attacker, Jeremy Christian, had attended Free Speech Rallies organized by the Portland-based alt-lite group Patriot Prayer. At his arraignment, Christian yelled “Get out if you don’t like free speech… Leave this country if you hate our freedom—death to Antifa!”

A few weeks later, on June 10, thousands of anti-racists and anti-fascists in Seattle, Austin, New York, and elsewhere successfully mobilized against a day of anti-Muslim rallies attended by various groupings of neo-Nazis, militia members, alt-lite activists, and alt-right activists. During the Houston rally, scuffles between patriot militia members and an alt-right activist attempting to display openly fascist placards exposed growing cracks within the far-right alliance that had been built up through the spring.

On July 9, the growing anti-fascist network in the Bay Area held a packed forum in the Berkeley Senior Center, blocks from the site of the spring’s clashes. A range of speakers from the coalition helped educate the hundreds in attendance about the rising tide of white supremacist and fascist activity as well as the necessity of organizing for community self-defense. The crowd left the forum energized and eager to mobilize.

Another round of alt-right rallies was on the horizon. Many hoped that this time the response would be different. Patriot Prayer was calling for a rally in San Francisco on August 26 and a “Rally Against Marxism” was planned for the familiar battleground of Berkeley’s Civic Center Park on the following day. As the end of summer approached, fascists across the country made it clear they aimed to double down on their offensive. When a reporter for the New York Times asked Nathan Damigo about IE’s goals for UC Berkeley during the new school year, he laughed and responded, “We’ve got some plans.”

Before any of this could unfold, events on the other side of the country changed the course of history.

The first step of this renewed fascistic offensive was a mobilization in Charlottesville, Virginia promoted throughout the summer as a rally to “Unite the Right.” Building on their successes in targeting liberal enclaves over the previous months, alt-right leaders including Richard Spencer and Nathan Damigo aimed to take their movement-building to the next level by forging an alliance with Southern white supremacists under the banner of their rebranded far-right activism. Charlottesville is a liberal college town that, along with other cities throughout the South, had been planning to remove monuments celebrating the Confederacy. Spencer had previously led a small torch-lit rally in Charlottesville on May 13 to protest the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. The August 12 rally was supposed to be the turning point that could transform the young movement into an unstoppable reactionary force under the cover of the Trump regime.

On the evening of August 11, a surprise torch-lit demonstration on the University of Virginia campus attended by hundreds of white supremacists gave the impression that this turning point had arrived. Footage of fascists surrounding and attacking outnumbered anti-racist demonstrators at the foot of the statue of Robert E. Lee spread around the country, provoking terror and urgency in equal measure.

Yet the following day turned out to be a historic disaster for the fascists. Anarchists and anti-fascists managed to interrupt the fascist rally, ultimately forcing police to declare it an unlawful assembly. The white supremacists retreating from the streets of Charlottesville knew that they had lost: their rally had been cancelled and the media was turning on them. They had failed to create a situation in which the volatile white resentment they drew on could be gratified by a successful show of force. That is why James Alex Fields, a member of the fascist organization Vanguard America, plowed his car into a crowd of ant-fascists that afternoon, killing Heather Heyer and grievously injuring 19 others.

Fascists had sought to obtain the upper hand in the media narrative by presenting their opponents as enemies of free speech. But after “Unite the Right,” the alt-right was inextricably linked with images of armed Klansmen and Nazis carrying swastika flags. The connection between far-right activism and fascist murder had become too obvious for anyone to deny. Charlottesville immediately became a rallying cry for an emerging broad-based anti-fascist movement that mirrored the microcosm of cross-tendency networking unfolding that summer in the Bay Area.

The heroes of this story are the anarchists and other militant anti-fascists who put their bodies on the line to throw the “Unite the Right” rally into chaos. Grotesque images from the streets of Charlottesville on August 12 showed armored fascist street fighters engaged in combat with outnumbered anti-fascists. These delivered a fatal blow to the alt-right’s stated goal of using the rally to legitimize the popular movement they hoped to build. Anti-fascists had forced the alt-right to show its true face; the results were catastrophic for the movement’s future. If the brutality of April 15 forced the Bay Area to reconsider far-right propaganda about “free speech,” August 12 in Charlottesville did the same thing for the whole country.

Resistance movements in the Bay Area are always strongest when they are not alone. When rebellions in Oakland, Berkeley, or San Francisco are simply militant outliers or exceptions that prove the rule, they are ultimately isolated and neutralized. Comrades in the Bay are most effective when their actions are a reflection of what is happening elsewhere around the country. The events in Charlottesville kicked local anti-fascist coalition-building into high gear. Within hours of Heather’s murder, nearly a thousand anti-racists and anti-fascists gathered in downtown Oakland and marched to the 580 freeway, where they blocked all traffic and set off fireworks in a display of solidarity with comrades in Charlottesville. Many drivers waved and raised fists in support.

Solidarity with Charlottesville demonstration shuts blocks the 580 freeway in Oakland on August 12

Over a hundred solidarity demonstrations took place around the world over the following days. Many targeted Confederate monuments in the South. On August 14, demonstrators in Durham, North Carolina pulled down a statue of a Confederate soldier. Meanwhile, the Three Percenters Militia, which had deployed fully-armed platoons as part of the Unite the Right rally, issued a national stand-down order stating, “We will not align ourselves with any type of racist group.” Infighting between various far-right tendencies blaming each other for the disaster reached a fever pitch.

The national discourse around militant anti-fascism that had begun in response to the events in DC on January 20 and Berkeley on February 2 shifted dramatically. After Charlottesville, anti-fascists were suddenly riding a tidal wave of support from the left and many liberals. Cornel West, who had attended the counterdemonstration with a contingent of clergy, pointedly stated on the August 14 episode of Democracy Now, “We would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the anti-fascists.” Traditional conservative leaders such as Republican senators John McCain and Orin Hatch even lent tacit support to anti-fascists as they went on the offensive against Trump. Mitt Romney weighed in on August 15, tweeting, “One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes.” By August 18, Steve Bannon, the most powerful and visible face of neo-fascism within the Trump regime, was forced out of the administration in an apparent act of damage control responding to the growing crisis. Anti-fascists were once again in control of the tempo.

The Final Battle of Berkeley

Black Bloc helps settle the score in Berkeley, August 27.

Far-right activists from the Bay Area who had attended the Unite the Right rally returned home to find they had lost their jobs. Fascist podcast personality Johnny Monoxide was fired from his union electrician job in San Francisco after posters appeared at his workplace outing him as a white supremacist and neo-Nazi sympathizer. Cole White, who had assaulted people in Berkeley alongside Kyle Chapman and others throughout the year, was fired from a Berkeley hot dog stand after being outed by the @YesYoureRacist twitter account for attending the torch march.

By mid-August, a complex network of spokescouncils, coalition meetings, assemblies, and trainings were bringing together a diverse range of activist, left, and anarchist tendencies in the Bay on a nearly daily basis to prepare for the alt-right rallies of August 26 and 27. Honest conversations about how to allow for a diversity of tactics while respecting different risk levels and different vulnerabilities forged an unprecedented level of trust and solidarity. On August 19, in Boston, Massachusetts, over 40,000 counterdemonstrators confronted a few dozen alt-right activists and Trump supporters, including visiting alt-lite celebrity Kyle Chapman, who were attempting to host another “Free Speech Rally.” This was the largest demonstration against fascism and the alt-right in the US throughout 2017. It was another sign of the turning tides. In Laguna Beach, just down the coast from where 2000 Trump Supporters had marched with DIY Division in March, a small “America First” rally against immigration was vastly outnumbered by 2500 anti-fascists and anti-racists.

Morale was high among Bay Area anti-fascists and anti-racists as the weekend rallies approached. Local graffiti crews lent support, spreading a campaign of writing anti-Nazi and anti-Trump messages in cities around the region. Various local businesses announced that they would not serve alt-right rally attendees while opening their doors to offer spaces of refuge for anti-fascists. Calls to action emerged from almost every single Bay Area activist and movement organization. A common thread in many of these calls was a respect for different approaches to confronting fascism and a commitment to “not criminalize or denounce other protesters.”

Saturday’s alt-right demonstration was planned for San Francisco’s Crissy Field with the Golden Gate Bridge as a backdrop. On the eve of the rally, Patriot Prayer organizer Joey Gibson announced the event was cancelled due to safety concerns. Instead, Patriot Prayer planned to hold a press conference across the city in Alamo Square Park.

Despite the apparent change of plans, over a thousand anti-racists and anti-fascists converged on Alamo Square the next day. Among them were members of the ILWU and the IBEW, Johnny Monoxide’s former union. This labor contingent had mobilized to support the counterdemonstration and to make it clear that fascists would not be tolerated in their ranks.

They found the park completely fenced off and occupied by hundreds of riot police, but no sign of Patriot Prayer or other far-right activists. Gibson and others including Kyle Chapman had retreated to an apartment down the coast in the city of Pacifica, from which they issued a statement over Facebook blaming city leaders and antifa for their own failure to hold a rally. It was becoming clear that their movement was imploding and the real obstacle to their rally was the potential of an embarrassingly low turnout. A colorful and celebratory victory march took the streets of San Francisco, making its way towards the Mission district. Throughout the rest of the day, anywhere far-right activists were sighted, counterdemonstrators swarmed the location and chased them off. Late in the day, Gibson and a handful of others made a surprise photo-op appearance in Crissy Field. A large crowd of counterdemonstrators chased them to their cars and they fled.

The “No to Marxism in America” rally planned for Berkeley on Sunday at 1 pm was also cancelled by organizer Amber Cummings. Nevertheless, the anti-racist and anti-fascist mobilization showed no signs of slowing down and Berkeley police were preparing for the worst. Berkeley City Council had passed a series of emergency ordinances giving the police special powers to set up multiple security perimeters around Civic Center Park and to ban items ranging from picket signs to masks. Over 400 police officers stood ready in and around the park on that sunny morning.

Two major rallies against the alt-right and against white supremacy were planned for the day in Berkeley. The first was organized by a coalition including local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), campus student groups, and a range of unions. It began across downtown on the edge of the UC Berkeley campus at 10:30. By 11, thousands were in attendance.

Other smaller groups went straight to Civic Center Park, where numbers had been growing since early in the day. As noon approached, nearly a thousand anti-racists and anti-fascists milled about between concrete barriers and various layers of fencing as hundreds of riot police monitored the scene under an increasingly hot sun. Screaming and shoving erupted multiple times as scattered Trump supporters and alt-right adherents attempted to enter the park. Some punches were thrown; this time, in contrast to March 4 and April 15, squads of riot police responded immediately to break up the fights and make arrests. The few antifascists who arrived with their faces concealed were tackled by police and arrested for violating the emergency ordinances.

Riot police face off against thousands of anti-fascists in Civic Center Park on August 27.

A few blocks away, in Ohlone Park, the second rally, organized by the local chapter of SURJ along with other anti-racist groups, was just beginning. Thousands were preparing to march. The call to action for this mobilization explicitly asserted the necessity of confronting fascists with a diversity of tactics and asked all attendees to respect those utilizing more confrontational forms of resistance. As a sound truck began leading the crowd towards Civic Center Park, a black bloc of nearly 100, many wearing helmets and protective gear, emerged from a side street ahead lighting off flares and chanting “¡Todos Somos Antifascistas!” The bloc parted for the sound truck and joined the front of the march to the cheers of the crowd. There were now nearly 10,000 antifascists of all stripes on the streets of Berkeley.

The black bloc doubled in size as it marched. Riot police standing guard around the Berkeley Police station on the corner of Civic Center Park looked on in dismay as the bloc led the crowd right up to the edge of the outer security perimeter. Tensions quickly escalated as riot police formed a skirmish line along the perimeter facing off against the bloc. One cop attempted to grab a masked comrade’s shield; others forced him back. Another cop fired a rubber bullet into the bloc as masked comrades with shields moved to the front line. A speaker on the sound truck announced that those wanting to help form a defensive line could move forward with the black bloc and all others could step back across the street to the steps of the old City Hall to hold space. Dozens of large shields were distributed from others in the crowd to those on the “defensive line.” Riot police began strapping on gas masks and aiming their various projectile weapons at the crowd. A major clash between two well-prepared sides was about to break out.

Anarchists hold the defensive line with shields on August 27.

Suddenly, the cops pulled back. All riot police in Civic Center Park had been ordered to withdraw to side streets in order to avoid instigating a riot. The crowd surged forward over the concrete barriers with the black bloc at the front chanting “Black Lives Matter!” Thousands flooded into the park, openly disobeying the emergency ordinances. Many chanted “Whose Park? Our Park!”

When Joey Gibson and his crew of patriots arrived minutes later, the crowd cheered on militant anti-fascists as they chased the pathetic showing of alt-lite reactionaries down a side street, where police fired smoke grenades to end the confrontation. Back in the park, the mood was jubilant and calm. Many applauded the black bloc and thanked them for keeping the crowd safe from neo-Nazis and white supremacists, who had been spotted leaving the area after seeing the size of the anti-fascist crowd.

A second march from the morning rally arrived in the park and members of the DSA, carrying red flags, gave high fives to members of the black bloc carrying black flags. Clergy members made speeches and sang from the sound truck as people dismantled more of the police barriers. After an hour and a half of holding the park, the decision was made to leave together. The clashes had been minimal, the police had been forced to back down, and no one had sustained serious injuries: this was undeniably a massive victory.

A diverse yet united front of 10,000 anti-fascists had finally settled the score in Berkeley. As the black bloc joined the march out of Civic Center Park, they chanted “This is for Charlottesville!”

The top story of next morning’s San Francisco Chronicle began,

“An army of anarchists in black clothing and masks routed a small group of right-wing demonstrators who had gathered in a Berkeley park Sunday to rail against the city’s famed progressive politics, driving them out—sometimes violently—while overwhelming a huge contingent of police officers.”

What this description left out was the coordination and solidarity with thousands of other demonstrators that had allowed this “army of anarchists” to take back Civic Center Park without any significant clashes. That was the important story of the day. But the narrative emerging from the anti-fascist victory in Berkeley looked very different to those who were not there. Corporate media described anarchists and militant anti-fascists as hijacking an otherwise peaceful movement. These media outlets focused on a few scuffles that broke out with Gibson’s crew and some other reactionaries, including a father-son duo, wearing a Trump shirt and Pinochet shirt respectively, who had entered the park and pepper sprayed the crowd at random.

A father-son duo, wearing a Trump shirt and a Pinochet shirt, are pushed out of the park after pepper spraying the crowd on August 27.

August 27 was a relatively relaxed and celebratory day in the streets of Berkeley. Yet from the outside, national media outlets that had ignored the much uglier violence of April 15 painted it as a disturbing street battle between extremist gangs. The short-lived window of mainstream support for militant anti-fascism that had opened after the tragedy in Charlottesville was now closing. As long as anti-fascists were understood only as victims of white supremacist violence, liberals could support them. Yet as soon as those wearing black gained the upper hand, they were described as a threat to the status quo—potentially as dangerous as the Nazis themselves.

“The violent actions of people calling themselves antifa in Berkeley this weekend deserve unequivocal condemnation, and the perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted,” read a quickly-issued statement from Democrat house minority leader Nancy Pelosi. “I think we should classify them as a gang,” said Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin. “They come dressed in uniforms. They have weapons, almost like a militia and I think we need to think about that in terms of our law enforcement approach.”

However, the diverse coalition that had been forged over the summer stood its ground. “We have no regrets for how they left our city. We do not want white supremacists in our city,” said Pastor Michael McBride in a press conference on the steps of the old City Hall the following day. “We don’t apologize for any of it,” said Tur-Ha Ak of the Anti-Police Terror Project. “We have a right and an obligation to self-defense, period.” A declaration of victory published by the Catalyst Project stated that it was “hard to convey how meaningful it was, after Charlottesville, for a very disciplined group of antifa activists to offer protection to the crowd from both police and white supremacists.”

Within activist, left, and anarchist circles in the Bay Area, there was no infighting after August 27. The unprecedented levels of trust and coordination that had developed between various groups held firm. Compared with the intense sectarian conflict that followed the spectacular demonstrations of the Occupy movement and the various waves of anti-police rebellions in the Bay, the revolutionary solidarity of 2017 was unheard of. This was the real victory of the Battles of Berkeley.

Make Total Decomposition

Milo exits the stage escorted by his $800,000 police security detail on September 25

The emergent fascist social movement that had grown throughout the first half of 2017 was now in ruins. Anti-fascist victories in Charlottesville, Boston, and Berkeley had shattered reactionary dreams of a far-right popular movement coalescing in Trump’s first year. The various tendencies that had converged under the banner of the alt-right were running for cover and turning on each other.

In a desperate attempt to give a new lift to his falling star, Milo had been hyping his triumphant return to Berkeley for a so-called “Free Speech Week” from September 25-28 in collaboration with an offshoot of the College Republicans calling itself the Berkeley Patriot. Together, they promised days of provocative events on and around campus featuring far-right speakers including Ann Coulter, Blackwater founder Eric Prince, and even Steve Bannon. The anti-fascist coalition in the Bay braced for another wave of reactionary posturing and violence. On the eve of Free Speech Week, hundreds took to the streets of Berkeley as part of the No Hate in the Bay march. As the march ended without serious incident in a rally at Sproul Plaza, Chelsea Manning made a surprise speech in a show of support for anti-fascists.

Over the preceding days, signs of infighting among the organizers of Free Speech Week had become increasingly apparent as venues changed, plans were cancelled without explanation, and the media received contradictory messages from Milo’s PR team, student Republican leaders, and campus administrators. In the end, Free Speech Week fizzled completely, reinforcing the increasing irrelevance of Milo and the alt-lite. On Sunday, September 25, about 60 far-right activists and Milo fans stood in an empty Sproul Plaza listening to Milo talk for 20 minutes while waiting in line to get his autograph. They were surrounded by a massive militarized police presence that cost the university $800,000.

BAMN and the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) turned out about 100 counter demonstrators who made some noise outside the police perimeter. But most anti-fascists stayed away. Milo had already been beaten back in February and the fascist reaction to that victory had now also been overcome.

Within less than hour, it was all over and Milo fled the city once again. Small groups of alt-right activists who had flown in for Free Speech Week tried their best to build momentum throughout the rest of the week. One group stood outside the RCP’s Berkeley bookstore and banged on its windows. Another rallied outside the Black Student Union on campus. Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer even held a small demonstration in People’s Park. Students organized a rally that Monday to protest the fascists’ presence on their campus; militant anti-fascists were on edge all week as they monitored each of these events. Yet none of this activity enabled the insurgent far right to reach critical mass again. Evaluated as publicity stunts, recruitment tools, and tactical advances, all the events surrounding Free Speech Week were pathetic failures. They were barely noticed and did nothing to change the balance of forces.

On October 12, alt-right and white supremacist sympathizers within the Berkeley College Republicans were deposed in an internal coup that gave more traditional conservatives more control of the student organization. Bitter infighting within the group continued throughout the rest of the semester, reflecting similar splits on the state level within College Republicans. Identity Evropa also faced unstable leadership following the collapse of the strategy of targeting liberal university enclaves, which they had pioneered on Berkeley campus in May 2016. Nathan Damigo resigned as IE’s leader on August 27 following his disastrous participation in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. He was replaced by Elliott Kline, who was then replaced at the end of November by Patrick Casey. In an interview in which he announced his plans to move away from the damaged brand of the alt-right and to stop attempting to hold any kind of large public demonstrations, Casey stated, “We can’t go into these liberal areas and essentially repeat what happened with Unite the Right.” Reflecting on his movement’s shortcomings, the Daily Stormer’s Andrew Anglin admitted that “large rallies on public property, where we know there is going to be confrontation with antifa, are not a good idea.”

Meanwhile, in southern California, on October 21, former member of Kyle Chapman’s Fraternal Order of Alt Knights and fellow alt-lite leader Johnny Benitez accused Chapman of not being racist enough and personally profiting off of his “activism,” leading to a fist fight between the two men at the California Republican Party’s 2017 convention in the Anaheim Marriott. The next day, Chapman led a squad of Proud Boys to disrupt a Laguna Beach Benghazi rally organized by Benitez. Both men accused each other of being Federal informants and infiltrators. Fully 150 riot police were deployed to keep the quarreling factions apart. Later that week, Chapman found himself in yet another messy public split with Florida fascist August Invictus who had previously been FOAK’s second in command. The alt-right meltdown was in full swing.

The core leadership of the fascistic far right continued desperately attempting to regain all they had lost. Patriot Prayer returned to Berkeley yet again for another tiny and insignificant rally in People’s Park in November. In December, Kyle Chapman and a few others marched through San Francisco in an attempt to use the acquittal of the man charged with Kate Steinle’s death to protest the city’s “sanctuary city” status. Other far-right activists in Portland, Oregon, Austin, Texas, and elsewhere across the country attempted to use this same issue to mobilize the crowds that had stood beside them earlier in the year. Yet by December, their numbers were minuscule; in most cases, they found themselves overwhelmed by anti-fascist counterdemonstrations.

Nowhere was this clearer than in DC on December 3, when Richard Spencer, Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Worker’s Party, former IE leader Elliott Kline, and other fascist leaders attempted to hold a rally. They were forced to cancel their march when less than 20 people showed up. They had failed to reignite the momentum that neo-Nazis and white supremacists rode on in 2016 and early 2017. By the end of the year, their movement was in total decomposition.

Solidarity Is Our Most Powerful Weapon

The August 27 black bloc marches in front of a sign printed and distributed by the city of Berkeley

The alt-right has been defeated. The convergence of fascist and white supremacist tendencies under this rebranded far-right umbrella has been successfully disrupted, cutting off the core leadership from the base of Trump supporters from which they sought to draw power. Militant anti-fascists who took action in Berkeley, Charlottesville, and dozens of other cities across the country should be proud of the role they played in achieving this victory.

It is important to emphasize that this was not accomplished through a militaristic application of force. During the darkest days of the spring, when the alt-right mobilizations in Berkeley were at their strongest, it was not certain that even the largest of contemporary black blocs could have defeated the array of fascistic forces prepared to do battle. What tipped the scales, ultimately leading to the Nazis’ downfall, was the strength of solidarity between various anarchist, left, and activist groups committed to combatting white supremacy, patriarchy, and fascism with a wide range of tactics. As anti-fascist networks expanded and grew increasingly resilient, the ideologically heterogeneous networks of the far right imploded. The alt-lite turned on the alt-right, the civic nationalists turned on the ethno-nationalists, the patriot militias turned on the neo-Nazis, and the average Trump supporter who had dabbled in this growing movement was left confused and demoralized.

Yet the struggle against fascist and reactionary forces in the United States during the Trump era is just beginning.

There is no going back to a time before the stabbings, doxxing, Pinochet shirts, Pepe memes, torch-lit marches, and murder. Movements struggling for collective liberation must remain hardened and ready to face down whatever future fascist mutations rear their ugly heads from the cesspool of the far right. This is especially true for the anarchist movement in the United States, as anarchists have stuck our necks out further than almost anyone else to combat the rise of the alt-right. We cannot lower our guard; comrades will have to continue prioritizing individual and community self-defense for the foreseeable future. Many of these radicalized fascists will seek to exploit future crises to jumpstart their movement-building in new and unexpected ways. Other far-right activists will likely attempt to gain positions of power within law enforcement and other security agencies. Lone wolf attacks and other manifestations of far-right violence will almost certainly continue.

So we must remain on high alert. But if the threat of an imminent far-right popular movement with a fascist vanguard continues to recede, the politics of militant antifascism can evolve. This is what happens when we win.

Anarchist projects and initiatives can once again set their sights on the foundations of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. Some comrades can work to develop a revolutionary anti-fascist tendency that builds on the momentum of recent years. Others can take what they have learned from this sequence and refocus on advancing the struggles they have always been a part of.

Either way, anarchists and other militant antifascists are starting 2018 in a much more advantageous position than we held a year ago. The diverse networks of affinity and solidarity that turned the tide in 2017 will remain vital to the safety and resilience of everyone engaged in these dangerous activities.

At the same time, it must not be forgotten that fascists took advantage of the contradictions inherent in liberalism and the elitism of liberal enclaves to gain strength in 2016 and 2017. We must not water down anti-fascism via “popular front” politics until it becomes nothing more than a defense of liberal capitalism. We have to defend ourselves against co-optation as well as fascist agitation. The victories of 2017 have afforded us a brief opening to catch our breath and reaffirm the profoundly radical nature of our struggle for collective liberation. Imaginative revolutionaries must now lead new offensives on their own terms that bring us all closer to the world we wish to build.

Some Bay Area Antagonists January 2018

Taking the Park on August 27.

[thegoldendemon-blog]

INTERLUDE pt I

Note for gore, violence, murder and all that. 2.5k word beginning of a wild ride into the origins of Khada Jhin.

The gnats in his ears were dry as the lips drawn on the head that gaped for him in the ravine.

The grass below him was quiet. Fine. A bit disused, a scatterplot of indentations towards the ravine and then back in circles. Bloodless, at least on the blades: the water itself a musty shade of red. Somewhere up in the trees birds sang. It was the first time he’d heard them all day— the rest before then went to the gnats.

A man was dead.

The name of whom came with difficulty, having to traipse from one idle neuron to the next. Hiro. A colleague of his (that one came a little quicker), no more important or well received than he himself was. If he looked down— and he allowed it— there was a body smushed half in the grass and half in the ravine. It leaked.

And if he stretched out his arms— he didn’t allow that— he might’ve seen a swathe of cuts and incisions written in by his own hands.

Khada Jhin ran before he had a chance to scream.

His long legs were a mess and his hair grew naps. Scabs lined his skin, a few still bleeding, his head hanging while the rest of the troupe put a lantern close to his face and sent for both a doctor and a shaman.

From what slivers he glanced over, most were morose. Some were shocked, some fearful— though those stayed behind the first group in front of him, chittering amongst each other like some bugs he knew.

“Hiro’s dead?” Someone new asked.

“That’s what he says,” someone old answered.

“Who?”

“Jhin.”

Beat.

“He doesn’t look too good.”

“Is anyone when a demon comes?”

Silence followed long after that.

The sun had long since bent beneath the horizon, with it a cold and tired night. Troupe camp was something of a solitary blot halfway in the woods and halfway in the village: space needed for the stage, then secrecy to maintain the air of intrigue. Aside from Jhin and Hiro who went on their way to circulate flyers in the market from their dingy, years-old cart, the lot hadn’t seen rehearsal from the outside world in weeks.

Not that there was time for derision.

A frumpy silhouette pushed through the crowd orbiting Jhin, landing square next to him. White robes, red tassels, one hand on an oak stave and the other clutching a basket of charms. The soft scent of incense proliferated inside his nose. When he looked up, a woman’s stern face stared in his.

“Akana. I’m the village mystic,” she announced.

He said nothing back.

“You encountered a demon?”

This time he managed some life. “Yes,” he said in a small voice.

She swept her hand behind her, flicking the thinning expanse of people back. “I will talk to him. I only want the doctor here with me. Go to your camps.”

A shorter shadow wheezed beside her. “What is it with the circus and demons?”

Akana reserved comment, turning again to Jhin. “Did you see it?”

“See what?”

She was sterner.

Jhin’s face knelt and he averted his gaze. “I heard more than I saw,” he said.

“What did you hear?”

“Screaming. Teeth crunching. I ran as fast as I could.”

A man revealed himself, balding and coarse. “If you ran, and it went for Hiro, what of your injuries?”

Jhin’s lips trembled. He sighed and swallowed a lump. “I tripped… many times. There’s brambles in the woods. I was horrified...”

The man harrumphed. “Let Akana see your arm.”

She took his wrist and pulled the rest of him forward, tracing the length of a wound. Jhin winced.

“These markings don’t look as if done by human fingers,” she said. “He has them on his legs, too.”

“Well, we’re not the Guard. I don’t want to have to dredge the other body out on their regard.”

“Muskan. Can you close the bigger cuts?”

“Of course I can.” He headed closer to Jhin and unveiled a bevy of surgical instruments, presumably expecting far worse. By the time they were done, Jhin’s head spun and his body was aflame in swollen plumes of pain.

“If there is a demon nearby,” Akana intoned, “I don’t doubt it won’t be the last time we hear of it. I will bless the village perimeter and case this camp in incense.”

She exchanged a look with Jhin, showing sympathy through the tight lines interwoven on her expression.

“As for you: I cannot imagine the fear you must have for what happened to you and Hiro.” She put her hands on his shoulder. “If this demon returns, remember it is not your fault. They’re beasts of sin and impulse. They rarely come for a single target.”

“And recite the Divines,” Muskan said behind her, almost bored.

“And recite the Divines.” She smiled sadly. “The grace of the white one’s tail. The protective breath of the red one’s jaws.”

Jhin tried to smile back, but his eyes were dead.

When he woke up the next day, the troupe’s routine was back in full swing. Mumbling and whispers filtered in and out of the tent, the bedroll next to him barren as could be. Motion splayed out before him, hitching to and fro, heads bobbing and hands frantic to plumb through curtain fabric and costume coattails.

He felt hollow.

Not good, not bad, not fearful or remorseful. Hollow. Nothing. Ambivalent. He sat up on his roll and was surprised to see someone looming over him.

“The Matron wants to see you.”

Of course she does, he thought with a surprising hint of distaste.

“I’ll go see her,” he said calmly. “Is she in her tent?”

“Behind the stage. Ogling Emiya as she does.”

Jhin made a sucking noise, thrown from reflection into the continued trivialities of his line of work. Set the boxes, he hissed in his mind as he stood. Catch the curtains. No! Not like that— slow. Be dramatic. It hurts your arms? You’re stronger than that. He reached for the pouch beside the bedroll and balanced the weight in his palm. With his pay (and the grievance for the lack thereof), it might be years before he could afford so much as a hut on the derelict byways on the worst of Zhyun.

Somehow that thought clung to him better than the one of Hiro’s disembodied head.

Rank panes of sunlight hit Jhin’s eyes like a punch to the gut as he exited the tent, throwing the flap behind him. He squinted until his vision cleared and passed sword-swallowers and jugglers to the stage and the mess of human beings on it. It occurred to him that they were staring— it was beyond him to reciprocate.

The Matron peered from under a sheaf of backstage curtains, beckoning Jhin with an old crooked finger. He followed it and found himself in a tiny boxed crevice he assumed would house a pulley system tomorrow.

She smelled of cheap perfume and powder, her voice as gnarled as her curls.

“Jhin,” she nodded.

Idly he wondered if she washed or simply smacked herself with an extra puff and further drenched her wrinkles with aroma.

When her eyes crinkled, he remembered to bow. “Matron,” he said, twice removed from the affair.

“I’ve heard what happened to you last night,” she said. “How awful! You and Hiro were friends, weren’t you? Oh, I remember how he requested to work with you specifically for this show...” She looked crestfallen. Jhin didn’t believe it for a second.

“Tsk. I don’t know what to do with you.” Her hands clapped together. “It would be cruel of me to send you out when you look like this. Let’s… oh, I’ll let you have a few days off. To clean up.”

To clean up.

Jhin almost sneered.

The next he remembered was the soiled grin of a drunkard turned sour reproach when Jhin forced him to the ground.

He muttered something unintelligible, words slurring to the degree that he ought as well been babbling. Jhin caught something about “a fight” and “fists up”, which he ignored to focus on the man’s clothes, keeping him down with a foot on his chest. Reaching into his own obi, he slid out a slender knife whose cutting edge twinkled polished in the moonlight. The drunkard’s cheeks were blazing red, eyes glazed over and throat churning as Jhin kicked him to his side before reaching to grab his collar. The knife scissored easily through the fabric and laid him bare.

A tightness welled up in Jhin’s heart at seeing pale flesh. It caught him long and hard and left him almost breathless.

Excitement.

His open hand trailed fingers along a shoulderblade, finishing at the small of the back. He studied the unspoiled skin as one might the meat of a pig. Gradually coming to a thoughtful crease, his brows slid together and, with some tightening on the hilt, he jammed the knife center to the spine. The whole body bucked. He watched it stutter with quiet fascination until the twitching stopped, arms and legs as motionless as the torso. Then he slipped the knife at an angle and dragged it down with the same trained motion as filleting fish.

He didn’t relent except when there were four incisions done in the style of the first. Two slit from both shoulderblades. Third in the center of the spine. Fourth in the back of the skull. Careful not to get his work muddy, he left the body facing down as he butchered off every limb one by one. Jhin’s eyes flickered with steely determination as, finally, he severed the head.

His breathing raked his lungs. At last he pulled the two legs and intertwined them together on top of the torso, then paired them with arms. At the center of it all, incision facing first, the head. He circled back to view what he had done in full glory.

It smiled at him.

His focus was shattered by the sound of footfalls crunching on forest underbrush. He spun around, looking quick for where the source was. A thumping line of lantern light headed towards him and Jhin dived behind a beetle-bit ash tree, clumsily sliding a still bloody blade into its sheathe and shoving it behind the chest of his obi.

He heard mutterings but couldn’t place them over the crown of buzzing. The voices, in tune with the lamplight, came closer until they had to have been only an arm’s length apart. Chitter chitter. Bugs and bugs. He resisted the urge to scratch himself and silently bent over to crawl into a nearby bush.

Help. The bugs wanted help. The lamplight turned around and hopped away. Jhin stared until he knew it was safe. He stood up from the brush and ran, the other bugs catching on to his fleeing only when he was long gone.

Free of insects and buzzing, he threw the tent flap behind him and lied still on his mat. Beats of sweat dolled down his forehead and ended hanging limply where his cheeks met his chin.

Despite it, nothing moved. Nothing whispered. There was silence. Jhin turned over to his side and closed his eyes, feeling full and satisfied.

Khada Jhin dreamt of a darkness slathered in yellow. His sleep was steady through the night, chest occasionally rising and falling to the beat of his internal machine. Once or twice the yellow would curdle and bleed, showering black with red.

All told, he would’ve found it pleasant should he have had remembered it.

“Are you up?” Someone called out to him.

“I am now,” Jhin rumbled, wiping his eyes and sitting up.

“It’s resting day.” He placed the voice now. Qing.

“I’m aware.” He stared ahead.

“Are you going to regale us with your marvelous cooking skills tonight, Jhin? You know, me and Toshi and Ru. To get everybody’s minds off—”

“I’m saving my money.”

“We can pitch in.”

Jhin sighed and rubbed his face, momentarily wishing he could go back to sleep.

“I suppose…”

He didn’t need to see Qing to know he was lit up. “Great!” He pat Jhin’s shoulder and stood up from crouching.

“No demons to get in the way of good sushi,” Qing mused. “I like that. See you tonight, Jhin.”

Jhin’s back unfurled and he found himself spotting dirty dots on the tent liner.

It was a while before he sat up again let alone coming to a stand. He shuffled out of the tent and avoided the stage to bungle his way through carts and empty boxes to finally wheedle out of the camp and into the village. Even then he turned for the outskirts that led away into a small lake where he could wash. Scrubbing daily was a ritual Jhin invented for himself: the dizzying scent of dirt and mud that fastened itself to his contemporaries was nothing short of a myriad array of disgusting. He despised their hygiene almost as much as he despised their listless, blurry looks and glassy-eyed faces.

Taking off his clothes and slipping into the water was one of the few ways he could order himself and relax, even as he clung to the shallows for his needle-like limbs made for awkward swimming. He turned his head up and felt clumps fade from his skin and knots undoing in his hair.

Something bubbled up in the water. His eyes lowered. At first, he thought it a rock, but it was too thin for such a thing. It turned itself over. Blinking, there was a bright shine to it, almost metallic. He focused harder and noticed horns.

His stomach dropped.

It was the last time Jhin washed in that lake.

“Your wares,” Jhin said. “I’m interested in your wares.”

“That makes a fair deal better sense than my ears,” the cartman replied, laughing to an audience of one. “Which one do you want?”

The wind hissed between them, masks shaking on wooden hooks as Jhin tilted his head and looked at them all.

“Most of these are green,” he murmured to himself.

“Oh, don’t mind the lack of variety,” the cartman said, apparently guessing what Jhin had muttered. “They’re— uh— backstock. You know. From the Jade Festival.”

Jhin’s brows furrowed. “Do you have any yellow ones?”

“Yellow?”

“Yes.”

“Well…” The cartman turned away to plumb through his levy of masks, inspecting them one by one. His advanced age suggested that he didn’t know which from which unless looking at them. Jhin hoped that it wouldn’t take as long as the slow whisk of his ancient fingers implied it would be.

“Oh!” The cartman wiggled his hand into the cart and pulled out a single mask.

“This one.” He presented it proudly to Jhin. “I made this one myself years ago. The white’s uh— yellowed with age. Wood’s still good, though. I guarantee it.”

A maw of etched fangs and horns, notched with chipping paint, pointed dumb at the sky. A background of theater let Jhin recognize it easily. Hannya mask. Used primarily to symbolize evil spirits and demons on set. Rarely worn except in plays out of fear of ill omens.

He sniffed the misty air as the wind whistled in his ears.

“What do you think?”

Jhin took the mask. “I’ll buy it.”

“I’ll give you a discount for its age,” the cartman hummed. “Uhhh… four gold coins. I don’t want any silver so don’t give me that.”

Jhin presented him a small pouch before he finished. The cartman took it and nodded whilst Jhin slipped the mask into his tunic.

He remembered last of walking into a shaman’s hut.

[thepapermixtape]

A Love Letter to Ruth from Ozark

By: Jenna Welsh

This winter break, I thought I would catch up on some reading or movies I missed, perhaps head back to the gym or take a few trips to the beach. Instead, as I always do, I sank headfirst into a new television series on Netflix. And man, was it worth the sacrificed activities.

Ozark focuses on Marty Byrde, played by Jason Bateman, a money launderer for a powerful drug cartel in Mexico. When Del, the liaison between Marty and the cartel, learns that Marty’s business partners are stealing from the pool of money that he entrusted them with, he massacres them, leaving Marty to make amends in order to protect his family. Through a series of chance circumstances, the Byrdes uproot their lives to move the money laundering operation to the Lake of the Ozarks, which touts that it “has more shoreline than the coast of California” (which is true!).

The first episode is, admittedly, a little slow as it displays the menial motions of Marty to move his family to the Ozarks. I also struggled throughout the series to find the characters sympathetic, as most of them seem to bring their misfortunes upon themselves either through crime or immoral behavior; instead, I watched with a more muted curiosity about the fate that might befall these awful people. The major exception to this is Ruth Langmore, played by the sparkling Julia Garner—she is, in my opinion, both the protagonist and heart of the show, as well as one of the most powerful feminist icons that Netflix has ever created.

You see, Ruth is one of a family of misfits and criminals. Her cousins Wyatt and Three, the first Missourians introduced on the show, convince Marty’s daughter, the unwitting Charlotte, to take a joyride with them on a stolen boat; her uncles steal parts off of boats that they service; and her father, Cade, starts the series in prison for an undisclosed crime. But Ruth does not ride on the coattails of her accomplished criminal family in any regard: she brags about her own formidable rapt sheet and reaches new levels of ruthlessness (pun intended) as the show progresses. She is her own independent criminal and woman, and as Todd VanDerWerff of Vox puts it, “smart and undervalued and ready to learn.”

The Langmores live largely isolated in several trailers on the outskirts of the lake, far removed from the rest of the resort town’s inhabitants; in a scene between the town’s sheriff and the Byrdes, we hear nearly every classist stereotype espoused, including that the family is not invested civically or financially in their community. In the second episode, Ruth comes into contact with Marty herself after she engineers the theft of the cartel’s money; during a standoff between Marty and the Langmores, she alone coldly advocates for Marty’s death, claiming it will restore a karmic balance. When Marty reaches an impasse in his business dealings, he turns to Ruth, who creatively devises a plan of attack on behalf of Marty while also gaining his trust, something that almost no other character is able to do in the entirety of the series. Eventually, she starts working at one of Marty’s shell businesses, a strip club; you might imagine that the trailer trash Southern girl would be grinding on the pole, but she, at nineteen, is in fact the manager of the entire operation. By subverting this classist trailer trash stereotype, Ozark allows Ruth to thrive as the character who gets fucked over constantly but creates opportunity within her situation. In the entrance of the Langmore trailer, a regular setting in the show, there is a poster of a topless, provocatively-posed woman; just like at the strip club, Ruth marches past this poster each day, living her life and continuing her work. She refuses to let an objectifying image bother her or sway her as she kicks ass and puts the men around her in their place.

Ruth is meant to be the character foil to the privileged Byrdes; she is constantly set up throughout the show to demonstrate how two families, merely miles apart, can have completely different experiences. While Marty’s insufferable children complain about their situation or do something to attract the attention of the FBI, Ruth is breaking up fights between strippers and overzealous customers or laying down some truth on her cousin’s high school guidance counselor. While the show provides quite a few romantic options for Charlotte, Ruth is not inherently romanticized or sexualized because, quite frankly, she doesn’t have time for that.

Of course, Ruth’s story is not all empowering moments. Throughout the series, Ruth makes gut-wrenching sacrifices, battling questions of family, belonging, and destiny. She often has to contend with the recklessness and stupidity of the men around her; her uncles purchase two female bobcats to breed with money she pilfers from Marty (“What are they gonna do, scissor each other?” she asks incredulously), her father abruptly robs a convenience store upon his release from prison, and her cousins are unmotivated to stay in school. What’s more, she often has to protect or look out for Marty and the rest of the Byrde clan; when Charlotte tries to run away, it is Ruth who helps find her, and she saves Marty’s life on multiple occasions, directly and indirectly. Of course, all of these figures in Ruth’s life continue to ask things of her—her father, in particular, constantly demands that she kill Marty and steal the remainder of his money, even when she starts to see Marty as a mentor rather than an adversary. Her intelligence and skill at times feels like a burden when combined with her circumstances, but Ruth generally takes it in stride, choosing to problem solve rather than whine. In one of the more poignant moments of the second season, Ruth reads a college essay her cousin wrote about the “Langmore Curse,” or her family’s unshakeable ties to crime and poverty. Ruth tearfully explains to him that there is no curse, that they are free to do what they want in life; though she is living proof that socioeconomic mobility is possible, in this moment we are unsure if Ruth actually believes in her personal agency against deeply entrenched poverty and crime.

In the second season, Ruth comes face to face with the cartel after becoming increasingly integral in their operation; her subsequent torture, perpetrated by another woman, is gut-wrenching. She struggles to cope with the near death experience, constantly having flashbacks to the incident and breaking down more than once, even in front of her terrifying father. Even a force like Ruth can feel pain and require comfort, guidance, and care; one of my favorite parts about the show is the way in which they allow Ruth to work through her trauma without victimizing her or completely altering her character.

There are some definite problems with Ozark that I think need to be rectified (the lack of people of color on a show set in Missouri, for starters), and, again, I become less and less concerned about what happens to the Byrdes as they go further down the rabbit hole of moral turpitude. But I will continue to watch for Ruth, because I’m incredibly invested in her story and inevitable success. Of all the people on the show, she is the only one I know who will come out from this complex situation stronger or, at the very least, unscathed. She’s too smart not to.

[cover32-yahoopartner-blog]

The Vikings Do Not Need an A+ Passing Game

We are in the age of the quarterback.

Expectations for all teams rest on who is taking the snaps. Seasons are made and broken based on how a quarterback performs. Franchises are ruined from taking the wrong guy, Super Bowls are won by choosing the right one.

That’s right, if you do not have the elite quarterback, your chances of winning the Super Bowl go right out the window.

Unless, of course, you have an all-time defense. And the Minnesota Vikings may very well have just that.

I know, I am getting out over my skis a little here as we are only seven weeks deep into the season and the Vikes have perhaps the most tenuous quarterback situation of any playoff hopeful. But they may have just the right formula to compensate.

What history has shown us is that getting the right quarterback is usually the fork in the road for great franchises. There are, however, notable exceptions. And those are defenses that are not only stout, but stout on a level that is seen only a handful of times in a generation.

If the defense is historically great and the running game is productive, a team can get away with middling quarterback play and compete for a Super Bowl. The classic examples of this are the early championship Steel Curtain teams and the 1985 Bears led by a turnover-prone Terry Bradshaw and the gutsy but limited Jim McMahon, respectively.

But even in the modern NFL where everything is set up to cater to the passing game, an average quarterback can ride the coattails all the way to title town. In this millennium there was the 2000 Ravens with Trent Dilfer, the 2002 Buccaneers with Brad Johnson, the 2013 Seahawks with a second-year Russell Wilson and the 2015 Broncos with a washed-up Peyton Manning.

All of these quarterbacks, with the exception of maybe Wilson, were game managers in the most extreme sense of the term. Yes, even Peyton. Wilson was given a bit more leash but in year two, he was a a top-12 quarterback just starting to creep into the top-10. That offense was built around Marshawn Lynch more than anything else.

But we do not remember the fact that these quarterbacks were basically told to not screw up.

What we will always remember is the defense. Hall of fame-level players like Ray Lewis, Derrick Brooks, Richard Sherman and Von Miller. They were the relentless forces that put a damper on some of the league’s most potent offenses. And all four of those Super Bowl wins? The game MVP was a defensive player.

So now that we know that precedent exists, how do the Vikings fit into that precedent?

They right now have arguably the best defense in football. Minnesota boasts at least four, possibly five All-Pro players in Harrison Smith, Everson Griffen, Linval Joseph, Xavier Rhodes and maybe Anthony Barr. And, like those past Super Bowl winners, as the offense is currently constituted they have a game-managing offense. Even if/when Teddy Bridgewater/Sam Bradford (gosh, this quarterback situation is up in the air) return, the passing game will be somewhat stagnant; Bridgewater will need the time to re-acclimate to game speed and Bradford’s knee troubles are just too consistent to fully rely upon.

Case Keenum has managed games, nothing more, nothing less. With one exception, every week he has moved the ball downfield when he has to, but mostly kept the offense flowing, allowing the running game to do its work, and as a result Minnesota is 5-2 and in first place in the NFC North. Whoever quarterbacks the team down the stretch will merely have to execute that baseline of passing performance.

And the stats indicate that this style works for the Vikings; they are producing at 20.9 points and 356.1 yards per game and allowing just 17 and 283. Those offensive numbers are satisfactory and the defensive numbers are elite.

Is this defense historically great? It is hard to say. The four defense-first teams listed above put a stamp on their legacy by winning the Super Bowl. Their reputation as a juggernaut came about during the season but had they not won, they probably would be a mere footnote, not an example.

The Vikings’ hopes to join such a group benefit from one simple fact: the league is as wide-open as its ever been. The best team through seven weeks is probably the Philadelphia Eagles but two weeks ago it was a slam dunk that the Chiefs were the NFL’s elite. Seven weeks ago the Giants were Super Bowl contenders and the Jaguars were aiming for the top draft pick.

So, as the NFL’s inconsistency reigns supreme, the Vikings have the consistency of dominant defense, solid running attack and an average passing game.

There are some caveats to this: For one, the second half schedule for Minnesota is tougher than the first. So those season averages may fluctuate and the need for stronger quarterback play could arise. Secondly, the Vikings started off last year 5-0. They ended 8-8. Things change, injuries happen, players who were dominant suddenly lose their way.

But that is something that is impossible to forecast. All we can do as fans and prognosticators is look at what is before us and make assessments accordingly. And based on how the first seven games have gone, my assessment is that the Vikings are a Super Bowl-caliber team with any of the three quarterbacks under center.

–Sam Smith is the Managing Editor for cover32/Vikings. Like and Follow @samc_smith Follow @cover32_MIN

AROUND COVER32 Chuck Pagano’s seat is as hot as it’s ever been Previewing the Jaguars’ divisional matchup with the Colts Making some observations on how the Texans played on Week 6 Notes on the latest in Titans news Ranking the 10 biggest injuries of the 2017 NFL season (so far)