#simply because one has a piece of personal information does not entitle one to use it how one pleases
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Alpine, Ocon, and a GPDR Park
According to Marcin Budkowski, who was an Alpine executive until 2002 and is now an analyst for Viaplay Poland (translated by Nischay Rathore at The Sportsrush), Esteban Ocon's attempt to join Williams mid-season was allegedly thwarted (at least in part) by use of the GPS system on his company car. Specifically, Marcin stated that an Alpine employee spotted the GPS tracker for his company car was in the Williams car park for 5 hours. The implications of this are interesting.
Despite Brexit, GPDR remains law in the UK, via the Data Protection Act 2018. This controls how personal data is used. Under this law, the data becomes personal if anyone can be individually identified by it. If Alpine had a pool of company cars and the system was to lend each one out ad hoc at need, the fact a given car has GPS, along with all the data it collects, is not personal information and thus not protected. GPDR would only become involved in that example once Alpine added the information about who had borrowed which car to the dataset. Since racing drivers generally need their company car across the season, and company cars themselves are most often a consistent perk rather than provided at need in the UK, it is more likely that Alpine provided a specific car to each staff member requiring one. This would mean the personal element was there from the beginning. If one receives anything from an employer, even if it is as trivial as a pen, one should be aware that a UK employer can record information connected with it provided GPDR principles are followed. GPDR requires that all personal information kept by a third party must have a lawful reason. The most common reasons this is done for a GPS tracker are insurance and helping staff who get lost. Lots of UK employers provide a discount to people who are willing to add a dashcam to their cars. Some won't insure certain people without a dashcam. The insurer does this to make it easier to gather evidence if there is a claim, as well as to attempt predictive risk assessment (this is not always to the customer's advantage, but is helpful often enough that it is specifically legal for an insurer). Employers who accept such insurance are in turn permitted to collect employee information relevant to insurance requirements. However, the insurance company would not be authorised to pass on the location information to Alpine - unless a claim had arisen from being parked in the Williams car park. Given that such would have made the story more interesting, and was not mentioned, we can reasonably assume this didn't happen. I believe we can rule out insurance as the reason this information went through this process. Helping staff who get lost initially doesn't look promising. We can probably assume that Esteban was not in the Williams car park to ask for directions. However, it would give Alpine itself a reason to have the GPS information in a non-crisis situation. After all, this would allow it to check on people who are expected somewhere and ask proactively if they need assistance. It would also fold into another purpose - checking if the car has been stolen. (No, nobody is going to believe that a thief would be so incompetent as to take a car belonging to one team and dump it in a different team's car park. That would run too much risk of being caught for too little reward. It does, however, establish the basic framework that would legally permit Alpine to discover Esteban's whereabouts).
In a legal framework which only controlled acquisition of personal information, an unscrupulous employer would be able to use this as an excuse to interfere with people's personal lives. Partially in an attempt to curb this, GPDR also controls the use and revelation of legally-acquired personal information. In summary: - One cannot use information for a purpose that was not originally cleared, without the informed consent of the individual whose information is at issue, unless it is in a limited range of exceptions - One cannot reveal personal information unless the individual specifically consents or it is in the limited range of exceptions - One must secure personal information against unlawful revelation I am not convinced that all 3 of these were satisfied. GPS trackers would not normally be used to track people's movements in their personal lives. Had Esteban been "on the clock" (within working hours), then it would have made sense that finding out he was within the Williams car park would be actionable (this would be a disciplinary offence under "wasting company time" or "not available to work", which are a part of employment contracts across the UK and thus an exception). However, a contract that allows someone to spend half a working shift not working without prior authorisation would be quite strange (and with that authorisation, the only possible check would be to establish the reason given could have been true). It is unlikely that Alpine would have told the journalists this way had there been an actual employment infraction. Either it would have kept silent and handled discipline behind the scenes, or presented an official press release about it. Not provided a rumour to a specific analyst who works for a media outlet and hope news percolated through in the form it desired. Thus, at some point I suspect it would have become clear that Alpine did not have the right to process the information further by law. It is vitally important for people who handle personal information not to reveal it unless and until it is legally appropriate to do so. This is why all those Not Always Right stories are anonymised - many of them were revealed to the website administrators against GPDR and similar laws, so information has to be redacted in order to make the published versions compliant. Rumours cannot be guaranteed to be provided with reference to the source's requirements for information security. Part of the reason many companies provide information security training to staff handling personal information is to control the risk of rumours acting as a leak source. One reason journalists don't always reveal their sources is to avoid getting their sources into disciplinary or legal trouble for GPDR breaches. This is why I don't think everyone at Alpine was complying with GPDR on this matter. In this instance, it probably isn't going to have much effect - but it is a good time to remind everyone that GPDR is a thing.
#f1#esteban ocon#alpine#gpdr#simply because one has a piece of personal information does not entitle one to use it how one pleases
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LMK fandom: Oh, what do we do about this guy who has nothing but hurt Xiaotian, tried to replace Sun Wukong and his crew, hurt Tripitaka and ordered servants to cannibalize a monkey? Oh I know! Weâll turn him into our little meow meow~ heâs so innocent and Sun Wukong is obviously the villain!
What doesnât help is this idea is perpetuated by multiple fan fic writers and artists for some reason. Especially some aus they make that turn SWK into a bastard for the sake of the story rather than considering cultural context and thinking they should be respectful.
And almost everyone lets them get away with it just because the art or fanfic is good and they get so popular that no one can point what is actually wrong without feeling like theyâre going to get attacked.
I'm starting to feel like my blog is the one anons go to specifically to vent their frustrations about the Six Eared Macaque in his lego monkey show form & the associated fandom lmao. But I guess this makes sense, as Iâve had fun quasi-dragging him before & will in fact use this anon submission as an opportunity to have my own, to put it academically, bitch fest about not just this fandom's favorite protagonist-traumatizing meow meow, but about the way villains are often treated in not just fanon, but increasingly in canon works as well. But same policy as with the last anon; I'll post my opinions below the cut, and as fandoms love to say, donât like don't read if you don't want to see me dunking on the six eared simian & common fandom tendencies towards villains.
Oh man I would say where would you even begin with this but anon youâve pretty much started yourself with my main gripe with a lot of ways that the Six-Eared Macaque is portrayed in fandom; there seems to be this unspoken agreement that his acts of violence towards Sun Wukong, Qi Xioatian, and Qi Xioatianâs loved ones are either to be framed as somewhat or totally justified, to be immediately forgiven/excused, or to simply & completely be ignored. Like friends maybe this is just me not seeing the proper posts but while the fandom is inundated with art and fanfics of Macaque as a generally decent individual & a true member of team good guy, I have yet to see one person address the fact that this monkey literally kidnapped & mind-controlled Xiaotianâs best friend and father figures & forced them to brutalize Xiaotian while olâ Six Ear looked on and laughed (X_X). Like this kind of fandom villain treatment is definitely not something thatâs solely at work for Monkie Kid, but it is kind of nutty how fandoms will swing between yelling that people should be allowed to like villains without even mild critique, and then will just flat-out not address the villainous behavior, and will even bend over backwards to frame even characters who committed genocide as just poor innocent widdle victims who need a hug. At its worst, Iâve even seen tons of people in a fandom get really angry at other people who donât like a villain, and will even start accusing those people of hating real-life mentally disabled or abused individuals all because they donât like the fandomâs favorite literal war criminal. The Monkie Kid fandom is FAR more chill & better than a lot of other fandoms Iâve come across in that regard, but that is an exceedingly low bar, & the tendency to woobify certain kinds of villains-- as with Macaque and the extreme emphasis on his bad boy/sad boy thing--is very much at work. Â
 Iâve also talked before about a kind of monoculturalization of certain character interpretations and story beats in fandoms, and one of the more popular ones that seems to be applied to Macaque a lot is the âhero actually bad, villain actually goodâ cliche, as observable from the general fandom assumption that Mr. Six-Ears he wasnât even slightly lying or remembering things through a rose-tinted or skewed lens when he gave his version of his and Sun Wukongâs past. Like at this point it seems the possibility that people WILL NOT even consider is that Sun Wukong never did & still doesn't care that much about the Six Eared Macaque (in JTTW they werenât sworn brothers & in Monkie Kid the only thing the monkey king really said to Macaque before attacking him was a pretty contemptuous "Aren't you ever going to get sick of living under my shadow?," & responds to his "beloved friend" getting blown up with "You did good, bud" to Qi Xiaotian, who did the exploding), or that their original fight may in fact have mostly been instigated by Macaque. After all, to repeat what this anon summarized & what I've said before about their original JTTW context (& in an example of the things that do feel like it's often lost in translation) is that the Six Ear Macaque was a villain not just because he beat up the Tang Monk, but because he wanted to take over Sun Wukong's entire life and identity so he could have all that glory, prestige, and power for himself. To quote the macaque himself from the Anthony C. Yu translation, "I struck the T'ang monk and I took the luggage...precisely because I want to go to the West all by myself to ask Buddha for the scriptures. When I deliver them to the Land of the East, it will be my success and no one else's. Those people of the South Jambudvipa Continent will honor me then as their patriarch and my fame will last for all posterity." And in order to do this, the Six Eared Macaque had apparently made Sun Wukong's "little ones," his monkey family, his captives through either trickery or force, and gotten a number of them to take on the appearance of Tang Sanzang and the other pilgrims. It's also made clear that in very direct contrast to Sun Wukong, he doesn't care about these monkeys beyond how they might serve him. In fact, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey posing as him the Six Eared Macaque not only all but immediately replaces him with another, but also "told his little ones to have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines." So this monkey is not only willing to risk the lives of a lot of other monkeys for his own personal benefit, but is also a literal cannibal. And yes yes, I know a lot of people have argued that Monkie Kid shouldn't be considered a direct sequel to JTTW & that's fair enough (for example, Sun Wukong probably shouldn't be smashing anyone into a meat patty in a children's cartoon lol). And of course, it needs to be noted that there are a buttload of really out there & really cursed pieces of media based on JTTW & that were created in China. Yet the above description is the oft-ignored in the west original facet of the Six Eared Macaque's character. And it is this selfishness, entitlement, and treatment of other individuals as tools for his own self-serving ends that is, from where Iâm standing, still very much present in Monkie Kid. Like besides repeatedly going out of his way to physically and psychologically traumatize Xioatian, with the last episode Macaque seemed to be going right back to his manipulative ways. Iâve seen people frame their last conversation as Macaque softening to Xioatian a little bit, but personally that read a lot more like that common tactic among abusers where even after theyâve hurt you theyâll dangle something you want or need over your head (in Macaqueâs case, the promise of desperately needed training and information about a serious looming threat), with the implication that youâll only get it if you do what they want you to, such as, in this case, Xioatian going back to Macaque as his student even after having been so terribly hurt by this monkey, which would give Macaque power over Xiaotian and probably Sun Wukong as a result. And it is this violence and manipulation that it seems the fandom at large has tacitly decided shouldnât even be addressed, instead leaning more towards a (and this is an exaggeration) âSix-Eared Macaque my poor meow meow Sun Wukong has always been bad & has always been wrong about literally everythingâ reading.Â
And while it is the case that I am not Chinese and feel that as such it would be best left to someone who actually comes from that background to provide more context into how common interpretations of the Six Eared Macaque from China may clash really badly with the stuff the western fandom creates, it also must be noted that, as much as we all want to have fun in fandom & in spite of all the out-there versions of JTTW from China, we westerners should recognize that there is a very long and very ugly history of western countries stripping other culturesâ important religious and literary works for parts & mashing them into their own thing while implying or even insisting that what they present provides a true understanding of the original piece. And while I trust most individuals in regards to Monkie Kid are able to step back and think âthis is a lego cartoon and not a set guide for how I should understand JTTWâ (especially given the insistence that JTTW and Monkie Kid should be considered there own separate works) there does nevertheless seem to be something of a tendency to take the conclusions people come to, for example, about Sun Wukongâs characteristic in his lego form & then assume thatâs just reflective to Sun Wukong as a totality. I imagine a good portion of this is due to people not reading JTTW & especially to not having easy access to solid information or answers about JTTWâs many different facets (like geez awhile ago I was trying to get a clear answer on what is considered the most accurate translation of the names of Sun Wukongâs six sworn brothers & got like 5 different responses lmao), but that tendency to take a western fandom interpretation & run with it instead of doing any background research or questioning said interpretation is still very much at play. As such, & as made prominent in the way people have been interpreting the dynamic between Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque in the lego monkey show, tbh it does seem kind of shitty for western creators & audience to sometimes go really out of their way to ignore all of this original cultural & narrative context for the sake of Angst (TM) in Macaque's favor, demonizing Sun Wukong, and shipping the monkey king with his evil twin (X_X).
And speaking of which, even beyond the potential inherent creepiness & revulsion that can be inspired by this specific ship given common interpretations of the og classic's original meaning (again, it's my understanding, given both summaries of translated Chinese academic texts I've been kindly provided with, my own reading of the Anthony C. Yu translation of JTTW, & vents from a number of Chinese people I've seen on this site, that the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China as having originated from Sun Wukong himself as a living embodiment of his worst traits, hence why only Buddha can tell the difference between them & why the monkey king is much more slow to violence after he kills the macaque), I'd argue that in the face of all the uwu poor widdle meow meow portrayals lego show Macaque is, especially if you include JTTW's events, still in the role of âSun Wukong but worseâ as he is very much a violent & selfish creep. Like he was basically running around in JTTW wearing a Sun Wukong fursuit, but there he had the sole reason of wanting to replace Sun Wukong wholesale so he could have all the good things in the monkey king's life without actually having to work as hard for them. But if you combine that with Macaque now claiming that he used to be best friend with Sun Wukong in his pre-journey days (something that's made funny from a JTTW context given that that status actually belongs to the Demon Bull King lol), his original violence has now blown into this centuries long and really unhealthy obsession with the monkey king. Like he's apparently gone from wanting to literally be Sun Wukong to being so obsessed with getting revenge on Sun Wukong that he's got basically nothing else going on in his life. Like he's only appeared in two episodes but...does he have any friends? Any family? A career or even a hobby that DOESN'T center the monkey king? Anything at all outside of his "get revenge on and/or kill Sun Wukong/use his successor as my personal punching bagâ thing? Like dude! That is extremely creepy and extremely bad for everyone all around! As Iâve said before, this seeming refusal to see beyond the past or to do something that doesnât involve Sun Wukong in some capacity is a trait that makes Macaque an interesting and somewhat tragic villain--he even seems to be working as Sun Wukongâs reflection in a mirror darkly, with lego show Sun Wukong pretty clearly not being able to heal from his own past which is hinted to be defined by one loss after another, and with Monkie Kid even kind of having these two characters somewhat follow their JTTW characterizations in that in the latter half of the journey Sun Wukong often gets sad & starts crying in the face of what seems insurmountable odds (& Monkie Kid Sun Wukong does seem to be hiding some serious depression behind a cheerful facade), whereas the Six-Eared Macaque retains a worse version of Sun Wukongâs pre-journey characteristic of getting pissed and lashing out if things donât go his way--but itâs also what would make any current friendship or romantic relationship between these monkeys horrific. Although to be fair even the fandom seems to recognize this in an unconscious way, in that a lot of the art & fanfic seems to swing erratically between them kissing & screaming at each other in yet another example of bog-standard fandom adulation of romanticized toxic relationships lol. Â
At the end of the day, of course, this is nothing new. You'll find versions of this dynamic across a ton of fandoms and now even canonical work. And as such, I can only look at this kind of popularized relationship dynamic with a kind of resigned weariness whenever it pops up, & my frustrated question with the popularity of this kind of pairing is the exact same one that I have for a multitude of blatantly toxic villain/hero ships, given common fandom discourse & the tendency to either ignore or justify the villain's actions & demonize the hero: if you're THAT convinced that everything is the hero's fault, if you believe THAT much that the hero is the one in the wrong for the villain's pain and their subsequent actions, then why are you so set on them not only becoming a romantic pair, but framing this get-together as a good thing? Like I know we contain multitudes but that's waaay too many contradictions for me to wrap my head around. And it definitely doesnât help that one branch of underlying reasoning behind this kind of pairing seems to be the ever-present âyou break it, you fix itâ mentality, where the assumption is that if youâre in a failing, abusive, and/or generally toxic relationship (platonically or romantically), if you put in enough time and effort & attempts to compromise, youâll be able to restore/have the relationship you dreamed of, even with someone who hurt you really badly. And this assumption isnât limited to fandom: Iâd even argue that itâs everywhere in the culture, hence why a lot of people feel like they âfailedâ if they have to get a divorce or make the choice to leave an unhealthy friendship. Personally, I feel like people could really benefit from more stories about how it is not only the case that the people you hurt donât owe you their forgiveness & you can still become a better and happier person without the one you hurt in your life, & that while it can be really hard it can also be a good thing to leave a relationship, even if itâs one that once meant a lot to you.Â
 But in all honestly, from my own perspective this kind of pairing is starting to read far less like enemies to lovers and far more like a horrible fantasy where you can pull whatever shit you want, even on the people you "love," & never be held accountable for your terrible behavior or even have to consider that maybe you were in the wrong. It's another facet that makes me larf every time I see people insist that fandom is an inherently "transformative" or "progressive" form of storytelling like friends you are literally just taking status quo toxic monogamy & rebranding it as somehow beneficial & romantic (X_X).
But as to anonâs last frustration, it is hard to know what is the appropriate response with this kind of thing...like for my own part Iâm keeping my frustrations to my blog & now increasingly to posts that you would have to click on the âread moreâ button to see what I have to say, but I totally get the hesitation to give even a mild critique to big names in a fandom. Like I've now seen it happen repeatedly where someone who has a big name in a fandom will make something that's kind of shitty for one reason or another, someone will message them with some version of "hey, that's kind of shitty, you shouldn't do that," and the typical response is either to blatantly ignore the issue completely, or more popularly to make a giant crying circus that seems deliberately geared towards stoking emotions on both sides of the, for example, fiction does/doesn't affect reality issue so that something that didn't even have to be that big a deal gets blown out of all proportion, with the big name often framing what often started out as a very mild critique into a long crying jag about how the initial response to their kind of shitty thing was so mean/cruel and they're just a poor innocent & that YOU'RE the true racist/sexist/bigot etc. if you don't agree with their opinion. It must of course be noted that there have also been numerous instances of people taking it too far the other way & sending not just big names but smaller creators literal deaths threats over stuff like innocuous ships which like holy hell bells people thatâs a horrible thing to do. But for the big names at least, the end result of all this fighting is usually that once the dust has settled they have more attention/fame/money/power in the fandom than before, and with anyone who might have a problem with their stuff feeling afraid to voice their opinion lest they be swarmed by that person's fans. In that way fandom does often seem to increasingly be geared towards presenting an âofficialâ fandom perspective about various facets of a piece of media instead of allowing for a multitude of interpretations, and with criticism, no matter its shape or form or how genuinely warranted it may be, being hounded out of existence. I feel like a lot of this could be made less bad if there wasnât this constant assumption & even drive to think that a different interpretation of or criticism of your favorite work of fiction or your fanwork isnât a direct claim that you are a thoroughly loathsome individual (& maybe also if people cultivated an enjoyment of learning things about important works from a culture outside their own, even if what you learn clashes with your own initial understandings), but I guess weâll see if that ever happens.Â
So these are my general thinks about the Six Eared Macaqueâs current fandom meow meow status & some of my bigger gripes with fandom tendencies as a whole. I stand by my idea that the most interesting & beneficial route for Macaque moving forward would be a kind of âredemption without forgiveness from the ones you hurtâ arc--as I think was done pretty excellently with the character Grace in Infinity Train--and if for no other reason than gosh dern this monkey really needs to cultivate some sort of identity beyond his âSun Wukong but worseâ persona.Â
#lmk macaque#monkie kid macaque#6 eared macaque#monkie kid#lmk sun wukong#qi xiaotian#lmk monkey king#sun wukong#monkey king#journey to the west#jttw#fandom criticism#lmk
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Let's talk about self diagnosing.
(This is purely a personal opinion piece.)
CW: Descriptions of hypothetical physical injury.
So I'm going to start off by immediately settling your minds - I believe self diagnosis can be both good and bad. Iâm not here to judge, gatekeep, or vilify. *************************************************************
A quick overview of the sections: 3 problems/examples. 5 questions/opinions.
 *************************************************************
Determining that you have an issue, does not mean that it is the only issue.
Lets start with a hypothetical example where the self diagnosis is obviously correct:
- You've fallen down the stairs. - You can see a bone sticking out of your leg. - You deduce that you have broken your leg.
This is almost certainly accurate, as there is no healthy explanation for the visible evidence.
However, this may not be the whole story.
What weâre really doing in this situation is identifying symptoms and possible/probably causes.
The symptoms are: - Pain. - Visible evidence of a broken bone. - Visible evidence of wounded skin. - Probably experiencing shock - Pale, cold, clammy skin. Shallow, rapid breathing. Anxiety. Rapid heartbeat. Etc.
The probable diagnosis: A broken leg bone.
When you arrive at the hospital, they will do an x-ray. They may discover additional injuries, for instance the bone may be broken in several places, a tendon may have been severed.
Their treatment of your issues relies on the full knowledge that they are able to learn via their tests. If they (somehow) were to treat only your broken bone and the flesh wound, you would likely end up with further health problems as the extra broken bones were not set properly, and the severed tendon would not heal on it's own.
This is a rather ridiculous example of course, but that's why I started with it.
You may believe that you know what the issue is, but if you do not have the right equipment/training, you may not be able to identify the full extent of the issue.
Even if you know what the issue is, you may not be able to determine the full impact of it.
For example: - You notice that whenever you eat citrus, your mouth and tongue start tingling/going numb. There may be also be symptoms such as sweating, feeling faint, swelling of lips/tongue. You conclude that you are allergic to citrus. You act on this by avoiding citrus. Thatâs all fine and reasonable. However, with this information you only know that you have a reaction to citrus. You donât know the full extent. Are you mildly allergic? Are you at risk of anaphylactic shock? Sometimes you do not need to know the full extent (in this example you can simply avoid lemon). But sometimes you DO need to learn everything you can about it, in order to live the best life possible.Â
Especially when the issue is not something easily avoided such as a minor food allergy.
You might group all of your symptoms together, leading to you accidentally obscuring one issue by presenting it as another.
(An example using some of my own symptoms & past trauma experiences.)
You have diagnosed yourself with autism based on the following symptoms:
- Difficulty forcing eye contact with others.
- Inability to read the invisible social cues that neurotypicalâs can see/read.
- Discomfort/anxiety in social settings / large groups.
- An extreme feeling of mental shutdown in response to loud noises/music.
These could indeed be symptoms of autism, however they can also be symptoms of other issues in play.
For instance, discomfort or anxiety in social settings could be due to an anxiety disorder.
The loud noises/music may mimic sounds from traumatic events - initiating flashbacks or fight/flight/freeze instincts.
You go to a therapist.
Your therapist listens to your concerns and symptoms, and looks for other explanations for these symptoms.
This is to ensure that the diagnosis they give you will be accurate, and thus the treatment you receive will be the most effective treatment possible for you.
If you did not go to the therapist with this, you may have been able to deal with the autism symptoms fairly well, but the anxiety and PTSD would go untreated. Your problems would not go away, because you werenât treating ALL of your issues.
When do I believe it is acceptable to self diagnose without seeking professional verification of your self diagnosis?
- When the issue/symptoms do not affect your life in any substantial way;
- When the issue is self evident;
- When there is no indication that there is an unseen element;
- When the issue does not require urgent or extensive treatment.
Eg: Mild allergy to citrus, which can easily be avoided in your daily life.
In this sort of case, I believe it is important to stay aware of the symptoms and immediately seek a professional opinion if there is a change in severity, frequency, or perceived cause, of these symptoms.
Eg: One day you have a drink that had a lemon wedge on the rim, and the symptoms are far stronger, or appear far sooner, than they used to.
Or:
One day you have the same reaction, but you did not consume any citrus.
When do I believe that it is helpful to ask a professional to confirm/refute your self assessment?
Always.
There may be situations where the professional canât offer any treatment (eg: a mild food allergy, where avoiding it is all that can be done). But if you feel anxiety over the uncertainty of it, and you want a professional assessment, diagnosis, or testing, you are of course entitled to it.
Whether it pinpoints a cause, or rules out a cause, finding out for sure will increase the chances of you receiving appropriate treatment.
Additionally, professional tests and assessments can identify previously unnoticed symptoms and/or issues.
(Such as additional injuries in example 1, or separate disorders in example 3.)
Do I believe that you should tell your health professional that you have self-diagnosed / self-assessed your symptoms?
Yes.
Especially with mental health issues, where your therapistâs assessment of you may be affected erroneously by them noticing that you are holding something back.
They may believe you are uncomfortable with them, or have some trust issues which you may not have.
If you simply tell your therapist that you have recorded your symptoms and searched for answers on your own, the therapist will be able to make a more accurate assessment of you.
It also gives them a good starting point, as they immediately know that the issue is concerning to you, and that you are ready to seek help for it.
Any health professional worth their training should be able to understand that you seeking explanations for your symptoms is natural, and should be willing to look into something that you are concerned about.
Eg: I told my GP (physical health doctor) that I was concerned about a specific lung condition which seemed to fit symptoms that I had been experiencing for over a decade. He listened, he asked further questions, he performed tests for the condition I had brought up, and he performed tests for other possible explanations.
In the end he determined that I did not have that condition, and we went from there.
Why do health professionals dislike self-diagnosis?
The issue with self diagnosis is that a patient can become convinced that they have something that they do not actually have.
This can lead to the patient: - Misinterpreting symptoms - Ignoring symptoms which do not fit their self-diagnosis - Unintentionally manifesting somatic symptoms which fit the self-diagnosis (this refers to a patient believing they have a condition, and their body beginning to show those symptoms. This is not the same as purposefully faking.) - Refusing testing for something other than their self-diagnosed issue - Refusing to accept that there may be a different issue - Refusing to accept that there may be additional issues - Resorting to self-help remedies which may be ineffective or actively dangerous to the patient
They arenât just being difficult or elitist - they are concerned that your self-diagnosis may impact their ability to accurately diagnose and help you.
This is a particular concern when the health professional doesnât know you well enough to be able to determine how much your belief will impact your symptoms, or whether you will be open to treatment if they determine a diagnosis which conflicts with your self-diagnosis.
Your health professional has YOUR health and safety in mind.
(If you believe this isnât true, you should seek a second opinion.)
Should your health professional just accept your self-diagnosis?
It is your therapistâs duty to independently assess your symptoms, and possible causes for those symptoms.
It is not an attack on you, it is not a sign of distrust.
Think of it like scientists - they donât just say âoh well that guyâs experiment showed these results, so they must be correct.â They go out and duplicate the experiment to check their results against the original results.
Yes, itâs not a perfect metaphor. No two peopleâs life experiences are the same. No two peopleâs brains will react identically to the same thing.
But the spirit is the same - in both cases, doing the extra work is to ensure that the stated result is accurate, NOT to discredit or demean the person who originally stated it.
 What if you are certain you have a certain issue, and will not be persuaded otherwise?
I urge you to rethink this, and open your mind.
You want to heal from whatever it is that is interfering with your best life.
You want answers.
You want validation that such-and-such issue isnât a personal failing but a neuro-divergency.
Those are great goals, but the best way to find the truth is to be open to explanations that you may not like.
And the only way to know itâs the truth, is to be honest and objective about yourself.
#CW: Descriptions of hypothetical physical injury.#did#osdd#self diagnosis#therapy#actuallydid#actuallyosdd#actually neurodiverse#actually autistic#actually multiple#long post
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Delight in Misery (ao3) - part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6
- Chapter 7 -
âWhy are you covered in feathers?â Jiang Cheng asked, and then immediately afterward added, âOn second thought, donât tell me, I donât want to know.â
Lan Wangji checked himself over and brushed off the few feathers that had ended up on his shoulder. âAre there any others?â he asked solemnly. âThey might be evidence.â
Jiang Chengâs eye twitched, as Lan Wangji had intended. âI donât want to know,â he repeated, and Lan Wangji believed it about as much as heâd believed it the first time Jiang Cheng said it â which was to say, not at all. âI donât want toâŚokay, fine, tell me.â
âYou donât want to know,â Lan Wangji informed him, and Jiang Cheng looked as though he was considering strangling him. âI will explain later. For the moment, it is best to pretend as if you know nothing.â
âI really donât know anything,â Jiang Cheng said.
âThat will make pretending easier.â
Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes at him, but stopped arguing, and Lan Wangji felt warmth in his belly at the instant capitulation. All of his life experiences had conspired to make Jiang Cheng an untrusting person, suspicious almost to the point of paranoia and constantly afraid of losing everything to the unknown, and yet he chose to trust Lan Wangji without question.
âIs there anything else I should know?â Jiang Cheng asked with one of his friendlier scowls, crossing his arms over his chest. âOr not know, as the case may be?â
Lan Wangji considered for a moment. âDonât count the number of Jiang sect disciples leaving with you,â he suggested, and Jiang Chengâs eyebrows shot up. âConsider storming out in a fury the next time someone insults you.â
âYou were right,â Jiang Cheng said. âI didnât want to know.â
Lan Wangji heard footsteps and put his hands behind his back. âNaturally, Sect Leader Jiang is entitled to change his mind. I understand it happens often.â
Jiang Chengâs eyes narrowed. âYou must be struggling with coming out of seclusion, Hanguang-jun,â he remarked. âTo come mucking around with the rest of us after spending so long on - avoiding worldly matters, letâs say.â
The sect leaders passing by sped up with expressions suggesting that they were dreadfully curious but did not want to get involved in a repeat of the fight that was rather infamously had throughout the Lotus Pier, with all of the attendant property damage (that theyâd paid for later, but still).
Once theyâd passed, Lan Wangji gave Jiang Cheng a look that suggested he did not appreciate the joke. Jiang Cheng appeared undeterred.
He also appeared, on closer examination, somewhat tired.
Lan Wangji frowned and stepped closer, lowering his voice. âYou have not slept.â
âIâm fine,â Jiang Cheng said, and realized his mistake at once â such excess vehemence meant that he was lying, and badly, too. âItâs your fault, anyway.â
âMy fault?â
âEntirely your fault. I canât eat my lunch without wondering why youâre not plucking away on your guqin the way you normally do at that hour, I canât finish my paperwork without trying to find you to ask for your views, I canât sleep without hearing you making noise next doorâŚwho made you fit yourself in so well at the Lotus Pier?â
âYou,â Lan Wangji said dryly, ignoring the warmth he felt. Surely it was wrong to feel touched when someoneâs unhealthy co-dependence with you was mentioned. âWhen you kidnapped me.â
âIt was only technically kidnapping,â Jiang Cheng grumbled. âAnd only at first, anywayâŚreally, itâs no big deal. Just had a few bad nights.â
Jiang Chengâs nights fell on a scale between decent, mediocre, bad, and genuinely horrific, and he generally only conceded that something was âbadâ when it fell toward the lower end of the scale â when his thoughts kept scattering like a flock of bird being chased off their perch, returning to circle around sore subjects and drill worries into his skull, when there would be blood and bile and panic and his mind would linger on anxieties he had long ago put aside in the light of day.
He hadnât had one of those in months â and now he had had a few?
âBecause IâŚ?â
Jiang Cheng shook his head. âA-Ling had a temper tantrum last week,â he explained, voice low and more than a little helpless. âI think he misses you and A-Yuan, and heâs at the age for pushing his boundaries, tooâŚhe told me that his Wei-jiujiu wouldnât have made him eat his vegetables.â
He would have, of course, Lan Wangji reflected. He remembered how Wei Wuxian had been with A-Yuan, always mercilessly teasing him. Wei Wuxian had a spine when it came to children, one that wouldnât crack into a thousand pieces at the first sob â that was Jiang Cheng, who was all bluster and bark without the slightest bit of bite.
But that wasnât the issue, not when Jiang Chengâs soul was a patchwork of ragged wounds and insecurity, a lifetime of being second-best and second-loved, and on his worst days he would voice doubts that heâd even been esteemed as much as that.
By his father, by his mother, by his sister, by Wei Wuxian himself â Â
âMaybe he wouldâve done better,â Jiang Cheng murmured, his eyes already blank with self-hatred â no doubt this was what had kept him up on those bad nights, the angry whispers of a too-fragile mind that said why did he leave me, why wasnât I good enough, he said heâd stay by my side and then took the first chance he could to leave me behind, that said it couldnât have been him that did all those things and betrayed me like that, no, he must have died earlier on and it was my fault for not noticing, that said if itâs all my fault then it all makes sense, itâs always because of me, no one ever stays with me.
That said if itâs my fault then itâll happen again.
Lan Wangji did not like those nights.
âMm,â he said mildly. âAnd then A-Ling would also know how to hide dirty pictures in awkward places.â
Lan Wangji had never been good at comforting people, having always been the one being comforted, and his failure to convey his feelings to Wei Wuxian during his life spoke volumes regarding his ability to communicate â but he knew Jiang Cheng.
After so long living together, he knew him.
(Jiang Cheng wasnât the only one who had difficulty sleeping without those familiar sounds next door.)
Sure enough, Jiang Cheng choked, his eyes clearing up, and he spent the next few breaths struggling not to burst out laughing. âWeâre supposed to be arguing,â he hissed at Lan Wangji, who smirked â from a distance it would certainly look as though they were arguing, Jiang Chengâs cheeks all red and his shoulders shaking in what a stranger might mistake for rage. âYou stone-faced bastard, thatâs not funny.â
Lan Wangji disagreed. Jiang Chengâs reaction was, in fact, extremely funny.
âWe will need to diversify our collection of such things,â Lan Wangji said thoughtfully. âGiven the inclinations of our future house guestâŚâ
âI am not buying Mo Xuanyu pictures of â ! He can buy it himself if he wantsâŚwait, youâre really planning to have him come with us?â
âHe will die if he remains,â Lan Wangji said simply, because it was that simple. Their conversation, however brief, had been extremely informative. âAnd so he must not remain. We have concocted a plan.â
âWe? I wasnât involved in this.â
âMyself, and Nie Huaisang.â
Lan Wangji was expecting some sort of reaction to that â what, he wasnât sure, possibly disbelief or ridicule or even panic that they were entrusting themselves to the most useless fop to grace the current generation of cultivators â but instead Jiang Cheng relaxed, looking pleased. âOh, well, Nie Huaisang,â he said, as if that explained anything at all.
âYou trust him?â
Jiang Cheng shrugged. âI donât not trust him?â he hazarded, and seemed rather helplessly puzzled by his own ease with the situation. âHeâs terrible at anything a sect heir ought to be good at, but heâll come up with the wildest sort of things if itâs nonsense heâs after, and he usually gets his way in the end. Heâs a pretty good judge as to how likely his chances at success are, too.â
âHeâs smarter than he looks,â Lan Wangji agreed, his voice neutral.
âDonât tell me you fell for his âwho, me, a person capable of doing anything, surely notâ act,â Jiang Cheng said, looking vastly amused. Lan Wangji might normally object to such teasing, but if it got Jiang Cheng away from his dangerous self-hatred, heâd take it â even if the idea that Jiang Cheng, master of obliviousness, had correctly judged a person that he himself had misjudged seemed just plain wrong. âHe just does that to anyone he thinks might squeal on him to his brother.â
Lan Wangji probably would have, too. Still, he felt that Jiang Cheng should have warned him better.
He glared.
âSecond Young Master Lan has no grounds for complaining at his own lack of perception,â Jiang Cheng said, and Lan Wangji noted again the presence of people in their vicinity. âItâs all that navel-gazing you do in the Cloud Recesses, no doubt â should I start to worry about A-Yuan?â
âLan Yuan,â Lan Wangji said snippily, then added, âLan Sizhui.â
Jin Rulan, Jiang Cheng mouthed at him, and both of them were forced to briefly avert their faces in sheer amusement. Poor Jin Ling â no one would ever call him by his courtesy name, not if even his two guardians werenât able to keep a straight face.
(Well, comparatively speaking. Lan Wangji was well aware that his own expression of deep amusement looked, to the uninitiated, exactly like his neutral expression but for a very slight narrowing of the eyes.)
The footsteps passed, and Jiang Cheng relaxed once more. Lan Wangji was pleased to see it, but acknowledged that if they were to keep up the pretense of disliking each other, deplorable political necessity that it was, they would need to do better in the future.
âToday will be a disaster,â Lan Wangji murmured, a warning. âBut beneficial in the long run. Do not take what they say to heart.â
He would not have said it if Jiang Cheng was not more fragile than usual. Normally, Jiang Cheng could, after years of practice, let insults flow off his back like water from a duck, unmoving and uncaring â he was a flawed man in many ways, Lan Wangji acknowledged, but he generally only had to make a mistake once to learn from it.
For instance, he would never again allow the poisoned words of others to interfere with those he loved.
Not when he still tormented himself for not having done more for Wei Wuxian, as if there had been more Jiang Cheng could have done without losing everything else he held dear â not even Lan Wangji, who was helplessly and hopelessly in love with Wei Wuxian and couldnât keep himself from sometimes playing Inquiry in search of him, summoned his ghost into their lives so often as Jiang Cheng did.
âSometimes I wonder what goes through your head,â Jiang Cheng remarked, glaring at the perceived commentary about his lack of emotional resiliency no matter how accurate. âAnd then I realize I donât want to know.â
âLying is forbidden.â
âI am not a Lan. And, yes, fine, itâs a lie. If I could crack you open and crawl into your head, I probably would, but that doesnât make you special or anything. Iâd do that to most people.â
Lan Wangji believed it â Jiang Cheng was just that insecure.
He didnât let Jiang Cheng change the subject, though, continuing to stare at him until Jiang Cheng shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, rolling his eyes. âDonât worry about it. Iâll prepare for a calamity and storm out as quickly as possible. What are they possibly going to say about me now?â
They said he was like his father.
It was usually meant as a compliment, but not always. In this case, it was the latter: the implication that Jiang Cheng would, like his father, eventually forget to care for the child he already had when another, better one came along put an especially ugly expression on his face.
As Nie Huaisang had gleefully predicted, Jin Guangshan was enraged to the point of maddening by the prank they had pulled and framed Mo Xuanyu for. Nor could he be blamed, the prank was positive infantile, and highlighted Mo Xuanyuâs relative youth and immaturity, losing his father and sect face in the process. Everyone had wanted to talk about that, about how extremely obvious it was that Mo Xuanyuâs only use was to humiliate the already legitimized Jin Guangyao, but in deference to their host they turned their conversation onto past examples like Jiang Fengmian â and, of course, the more recent example of the ongoing fight between Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji over Lan Sizhui.
Jiang Cheng had had no choice but to ignore it, no matter how his face purpled in rage at the suggestion that he might neglect either Lan Sizhui or Jin Ling in favor of the other. Â Still, no one had really questioned it when he left in a huff not long after in response to an extremely unfortunate comment by the ever-feckless Nie Huaisang (of course: Lan Wangji shouldnât have doubted him) about the ability of young men to handle child-rearing, returning to the Lotus Pier in a fury with a parting shot about how the Lotus Pier, at least, did not follow the Wen sect in encouraging the indoctrination of children â a vicious and unwarrented smear regarding the Lan sectâs lectures that made Lan Qiren almost visibly see red and Lan Xichen frown but which Lan Wangji thought was rather useful to their ultimate goal.
When later it was discovered that Mo Xuanyu had apparently run away â and based on the clues that had been left behind, that he must have pulled off his escape by disguising himself as part of Jiang Chengâs retinue â Jin Guangshan was so angry that smoke nearly poured out of his ears, to the point that Jin Guangyao hastily came up with some excuse to briefly remove him from the scene.
Nie Huaisang winked at Lan Wangji from behind his fan, looking pleased with himself, and he looked so ridiculous that Lan Wangji had to forcefully remind himself once again of his personal revelation that the second young master of Qinghe Nie was far away from being the useless waste that he presented himself as.
Far more effective a reminder, though, was Jin Guangshanâs announcement later that day that he would indulge Mo Xuanyuâs desire for a little bit of freedom â natural in a boy of that age, heâd chuckled, playing the indulgent father â by requesting that Jiang Cheng keep him for some time at the Lotus Pier to tutor his young cousin Jin Ling in the ways of Lanling Jin.
Just as Nie Huaisang had so enthusiastically and confidently said he would.
âAnd with Hanguang-jun there to supervise, there will be no question of misconduct,â Chifeng-zun said, nodding in approval at the proposal. âYour son and grandson will benefit twice over! I think our younger generation is stronger for having all gathered together in one place, whether learning at the Cloud Recesses or resisting the oppression of the Wen sectâŚâ
âThat requires there to be a younger generation,â someone in the crowd interjected, as they almost always did when someone of their present generation mentioned the next. âSect Leader Nie, donât you think itâs time you settled down?â
âWhy are you looking to me?â he demanded, looking annoyed. âZewu-jun is equally unattached, and he ranks first on the list of womenâs hearts, doesnât he?â
âOn the list of young masters, of which I no longer count,â Lan Xichen stressed hastily, holding up his hands in a vain attempt to ward off the discussion topic. âAt any rate, Iâm far too busy to be interested in courting at the moment â anyway, wasnât Sandu Shengshou trying to set up a match some time back?â
âDidnât he get blackballed?â Sect Leader Qin, ever Jin Guangshanâs faithful dog, interjected, always on the look-out for a way to denigrate the other Great Sects. âI didnât even know that was possible ââ
âAt least heâs demonstrated the ability to care for a child ââ
Lan Wangji decided that that was an excellent time to make his escape. This was one situation in which he especially did not want to get held up as a positive comparison.
His uncle went with him.
âVery cleverly done,â Lan Qiren remarked as they strolled into one of the many gardens that peppered Lanling City and Jinlin Tower in particular, and Lan Wangji looked at him sidelong. âMatchmaking and children are the favorite subjects of old men; by the time the noise dies down, Sect Leader Jinâs decision as to his newest son will be considered as settled and unquestionable. It was good of your brother â and Chifeng-zun, of course â to throw themselves on their swords for you.â
Lan Wangji put his hands behind his back, uncomfortable. âI did not ask them to act.â
His uncle said nothing. He didnât need to â if perhaps Chifeng-zun was somewhat opaque to them both, his sheer straightforwardness ironically enough serving to conceal any subtle thoughts he might have, Lan Xichen was as clear as a calm lake. He had jumped into the conversation at just the right moment, saying words that would only inflame the situation rather than calm it, displaying just enough dismay to be humorous without actually appearing, to those that knew him well, to be surprised at all.
âIt was Nie Huaisangâs idea,â Lan Wangji added, and that did get Lan Qirenâs eyebrows to rise up in surprise. Probably wondering, just as Lan Wangji was, when exactly Nie Huaisang had had the opportunity to rope the Venerated Triad into his scheme â as far as Lan Wangji could tell, he hadnât had any opportunity to speak to them.
Still, however intriguing the speculation was, it wasnât enough to dissuade his uncle from his target. Â
âThe motivation was yours,â he said, the question implicit.
âMo Xuanyu requested Jiang Chengâs assistance,â Lan Wangji explained. âHe is â unhappy, in Lanling, and ill-suited to it. Jiang Cheng feared that he might one day bring harm upon himself if he remained.â
His uncle nodded slowly, looking thoughtful. âHaving him at the Lotus Pier to teach Jin Ling the ways of Lanling Jin also means that there is no urgent need for Jin Ling to return to Lanling himself. He can remain with Sect Leader Jiang.â
âYes.â
His uncle huffed out a breath and leaned down to smell one of the flowers. âI will give you some books before you return to the Lotus Pier,â he said. âMo Xuanyu is already past thirteen; it is not at all the same as dealing with small children. You will need to be prepared.â
Lan Wangji looked at his uncle, a little surprised. He had expected more resistance to this scheming plot, which was not at all in line with Lan sect principles.
âMo Xuanyu is old enough to make his own decisions,â his uncle said, his eyes still fixed on the flower. âIf he cannot happy here, he should go to where he can be.â
Lan Wangjiâs heart trembled within his chest. Heâd thought â his uncle, who had led the charge at the Burial Mounds, who had been the most disappointed at all of his choicesâ
âI am sorry that we did not suit you, Wangji.â
Lan Wangji exhaled, hard, feeling a stinging feeling in his eyes and nose.
He had not expected an apology.
It didnât change everything all at once, of course. He was still angry, still spiteful, still furious, fill of bile and bone-deep rage at how his own family had so thoroughly failed to trust in him that they would take away even his right to choose. His belly was heavy with his resentment at how they disapproved of him, how they were ashamed of him, and it would take more than mere words to liberate him from it.
But still, he had to admit â there was something more complicated about it now.
It had been easier, he thought, to be merely angry.
âIt was not you,â he said, a small concession. âIf the circumstances were different, I could have lived my whole life at the Cloud Recesses with no dissatisfaction.â
âBut they arenât,â his uncle said, bowing his head in understanding. âAnd you canât. I â do not understand, and I do not like it, but that is not necessary. It is still my dearest wish for you to be happy and safe.â
Lan Wangji wasnât sure that being truly happy was possible in a world that lacked Wei Wuxian â a world his uncle had helped bring about with his own two hands â but he knew that the life he had built with Jiang Cheng in the Lotus Pier, warm and tightly packed and full of worries as it was, was as close as he would come, and a life of solitude and distance and tranquility at the Cloud Recesses would only be worse.
âI have another month left before I return,â he pointed out, seeking to change the subject.
âNot after that conversation,â Lan Qiren said, looking reluctantly amused. âYou will be sent to the Lotus Pier as soon as can be managed to make sure that everyone is being properly supervised.â
âJiang Cheng can supervise.â
âJiang Wanyin wonât.â
Lan Wangji bowed his head to hide a smile. His uncle wasnât wrong.
And he had to admit - he wouldnât miss Jiang Cheng dealing with a teenager for the world.
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(pt 1) i really enjoy all your atla analyses & you've done a great job breaking down the usual arguments re how eip shows that kataang shouldn't have happened. i'm curious about your take on one specific argument that i just saw today, in an analysis of the show by a zker that was otherwise quite good and respectful (i know you've already talked about eip a lot, so no problem if you don't feel like rehashing). the premise: aang didn't just pressure katara in eip, he threatened her.
(pt 2) they point to when katara joins aang & asks if heâs alright: âaang: no, iâm not! i hate this play! katara: i know itâs upsetting, but it sounds like youâre overreacting. aang: overreacting? if i hadnât blocked my chakra, iâd probably be in the avatar state right now!â the suggestion is heâs threatening her when he says âiâd probably be in the avatar state right nowâ to describe his anger. i think this take exaggerates and oversimplifies it, but interested in your thoughts on it.
Hello my friend!! It is true I am Old inside and donât like rehashing dhdlksjslks BUT your comments on my posts are always incredibly kind and insightful so I am more than willing to do a bit of rehashing for you 𼰠Besides! Iâve seen this general take before a few times and itâs always irked me for the exact reason you point out - it simultaneously exaggerates and oversimplifies the situation (and honestly thatâs an impressive duality since itâs seemingly contradictory, so hats off to them lmaooo) - and now is as good a time as any to address it. So, for starters, letâs go ahead and get the excerpt they love to focus on so much:
Cut to Aang standing alone on a balcony. Katara enters and walks up to him.
Katara: Are you all right?
Aang: [Angered.] No, Iâm not! I hate this play! [Yanks his hat off and throws it on the ground.]
Katara: I know itâs upsetting, but it sounds like youâre overreacting.
Aang: Overreacting? If I hadnât blocked my chakra, Iâd probably be in the Avatar State right now!
Hereâs the thing about so-called analyses of this excerpt: in a manner extremely convenient to the poster, they never seek to contextualize this moment. (I mean, to do so would deplatform their entire âargumentâ - perhaps thatâs why they avoid performing a full analysis?) So letâs avoid that pitfall from the start.
Firstly, below are some links to related posts; Iâm going to do my best to summarize the most relevant parts, but for anyone who desires greater detail, I gotchu đ¤
This post explains why EIP (the play, lol) is imperialist propaganda and is intended to belittle the entire Gaang.
This post explains how Aang never acted âentitledâ to Kataraâs affections, particularly in regard to EIP.
This post breaks down the infamous EIP kiss like Snopes Fact Checker, covering common misconceptions, important perspectives to consider, etc.
Alright. With that out the way, itâs time for some context.
Aang and Katara have this conversation on the balcony after watching 95% of âThe Boy in the Iceberg,â a play chock-full of Fire Nation propaganda that demeans the entire Gaang in order to prop up the Fire Nation as superior (hence why the play ends with Ozaiâs victory). Here is my general breakdown of Aang and Kataraâs treatment in particular from a previous post:
- katara, an indigenous woman, is highly sexualized and portrayed as overly dramatic and tearful, because the fire nation objectifies women not of their own people and views them as less intelligent and less emotionally stable
- aang, the avatar, the sole survivor of the fire nationâs genocide of the air nomads who is incredibly in-touch with his spirituality and femininity, is portrayed as an overly-airy and immature woman. the fire nation portrays him with a female actor to demean him (like, thatâs classic imperialistic propagandist tactics) and furthermore writing his character as a childish airhead reinforces the fire nation sentiment that the air nomads were weak, foolish people who did not deserve to exist in their world
In other words, these kids have just watched almost an entire play that preys upon their insecurities and depicts them using racist and sexist stereotypes about their respective nations. It is completely understandable that tensions might run a little high and that their interactions would not be as balanced as usual (Katara and Aang have a great track record of communicating well with each other, as it happens!).
So we have to keep that in mind when examining the aforementioned excerpt. But there are other factors to consider, too! Namely: they are kids. Children. Teens. Aang is 12, Katara is 14.
If we want to be scientific, a personâs brain doesnât finish developing until they are 25, lmao, and the preteen/teen years are when the prefrontal cortex that controls ârationality,â âjudgement,â âforethought,â etc. is still developing. This doesnât mean Aang and Katara are irrational and make poor decisions 24/7 (obviously not), but it does mean that in an intense, highly emotional situation, like after watching a play that intentionally demeans them and depicts them as inferior, they are more likely to overreact, more likely to be emotional, and more likely to make mistakes. Like, Iâm serious, lol. âTeens process information with the amygdala.â Thatâs part of the brain that helps control emotions! Itâs why teens sometimes struggle to articulate what weâre thinking, especially in situations that require instinct/impulse and quick decisions, because weâre really feeling whenever we make those choices. Acting more on emotion. Our brains simply havenât finished developing the decision-making parts, lmao.
In sum: Aang and Katara are both kids, not adults, and should be interpreted as such. This doesnât negate their intelligence, because they are both incredibly smart and Aang is arguably the wisest of the Gaang, but they are human. Young humans. They have emotions, and we should not be so cruel as to assume theyâd never act on them.
So taking that all together, we can now acknowledge the high stress Aang and Katara are under, understand why they might be upset (*cough* imperialist propaganda is hurtful *cough*), and examine how their youth might play into their emotional reactions. And funny thing - all analyses that come to the conclusion of Aang âthreateningâ Katara here do not usually bother with this context. I canât imagine why!
And you know what, letâs add one more piece of context: Sokka states that Aang left the theater âlike, ten minutes ago,â which is what cues Katara to go look for him on the balcony. The reason I mention this line is because to me, it suggests Aang knew he was more worked up than usual! He chose to separate himself from his friends so he could process his frustration! He did not take his anger at the play out on them; instead, he purposefully took time and space to be alone.
With that in mind, I donât understand at all how Aangâs Avatar state quote could be interpreted as a threat? Canonly, Aang is someone who was aware enough of his frustration to separate himself from the others - yet the logical next step is him threatening Katara as a result? He knew his intense emotions were because of the play (which he says himself), so the logical conclusion is that he then pinned the fault on Katara? What?? Sorry, that interpretation has no textual basis, lmao. But I digress!
Aang tells Katara, âIf I hadnât blocked my chakra, Iâd probably be in the Avatar State right now!â As you said, this is the line people point to in an attempt to justify their (baseless) conclusion that Aang is âthreateningâ Katara. So letâs bring in the two key pieces of context: imperialist propaganda and age. Given that Aang is 12, and given that Aang has just watched almost a full play that demeans him and everything his people stood for (and letâs not forget it also mocks his and Kataraâs love for each other)âŚ
His reaction is understandable. An exaggeration and needlessly dramatic, but understandable. He feels vulnerable and insecure and Aang is human. He is human and flawed and he overreacts here and I love that A:TLA shows how even our heroes, even people who are truly good at heart and in soul, can get overly upset (especially given the aforementioned circumstances!). Would Aang actually be in the Avatar state at that moment, had it been possible? Of course not! Heâs young and heâs hurt and as such he says something dramatic to convey his anxieties and frustrations. The line is not meant to be taken literally, and seeing people do so despite all the factors that should be taken into consideration when analyzing it⌠Cue a long, tired sigh from me and so many other A:TLA fans.
And to be honest? I cannot fathom how people watch this episode and come to the conclusion that Aang is âthreateningâ Katara. To me, this episode - besides being a recap episode - is one that humanizes our cast even further. Aang snaps at Katara, kisses her when he shouldnât (which the story appropriately treats as wrong). Katara pushes down her true feelings and retreats into herself, afraid to start a relationship with the boy she loves because sheâs already lost him once before and canât bear to do so again. Zuko further confronts the hurt heâs enacted upon others, especially upon Iroh. Toph practices being vulnerable and accepting vulnerability from others by conversing with Zuko. Sokka witnesses how others have erased his contributions and labelled him as nothing more than the token nonbender in the group. Even Suki learns that she is not the only person who holds a place in Sokkaâs heart and that she can never replace what he has lost.
To watch this episode where our heroes must come to terms with how the Fire Nation deems them inherently inferior, with how they have more fights to overcome in the future with the Fire Nation than a single war, and to come to the conclusion that⌠that what, Aang is abusive? A monster? Irredeemable? That he would threaten his best friend, someone he loves in every way?
Wow. That says more than enough about the viewer, doesnât it?
#getting back into the swing of things babey âď¸#aang#katara#kataang#kataangtag#the ember island players#atla#avatar the last airbender#amy answers#dramaticowl#amy analyzes#also i am speaking in GENERAL TERMS here lmaooo this is not a direct response to any one post đđ
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Why do we hate Nintendo?
Today, organizers of the The Big House online tournament announced that they received a cease and desist order from Nintendo.Â
What is Slippi?
Project Slippi is, essentially, an add-on to the existing Dolphin emulator for Gamecube games. Its purpose is to bring the features of modern online gaming to Super Smash Brothers Melee, a game which was released very nearly 20 years ago and is no longer in production, but remains a popular competitive game with an active scene.Â
Slippi has been a godsend to the Melee community during the pandemic. It offers incredibly high-fidelity gameplay with random matchmaking and tournament support, and the developers have emphasized making the game experience itself as close to local play as possible. Itâs been so successful that the Big House - a series of major annual tournaments that have been running for almost a decade - decided to host their 2020 tournament purely online using Slippi.Â
Who care about Melee? Why arenât they just playing Ultimate instead?
If you ask a Melee player, they will go on and on about the improved framerate, responsiveness, and other such technical advantages Melee has over Ultimate. Iâm going to talk about something else instead.Â
Itâs culturally expected nowadays that when a new game in a franchise comes out, you stop playing the old game and play the new game instead. But if you apply this way of thinking to any other form of media itâs completely ridiculous. Itâs like saying thereâs no reason to watch documentaries from the 80s and 90s, because documentaries about the same subjects have been remade more recently. Media exists as a product of its time. It might contain valuable historical insight that remains precious to us for centuries to come. Or, it might just be better. Maybe the older documentaries are more informative, or maybe theyâre more engaging to watch. Games work the same way; people will always have their preferences about which game in a series is their favorite, and choosing to play an older game you prefer - especially if youâve got a lot of friends to play with you - isnât at all an entitled thing to do.Â
The problem with digital media is that having a movie or game by itself isnât useful. Me owning a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is useless if I donât also have a Sega Genesis to run it on - and that system is useless if I donât have a working controller to use to interface with the game. Melee has been facing this problem for years now, as copies of Melee itself and Gamecube systems and controllers become more exclusive and more scarce. There arenât new games or systems coming onto the market to replace whatâs being lost - there are only a finite number left, and when the last one breaks, Melee will effectively cease to exist.Â
Ok, well, thatâs sad and all, but Slippi is an emulator, right? And emulating is illegal!
Emulating is legal... sort of. Emulation has hidden behind a vague phrasing of copyright law that suggests that, when you own a piece of digital media, you have the right to make copies of it for your own personal use - you just canât distribute those copies. Owning an emulator, or the ROMs needed to play games on that emulator, isnât strictly illegal... but distributing those things is.Â
The idea here is, in theory, you could very thoroughly mod your Gamecube to connect to the Internet and play with modded firmware using Project Slippi. Modding isnât illegal, so if you have your own GameCube and your own copy of Melee, which you purchased legitimately, then doing this is absolutely legal. And it probably is what people are doing! Definitely, probably. Iâm sure itâs not as hard as I make it sound. Donât worry about it!
Point is; distributing ROMs is whatâs illegal, not playing them. The Big House isnât distributing ROMs, so theyâre not doing anything illegal. And Nintendo knows that; they took a different approach. Instead of claiming that using Project Slippi is against the law, they instead simply informed TBH that they donât have permission to stream or host a tournament using their game.Â
Obviously, Nintendo owns the rights to Melee, and that means they have the right to decide who is and isnât allowed to stream their game and why. The Big House didnât break the law, but that doesnât mean they have the legal standing to challenge Nintendoâs order - let alone the financial resources or emotional stamina needed to get into a legal battle with a company of that size.
I donât see the problem. Nintendo has the right to do this. Isnât this what everybody does?
No.
Age of Empires 2 came out in September of â99, and it has remained a niche but thriving competitive RTS game over 20 years since then. Fans had to keep the game fresh on their own via modding in new map support and even new civilizations.Â
In 2012, Microsoft decided that the gameâs consistent support from its fans deserved an offering, and they decided to make an HD rerelease. Thatâs really cool of them! They also contacted the developers of one of the most popular fanmade expansions, Forgotten Empires, and worked it into an official expansion, called The Forgotten! AOE2 has continued to grow and thrive ever since, receiving enough attention to call for TWO MORE EXPANSION PACKS, and of course leading to the Definitive Edition release last year. Embracing fan support of their outdated product has given Microsoft the opportunity to make money off of something that should be long dead, and now itâs bigger and better than ever before.Â
If you ask folks within the fighting game community, youâll find this isnât an isolated story - for example, Arcsystems notably once incoporated a fanmade mod that improved netplay into an official patch, lending official developer resources to the group to help them get the job done. When your fans care so much about a game youâve made that theyâll put in the time and the effort to make that game better and more accessible for everyone, a lot of developers are happy to honor and embrace that effort, and in doing so, they stand a lot to benefit - their games get better, and they might even be able to make enough money back on those improvements to keep growing the game even further.
So if other developers arenât doing this, why is Nintendo doing it? Simple: They donât like the idea that people are playing old games. They want everyone playing the most recent offerings, no questions asked. To them, ârereleasingâ Melee is out of the question; Smash Ultimate is the only âcanonicalâ version of Smash. Donât play anything else. Donât try to buy anything else. This is the only game that exists.Â
So what? I donât care at all about Melee. Why does it matter that Nintendo wants people to stop playing a 20-year old game?
The short answer is because it sucks that Nintendo holds the rights to something they donât care about and arenât using, and that theyâre using those rights to legally bully people who love their games and want to make them better and more accessible to other people. Regardless of how you feel about Melee or its community, itâs a simple fact that the people who are building Project Slippi and running tournaments love the game more than just about anybody else. For Nintendo to order a C&D against a passionate fan project is a bummer - but for them to do so in regards to a game that theyâre not making anymore is downright unfair. They would rather protect their ability to maybe make more money on Melee later, than allow the existing scene to thrive in a way that does literally no harm to them.
Nintendoâs well-known and aggressive policy of shutting down fan-made projects and communities of all kinds has only one objective in mind: they want absolute control over everything that theyâve made. From a certain naive point of view, this is fair, right? But if you take this to its logical extreme, then that means Nintendo has the right to prohibit things like fanart or fanfiction, which doesnât really seem that fair. Where should the line be drawn?
This is just another battle in a war that has been fought over the last 200 years regarding the idea of a âcopyrightâ, and what gives a person the right to decide how other people will consume media they publish. It has never been about the rights of writers, musicians, or game developers - it has always been about publishing rights. Publishers want exclusive control over the things they publish, because holding exclusive control makes it much easier for them to make money from their products.Â
We have a legal term for when a single entity has exclusive control over a commodity in high demand - thatâs called a monopoly, and it is illegal. Monopolies pose a serious threat to consumers because they can price their goods however they like, extorting their consumerbase or simply making their product inaccessible except to an elite few, which isnât considered fair. So if thatâs the case, why arenât video game publishers considered monopolies? It turns out some people in the past believed they should be, and publishing companies have been doing all sorts of legal acrobatics for years to avoid it. Free Culture makes for a good read on the subject, if youâve got time. (Chapters 6 through 9 are particularly relevant to todayâs issues with streaming games and music.)
A lot of people donât seem to understand the damage that Nintendoâs ridiculous monopolizing practices have done to their own gaming community. Itâs absurd of them to expect people to continue to pay for new releases of the same games on virtual console, not just once but every time a new generation of âvirtual consoleâ is released - and yet they keep doing it, and itâs just one of many ways they continually screw over their customers at a chance for a few more bucks, and somehow most of their audience thanks them for it.Â
So what exactly do you want me to do?
Nintendoâs tried to suppress Melee tournaments in the past, but were forced to reverse their decisions following massive public outcry by the competitors and their fans. Regardless of how you feel about Melee in particular, what Nintendo is doing is scummy and actively malicious to the people that love their games, and the fact that theyâre doing it again proves that theyâre not interested in learning their lesson. Folks on twitter are using the tag #FreeMelee to protest; lending your voice for a tweet or two can only help.Â
More generally, though, all we can really do is be critical of Nintendoâs games and actions, and to ask ourselves whether weâre really getting what weâre paying for. Nintendo will continue to take everything you offer them and will never be satisfied; they will do whatever they think they can get away with - and if their fans never challenge them, theyâll assume they can get away with anything, and thatâs bad for everybody - but itâs worst of all for the people who ostensibly love and support Nintendo the most.
#long post#free melee#ssbm#i don't normally make big long posts like this. reblogging would mean a lot to me but it's also ok if it doesn't go anywhere#it was mostly a stress relief exercise
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In Defense of Smashing Cameras
We are making ourselves vulnerable to attack.
More seriously, we are making each other vulnerable. Photographers at demonstrations will soon outnumber demonstrators, those who are willing to take action. This is something we need to take a stand against. Cameras are tools of surveillance, and whether it is us or the enemy that wields them, we are participating in our own surveillance. Groups and individuals who have an interest in publicity and photo opportunities need to recognise the fact that they can make everyone else vulnerable to repression and less effective. One groupâs photo op is unwanted Twitter publicity for the 100 people surrounding them.
It is not a question of the desires of the few dictating the safety of the majority; it is a question of the politics of these desires. A protest is an attack, or at least, the threat of one. Considering this is a show of our strength, we need to seriously consider: what makes us less strong, less effective, what makes the collective-in-movement less powerful and more at risk? And here it is the cameras, which are continuous with techniques of surveillance.
Stopping for photos when you are part of a big group puts everyone at risk, risks separating those you are walking with from the safety of large numbers, and risks everyone behind you also being subjected to the penetrating eye of the journalistâs lens. This not only subjects others to your desire for publicity or fifteen minutes of fame for your actions (an ideological position it should not be assumed that every member of a collective action or formation desires), but can also lead to people who are ready to do something interesting feeling hesitant, after spending an hour with their every footstep, flag wave, and expression documented and disseminated by the multitudinous horde of camera clicking parasites.
Publicity is one issue. If we are on the streets we are in public; we are surveilled. We canât escape this. What we can control is intelligible visibility. The reason we mask up is to become opaque, to elude intelligibility. Being photographed against our will is a direct attack against our attempts of obfuscation and ought to be treated as such. Cameras are tools of the surveillance state and dominant forms of control that our very presence on the streets seeks to dismantle.
Photographs at actions of our actions weaken us and consequently weaken our ability to act. This is not paranoia; it is a fact. For every police photograph, there are ten more incriminating ones on twitter. For every official observation, every surveillance camera pointed our direction, we are doing ourselves the injustice of allowing ourselves to be recorded, disseminated and documented by our peers, in the name of free speech or journalistic impartiality, entitlement, whatever you want to call it. And it has to stop.
This isnât an innocent game where you spot yourself on Facebook and marvel at how rebellious you look. The reality is people face jail time because of foolish Twitter posts. The other reality is that sometimes itâs not just foolishness. There are journalists at demos who arenât just capturing their bit of riot porn to excite /Vice/ readers. Some photographers explicitly try to capture faces, try to catch you in the act. These people are scum and should not be protected simply because we believe that journalists have some kind of impartiality, some right that is above our desires to protect ourselves.
Our concern is not concerning the so-called right to take pictures in a public place. We could care less about this boring defence that photographers resort to when critiqued. Our question is not: what are your rights in public? Rather: where do you stand when it comes to social struggle? How do you act to further revolt? Simply put, journalists do not have any political right to a âspectacleâ. They have the ability to participate in a moment of revolt and they forgo that capacity by consigning the event to a digital memory rather than a future possibility. While photographic evidence has been useful in the past, we maintain that by prioritizing documentation, in ignorance or indifference to its effect on an action, journalists are not comrades in the present.
Spectators do not act. Time and again, photographers actually inhibit the unfurling of events by standing right in front of an action, rushing forward, blocking your way to support your friends and documenting your attempts to do so. Eyes without bodies do not move, but they may propel enemies. When you take a photograph at a demo before anything actually happens, if something does happen, the police can use that photograph to construct a narrative and build identities. You could spotlight someone involved in something that hasnât even happened yet, highlight that crucial piece of evidence the police will use to solidify their case against us. To inhibit possibility and limit potential is not something we should simply accept.
Itâs time to fight back. This is a call out for people to stand up against those who are putting our lives in danger. People who take photographs and post them online, without blurring faces or cropping out identities, put us at risk and we should not be complacent. In other countries with much stronger movements, complacency is not so dominant; people often smash cameras they see pointed at their friends and deliberately documenting them. They destroy cameras because they recognise that these instruments can and do lead to arrests and arrests can ruin lives and destroy a movement. Why tolerate an instrument that supports and reinforces our oppression? Our surveillance? We should learn from our friends across Europe, who are so much more adept at rebellion than we are, so much less complacent.
That said, we are not luddites. To the contrary, we love a good photo and we cannot dismiss the seductive qualities of images in the age of spectacles. Thereâs a reason we call it riot porn. Weâve even printed and framed the memories we love best. We recognise the importance of documenting certain struggles, to spread the message, to share with our friends abroad, to help ignite the fire of rebellion. Photos move enemies, but they also move us. This is not a critique of cameras /as such/, but of a particular and dominant usage:
âArms as inert objects do not exist. What do exist are arms in action, i.e. that are used (or waiting to be used) in a given perspectiveâŚ. Behind the thing there is always the individual, the individual who acts, plans, uses means to attain endsâ (Alfredo Bonanno, âThe Refusal of Armsâ).
We have friends who we trust to take good photos, but the key word here is trust. We consider them part of our struggles and think of them as partisans and accomplices in social war. Assuming then that you want to participate in social struggle as a friend and have committed yourself to the camera, here are some proposed guidelines:
1. Contrary to what many protest-photography tips tell you, donât get up close.
2. If there are faces in your shot, blur them. A simple swirl in Photoshop wonât do. Weâre talking scrambling such the police cannot reverse the process.
3. If there is distinctive or identifying clothing in your shot, blur them.
4. If certain identities stick out (the few black bodies in a white protest, the few visibly disabled in a seemingly able-bodied demonstration, etc. etc.), delete the photo.
5. If you choose to participate as a spectator, then realise your participation is secondary to those actively engaged in the moment of revolt. This means you should step aside, even if it means losing that âwiningâ shot.
6. If possibleâand it usually isâask for consent or indicate that you are taking a photo so that we have an option to turn away or decline. Yes, we get it. We are in a public place and you donât have to ask, but realise that failure to ask makes us suspicious of your motivations and provides us with added reason to assert our capacity for opacity.
7. Your camera is a weapon. Friendly fire is not acceptable.
8. You are a partisan in social war. Become involved in the struggles you choose to document. Should they be documented? If so, how should they be documented to spread their capacities? Become a comrade and earn the trust of those around you. Excepting professional activists, for the vast majority of us, this is not a career.
9. Photograph the police.
10. Infer more guidelines from the analysis above.
Until a conversation about protest photography becomes more pervasive, until guidelines like these become more common, until the burden is on photographers and not on active participants, until thenâŚ
This is a call for people to smash cameras. Time and time again we see our friends being taken away because someone chose their five moments of fame, the titillation of seeing his photo of our fucking faces making it onto the pages of Vice, the Evening Standard, the Guardian. They choose that above standing next to their friends and accomplices and fighting against the surveillance state that controls us all. Maybe the hack is on our side; maybe they think they are spreading the word, spreading the revolt. It doesnât matter. For right now, all they are doing is contributing to a climate of inaction, of fear of action, spreading information that those who seek to bring us down will use against us. Next time you see someone thrusting their lens in someoneâs face, getting a little too close and personal, blocking your path to assist your friends so they can get a winning angle, we ask you not to stand idly by.
Fight back. Protect your friends.
#smash cameras#pdx#portland protests#defendpdx#surveillance#spectacle#jounalism#policing#communism#anarchism#direct action#black bloc
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8 Untold Signs Of Narcissist People
Sometimes the signs of narcissism aren't so obvious and narcissists fly under our radar. Not every narcissist may be a puffed-up addict or a Mean Girl like Regina George. If they were, we could see the signs from a mile away and steer clear. No, many narcissists are sensitive, thoughtful, and generous â until the charade wears off, of course.
That's why it's so important to know the subtle signs of narcissism that you simply won't notice until it's too late and they've sucked you into their region.
What's the Difference Between an Overt and Covert Narcissist?
Many people tend to consider narcissists as having extroverted personalities. They're flamboyant and demand to be the middle of attention â how are you able to miss them?
The truth is, introverts also can be narcissists. These are those who fool us into their web of manipulation.
"They're not self-absorbed â they're just sensitive!"
"They're not a nasty friend â they're just misunderstood!"
After forming a relationship with a covert narcissist, you realize that this sensitivity and isolation were, in fact, signs of narcissism. Since the signs weren't so obvious, however, you completely misjudged things.
8 Signs of Narcissism You Can't-Miss
Since the covert narcissist is best at hiding their abusive behavior, it's important to know the subtle cues that give them away.
1. They'll Never Utter the Phrase "I Don't Know"
I once knew a narcissist who was so averse to the present phrase that he would rather give someone dangerously incorrect answers than admit to not knowing something. He was confident in his woefully wrong answers, too.
Why do this?
Answering an issue with "I don't know" deprives the narcissist of important attention. The person seeking a solution will simply advance to somebody else who might help them. That's an enormous ego hit.
That's why you'll often find narcissists rambling on about topics they need no business speaking on.
2. They Are A Nasty Friend
The narcissist is usually a nasty friend but you'll typically find them playing the victim. confirm to urge all sides of the story if you're unsure.
What are some red flag signs of narcissism that indicate the suspect may be a narcissist?
⢠They get irritated when their friends invite help or advice.
⢠They don't bother to call or text their friends on birthdays or holidays.
⢠They don't return borrowed items. (A sign of entitlement.)
⢠They owe their friends money. they'll downplay this as "not an enormous deal."
⢠They embarrass their friends ahead of others.
⢠They hunt down or entertain their friends' partners or love interests.
They also treat waitstaff or service workers poorly. This is a dead giveaway. run the hills. Anyone who disrespects waitstaff or service workers views people as "beneath" them. Soon, you'll be a part of the inferiors also.
3. They Need To Insert Themselves Into Every Story
A covert narcissist might not demand everyone's attention. They will, however, still find how to form everything about them. an outsized part of this strategy involves inserting themselves into every story.
Is a coworker talking about their experience with homelessness? The narcissist, too, features a story about being poor.
Is a lover talking about his amazing trip to Vietnam? The narcissist also had a friend who visited Vietnam. And guess what? She heard it wasn't so great.
No matter the subject, the narcissist features a remarkable skill for turning the eye their way â regardless of how innocuous it'd seem.
4. They're Sensitive
At first, you'll appreciate their ability to freely express emotions. this is often an excellent tactic narcissists use to lure empathetic people into their trap.
Maybe a fast-food worker got their order wrong and therefore the narcissist hasn't shut up about it all day. Maybe their boss asked them to prevent playing on their phone such a lot and now the narcissist is crying about it over dinner.
As time goes on, you'll realize that the narcissist isn't vulnerable and sensitive: their fragile ego can't handle honest mistakes and valid criticism. To the narcissist, these are personal attacks.
5. They Form Relationships Based On What Someone Can "Do for Them"
If you're at a celebration and therefore the suspected narcissist suggests you ask someone because they will help together with your career or financial situation, don't ignore it. They aren't trying to assist you: they're letting you in on their game.
Narcissists tend to make shallow friendships that supported what people can do for them. You'll often find narcissists make friends with horribly toxic people simply because these folks have money, own bars, or offers career opportunities.
6. Their Stories Don't Match Reality
Both the overt and covert narcissist has an inflated sense of self. The thing is, they believe their lies. As a result, you'll often find they recall stories much differently than the situations played out.
If you notice that the suspect constantly reframes stories to form themselves the hero or victim, retreat fast â this is often one among the various signs of narcissism. By changing the story to suit their narrative, the narcissist is gaslighting everyone else involved.
It's not cute or funny to constantly need to correct them. Sooner or later, they'll start gaslighting you, too.
7. They Observe and Judge
"There's no way she will be a narcissist. When we're out with friends, she barely says ten words!"
I hear it all the time. By sitting back and observing everyone, however, the covert narcissist is silently taking notes and judging. I'm sure you heard all about her observations on the car ride home.
The narcissist must feel superior to everyone around them. this is often easy to try to do once you don't open your mouth to interact in conversation and instead sit back to require notes about everyone's shortcomings.
8. They Only Hear Bits and Pieces of Your Stories
Does it desire the suspected narcissist just isn't. listening? They're probably not. And if they're, they don't care.
Maybe you spent ten minutes venting to your mother about how you didn't get that promotion at work because you showed up late one solitary time with a legitimate reason. How did she respond? "Well, maybe you'll remember to point out up on time from now on."
You can't be the victim. Only the narcissist is often the victim.
You see this ton with narcissist parents or partners who listen only enough to toss stuff back in your face later.
How to Turn the Tables on a Narcissist?
Perhaps you've gone on a couple of dates with someone or a replacement coworker joined your team. you think they'll be a narcissist but you aren't entirely sure.
After all, the covert narcissist is especially cunning at hiding the more obvious signs of narcissism. Here's the way to turn the tables on a narcissist and obtain them to show themselves.
⢠Play along. Don't give the suspected narcissist room to regulate their manipulation tactics â play stupid and pretend you completely believe them. Use this chance to document their behavior.
⢠Remain indifferent. If you want to continue handling an overt or covert narcissist for reasons out of your control, act indifferent to their behavior. The narcissist wants to use your emotions against you. If you don't give them anything to figure with, they'll seek their fix elsewhere.
⢠Find Support: this might only include one or two people you trust. open up to someone who will validate and believe you.
At the top of the day, the sole thanks to truly turn the tables on a narcissist are to chop them off completely. If that they had any real intentions of adjusting, they might have done so already.
The narcissist won't suddenly see things your way. If they ever do, it's â a) for a fleeting moment and b) to use against you later. Don't believe the conflicting information you would possibly see from other websites or therapists â the narcissist will never change.
With a mental disease, a chemical imbalance within the brain may cause different disturbances that manifest as depression, anxiety, and lots of others. Although complex, mental illnesses tend to reply well to medication because it targets the physical root of the problem: like a chemical imbalance. Though it's been determined that a lot of mental illnesses like depression and anxiety are frequently caused by unresolved emotional trauma, often dating as far back as childhood.
Personality disorders occur due to a repetitive stimuli-reward environment. At some point in their life, the narcissist realized they might elicit specific reactions and emotions from people â and it felt good and helped them achieve their self-fulfilling agendas.
Anything but cutting them out of your life will offer you a mental and emotional breakdown.
No Contact is that the Only Way to Packing Up A Narcissist
Many narcissists have always been this manner â whilst far back as their teenage or childhood years. If you're handling a narcissist, you can't and will not expect them to vary their behavior now or ever.
Treatment for personality disorders often involves things like cognitive behavioral therapy. In many cases, a narcissist can also suffer from other mental illnesses like depression or substance use disorder. (You've probably heard extensively about these problems, too, when the narcissist needs your sympathy or someone responsible .)
ŮDespite this, there's little evidence to suggest therapy works for narcissists as personality disorders are notoriously difficult to treat. the primary step to getting assistance is to admit a drag exists â the narcissist will never believe they need or are a drag.
No Contact is that the only option.
Trust in yourself and your network. Because once you get to the opposite side and stick with No Contact, you'll be amazed by all the amazing belongings you can accomplish.
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I still donât agree. If the series was going to build up to this, they wouldâve had proper foreshadowing. It also doesnât help that RWBY+ arenât angry for Oz telling them "No", theyâre angry with the lying and secret keeping. RWBY arenât alone in their anger, Qrow and JNR (as you pointed out didnât get these privileges) are equally pissed. Actually, Jaune and Qrow were the most pissed, as they physically attacked in their anger. RWBY never say âyou used to do everythingâ for us or something.
1. As said, itâs not a matter of whether the series deliberately built up to this or not. Authorial intent doesnât erase what we get on screen. RT wrote scenarios where Ozpin treated Team RWBY quite differently from their peers and if we read the series ârealisticallyâ - meaning that if we assume the experiences these characters have will change their outlook on life moving forward - then how Ozpin treated them at Beacon impacts how they respond to him and potentially others. We watched âAuthority figure encouraged them to lie, keep secrets, break rules, and see themselves as exceptionsâ and then a year later see âThe group now lies, keeps secrets, breaks rules, and sees themselves as exceptions.â Thatâs a cause/effect that exists in the text regardless of whether RT ever has a character explicitly say, âYou used to do everything for us.â Foreshadowing is not the same thing as acknowledging, âThe past experiences of these characters influence how they act in the future.âÂ
2. Yes, theyâre angry about lying and secret keeping but thatâs wrapped up in those expectations of what theyâre owed. Theyâre angry because they feel entitled to every piece of information about this war, because Ozpin said/did things that denied them what they wanted. They said âTell us everything. Trust us,â he responded, âNo because thatâs dangerous and I donât know what youâll do with that information/how youâll react,â and they went, âWe deserve to know and if you wonât tell us willingly weâll take the information by force.â Characters who have experienced more boundaries are more likely to understand that there are good reasons for why theyâre denied things (that cause/effect again) and are poised to realize that âBut I think I should have itâ isnât always a good justification. A Ruby who had been told, âSorry, Ms. Rose. Youâre too young/inexperienced for this fightâ at Beacon and given the chance to grapple with that - Dammit I really wanted to go to Mountain Glenn. Why wonât Headmaster Ozpin let me? Hmm, maybe heâs right and Iâm not ready for that yet yet... - is more likely to hear âSorry, Ms. Rose. Youâre too young/inexperienced/potentially untrustworthy for this informationâ and work on accepting that - or at least considering whether itâs worth accepting - even if she doesnât like it. Meanwhile, a Ruby who has never been told âNoâ is more likely to just take the info because sheâs never had the chance to develop that respect for another opinion. If you tell a kid, âNo, you canât have a cookie before dinner because it will ruin your appetiteâ they will (hopefully) come to understand that this is a rule they must follow for good reasons even if they hate it. If you secretly sneak a kid cookies before dinner for a year, encourage them to lie and say they definitely havenât had any cookies today to other adults who ask, remind them that theyâre not supposed to have a cookie right now but Iâll give it to you anyway... and then suddenly say, âNo, you canât have a cookie before dinnerâ the kid is more likely to just sneak a cookie the first time your back is turned. Why wouldnât they? Theyâve never been denied one before. Theyâve always gotten cookies and have, in fact, been taught to sneak cookies even if others say they canât have one. Clearly this is something that should continue and that stupid adult is wrong to try and deny them. Â
3. Yes, JNR act just as entitled, but crucially theyâre not their own characters anymore. They are fully and completely a part of Team RWBY. Thatâs why I had Blakeâs line at the end: the rest of the group - including JNR - does whatever Ruby wants. Her will is their will. Does JNR react differently to the Salem information than Team RWBY did? No. Does JNR have different opinions about lying to Ironwood than Team RWBY does? No. This is indeed a big writing problem because they absolutely should be reacting differently. As weâve both pointed out, they have different past experiences. That should result in different future reactions too - a different cause/effect. But it doesnât. Not because the concept of âPast events influence future outlooksâ as an argument is completely invalid, but because RT decided Post-Volume 3 that Team RWBY and Team JNR would become RWBYJNR. They donât have a reason to be entitled like Team RWBY does, but the show writes Team RWBYâs outlook - specifically Rubyâs outlook - as overriding anyone elseâs. Itâs like if you slammed a kid who learned cookie moderation and a kid who got cookies whenever they wanted together. The second kidâs will overrides the first because this is better, yeah? You want this and Iâve learned that we can, in fact, just take it! So follow me, do what I think its best, and the first kid just... does. Thatâs partly why Ruby is maintaining this entitlement. No one - including her closest friends who she might actually listen to - has told her âNo.â When Jaune suggests stealing an airship and Ruby, as the leader, decides thatâs what theyâll do, Yang, Weiss, Blake, Nora, and Ren could have been written as opposing this and teaching Ruby that her decisions are not always best. They could have imposed a personal consequence: If you try to go through with this then you will not have our support. But that didnât happen. Regardless of who comes up with an idea, Rubyâs voice is the only one they listen to.Â
4. Qrow is indeed pissed about the secret keeping but he is crucially not entitled like the RWBYJNR group. Qrow says Ruby needs to stay out of the Tyrian fight for her own safety, Ruby declares that this is âmy fight too.â He wants to talk everything out, but he has weapons leveled at his throat so he concedes and letâs Ruby - again, always Ruby - decide whatâs best. Ruby decides sheâs entitled to this information and uses the relic. Qrow doesnât want to steal an airship to cross a border they have no legal right to cross. Ruby tells him she doesnât care what he thinks and theyâre doing it anyway. Qrow doesnât want Ruby to continue attacking Cordovin after she stole military property and started a fight. Ruby tells him to trust her and tears her arm out of his hand, going to continue the fight. Qrow, as an adult who better understand the concept of âNo,â continually tries to impose restrictions: donât attack, donât steal, donât antagonize, donât do something rash - a case of âDo as I say, not as I doâ considering Qrow also struggles with rash decisions (fight with Winter) - but at every turn Ruby comes to the conclusion that she is entitled to [insert what she wants here] and Uncle Qrow is wrong. Though itâs treated as humorous (another writing mistake imo), Winter basically says, âHow could you let them do all this when youâre the adult meant to teach them boundaries??â and Qrow responds, âYou try telling them ânoâ when youâre outnumbered eight to one, theyâre willing to threaten you with their weapons, make it clear theyâre straight up leave you if it comes to that, and all the while youâre dealing with your alcoholism and the revelation of Salemâs immortality.â Qrow, as one adult whose authority is already severely undermined - Heâs too drunk to listen to. Heâs the cool uncle whoâs more of a friend than an authority figure - who is faced with some serious hurdles - What do I do with super powered teens who are willing to attack me to get what they want? - and who himself is very flawed and poised to make mistakes, simply canât compete with the attitude RWBYJNR has developed. He isnât entitled like they are, but heâs not in a good position to successfully impart that outlook in any way theyâll listen to and learn from. Â
Ironwood likely would have been able to. Heâs more stable, has more power, fewer vices, has things like huntsmen licenses to use as rewards/punishment.. but then RWBY the show decided that he wouldnât challenge the groupâs entitlement either. No worries that you came here illegally. You donât need to do anything to prove yourself to me before I share my plan. You can, in fact, carry the relic if you want. You get licenses and you get to yell at me, etc. By the time the story has Ironwood imposing real restrictions - Okay, betraying me, threatening me, and risking the Amity project earns you some time in jail! - heâs painted as the bad guy who, again, RWBYJNR wonât listen to.
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The newest installment of The Alt-Right Playbook - Endnote 4: How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship - is a little different. This installment was presented live at Solidarity Lowell, and includes a bonus Q&A section. This video expands on the ideas put forth in How to Radicalize a Normie.
If you would like more videos like this to come out, please back me on Patreon.
Transcript below the cut.
He is intriguing, yet unpredictable. He demands unconditional loyalty. He seems to have an intuitive understanding of what people want to hear but no actual empathy; he treats others as simply bodies or objects. And heâs surrounded by a network of subordinates but the personnel is always changing.
Does it sound like Iâm describing The President? Because these are, according to Alexandra Stein, qualities of a cult leader.
Hi. My name is Ian Danskin. Iâm a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, the flagship endeavor of which is currently The Alt-Right Playbook, a series on the political and rhetorical strategies the Alt-Right uses to legitimize itself and gain power. And, if that sounds interesting to you, and you havenât already, please like share and subscribe.
The most recent episode of The Alt-Right Playbook is about how people get recruited into these largely online reactionary communities like the Alt-Right, a subject which, as it turns out, is real fuckinâ hard to research.
What I want to talk about with you today is how I go about studying a population that is incredibly hostile towards being studied. It involves finding the bits and pieces of the Alt-Right that we do have data on - the pockets of good research, the outsider observations, the stories of lived experience - as well as looking at older movements the Alt-Right grew out of, that have been extensively researched, and spotting the ways the Alt-Right is continuous with them, and trying to extrapolate how those structures might recreate themselves in the social media age.
So itâs⌠a lot. And, in the process of researching, I found a wealth of interesting perspectives that, by focusing the video on recruitment specifically, I barely dipped a toe in. All that stuff is what Iâd like to get into with you today. But Iâm trying to thread a needle here: you donât need to have seen my video, How to Radicalize a Normie, to follow this talk, but, if you have seen it already, I will try not to be redundant. This talk is one part making my case for why I think the conclusions in that video are correct, one part repository for all the stuff I couldnât get into, and one part how Iâve come to look at the Alt-Right as a result of this research, including some pet theories I wouldnât feel right claiming as truth without further research, but I do think are on the right track.
This talk is called Isolation, Engulfment, and Pain: How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship. Weâre going to cover a lot of ground, from information processing to emotional development, but weâre necessarily also going to cover racism and violence and abuse dynamics. So this is an introduction and a content warning: if some of these subjects are particularly charged for you, no offense will be taken if you at any point leave the room. I have to research this stuff for a living, and it is rough, and sometimes I have to step away. We donât judge here.
Now. Requisite dash of self-deprecation: donât give me too much credit for all this. I am proud of the work I do and I think Iâm genuinely good at it, but much of this video was compiling the work of others. Besides research I had already done and my own observations, the video had 27 sources: three books, five research papers, six articles, one leaked document, three testimonials, four videos, four pages of statistics, and one Twitter joke. I also spoke to four professional researchers who study right-wing extremism and one former Alt-Righter.
Without all their hard work, I would have nothing to compile.
OK? Letâs begin.
Weâre gonna center on those three main texts: Alt-America by David Neiwert, a history of the Alt-Rightâs origins; Healing from Hate by Michael Kimmel, about how young men get into (and out of) extremist groups, be they neo-Nazi or jihadist; and Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein, about how people are courted by and kept inside cults and totalitarian regimes.
I began with Kimmel. The premise of Healing from Hate is that extremist groups tend to be between 75 and 90% male, and that you cannot understand radical conservatism without looking at it through the lens of toxic masculinity. Which makes it all the more disappointing that Kimmel has been accused by multiple women of bullying and harassment. I found the book incredibly useful, and weâre still going to talk about it, I just need to caveat here that retweets are not endorsements. Also, if I spoil the book for you then you donât need to buy it, give your money to someone who isnât a creep.
Kimmelâs argument is that extremism begins with a pain peculiar to young men. He calls it âaggrieved entitlement.â I call it Durden Syndrome. You know that scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden says, âWeâve all been raised on television to believe that one day weâd all be millionaires and movie gods and rockstars, but we wonât, weâre slowly learning that fact, and we are very, very pissed offâ? Yeah, that. As men, the world promised us something, and the promise wasnât kept.
Some men skew towards social progressivism when they realize this promise was never made to women, or men of color, or queer or trans or nonbinary people, and recognize the injustice of that. Some men skew towards economic leftism when they realize that every cishet white man being a millionaire rockstar movie god is mathematically impossible. But they skew towards reactionary conservatism when they feel the promise should have been kept. Thatâs the life they were supposed to have, and someone took it from them.
Hate groups appeal to that sense of emasculation. âYou wanna feel like a Real Man? Shave off your hair, dance to hatecore, and letâs beat the crap out of someone.â Kimmel notes that the greatest indicator someone will join a hate group is a broken home: divorce, foster care, parents with addictions, physical or sexual abuse. The greater the distance between the life they were promised and the life they are living, the more enticing Real Masculinity becomes. Their fellow extremists are brothers, the leaders father figures.
The group does give them someone to blame for their lot in life - immigrants, feminists, the Jewish conspiracy - but thatâs not why they join. Theyâre after empowerment. According to Kimmel, âTheir embrace of neo-Nazi ideology is a consequence of their recruitment and indoctrination process, not its cause."
But once an Other has been identified as the locus of a hate groupâs hate, new recruits are brought along when the group terrorizes that Other. Events like cross burnings and street fights are dangerous and morally fraught, and are often traumatic for a new recruit. And experiencing an emotional or physical trauma can create an intense bond with the people experiencing it with him, even though theyâre the ones who brought him to the traumatic event in the first place. The creation of this bond is one of the reasons some hate groups usher new recruits out into the field as early as possible: the sooner they are emotionally invested in the community, the faster they will embrace the communityâs politics.
This Othering also estranges recruits from the people they are supposed to hate, which makes it hard to stop hating them.
So thereâs this concept that comes up a lot in my research called Contact Hypothesis. Contact Hypothesis argues that, the more contact you have with a different walk of life, the easier it is to tolerate it. Itâs like exposure therapy. We talk about how big cities and college campuses tend to be liberal strongholds; the Right likes to claim this is because of professors and politicians poisoning your mind, but itâs really just because theyâre diverse. When you share space with a lot of different kinds of people, a degree of liberalism becomes necessary just to get by. And we see that belief systems which rely on a strict orthodoxy get really cagey about members having contact with outsiders. We see this in all the groups weâre discussing today - extremists, cultists, totalitarians - but also religious fundamentalists; Mormons only wanna send their kids to Brigham Young. They are belief systems that can only be reliably maintained so long as no one gets exposed to other people with other beliefs.
So thatâs some of what I took from Kimmel. Next I read Stein talking, primarily, about cults.
Steinâs window into all of this is applying the theory of Attachment Styles to what researchers calls totalism, which is any structure that subsumes a personâs entire life the way cults and totalitarian governments do. Attachment is a concept you may be familiar with if have, or have ever dated, a therapist. (Iâve done both.)
So, for a quick primer:
Imagine youâre walking in the park with a three-year-old. And the three-year-old sees a dog, and ask, âCan I pet the dog?â And you say yes, and the kid steps away from your side and reaches out. And the dog gets excited, and jumps up, and the kid gets scared and runs back to you. So you hold the kid and go, âOh, no no no, donât worry! Theyâre not gonna hurt you! They were just happy to see you!â And you take a few moments to calm the kid down, and then you ask, âDo you still want to pet the dog?â And the kid says âyes,â so they step away from you again and reach out. The dog jumps up again, but this time the kid doesnât run away, and they pet the dog, and you, the kid, and the dog are all happy. Hooray!
This is a fundamental piece of a childâs emotional development. They take a risk, have a negative experience, and retreat to a point of comfort. Then, having received that comfort, feel bolstered enough to take a slightly greater risk. A healthy childhood is steadily venturing further and further from that point of comfort, and taking on greater risks, secure in the knowledge that safety is there when they need it. And, as an adult, they will form many interdependent points of comfort rather than relying on only one or two.
If all goes according to plan, that is Secure Attachment. But: sometimes things go wrong when the kid seeks comfort and doesnât get enough. This may be because the adult is withholding or the kid doesnât know how to express their needs or theyâre just particularly fearful. But the kid may start seeking comfort more than seems reasonable, and be particularly averse to risk, and over-focus on the people who give them comfort, because theyâre operating at a deficit. We call that Anxious Attachment. Alternately, the kid may give up on receiving comfort altogether, even though they still need it, and just go it alone, developing a distrust of other people and a fear of being vulnerable. We call that Avoidant Attachment.
Now, these styles are all formed in early childhood, but Stein focuses on a fourth kind of Attachment, one that can be formed at any age regardless of the Attachment Style you came in with. Itâs what happens when the negative experience and the comfort come from the same place. We see it in children and adults who are mistreated by the people they trust. Itâs called Disorganized Attachment.
According to Stein, cults foster Disorganized Attachment by being intensely unpredictable. In a cult, you may be praised for your commitment on Monday and have your commitment questioned on Tuesday, with no change in behavior. You may be assigned a romantic partner, who may, at any point, be taken away, assigned to someone else. Your children may be taken from you to be raised by a different family. You may be told the cult leader wants to sleep with you, which may make you incredibly happy or be terrifying, but you wonât be given a choice. And the rules you are expected to follow will be rewritten without warning.
This creates a kind of emotional chaos, where you canât predict when you will be given good feelings and when you will be given bad ones. But youâre so enmeshed in the community you have noplace else to go for good feelings; hurting you just draws you in deeper, because they are also where you seek comfort. And your pain is always your fault: you wouldnât feel so shitty if you were more committed. Trying to make sense of this causes so much confusion and anguish that you eventually just stop thinking for yourself. These are the rules now? OK. Heâs not my brother anymore? OK. This is my life now? OK.
Hardly anyone would seek out such a dynamic, which is why cults present as religions, political activists, and therapy groups; things people in questioning phases of their lives are liable to seek out, and then they fall down the rabbit hole before they know whatâs happening. The cult slowly consumes more and more of a recruitâs life, and tightly controls access to relationships outside the cult, because the biggest threat to a Disorganized Attachment relationship is having separate, Securely Attached points of comfort.
And at this point I said, âHold up. Youâre telling me cults recruit by offering people community and purpose in times of need, become the focal point of their entire lives, estrange them from all outside perspectives, and then cause emotional distress that paradoxically makes them more committed because they have nowhere else to go for support?â
Isnât that exactly how Kimmel described joining a hate group?
Now, these are commonalities, not a one-to-one comparison. A cult is far more organized and rigidly controlled than a hate group. But Stein points out that this dynamic of isolation, engulfment, and pain is the same dynamic as an abusive relationship. The difference is just scale. A cult is functionally a single person having a very complex domestic abuse situation with a whole lot of people, #badpolyamory.
So if we posit a spectrum with domestic abuse on one end and cults and totalitarianism on the other, I started wondering, could we put extremist groups, like ISIS and Aryan Nations, around⌠here?
And, if so, where would we put the Alt-Right?
Now, I have to tread carefully here. There are reasons this talk is called âHow the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationshipâ and not âHow the Alt-Right is Like a Cult,â because the moment you say the second thing, a lot of people stop listening to you. Our conception of cults and totalitarianism is way more controlled and structured than a pack of loud, racist assholes on the internet. But weâre not talking about organizational structure, weâre talking about a relationship, an emotional dynamic Stein calls âanxious dependency,â which fosters an irrational loyalty to people who are bad for you and gets you to adopt an ideology you would have previously rejected. (I would also love to go on a rant puncturing the idea that cultists and fascists are organized, pointing out this notion is propaganda and their systems are notoriously corrupt and mismanaged, but we donât have time; ask me about it in the Q&A if you want me to go off.)
So I started looking through what I knew, and what I could find, about the Alt-Right to see if I could spot this same pattern of isolation, engulfment, and pain online funneling people towards the Alt-Right. And I did not come up short.
Isolation? Well, the Alt-Right traffics in all the same dehumanizing narratives about their enemies as Kimmelâs hate groups - like, the worst things you can imagine a human being saying about a group of people are said every day in these forums. They often berate and harass each other for any perceived sympathy towards The Other Side. They also regularly harass people from The Other Side off of platforms, and falsely report their tweets, posts, and videos as terrorism to get them taken down. (This has happened to me, incidentally.) I found figureheads adored by the Alt-Right who expressly tell people to cut ties with liberal family members.
We talked before about Contact Hypothesis? Thereâs also this idea called Parasocial Contact Hypothesis. A parasocial relationship is a strong emotional connection that only goes one way, like if you really love my videos and have started thinking of me almost as a friend even though I donât know you exist? Yeah. Parasocial relationship. Theyâve been in The Discourse lately, largely thanks to my friend Shannon Strucci making a really great video about them (check it out, I make a cameo, but⌠clear your schedule). Parasocial Contact Hypothesis is this phenomenon where, if people form parasocial feelings for public figures or even fictional characters, and those people happen to be Black, white audience members become less racist similar to how they would if they had Black friends. Your logical brain knows that these are strangers, but your lizard brain doesnât know the difference between empathy for a queer friend and empathy for a queer character in a video game. So of course the Alt-Right makes a big stink about queer characters in video games, and leads boycotts against âforced diversity,â because diverse media is bad for recruitment.
Engulfment? Well, I learned way too much about how the Alt-Right will overtake your entire internet life. There was a paper made the rounds last year by Rebecca Lewis charting the interconnectedness of conservative YouTube. (Reactionaries really hated this paper because it said things they didnât like.) Lewis argues that, once you enter what she calls the Alternative Influence Network, it tends to keep you inside it. Start with some YouTuber conservatives like but whoâs branded as a moderate, or even a âclassic liberal.â Take someone like Dave Rubin; call Dave Rubin Alt-Right, people yell at you, I speak from experience. Well, Dave Rubinâs had Jordan Peterson on his show, so, if you watch Rubin, Peterson ends up in your recommendations. Peterson has been on the Joe Rogan show, so, you watch Peterson, Rogan ends up in your recommendations. And Rogan has interviewed Gavin McInnes, so you watch Rogan and McInnes ends up in your recommendations.
Gavin McInnes is the head of the Proud Boys, a self-described âwestern chauvinistâ organization thatâs mostly known for beating up liberals and leftists. They have ties to neo-fascist groups like Identity Evropa and neo-fascist militias like the Oath Keepers, they run security for white nationalists, and their lawyer just went on record that he identifies as a fascist. And, if youâre one of these kids who has YouTube in the background with autoplay on, and youâre watching Dave Rubin? You might be as few as 3 videos away from watching Gavin McInnes.
Thereâs a lot of talk these days about algorithms funneling people towards the Right, and thatâs not wrong, but itâs an oversimplification. The real problem is that the Right knows how to hijack an algorithm.
I also learned about the Curation/Search Radicalization Spiral from a piece by Mike Caulfield. Caulfiend uses the horrific example of Dylann Roof. You remember him? He shot up a church in a Black neighborhood a few years ago. Roof says he was radicalized when he googled âBlack on white crimeâ and saw the results. Now, if you search the phrase âcrime statistics by demographic,â you will find fairly nonpartisan results that show most crimes are committed against members of the perpetratorâs own race, and Black people commit crimes against white people at about the same rate as any other two demographics. But that specific phrase, âBlack on white crime,â is used almost exclusively by white racists, and so Roofâs first hit wasnât a database of crime statistics, it was the Council of Conservative Citizens. Now, the CCC is an outgrowth of the White Citizens Councils of the 50âs and 60âs which rebranded in â85. They publish bogus statistics that paint Black people as uniquely violent. And they introduce a number of other politically-loaded phrases - like, say, âMuslim fertility ratesâ - that nonpartisan sites donât use, and so, if Roof googles them as well, he gets similarly weighted results.
I have tons more examples of this stuff. I literally donât have time to show it all. Like, have you heard of Google bombing? Thatâs a thing I didnât know existed. The point is, the same way search engines tailor your results to what they think you want, once you scratch the surface of the Alt-Right they are highly adept at making it so, whenever you go online, their version of reality is all you know and all you see.
Finally, pain. This was the difficult one. Can you create a Disorganized Attachment relationship over the internet with a largely faceless and decentralized movement? I pitched the idea to one the researchers I spoke to, and he said, âThat sounds very plausible, and nearly impossible to research.â See, cults and hate groups? They donât wanna talk to researchers anymore than the Alt-Right wants to talk to me. Stein and Kimmel get their data by speaking to formers, people whoâve exited these movements and are all too happy to share how horrible they were. But the Alt-Right is still very young, and there just arenât that many formers yet.
I found some testimonials, and they mostly back up my hypothesis, but thereâs not enough that I could call them statistically significant. So I had to look where the data was.
My fellow YouTuber ContraPoints made a video last year - in my opinion, her best one - about incels (thatâs âinvoluntary celibate,â men who canât get laid). Incel forums tend to be deeply misogynistic and antifeminist, and have a high overlap with the Alt-Right. If you remember Elliot Rodger, he was an incel. Contraâs observation was that these forums were incredibly fatalistic: you are too ugly and women too shallow for you to ever have sex, so you should give up. She described a certain catharsis, like picking a really painful scab, in hearing other people voice your worst fears. But there was no uplift; these communities seemed to have a zero-tolerance policy for optimism. She likened it so some deeply unhealthy trans forums she used to visit, where people wallowed in their own dysphoria.
And I remembered the forums I researched five years ago in preparation for my video on GamerGate. (If you donât know what GamerGate was, I will not rob you of your precious innocence. But, in a lot of ways, GamerGate was the trial run for what the Alt-Right has become.) These forums were full of angry guys surrounding themselves with people saying, âYouâre right to be angry.â And, yeah, if everywhere else you go treats your anger as invalid, that scratches an itch. But I never saw any of them calm down. They came in angry and they came out angrier. And most didnât have anywhere else to vent, so they all came back.
I found a paper on Alt-Right forums that described a similar type of nihilism, and another on 8chan. What humor was on these sites was always shocking, furiously punching down, and deeply self-referential, but it didnât seem like anyone was expected to laugh anymore, just, you know, catch the reference. I found one testimonial saying that having healthy relationships in these spaces is functionally impossible, and the one former I talked to said, yeah, when the Alt-Right isnât winning everyoneâs miserable.
So I think it might fit. The place they go for relief also makes them unhappy, so they come back to get relief again, and it just repeats. Same reason people stay with abusers. I wanna look into this further, so, Iâll just say this part to the camera: if there are any researchers watching who wanna study this, get at me.
Finally, I read Alt-America by David Neiwert, a supremely useful book that I highly recommend if you wanna know how the Alt-Right is the natural outgrowth of the militia and Patriot movements of the 90âs and early 2000âs, not to mention the Tea Party. Neiwert also does an excellent job illustrating how conspiracism serves to fill in the gap between the complexity of the modern world and the simplistic, might-makes-right worldview of fascism.
Neiwert also provides an interesting piece of the puzzle, suggesting what people are actually looking for when they get recruited. He references work done by John Bargh and Katelyn McKenna on Identity Demarginalization. Bargh and McKenna looked at the internet habits of people whose identities are both devalued in our society and invisible. By invisible, what I mean is, ok, if youâre a person of color, our society devalues your identity, but you can look around a room and, within a certain margin of error, see who else is POC, and form community with them if you wish. But, if youâre queer, you canât see who else in a room is queer unless one of you runs up a flag. And revealing yourself always means taking on a certain amount of risk that youâve misread the signals, that the person you reveal yourself to is not only not queer, but a homophobe.
According to Bargh and McKenna, people in this situation are much more likely to seek online spaces that self-select for that identity. A fan forum for RuPaulâs Drag Race is maybe a safer place to come out and find community. And people tend to get very emotionally tied to these online spaces where they can be themselves.
Neiwert points out that the same phenomenon happens among privileged people who have identities that are devalued even as theyâre not actually oppressed. Say, nerds, or conservatives in liberal towns, or men who donât fit traditional notions of masculinity. They are also likely to deeply invest themselves in online spaces made for them. And if the Far Right can build such a community, or get a foothold in one that already exists, it is very easy to channel that sense of marginalization into Durden Syndrome. I connected this with Rebecca Lewisâ observation that the Alternative Influence Network tends to present itself as nerd-focused life advice first and politics second, and the long history of reactionaries recruiting from fandoms.
So I can see all the pieces of the abuse dynamic being recreated here: offer you something you need, estrange you from other perspectives and healthy relationships, overtake your life, and provoke emotional distress that makes you seek comfort only your abuser is offering. And I found a lot more parallels than what Iâm sharing right now, I only have half an hour! But the thing thatâs missing thatâs usually central to such a system is, an abusive relationship orbits around the abuser, a cult around the cult leader, a totalitarian government around a dictator. They are built to serve the whims of an individual. But I look at the ad hoc nature of the Alt-Right and I have to ask: who is the architect?
I can see a lot of people profiting off of this structure; our current President rode it to great success, but he didnât build it. It predates him. Itâs more like Kimmelâs hate groups, which donât promote an individual so much as a class of individuals, but, even then, their structure is much more deliberate, designed, where the Alt-Right seems almost improvised.
Well⌠one observation I took from Stein is that cult recruiters often rely on two different kinds of propaganda: the winding diatribe and the thought-terminating cliche. The diatribe is when someone talks at length, sounds smart, and seems to know what theyâre talking about but isnât actually making sense, and the thought-terminating cliche comes from Robert Jay Liftonâs studies into brainwashing. So, I went vegetarian in middle school, and, when I would tell other kids I was vegetarian, some would get kind of defensive and say things like, âhumans arenât meant to be vegetarian, itâs the food chain.â Now, saying âitâs the food chainâ isnât meant to be a good argument, itâs meant to communicate âI have said something so axiomatically true that the argument need not continue.â Thatâs a thought-terminating cliche; something that may not be true, but feels true and gives you permission to think about something else.
Both these techniques rely on whatâs called Peripheral-Route Processing. So, Iâm up here talking about politics, and, Solidarity Lowell, you are a group of politically-engaged people, so you probably have enough context to know whether Iâm talking out of my ass. Thatâs Direct-Route Processing, where you judge the contents of my argument. But if I were up here talking about string theory, you might not know whether I was talking out of my ass because thereâs only so many people on Earth who understand string theory. So then you might look at secondary characteristics of my argument: the fact that Iâve been invited to speak on string theory implies I know what Iâm talking about; maybe I put up a lot of equations and drop the names of mathematicians and say they agree with me; maybe I just sound really authoritative. All thatâs Peripheral-Route Processing: judging the quality of my argument by how itâs delivered.
Every act of communication involves both, but if youâre trying to sell people on something thatâs fundamentally irrational, youâre going to rely heavily on Peripheral-Route tactics, which is what the winding diatribe and the thought-terminating cliche are.
I noted that these two methods mapped pretty cleanly onto the rhetorical stylings of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. But hereâs the question: cults use these techniques to recruit people. But can I say with any confidence that Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are trying to recruit people into the Alt-Right?
The thing is, âAlt-Rightâ isnât a term like âklansman.â Itâs more akin to a term like âmodernism.â Itâs a label applied to a trend. In the same way we debate the line between modernism and postmodernism, we debate the line between Right and Alt-Right. People donât sign up to be in the Alt-Right, you are Alt-Right if you say youâre Alt-Right. But the nature of the Alt-Right is that 90% of them would never admit to it.
So are Peterson and Shapiro intentionally recruiting for the Alt-Right? Are they grifters merely profiting off of the Alt-Right? Are they even aware theyâre recruiting for the Alt-Right? Part of my work has been accepting that you canât know for sure. It would be naive to say theyâre unaware; when they give speeches they get Nazis in their Q&A sections, and they know that. But how aware are they? I suspect Shapiro moreso than Peterson, but thatâs just my gut talking and I canât prove it. Like 90% of the Alt-Right, itâs debatable.
I donât know if theyâre trying to be part of this system, I just know theyâre not trying not to be.
A final academic term before we say goodnight thatâs been making the rounds among lefty YouTubers is âStochastic Terrorism.â Thereâs a really great video about this by the channel NonCompete called The PewDiePipeline. Stochastic Terrorism is the myriad ways you can increase the likelihood that someone will commit violence without actually telling them to. You simply create an environment in which lone wolf violence becomes more acceptable and appealing. It mirrors the structure of terrorism without the control or culpability.
And I hear about this, and I look at this recruitment structure I see approximated in the Alt-Right, and I remember something I learned much earlier in my research, from Bob Altemeyer in his book The Authoritarians. Altemeyer has been studying authoritarianism for decades, he has a wealth of data, and one thing he observes is that authoritarianism is the few exerting power over the many, which means there are two types of authoritarians: the ones who lead and the ones who follow. Turns out those are completely different personality profiles. Followers donât want to be in charge, they want someone to tell them what to do, to say âyouâre the good guys,â and put them in charge of punishing the bad guys. They donât even care who the bad guys are; part of the appeal is that someone else makes that judgment for them.
So if you can encourage a degree of authoritarian sentiment in people, get them wanting nothing more than to be ensconced in a totalist system that will take their agency away from them, putting them in the orbit of an authoritarian leader, but no leader presents themself⌠can you just kind of⌠appoint one?
Like, if you donât have a leader, can you just find yourself an authoritarian and treat him like one? And, if he doesnât give you enough directives, can you just make some up? And, if you donât have recruiters, can you find a conservative who speaks in thought-terminating cliches just because he thinks they win arguments; find a conservative who speaks in meaningless diatribes because he thinks heâs making sense; and then maneuver those speeches and videos in front of people you want to recruit? If youâre sick of waiting for Moses to come down the mountain with the Word of God, can you just build your own god from whateverâs handy?
Every piece of this structure, you can find people, algorithms, and arguments that, put in sequence, can generate Disorganized Attachment whether theyâre trying to or not, which makes every part plausibly deniable. Debatable. You just need to make it profitable enough for the ones involved that they donât fix it. This is a system created collaboratively, on the fly, with the help of a lot of people from hate movements past, mostly by throwing a ton of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. The Alt-Right is a rapidly-mutating virus and the web is the perfect incubator; it very quickly finds a structure that works, and itâs a structure weâve seen before, just a little weirder this time.
Iâve started calling this Stochastic Totalism.
Now, again, Iâm not a professional researcher; I do my homework but I donât have the background. I have an art degree. This isnât something I can prove so much as a way Iâve come to look at the Alt-Right that makes sense to me and helps me understand them. And I got a lot of comments on my last video from people who used to be Alt-Right that echoed my assumptions. But donât take it as gospel.
Mostly I wanted to share this because, if it can help you make sense of what weâre dealing with, I think itâs worth putting out there.
Thank you.
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TWP Chapter 21
A shuttle took us to the Negotiator once we dropped the 501st and Master Skywalker off on their ship. A report had been given to the Jedi Council already. Eleven dead, several wounded. The price for an arrogant politician's actions. I had made it a point to stay silent the entire time, coming to terms with my feelings regarding the entire situation. My disdain for Chairman Cho, my indifference for his death, my inability to set it all aside and try to come to a peaceful solution.
I had failed as a Jedi, and yet it didn't feel like it. The silent, but powerful gratitude I felt in the clones when I visited the med bay made it all worth it. In the corridors, the 501st said nothing, but every clone I walked past either saluted me or patted my shoulder. There was no need for more. But in the back of my mind, I knew my behavior had not been that of a Jedi. The real question was: was that really wrong?
All of this I considered in silence, I had to sort my emotions on my own before I asked Master Kenobi the important questions. I needed to know the source of my hatred for Cho -other than the obvious-, the reason behind my protectiveness of the clones and my attachment to them. I needed to figure out if I was truly capable of feeling all of this but not let it dictate my actions. Was I capable of accepting the death of those around me and not let my grief turn into hatred? Was I capable of processing it all and letting it go? If I was in a situation where I couldn't really take my time to process it all, how would I react?
Master Kenobi decided not to comment on my silence, at least not until we were on board the Negotiator. He had probably felt my struggle and decided to give me some time to sort it all out. Master Kenobi, I'd realized, was the type of Master to be quietly supportive. He would give you time to figure things out on your own and only interfere if things felt like they were getting out of hand. He was the kind of person who knows when to shut up and when to interfere.
Unlike Master Plo, who decided to simply wait until I came to him with my concerns because he knew I trusted him enough to do so, and he trusted me to figure things out on my own in turn. I guess it was because of the nature of each master. Kenobi might have been a good negotiator, but at the end of the day he was a Guardian, always would be. There was no way he would stand idly by when he felt turmoil within his Padawan.
"You've been awfully quiet since we left orbit." He was trying to be casual about it, asking only when the only people around were a few maintenance droids and the hangar crew. "Don't get me wrong, it is nice to have a Padawan who can stay still for a change, but the Force does not lie, Kriari. What's on your mind?"
I smiled, I'd have to ask him about that some other time.
"I don't know if Master Plo ever told you, but I'm not good with emotions -feeling them that is." I started "I'm more mentally oriented and feelings confuse me a lot. I'm trying to sort mine out and understand them. That way, if I know how I respond emotionally to certain situations, I can know what to expect of myself in the future. It makes not giving into them a bit easier."
This seemed to amuse Obi-Wan.
"Emotions are very volatile, and they are meant to be felt, not thought, young one. Analysing them will only get you so far."
We started to make our way out of the hangar and towards the elevators, we had to meet with Commander Cody for debriefing and status reports on the 212th.
"I know that, Master, but it doesn't hurt to try. It's also an excuse to reevaluate my relationships with the people around me. I might not have acted on impulse in Orto Plutonia, but I did let my feelings get the best of me. Charman Cho-"
"You did nothing wrong in Orto Plutonia, Kriari. The Chairman was a test on the resolve of all of us present. Not acting on your emotions does not mean you don't get to feel them. You are entitled to your own opinion on the man and his actions. The Force knows it was a test for all three of us to keep it together." He said as the doors to the upper level opened. "You forget you are a Padawan, this is the time for you to make mistakes and learn from them, don't be so hard on yourself."
It was at times like these that I realized just how lucky I had been when I'd been assigned both my masters. They were understanding and compassionate, but they knew where to draw the line. Master Kenobi, as a Guardian, often took a more direct approach to every situation, while Master Plo was willing to wait and let things pan out before acting. It was a good thing that I was Padawan to both. One appealed to my rational side, and the other to my intuition, but both of them knew where my priorities lied and respected that.
Cody was waiting for us at the bridge, but the Force around him wasn't calm and collected as usual, something had happened. If I'd felt it, then Master Kenobi had too, but when I looked at him all I saw was his unmoveable exterior. To me, Master Plo felt safe because he was a comforting presence, someone who would validate your fears but guide you through them. Master Kenobi -on the other hand- felt safe because he was strong, supporting, immovable like a pillar holding the ceiling above your head even in the face of an earthquake.
"You have news for us, I gather, Cody." Said my Master.
"I do, Sir," started the commander before turning on a holo map on the tactical table. "We have received a transmission from Naboo. Senator Amidala has found a Separatist lab within the system and has requested Jedi intervention."
What was the saying, again? No rest for the wicked?
...
I adjusted my new armour as I exited my quarters aboard the Negotiator. After the other set had been all but melted off my back, Master Kenobi put a few of his men to work on a new one. This one still had the original gray design of the Pack on the left arm, but the right one now sported a straight yellow line that ran from my shoulder to my wrist. The chest piece had been left its original white, and the symbol of the Jedi order had been moved to where my heart was. When I asked about it, Master Kenobi shot a side glance at Cody and grinned. The Clone Commander blushed lightly. It was so that I could blend in easier in the 212th -he said- scratching nervously at the back of his head. It was heartwarming, the fact that -even after working together for a short while- Cody was still welcoming me into the battalion as if I'd been there the entire time.
Clone loyalty was something that had baffled me from the very beginning. Even during the first assault on Geognosis, the clones had welcomed me in as one of their own, and even after that, some of them remained my closest friends. Art, Twitch, Boost, Wolffe, and even Headfirst had shown their loyalty time and time again. Not only by saving my life and having my back, but also by showing me they cared.
Wolffe tried to keep me safe at every turn, he monitored me closer than anyone else and made sure I was level headed in the field. Art made sure not to pry every time I sat down to get tattooed. He knew the weight of those names, he never asked how many names I had left, or if I was planning to stop at some point. He made sure each stroke was precise so it didn't need going over. He never asked if I was tired of it or if I didn't think I had too many already. Twitch made sure to check on my mental health even when he wasn't assigned to watch me, he would recommend books or bands or holo shows to keep my mind entertained and away from the battlefield. Headfirst made sure to spar with me every time one of us had the time, and he insisted it was so that I wouldn't lose my touch.
And the men of the 212th were starting to warm up to me quickly too. Their loyalty to their General extended to me as well, so it took little convincing for them to acknowledge me as a part of their battalion.
They had all proved to me time and time again that they would be risking their lives for me as much as I'd been doing for them, not because it was their duty, but because they wanted to keep me alive.
I double checked that I had both my lightsaber and my Kel Dor mask before finally stepping into the hangar. I decided that -since we were going to infiltrate a laboratory- it was in my best interest to have something to help filter the air around me. I did not put it past the separatists to use biological warfare when it would clearly give their droid forces an advantage over an army of life forms. Even if blowing up the entire facility would only compromise Naboo instead of the dozens of systems they were aiming for.
After receiving further information from Naboo, Masters Kenobi and Skywalker decided that a smaller taskforce was probably better in close quarters. Master Kenobi and I would be taking a single squad made up of two teams of four. The bomb diffusing team would go in with General Kenobi, and the assault team would come with me. Master Skywalker and Ahsoka would be doing the same. The aim was to capture the lab, its resident chemist and rescue both Senator Amidala and Representative Binks without setting off any of the bombs that contained an airborne version of the Blue Shadow virus. It was a delicate operation, and the stakes were higher than ever.
My master and the rest of the squad were waiting for me aboard the LAAT/i that would take us to the surface where we would have one last briefing before storming the facility. The men were doing last minute checks on their armour integrity and weapons function as the pilot closed the blast doors and carefully started the taking off sequence. In my head I went over the plan once again and did a mental checklist on everything I had on me. Mask, check; lightsaber, check; armour, check; names of the teamâŚ
I realized I had never worked closely with any of the 212th before, and there had been no time for introductions right then, rescue missions needed to be quick. I introduced myself to the four troopers that would be working with me. Waxer, Boil, T.H. and Ginger introduced themselves in turn. they had heard a lot about me from Rex, they said. Which only made me dread what the Captain might have told them. I hoped nothing about my tendency to catch fire.
But there was no time for that now. We arrived at Theed in no time, and there was a meeting to attend. The plan was simple: Ahsoka and I would be leading our teams through one of the lab's entrances and creating a distraction so that our Masters could disarm the bombs and rescue the hostages. I was confident we could make it with minimal casualties. And even if ours was the most action packed mission, I would rather face droids than try and diffuse bombs before the virus killed us all.
As it turns out, it didn't really matter what I wanted. In war, if something could go wrong, it would. And this mission was no exception.
#TWP#clone wars fan fiction#star wars the clone wars#plo koon#commander wolffe#obi-wan kenobi#ahsoka tano#captain rex#padawan!oc
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âPeople die, itâs the one thing weâre universally good at as a species.â
âSome days you just have to say...â
âsay what?â
âI have no flippin clue!â
âJust because you love someone and they love you doesnât mean they arenât dangerous for you. It certainly doesnât mean that they canât hurt you. In fact it usually makes it much more likely.â
âBut you forgot how stubborn I can be.â
âI was actually going to use another word but it starts with the same three letters.â
âHope is a rare thing these days and unfortunately regret isnât.â
âIt started, as many things do with a broken chair that had simply had enough.â
âWe donât cry that our time is cut short, we bless all the time we had because tomorrow is a gift not a promise.â
âTime travel stole my butt!â
âIâm too tired. You know the kind of tired you get when youâve seen too much unseeable, known too much unknowable and tried too hard for too long to change the unchangeable.â
âYouâre just embarrassed that you were rescued by the girl that used to wipe your nose.â
âI retired because the world is far too good at getting into trouble and far too bad at showing any gratitude.â
âYou know itâs very rude to ask a lady her age.â
âI know that but i didnât ask a lady I asked you.â
âIâm trying to explain that the world is in grave danger.â
âOh I got that part. What I fail to understand is why thatâs in any way my responsibility to fix.â
âWhy is my cabin on fire!â
âIâve lived too long to believe in sanitized fairy tales but I know the bloody originals are usually true.â
âPlease donât trust any information you get from drunk skeletons.â
âWe keep living because they canât anymore.â
âThat was rude.â
âWell Iâm very old, Iâm entitled.â
âYou would never accept one of us giving in like this. So why are you so different? Why do you get to give up?â
âThis isnât giving up. This is me accepting that this is the end for me. After everything Iâve done and been through this is my final call and that isnât a bad thing. Everything ends and sometimes itâs just time to go.â
âDoes saving the world mean I have to put on shoes?â
âOh I care. My life would be so much easier if I didnât but I do. I care so much, far too much.â
âItâs days like this that really make me wish I could get drunk!â
âUnfortunately itâs all too common that what people donât understand they want to set on fire.â
âIâm several hundred years old and my closest friends are a werewolf, a vampire and a living skeleton, nothing you are could surprise me.â
âSince life is hell than I guess the dead are the lucky ones.â
âI figured the best person to look after you would be your younger self.â
âThatâs a terrible idea! Iâve been out to get myself for the past several hundred years!â
âIâve forgotten more life than you have lived.â
âOf course thereâs a bomb! Thereâs always a bomb!â
âIf all of life is a show than Iâd like to fire the director.â
âIâd say there is a glitch in the matrix but given our luck thatâs too likely to be real.â
âPlease can I have just one day when no one dies.â
âWhy should I believe a word that comes out of your mouth?â
âUsually you shouldnât but today Iâm in a bit of a rush.â
âThere is no such thing as heroes or villains. Thereâs just people. People who try to do the right thing, people who make mistakes, just people. Thatâs what makes it so hard.â
âWho drinks mouthwash?!â
âDonât judge me!â
âUnfortunately the people who will hurt us rarely wear neon signs proclaiming that they will do wrong.â
âIâm not going to die today because Iâm not giving you that satisfaction.â
âOh Iâm so glad that you made me leave my quiet cabin in the middle of nowhere for this!â
âAdmit it you missed the action.â
âEven if I did do you really think I would tell you that?â
âWhy does no one just call me up for a nice game of ultimate frisbee?â
âThe smaller something is the more likely that it wants to kill you.â
âIf you donât come back with every single one of them in one piece I will make you fill out so much paperwork!â
âI would have looked out for them without the threat you know!â
âJust shake the flippin teddy bearâs paw!â
âIâm not ready for you to go!â
âWe rarely feel we are. However you may not feel prepared to let go but you are ready to stand on your own.â
âSee, back in civilization 5 minutes and already things are in the mud.â
âHow do you keep going on?â
âSpite and a cursed pendant.â
âPlease be serious.â
âOh but I am, without those two things I would have died long ago.â
âFine! Forget it! Iâm sorry I asked!â
âBecause the world doesnât stop turning just because you want it to.â
âWhat?â
âI keep going on because as much as it hurts the world is still going on. The sun still rises and falls. The dishes still need to be washed and the trash needs to be taken out. People still get in and out of trouble. I still have responsibilities and there are still things I need to do.â
âSo you just keep going despite the hurt?â
âYes and eventually as you keep going on, you find the hurt to be more bearable and life is eventually liveable again instead of survivable.â
âAre you drunk?â
âOh how I wish!â
âSometimes the only way to survive this world is to be as cold and unforgiving as it is.â
âYouâre our best hope.â
âAnd you donât find that incredibly depressing?!â
âThe key is not to try and change the whole world but to just change one world.â
âArenât people supposed to get more mature as they get older?â
âYes but eventually you reach a point where you start going backwards.â
âYou do know that having children as a backup in the event you screw up is really messed up!â
âSometimes all you can do is save one starfish.â
âSorry, the earth only swallows you up when itâs completely inconvenient.â
âDonât worry you will eventually find someone who will cover you with a umbrella rather than watch you stand in the rain.â
âWe Just traveled over a hundred years into the past in order to stop a plot to completely change the world as we know it and you arenât even the least bit phased!?â
âQuite frankly this isnât even the weirdest thing to happen to me today.â
âSometimes people surprise you. Itâs rare but it does happen.â
âWhy are you soaking wet?â
âI fell out of a submarine.â
âHow... never mind I donât want to know.â
âItâs not my responsibility to make you comfortable with what I am.â
âI so regret teaching you to talk.â
âYou didnât teach me to talk.â
âWell then I regret that I wasnât there to prevent it.â
âSee all those little lies you tell to get you through they all start to pile up and eventually they completely smother the truth and you look in the mirror and donât know the person looking back.â
âWhoever has been spreading these nasty rumours that Iâm a good person really needs to stop.â
âYou have to forgive yourself for surviving.â
âHave you?â
âThatâs different.â
âSo how was it growing up with dinosaurs?â
âIt was great! Had a pet triceratops named Trixie!â
âYou know the joke is no fun if you go along with it.â
âWho was joking?!â
âLiving isnât always easy. Sometimes itâs all difficult choices and burying people you care about.â
âYouâre really not good at this encouraging thing you know.â
âYeah but itâs the hard days that make the good ones special. Like walking out of here and going home to the people waiting for us.â
âDonât play cards with him he cheats.â
âSo do you!â
âHow do you think I know that you cheat!â
âDo you trust me?â
âCan you give me any reasons that I should?â
âNot really. Except that I will do everything in my power to make sure you get through this at least partially intact.â
#quotes from my novel#please ask me about them#ask and I will give context#long post#mine#death mention
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Michaela Brown, ScaryMommy:
Upon graduating college with my hard-earned degree to teach high school English, I almost immediately began planning for  my graduate studies. Lots of high schools around the country require their teachers to have a masters degree, so that was a motivator. Plus, it came with a pay raise. And, I truly enjoyed going to school. In fact, at the time, I hadnât ruled out going on and earning my doctorate as well.
I did end up graduating with my M.A. in secondary education, after writing a thesis Iâm damn proud of. My path changed a bit and I never went on for my doctorate, but you can be sure as hell if I had that Iâd claim that Dr. title. That my studentsâeven the grumpiest of teenagers whose eyes shot daggers at me as I made them read Shakespearean sonnetsâwould be calling me Dr. and not Mrs. or Miss.
And as Iâve encountered other professionals with that Dr. title, Iâve never hesitated to refer to them that way. My childrenâs formal principal went by Dr. Matthews. No one questioned it. Iâve had professors at the undergraduate and graduate level use the title. Again, thatâs what we all called them. With respect. And without hesitation. Just as we refer to famous figures like a man weâve all heard ofâDr. Martin Luther King, Jr.â because each of these people put in the work, the years, the money, the commitment, and the dedication. Each of them earned their Dr. title.
So yeah, when Dr. Jill Biden completed her education and earned her Doctor of Education (Ed.D) from the University of Delaware, she rightfully earned the title âDr.â and deserves to be referred to as such. Just as any other professional with that level of expertise does as well. Is she a medical doctor? No. Does she claim to be? No. Have professionals in academia added Dr. to their titles once theyâve earned their doctorate for centuries? Yes.
However, because some ignorant asswipes remain stuck in 1950, or donât understand how higher education works, or simply are bound and determined to hate on the Bidens as they hated on the Obamas even though they are kind and supportive of othersâregardless of political party, her title is under scrutiny.
The Wall Street Journal stupidly published an op-ed, which has now gone viral, that was moronically entitled, âIs There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.â And, of course, this piece of trash essay included a byline that reads, âJill Biden should think about dropping the honorific, which feels fraudulent, even comic.â
Joseph Epstein, the âwriterâ of this ignorant word vomit, opens by condescendingly calling Dr. Biden âkiddoâ and offering her advice, as if he is in any position to advise the First Lady of the United States on literally anything. âMadame First LadyâMrs. BidenâJillâkiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter,â Epstein mansplains.
He then goes on to insult her dissertation on student retention at community colleges, calling it âunpromisingâ and, in the same paragraph, refers to the idiotic but commonly used quip that no one can call themselves âdoctorâ unless theyâve delivered a child.
Letâs break this bullshittery down, shall we? First of all, Mr. Epstein, your piece reeks of envy. Weâre sorry you didnât have the⌠guts? courage? stamina? intelligence level? (who knows) to actually ever earn a doctorate, but you sound bitter. Itâs not a good look. Also, itâs clear that you donât respect the value of community colleges, which is where Dr. Biden has spent a large portion of her career. And, finally, the world now knows that you are threatened by smart women. Bravo.
Also, weâll be sure to let all the medical doctors out there whoâve tirelessly fought COVID-19 this year, holding the hands of dying patients, and also those brilliant scientists who thankfully have brought us a vaccine that offers a beacon of hope, that they donât get to call themselves âdoctorâ because theyâve never caught a newborn baby. Iâm sure theyâll appreciate that tidbit of info from youâ*checks notes*âa man with one single undergraduate degree, no earned doctorate, and zero medical expertise.
Basically, Mr. Epstein, itâs obvious that you have some personal issues you need to unpack. Maybe take some time over the holidays to do a little self-reflection? Like, why do you even care what title Dr. Biden goes by? Why are you so scared of women who are more successful than you?
Your piece then goes on a long, barely coherent rant about âhonorary doctorates,â which is not what Dr. Biden has. If youâd like to blast the validity or point of bestowing honorary doctorates on celebrities like Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, for example, go right ahead, but that has nothing to do with Dr. Biden. This lack of cohesive argument is why Iâve referred to you as a âwriterâ a few paragraphs up, because it seems apparent that you donât understand the need for basic textual support.
(Calling you a jealous asswipe, well, thatâs just a reflection of your character.)
Finally, your last âsupporting argumentâ (again, use of quotes intentional here) as to why Dr. Biden should drop her title is because apparently doctorates donât count anymore. Back in the day, you explain, doctoral exams were far more grueling, but todayâs candidates get off way too easy.
âOne had to pass examinations in two foreign languages, one of them Greek or Latin, defend oneâs thesis, and take an oral examination on general knowledge in oneâs field,â your op-ed states. âAt Columbia University of an earlier day, a secretary sat outside the room where these examinations were administered, a pitcher of water and a glass on her desk. The water and glass were there for the candidates who fainted. A far cry, this, from the few doctoral examinations I sat in on during my teaching days, where candidates and teachers addressed one another by first names and the general atmosphere more resembled a kaffeeklatsch.â
(I had to look up what kaffeeklatsch meantâitâs an informal social gathering at which coffee is served. Excuse my lack of knowledge there. Iâm just a silly woman with a higher degree than you.)
And, as you end with, âDr. Jill, I note you acquired your Ed.D. as recently as 15 years ago at age 55, or long after the terror had departed,â you not only insult her by addressing her as âDr. Jillâ, but you also imply that because she likely didnât faint while taking her exams or defending her dissertation, that somehow her degree isnât real.
Thatâs the crazy thing about educationâit evolves. Today, kids even use these neat little things called computers! You wouldnât believe it. Another way weâve evolved is to realize that shockingly, our doctoral candidates donât have to become physically ill to prove they are smart and worthy of their degree!
(I mean, you never even tried, Mr. Epstein, so I guess even today, doctoral programs are only for the toughest among us, like Dr. Jill Biden.)
Also, it seems that Northwestern University, where you were previously listed as âemeritus lecturer of English,â has scrubbed you entirely from their website, stating that it is âfirmly committed to equity, diversity and inclusion, and strongly disagrees with Epsteinâs misogynistic views.â Again, evolution! Change is good.
Hmmm. So one of you is a misogynist with no teaching history to even brag about as your previous employer has disassociated with you, and another is a successful educator committing to helping all Americans have access to a proper education. Oh, and the second one goes by Dr.
Looks like the real âcomical fraudâ is you, bruh.
And just so weâre clear, Dr. Biden has always been committed to ensuring that everyone (not just pretentious twats like you, Joseph Epstein) has access to a fair education. Earlier in her career, she worked in a psychiatric hospital where she taught English to adolescents with emotional disabilities. During that same time she also earned two (yes, TWO) masterâs degrees, one from Villanova University and one from West Chester University. In 2009, after earning her doctorate, she began teaching English at Northern Virginia Community College, and advocating for community college education has since been her passion. âDr. Biden has always said that community colleges are âone of Americaâs best-kept secrets.â As a teacher, she sees how community colleges have changed the lives of so many of her students for the better,â explains former president Barack Obamaâs White House website.
Sorry, Mr. Epstein, but not everyone can afford to enroll in an English class at Northwestern taught by a raging sexist who gets his balls in a bunch when women succeed. For many, community college is a better fit, and Dr. Biden is a big part of that.
âIn 2012, she traveled across the country as part of the âCommunity College to Careerâ tour to highlight successful industry partnerships between community colleges and employers,â the website goes on to say. âIn the fall of 2010, she hosted the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges with President Obama, and she continues to work on this outreach on behalf of the Administration â frequently visiting campuses, meeting with students and teachers, as well as industry representatives around the country.â
Imagine all of the hard-working Americans Dr. Biden has helped by supporting community colleges. Future teachers just like her often get their degree while working full time, raising a family, and going to college at night. Who knows, some of them may evenâgaspâgo to grad school too. High school kids who choose to forego going away to a full-time university and instead, take classes at a community college closer to home, are given that option because of people like Dr. Biden. Kids who go on to be EMTs, police officers, technicians in trade industries, engineers, and find success in the business world. Or, they transfer those college credits to a larger university down the road when they have the means to do so. Single moms doing their best to give their children a good life often attend community college classes online, after their children are asleep, proving that they have the drive and determination to do more and be more.
So, what it all boils down to, Mr. Epstein, is that you really, really hate that thereâs about to a woman in the White House whoâs smarter than you. And not only that, but she inspires women everywhere to work hard, earn their degrees, and then theyâll be smarter than you too. Yikes. Thatâs a tough pickle to be in, Mr. Epstein. Weâre sorry that you are so insecure and unhappy with your own lack of success.
At least you can still wrote those stellar op-eds though! Good luck with your âwritingâ career, kiddo.
#dr. jill biden#michaela brown#scarymommy#op ed#joseph epstein#current events#SO fired up right now#gimme that feminism#my country tis of thee#long post
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One challenge of white ally-ship in the age of BLM.
In the age of Black Lives Matter, how Iâm hoping this chapter of life gets labeled some day, being a white ally has presented new challenges. Iâm working through these challenges in the only way I can, listening and learning from Black and POC voices. There are maybe two things Iâve been hung up on consistently over the last few days and I think I had a bit of a breakthrough. Part of me wants to write this out just to write it out, but I would be lying if I implied this post was only for me. If you consider yourself a white ally, I suspect youâre meeting challenges too. And maybe some of what Iâve landed on can resonate with you as well. Most of my communication with others is happening through social media and messaging apps. This is for safety reasons, of course, and because I genuinely believe social media is a tool we can use for change. Iâm not here to have that fight with you today. In my various feeds, Iâve seen a handful of white people say things like, âwell, _____ is Black and heâs not out marching/he believes all lives matter/Blue lives matter/heâs a cop and he says this is all bullshit.â Etc. This is a challenge because what is happening right now in this country does indeed require white folks to listen to Black and POC voices. In a lot of cases in my feed, I donât ever get to interact with the Black people these white people are speaking for. Maybe they donât exist. But I donât consider that a fair assumption. So, for the sake of the argument, letâs say they do exist. I will note here that none of the Black or POC voices in my feed have said anything remotely close to these things that Iâve heard reiterated by white folks as excuses for their silence or opposition. But, as I said, for the sake of the argument, letâs say they exist. It hasnât seemed appropriate for me to preach listening to Black and POC voices and then shut down these white people when they do just that. So how can I, as an ally, navigate this sticking point in a conversation I believe may have some impact of value? Keep in mind, I know Iâm not magically changing any minds. But I do have the tools, mostly communication skills, to share a new piece of information in a way that may be understood for the first time in another personâs life. I believe I can do this because Iâve done it before in other contexts... but again, not here to have this fight today. So, when a conversation about the protests in this country goes in this direction, how can I, as an ally, proceed? Here is a thing I know that is true of all humans, regardless of race or culture. We all experience things differently. Your experience is never exactly the same as someone elseâs. This is because even if we survive the same event, our points of view differ, as do our backgrounds and philosophical/spiritual beliefs and our neural processing techniques. No two people will survive the same trauma in the exact same way. Now for the hypothetical. Letâs say ten people experience the same event. Of these ten, six eventually speak out. Though they lived it differently, each of the six experienced trauma during their shared event. Maybe some of the six seek therapy or other psychiatric treatment to overcome their trauma. Maybe some of the six find healing in telling their stories. Maybe one of the six turns to alcohol to self-medicate. In a situation like this, it will never be appropriate to say to those six individuals, âit couldnât have been that bad, those other four people were there and they are fine, so you should be too.â First of all, we donât know for sure that those other individuals are fine. Maybe those four are processing things differently. But yes, it is also possible that they werenât traumatized by the shared experience. Even if they werenât though, we donât get to be the people that decide that the four are ârightâ and the six are âwrong.â In any situation that statement is true, but itâs especially true when we didnât witness the same event those ten people did. Each perspective of those ten people deserves to be heard and valued. But itâs vital that we learn to value one without devaluing the other.Â
In a situation where four people are saying, âno really, everything is fine,â and six people are saying, âI am not okay, and things are not fine.â It is our responsibility to hear them all. After we hear them, though, what must we do next? Well, if those four people really do believe that everything is fine, then maybe we donât need to do anything else for them. If the other six people ask for help, though, we help them.Â
I would never imply that I know anything at all about what it is like to be Black in this country. I do know what itâs like to be traumatized and to not be believed. Nothing in my comfortable and privileged life has been as physically and emotionally challenging as telling my story and having the people in my life refuse to hear my truth. One of the greatest and most simple gifts we can give to others is simply believing them and validating their experiences.Â
If the event in the hypothetical is being Black in America, obviously not everyone will respond to that the same way. Not everyone will be presented with the same foundations, backgrounds, choices, and experiences.Â
Is that metaphor clear?Â
Black outrage is not hard to find right now. If youâre not seeing it, youâre choosing not to look. Itâs our responsibility to look. And then itâs our responsibility to listen and change our behavior in a way that contributes to their fight.Â
This metaphor is far from perfect. But it has helped me clarify my thinking and maybe itâll do the same for you.Â
Some of the most important things that are not included in this metaphor are the numbers.Â
The numbers make it clear that Black outrage is justified.Â
The numbers make it clear that Black people are disproportionately beaten and killed by police.Â
The numbers make it clear that Black people are disproportionately incarcerated, often receiving harsher sentences than white folks for the same charges and crimes.Â
The numbers make it clear that Black people are disproportionately given the death penalty and disproportionately executed.Â
If there is a Black person in your life who does not seem to agree that Black outrage is justified, theyâre entitled to their perspective. Being Black is an experience white people have judged and governed without understanding for far too long. That personâs perspective, however, does not eliminate the reality of Black outrage and it does not eliminate the numbers that justify Black outrage either.Â
I am working hard to be an ally. I am working hard to listen to all Black and POC perspectives. As white allies, we donât get to pick and choose which Black voices appeal the most to us. Itâs our responsibility to take it all in. In this case, that has demanded that I find value in Black perspectives that oppose the movement that has been unfolding across generations and is now blooming in the streets of our cities all across the country. If I can find a way to see both points of view, however, so can you. Itâs fine to align yourself with and support the Black people in your life who oppose this movement... but that does not give you the right to devalue or ignore the movement. Both perspectives have value, and both deserve our attention.Â
In the effort to listen and understand, though, you, as a white ally, donât have the right to use any Black perspectives as an excuse to look away from what is happening in this country. Even though _____ says itâs not bad, ____ and _______ and _______ and _____ say it is. And if youâre gonna listen to your friend, youâre morally responsible to hear and process those other voices as well.Â
Oh, and donât forget, in your listening and processing, that the numbers justify Black outrage.Â
Note: One of the challenges I am facing in my white ally-ship is the desire to speak in a way that does not draw attention away from Black or POC voices. It is not my job to lead this fight. It is my job, however, to be a white ally and to encourage the white community around me to do the same. That is the intent behind this post. In case it was not absolutely clear, this post is in no way meant to minimize the experience of being Black in this country, which I know I cannot even begin to understand.Â
Photo borrowed from The Atlantic, taken by Scott Olsen.
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Speaking as someone who has autism and has been in DK for a while.. I've got some tea. And the tea is that the admins have been nothing but kind and welcoming, even more so than other rps I have been in throughout the years of roleplaying. You will most likely not post this, but hey, it needs to be said.
Thatâs the thing here, youâre all so ready to invalidate the experiences of multiple other people, simply because you had a better experience? I think in the political climate weâre in, we should all know better than to assume that just because you have been somewhere and felt safe, that doesnât mean that everyone that has been there has been safe. And itâs this very reaction that is why people wouldnât feel safe talking about why they donât feel safe in that group. Why would anyone want to speak up about their struggles if all theyâre going to be met with is:
Well Iâm having a great time so clearly you canât be having a bad one.
Here are all the ways that you having a problem has ruined everything and should make you feel guilty.
Here are all the ways that you are wrong in your feelings, and in the wrong for stating that there is a problem.
In fact Iâm going to kick out the people that stood up for you and list it as âcomplaining and making an outburstâ as the reason for being kicked out.
And because they dared to take one for the team and speak to me about the triggers other people brought to their attention, Iâm going to suddenly decide that everything they do in the whole grpc is just to attack me. Now theyâre a bad person, because someone asked for help and youâre a bad person for asking for help.
Iâm going to kick them out and make sure everyone in the group knows theyâre a piece of shit and also shit talk everything else that they do in the grpc-- because despite having my own glee rp, itâs decided that any glee rp they make is obviously an attack against me.Â
Clearly, nobody has a problem because I said so and amidst all this, nobody else has complained so....Â
The clear truth is, these two werenât vilified and kicked out of DK until they started to get an influx of apps on their own roleplay group and the admins made it very clear that they were unhappy that there was another D/s group in the tags.Â
I read things myself that were very obvious examples of bullying autistic people for showing autistic traits. I ran these screencaps by people in the community that are also autistic or have learning disabilities and what I was told hurts me to my core. The same things I saw happening in DK happen to them all of the time in roleplays. Maybe people donât realize it, but it has happened in that group. Maybe youâll get a better understanding of it all after @disabilityrph comes out with her guide, explaining all of the ways (subtle too) that she and other people with learning disabilities have been bullied in the community. I think youâre forgetting that bulling isnât just pushing people down physically or being obvious with insults, itâs microaggressions too. Itâs having an attitude with autistic players that you donât have with other people. Bullying can be subtle. You may have been bullied and you didnât even realize it.
The fact of the matter is, what happened in DevilsKey was M/s activity. It was non con. What would you do if someone raped you and then was like, âWell it only happened once, so why are you calling me a rapist?â The fact of the matter is, it happened, and that makes it an M/s rp. If that is allowed to continue to be part of the plots that people are playing with in their server (aka they are playing out the trauma caused by it), if they are going to allow non con punishments of that nature to happen in the future, then they are an M/s rp and need to be labeled appropriate so that nobody is triggered. If you canât figure out how to dole out punishments in a way that does not break the rules of D/s by forcing kink and traumatizing people in and out of character, then you donât belong running a D/s rp.Â
Because another fact of the matter is that D/s is used by survivors of trauma as a means to overcome their past. There is no reason at all that anyone should expect non con in a D/s setting. To find it would be triggering to a lot of people. Maybe not you, but that just makes you privileged. Weâre not in an era where flaunting your privilege (like you did with this anon) is cute anymore. Itâs ugly.Â
Another fact of the matter is that people were made to feel upset by one of the admins, and both admins allowed the roleplayers as a group to talk shit about the people who were triggered in the ooc chat. The immediate response should have been to step in and tell them that they needed to stop. There is no reason for someone to point out that people are hurt and then allow a mass attack on those people in the ooc. You were already told that the people that were triggered were feeling too anxious to come forward, so you allowed them to be attacked and proved to all of them why they should never speak to you about anything. Who would want to speak up about being triggered in a group where doing so will only end in them feeling like the whole roleplay is going to hate them by the time they wake up? Look at what you guys did to the two people that did take credit for wanting to make things right. And now me.
All of the stuff that I have seen has happened through my research indicates that there are a lot of things that need to be exposed. There needs to be accountability taken instead of trying to launch a smear campaign against people that did the right thing and stood up to bullies.Â
Iâm still laughing at that GLEE IS OVER, WHY ARE YOU HERE bullshit. Are you kidding me? Why are you here? It still baffles me that you guys are so privileged and so entitled that you think that youâre the only people that can be honestly and genuinely interested in the glee rp community. Which is why, after seeing your group try to shift the blame on these two people over and over and over again in different ways every time theyâre proven to be baseless, Iâve just come to the conclusion that there never was an issue on your side and everything that is being done just proves the absolute lack of maturity thatâs going on from your side of things.Â
What do I mean by that? Well hereâs the timeline of excuses, so far:
They stole DK when they made TDS.
Oh wait, TDS was made in 2017 so theyâre just stealing ideas.
Oh wait, TDS has a completely different plot and CANâT use ideas... they stole our NPCs.
Oh wait, they donât have NPCs? They stole our OC.
Oh wait, the player created her own OC and you canât be mad at people for writing their own muses? They made up drama in the ooc then.
That one player that wrote a Dom character was âtoo much like a Dom oocâ (which proves you know nothing about D/s if you think thatâs an scary offense?)
You mean you have screenshots of people saying they were triggered so we canât say that didnât happen? Well they said this was an M/s rp and weâre upset about it.
You mean this is an M/s rp because we have M/s content so it canât be called D/s without being triggering? Then they made people uncomfortable, we wonât explain how or why because there is none. Iâve read the entire three serverâs worth of information through screenshots, Iâve seen these two interacting with people IC and Iâve seen them plotting and joking OOC right up until the point they were kicked out though.
Why would they open a Glee rp anyway? What even is Glee? Who has a Glee rp? Clearly, weâre the only ones that made our own groups innocently. These people purposefully joined our group so that they could make theirs and ruin us! (Nevermind that they have other Glee rps, and those were started months and years ago)
This is what the timeline should have looked like:
Oh, youâre telling me that I have triggered people by not labeling my roleplay group properly? People didnât feel like they were warned about the content that was going to be in place and taking over all three servers?Â
Please, explain that to me because I donât know if I understand it correctly because I disagree with you-- but you just said people are upset and triggered, so I would like to fully understand with no malice intended, in order to better take care of my roleplay group and the people in it.Â
Oh, maybe I donât want to label it an M/s rp and maybe I personally think you can traumatize people with D/s and have it still be real D/s, but Iâm going to stop the plot, take some time to research, and better understand this situation.Â
Maybe I still donât want to label it an M/s rp after doing research on D/s and trauma, because I donât like the stigma in the glee rp community about it, but what I will do is I will put a more clear label on the main and in the server channels somewhere. That way nobody is surprised by this again, and everyone joining knows what they are getting into. None of the admins wants anyone to be triggered because they donât expect non con.Â
Then a simple addressing the issue post in the announcements channel where they explain that new information has come to your attention that has made you reconsider a few things; that things will be a little different moving forward (either you will do zero non con and never use D/s to traumatize characters or you will put a label that says that excessive force and non con can be used in this group, so itâs not traditional safe, sane, and consensual D/s) but that you know everyone will help you keep things going.
Never out that someone was upset. Never out that you donât personally agree in the ooc chat, because you donât want them to feel alienated or as if you didnât listen to their concern. Donât allow players to argue the new way of things in the ooc, let players know if they do say anything negative about it that they need to be mindful of other players in the group as well, because everyone has thoughts and feelings. With your secret knowledge that people were triggered, you should have known better than to let people shit talk like that. Your first concern should not have been your plot or your pride, it should have been to focus on the fact that someone was upset and you should have wanted to clearly understand why so that you could fix it. And you definitely shouldnât have guilted and attacked your players for not being comfortable coming to you ooc. Yeah, that would be the goal and hope, but itâs not their fault that you make them uncomfortable. Trying to make it out to be their fault and attacking them for it is only going to make people even more uncomfortable with you.Â
And the âoutburstsâ from those two players? I read it. They screencapped it when it happened, because they had been warned that they might be removed for speaking up about their friends being triggered. They said nothing wrong. Everything they said was right. One of them very politely said what I just said the admin should have, which was that nobody should be trying to make anyone else feel invalidated by hopping into the group chat to talk about how they didnât feel uncomfortable so it was preposterous that anyone else might be. She asked people to use more inclusive language, to remember that whatever they feel... it was obvious that other people felt differently. It was obvious that people were hurting. And the other player explained how it was traumatic to people to mislabel something as D/s and when your main says âsafe, sane, and consensualâ but you allow NON CONSENSUAL, that itâs triggering because that makes non con unexpected. Which it is. Very much so. I think the reaction from everyone outside of Devils Key should prove that. Non con should not have to be on the banned kink list in a D/s rp because non con is already banned by the basic rules of RACK and the very phrase they put on their main.Â
You canât say a person will have a âsafe, sane, and consensualâ experience and then attach electrical currents to their genitals while you rape them anally for hours and damage their physical health by pouring something thatâs very nearly poisonous down their throat for hours while theyâre naked in the middle of town square, with a bunch of other people who are also getting non consensually abused for a full week.Â
I donât know how much clearer I can be on that. I donât know why it wasnât clear in the first place. The fact that bringing this up to the admins is what started this all is mind blowing. How are you going to kick people out of your roleplay for letting you know that people were triggered? How are you going to kick people out of your roleplay because they have their own group that was made in 2017? Admins are allowed to remove people at their own discretion, but this isnât just kicking people out. This is purposefully slandering and bullying people because they dared to tell you that you had hurt people and because they dared to love the same glee rp community that we are all still trying to thrive in and THAT is DISGUSTING.Â
The fact that YOU have a good time there, does not negate all of the negative experiences of other people.Â
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I did actually write this instead of sleeping.
Today the rules in schools regarding bullying are strictly a no violence policy which in theory sounds good, but if one students feels entitled enough to inflict harm on another student they will do so regardless, and the victim of bullying (of course, this term is not necessarily referring to physical harm inflicted on others, but might also refer to verbal or emotional harm inflicted, even though this is not what I am discussing at this point) might even get expelled when push comes to shove, seeing as it will often be the pupils words against each other, sometimes even more people will back the bully simply because theyâre afraid of them, or because they are genuinely friends with them (the bully and their friends might not always see themselves as the bullies, a fictional example of this is the group called the marauders in the popular series Harry Potter written by J.K. Rowling, that without a doubt traumatized and bullied one Severus Snape in the fictional piece of literature. They still saw themselves as the good guys and later drove Severus down a very dark and lonely path).
It has been proven time and time again that the current system in place isnât working, and the only thing that will make a more accepting society is a more inclusive education in schools. It is important that everyone has the freedom of their own beliefs, but when these beliefs are challenged it should not result in harassment of fellow students. When indoctrination often starts at a young age it is the school systems responsibility to counter-act the spreading of information that might end up hurting genuine human beings in the future, after all, one of the current school systems the greatest responsibility isnât spreading correct information to educate the next generation, but to raise us to be functioning members of this society.
It stands to argue that this is a harmful thing, when it usually tends to narrow peoplesâ mindsets as well as resulting in that the same mistakes continue repeating, as well as the powerful people keep their power. People in positions of power will often do everything they can to make sure they keep that power, and that they get their way the majority of the time.
That is why the two-party-system in the United States of America, for example, is a faulty system, seeing as the party that won the election will go on to become president, and then change as much as possible just because, come next election, thereâs a 50% chance their opponent will get voted in the office instead and so the cycle will repeat.
Humans are animals that appreciate patterns, as do nature, but after a while they get tiresome, when we have found every single way to squeeze every ounce of power from it, we will move on to the next shiny cycle to repeat, extort and abuse. Itâs in and of itself a cycle, a pattern that will never be broken unless we learn to appreciate change as much as we appreciate safety and stability; because the earth is faulty, that much is obvious, humans take, and we take, and we take and what will happen when we have concurred everything on this planet, in this galaxy? What will happen when thereâs no more land for us to colonize and rule?
Is there such a thing as a society where everyone is happy? Probably not, seeing as the thing with opinions are that theyâre allowed to be different. But when said opinions directly hurt marginalized groups of people, when they are directly responsible for murder, are they still valid opinions? When you can trace the genocide of an entire group of people back to a person with an opinion, is this persons' opinion still valid? When a hundred of people die because doctors donât give them proper medical treatment based on an opinion, can it still be regarded as valid?
An opinion formed independently from outside influence, based on what information the individual themselves has gathered, free from emotional attachments based on facts (feelings are a valid thing to take into consideration, but seeing how easily our own brain can trick us into thinking we are experiencing one thing when weâre, in fact are not, is scary and if we only rely on feelings to base our opinions on, that would be based on your own brains confirmation bias because we as humans donât like to be wrong), is what might be called a valid opinion rooted in truth.
Then we have the question about morality, what is morally wrong and what isnât? Seeing as this will be the guidelines for how we live our life's I fret that schools donât teach us enough about this from a young age. What we deem morally correct are something highly personal, even though our society teaches us about some things that we generally seem to agree on; one of these examples being murder.
We as a society can in general agree that murder is wrong, immoral, but why? The active act of robbing someone of their choice, to without consent and with a single (or sometimes multiple) motion erase someone from existence (not entirely of course, seeing as the victims family and friends and every single action the victim has done will affect people, as humans tend to have an enormous influence on each other subconsciously or even concisely as the idea of random isnât quite applicable to the humans psyche), is generally regarded as highly immoral. Does it have something to do with that people in general fear of the true nothingness that is death?
Humans are afraid of things we do not know, and we certainly donât know death, at all. It is something mysterious, but maybe it isnât. Death might just be the state when your brain stops processing your surroundings, when your consciousness stops existing. Why are humans obsessed with death? Maybe because we know that our days on this earth are numbered, our mortal lives will eventually come to an end. So why do we insist on hating other people?
Wouldnât that be considered as a significant waste of time? To spend our numbered days on this planet insisting that our hate is rooted in love. In the end it will always be hate that is the root of our misery on this earth, as well as the fear of what we do not understand. Humans strive to understand the impossible, yet we seem to also resent it.
Words can hurt as much, if not more, than actions sometimes. And often the words will slowly nest itself into our brains, seeking a place to find permanent residence in, and we will let them. Because we are the only enemies we ever seem to lose to, as we are our own worst critic as well as our own best friend.
We can only see the world from our own perspective, we canât swap minds with someone to see how they view the world, and regardless of how much we might try, we canât ever understand all the complex threads that makes a person, but we sure as hell will try. Opinions are formed through life experience, so when we only have our own lives to base our opinions on, all of our opinions will automatically be biased in some way.
Then we have the concept of normality, that some things are normal and some things are not. What would you describe normal as? The opinion of the majority or the common trends we see in people? Why would we as a society group normal and good and safe in the same category? Normal is a synonym for common, and I would like to argue that only uncommon people have been able to contribute to change.
Is change a good thing? Or should we prioritize safety and stability? In today's world, I would like to reason that change is needed. While money and power rule the world, those without it will not be able to live as successful, or at least as influential, as the rich. What even is success? The definition of success today can be traced back to money, as humans desire to be in control of themselves and things around them. And without money, we are dependent on society to help us out, weâll never afford everything that we want, and thatâs just how it is.
The economy in the world is one of the most important topics in today's world, and that might just be because it is, in the end, the foundation of our modern society, and itâs been that way for an extended period of time.
The ones with money, if they do not go out of their way to do so, will never understand the ones without it, the privileged will do whatever it takes to stay privileged, and when the less privileged defend themselves society will, maybe to spare their own consciousness, find a way to blame them for their own misery.
In the beginning it was the church, finding ways to get as many as possible to join them, and by doing, so they gained power. With this power they evaded taxes, murdered, repressed womens' rights (in for example old Norse cultures women where regarded as, if not the stronger gender, at least equal to men), and found ways to alienate whole sexual identities, as well as justify slavery.
Today, it is still the remaining influence of the Abraham religions had on society that justifies the alienation of human beings from society. Poland and Russia are starting to draw back on their progress of rights for the LGBTQ+ community, and homosexuality is still met with the death penalty in some places, of course, even in progressive countries' homophobia is common, and insensitive people will always exist in society, Iâm afraid, seeing as it was built on ignorance.
Pushing the American people to âsettleâ for a president is a, if I may so myself, stupid system. As of today, itâs election day in America, and now people are fearing for their own civil rights! Itâs quite outrageous. Only a bit over half of the people in America vote in the normal elections (this year, it will probably be higher than that seeing the huge Trump vs. Biden situation), and if it was that way in, for example my country, the whole democracy would fall apart.
We clearly see the small amount of value that peoples own opinions against the overwhelming amount of power that politicians hold in elections, and we also see the clear desperation and willingness to do whatever it takes to keep oneselfs' power.
No one in a free nation, no less in a democracy should have to fear for their safety on the basis of anything to do with things out of their control.
#politics#sleep deprived ramblings#bullying#i guess#i dont fucking know#i will regret this#im not fine#queer stuff#idk#enby#fuck trump#i tried#one person will read this#ramblings#sleep is overrated#praise the coffe gods#send help
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