#the POINT is that whether or not a person or institution - real or fictional - is labeled as 'nazi' by you or by others

[imunbreakabledude]

any time I see someone speaking about one of the antagonists from the boys, other than stormfront, and for whatever reason they feel they need to make the statement, "well at least [homelander/soldier boy/firecracker/whoever] isn't a nazi", i die a little bit inside. did you watch season 2. did you UNDERSTAND season 2....

[qqueenofhades]

For creative writing purposes, can you go into what a typical day is for a professor? Like what their teaching schedule looks like, when most fit in their research time, etc?

Ahaha, well. I don't want to just say "you can completely make it up," but also.... you can pretty much just make it up, and what is the case for one professor is definitely not going to be true for another. I have known people who will send emails at 1am and/or 4am, and actually finding and fitting in research time for most academics is also "lololololol what." So I can give you a roster of typical daily academic tasks and categories, and then let you know if that if you want to throw them up in the air and scatter them around in literally whatever-the-fuck order, there is probably a beleaguered academic who has done that, but with an even worse sleep schedule. So:

Most permanent faculty at a university are hired as assistant (tenure-track) professors. Once they pass the tenure-committee review (usually about 5 years into the job) they are appointed as associate (tenured) professors. Full professors are considerably senior and/or have been in the field for a long time and have a distinguished service record, excluding various wunderkinds who get it early (but are not common).

If the faculty is just teaching one class a semester or has an irregular appointment, i.e. they step in to teach when the university needs them, they are adjunct professors. You can gain a lot of cred and/or commiserating groaning in your AO3 comments by complaining about how little money the adjunct faculty makes, how erratic their schedule is, and how there is generally little-to-no actual career advancement possible in that position, unless they manage to reapply to a permanent post.

There are also a lot of Visiting Assistant Professors (and similar title), for 2- or 3-year/non-permanent appointments. Many institutions now also offer 1-year VAPs with only a possibility of renewal for 1 additional year or not at all. Those institutions should go straight to hell.

Most professors have 3/3 teaching loads, i.e. they'll teach 3 classes per semester (assuming winter/spring semester). Others have 2/2/2 loads for trimesters (also known as quarters). It can be more, i.e. 4/4, but that's for sucky entry-level teaching-only positions and someone in that role would be unlikely to have any research or service (i.e. institutional committee or internal college) commitments. They would probably also mostly be teaching introductory or freshman-year general survey courses. It depends on how much you want to torture your fictional academic.

Free food? Yes. You will see a healthy amount of the department there, whether faculty or student.

Please remember to have your fictional academic receive approximately 50 student emails a day wherein they ask something that is clearly answered in the syllabus or on the course website, and to see how polite they can possibly be in telling said student this.

Most grading is now done online, so the red pen is only metaphorical, but you can leave SO many Pointed Comments on Canvas Speed Grader. But if you want to torture Dr. Blorbo, you can have the e-grading system suddenly stop working, so they have to grade three classes' worth of introductory freshman history essays by hand. Not based on real events.

Likewise, there will be endless bullshit with the dean's office and/or central university administration, wherein there will be so many Urgent Budget Updates and Breaking News From The Chancellor and We Regret To Inform You We Cannot Hire Someone For That Position.

Related to the budget woes: they will ask you to do things like "make sure you print on both sides of the paper!" or otherwise "economize." Contemplating murder is acceptable and encouraged.

The administrative assistant in each department holds the entire department together. They will be extremely indispensable. Your fictional academic, if they know what's good for them, will befriend that person and/or grovel at their feet. Said person is also usually responsible for scheduling classrooms, which can cause all kinds of juicy drama in the academic fandom if there is One Particular Classroom that everyone hates and lo and behold, Dr. Blorbo is stuck there yet again. They will then probably also fire off multiple passive-aggressive emails attempting to correct the problem. The administrative assistant can grant and/or ignore these requests at their discretion, depending on how much beef they have with Dr. Blorbo and/or how motivated they are to solve their problems.

Department meetings! Who asked for them? Nobody! Who has to attend them? Everybody! They go on for two hours every other week (possibly more depending on how meeting-happy your department chair is) and you will wish for death!

Likewise, the department staff sending out passive-aggressive emails about how they really NEED one more volunteer for (insert university event here). Dr. Blorbo, if they are smart, will delete these emails and pretend they never saw them, but sometimes it may be unavoidable. Bitching and moaning will follow.

For research: it really depends on what academic field Dr. Blorbo is in, since the hard sciences, etc. look quite different and I, as a humanities person, can't speak to that. Most academics aim to fairly regularly publish a piece in a peer-reviewed journal; you can check Dr. Blorbo's field to see what journals they might be trying to submit a journal article (usually max. 8000 words, sometimes more) to.

This will go through a process called Peer Review, wherein two anonymous academics review your work (also anonymized to them) to make sure that you are not talking out of your ass. It is a running joke that Reviewer 2 will always, ALWAYS be more grumpy and critical and otherwise annoying. Invoking the specter of Dr. Blorbo receiving a peer review evaluation for their article will send a shiver down every academic's spine.

If Dr. Blorbo has recently finished their PhD, they may be working on converting their PhD thesis into an academic monograph. The most horrible part of this process, hands down, is reviewing proofs to make an index. Don't ask me how I know this.

However, academic monographs take a lot of time and work and most academics are mostly focused on publishing journal articles, book chapters (in collected volumes) or editing/working in collaboration with other projects.

Likewise: Dr. Blorbo will have to write book reviews. This is accomplished by the very scientific method of subscribing to various industry publications and/or email lists that will sometimes send out lists of books that need to be reviewed and solicit people to sign up. You will then receive a hard copy of the book (usually) and have 3 months or so to read it and write a review. The first 2 months of this, give or take, will consist of the book sitting untouched on the academic's desk as they remind themselves that they still have plenty of time to do it.

There can, however, be INCREDIBLE beef in book reviews, and while the standards of professional courtesy dictate that you don't go great-guns-flaming calling someone else in your field a moron (in more technical language), sometimes it is unavoidable.

Do they get paid for any of this extra intellectual work? Lol. No. No they do not. They don't get paid enough for their actual job.

Dr. Blorbo will inevitably hear some Hot Gossip about what nonsense has recently happened at which field-specific conference (where academics go to present research papers and network with other academics and make regrettable decisions at the open bar). They will then rush to secretly text all their other academic friends with OOH JUICY ACADEMIC DRAMA. Their friends will do the same whenever the opportunity arises to reciprocate.

Removing the coffee machine from the break room/faculty kitchen is grounds for mutiny.

Anyway. I am sure there are many, MANY more, but if you want an authentic slice of long-suffering academic life for Dr. Blorbo, this is all a good place to start.

[deramin2]

Critical Role Campaign 3: Political Situation vs. Monster Situation

Campaign 1 was a monster situation. The monsters created a disruption that was mostly ended by killing the monsters, even if the world was changed. Killing the monsters was the clear course of action.

Campaign 2 is a monster situation with a backdrop of a political situation. The political tension erupted into outright war, but they resolved the pretext (accidentally and then with intention) and things fell back into steady mistrust and unease. Meanwhile The Mighty Nein were dealing with multiple monster situations that by and large the public remained unaware of. Killing the monsters was the clear course of action.

Campaign 3 is a political situation with a backdrop of monster situations. Who the monsters really are and which ones need to be killed vs. worked with is very murky. Nana Mori and Ira Wendagoth are both by every definition monsters who create situations, but they're also consistent allies who are contributing to protecting the world from Ludinus, who everyone agrees is much worse. They don't agree on whether the gods are monsters who need to be saved, run off, or killed.

The gods are an extremely handy proxy for institutional powers that present a set of ideals they don't follow. They have more in common with other institutional powers than the mortals they often send to their deaths. But Earth is not controlled by a family of incomprehensible cosmic horror beings, some of whom are benevolent. So there's a useful separation from real people's struggles while still expressing a meaningful dynamic. (Those are also important speculative fiction stories, they're just a different approach.)

There is not a definitive answer to "Are the gods monsters?" Or "Would be better off without the gods?" They may be monsters, but they're better than Ludinus. At the very least they might be a problem for later. Ludinus is a charismatic leader running a mainstream cult on the promise that the chaos and upheaval he cases will disrupt a harmful status quo. He promises that all the death and destruction he unleashes will one day be regarded as the greater good. Internally he may simply believe that everything would be better if he was in charge. (Sound familiar?)

Bell's Hells aren't a unified front, they're a conflicted coalition who mostly just agrees on what situations they need to stop. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and they've been under attack the entire campaign. At best they're breaking bread together in foxholes. No one knows what's going to happen, even as they're planning their next move.

Which can be a really fun and freeing way to play if everyone's down for it. It takes a lot more communication to manage conflicts and keep them in the game, but getting to pluck all the narrative strings just to find out what sound they make can be a really rewarding way to create. All possibilities are on the table and there isn't a right solution. In the end something will happen and no one really knows what that will be or what it will change. The world building toys don't have to go back in the box at the end.

Politics doesn't have one completely correct answer for how society would function best, even if individual battles seem pretty clear. Unfortunately Ludinus has a few good points despite being widely considered the worst person even his allies know. Those disputes won't go away if he's overthrown.

There isn't a binary choice of "no on Ludinus, yes on gods." "No on both" is something that could happen in the power struggle. The uneasy tension of both existing has ended. Whether it should is a matter of debate, but things developing on the ground in the moment may end up making a bigger difference than philosophical choice (doing nothing is a choice to cede the outcome to other people).

Many viewers think of Campaign 2 as "the political campaign" because the backdrop was zoomed out and easier to see. Campaign 3 is more of a "the personal is political" situation. No one fully knows what change will result from their actions when they're in the middle of it. Everyone's got a different vision for what the best future looks like. Unfortunately we have to act anyway to collectively shuffle in a favorable general direction. The individuals who are totally certain of the best course of action end up being like Ludinus. The rest of us have to work towards our goals while holding space for the possibility that we're totally wrong.

[mariacallous]

Many times a year, as if on a hidden schedule, some tech person, often venture-capital-adjacent, types out a thought on social media like “The only thing liberal arts majors are good for is scrubbing floors while I punch them” and hits Send. Then the poetry people respond—often a little late, in need of haircuts—with earnest arguments about the value of art.

I am an English major to death. (You know us not by what we’ve read but by what we are ashamed not to have read.) But I learned years ago that there’s no benefit in joining this debate. It never resolves. The scientist-novelist C. P. Snow went after the subject in 1959 in a lecture called “The Two Cultures,” in which he criticized British society for favoring Shakespeare over Newton. Snow gets cited a lot. I have always found him unreadable, which, yes, embarrasses me but also makes me wonder whether perhaps the humanities had a point.

By the time I went to college, in the mixtape days, the Two Cultures debate had migrated to corkboards. In the liberal arts building, people tacked up pro-humanities essays they had snipped out of magazines. A hot Saturday night for me was to go and read them. Other people were trying drugs. I found the essays perplexing. I got the gist, but why would one need to defend something as urgent and essential as the humanities? Then again, across the street in the engineering building, I remember seeing bathroom graffiti that read “The value of a liberal arts degree,” with an arrow pointing to the toilet paper. I was in the engineering building because they had Silicon Graphics workstations.

Wandering between these worlds, I began to realize I was that most horrifying of things: interdisciplinary. At a time when computers were still sequestered in labs, the idea that an English major should learn to code was seen as wasteful, bordering on abusive—like teaching a monkey to smoke. How could one construct programs when one was supposed to be deconstructing texts? Yet my heart told me: All disciplines are one! We should all be in the same giant building. Advisers counseled me to keep this exceptionally quiet. Choose a major, they said. Minor in something odd if you must. But why were we even here, then? Weren’t we all—ceramic engineers and women’s studies alike—rowing together into the noosphere? No, I was told. We are not. Go to your work-study job calling alumni for donations.

So I got my degree, and off I went to live an interdisciplinary life at the intersection of liberal arts and technology, and I’m still at it, just as the people trashing the humanities are at it too. But I have come to understand my advisers. They were right to warn me off.

Because humans are primates and disciplines are our territories. A programmer sneers at the white space in Python, a sociologist rolls their eyes at a geographer, a physicist stares at the ceiling while an undergraduate, high off internet forums, explains that Buddhism anticipated quantum theory. They, we, are patrolling the borders, deciding what belongs inside, what does not. And this same battle of the disciplines, everlasting, ongoing, eternal, and exhausting, defines the internet. Is blogging journalism? Is fan fiction “real” writing? Can video games be art? (The answer is always: Of course, but not always. No one cares for that answer.)

When stuff gets out of hand, we don’t open disciplinary borders. We craft new disciplines: digital humanities, human geography, and yes, computer science (note that “science” glued to the end, to differentiate it from mere “engineering”). In time, these great new territories get their own boundaries, their own defenders. The interdisciplinarian is essentially an exile. Someone who respects no borders enjoys no citizenship.

You could argue that for all the talk of the university as an “intellectual commons,” it is actually an institution intended to preserve a kind of permanent détente between the disciplines—a place where you can bring French literature professors together with metallurgists and bind them with salaries so that they might not kill each other. The quad as intellectual DMZ. But those bonds are breaking down. Universities are casting disciplines to the wind. Whole departments are shuttering. The snazzy natatorium stays open, French literature goes away. And then the VC types get on Twitter, or X, or whatever, to tell us that poetry is useless. The losses are real.

And so what, really? Well, what I mourn is not a particular program at a college I never visited but the sense of institutions being in balance. I’ve spent most of my life wanting desperately for institutions to be disrupted, and now I find myself entering the second half of my existence (if I’m lucky) absolutely craving that stability. The delicate détente is vanishing, that sense of having options. A shorter course catalog is an absolute sign of a society in decline.

But also, we’re cutting off the very future that the tech industry promises us is coming. If the current narrative holds—if AI is victorious—well, liberal arts types will be ascendant. Because rather than having to learn abstruse, ancient systems of rules and syntaxes (mathematical notation, C++, Perl) in order to think higher thoughts, we will be engaged with our infinitely patient AI tutors/servants like Greek princelings, prompting them to write code for us, make spreadsheets for us, perform first-order analysis of rigid structures for us, craft Horn clauses for us.

I see what you nerds have done with AI image-creation software so far. Look at Midjourney’s “Best of” page. If you don’t know a lot about art but you know what you like, and what you like is large-breasted elf maidens, you are entering the best possible future. You might think, Hey, that’s what the market demands. But humans get bored with everything. We’re just about done with Ant-Man movies.

The winners will be the ones who can get the computer to move things along the most quickly, generate the new fashions and fads, turn that into money, and go to the next thing. If the computers are capable of understanding us, and will do our bidding, and enable us to be more creative, then the people in our fields—yes, maybe even the poets—will have an edge. Don’t blame us. You made the bots.

Perhaps this is why they lash out, so strangely—a fear of the grip slipping, the sense that all the abstruse and arcane knowledge gathered about large language models, neural nets, blockchains, and markets might be erased. Will be erased. At least art goes for the long game, you know? Poems are many things, and often lousy, but they are not meant to be disposable, nor do they require a particular operating system to work.

All you have to do is look at a tree—any tree will do—to see how badly our disciplines serve us. Evolutionary theory, botany, geography, physics, hydrology, countless poems, paintings, essays, and stories—all trying to make sense of the tree. We need them all, the whole fragile, interdependent ecosystem. No one has got it right yet.

[proshippresentmic]

Pinned info time

Call me Mic I guess, about 30 years old, he/they or similar.

I have a deep resentment for the terms profic and proship, but it scares kidders and sensitive catholic guilters away, so it's in my url.

I don't care what someone writes in fiction so long as they're a decent person to the real world. If you disagree then politely go back to your cesspit, I have no time for radfems and protofascist babies.

This account is for seeking/responding to RP ads, because I realized a lot of the seeking blogs here required an account for "liking to reach out", rather than just dropping a discord.

I use my discord account tag presentationmicheal for RP purposes, for the time being I'm ok with random friend requests, but I'm also a grouchy old man and if your vibes are rancid you're gone.

Goes without saying but 18+ partners only. Honestly preferably 21+

Under the cut is my general RP info!

Extremely very horrendously gay so I won't be interested in MxF, also extremely very horrendously trans so expect most if not all of my muses to come with pussy DLC.

Currently I'm only super into writing My Hero Academia (manga reader!).

Muses

---

Dabi / Touya Todoroki - primary muse, snarkastic piece of shit, I do not pull punches with him nor will I write him being a doting husband, or other out of character extremes.

Even in AUs where, somehow, Enji was an alright father, my Touya ends up a serial killer.

That said I can reel him in a little, but he will come with "canon typical asshole" warning either way.

No hard pref on whether he's got a cock or cunt.

---

Katsuki Bakugou - not 100% confident with him, but getting there. Always written at least 20 years old, UA was a college to me, what of it.

Again, canon typical asshole.

Primarily play him trans, but I can be convinced to play him otherwise.

---

Present Mic - Pretty sure I could write this cringelord in my sleep at this point. Nothing special about him, he's chillin'.

Slight preference for him having cock n balls, but I'll write him otherwise more than happily.

---

Currently on track learning Hawks, Aizawa, Enji and Natsuo. Unsure when I'll be confident enough.

---

Kinks, Limits n Shippy shite

Shit that I love: Omegaverse, hybrid AUs, height differences, enemies to lovers, biting/scratching, piss, petplay, dom/sub, ponyplay, bondage, muzzles. interrogations/captured be heroes or villains, male pregnancy (pussy preferable, but can deal with otherwise), public sex, heat/rut, aphrodisiacs, intercrural, mirrors... honestly most kinks not listed in limits/meh do something for me.

Dead dove edition: Incest, noncon, abduction, torture, guro/snuff, fuck-or-die, fuck-AND-die, human pet, meditorture, more I've probably forgotten.

Hard limits: Characters under 18, feet, scat/gas in general, mental institutions, ABDL/Ageplay, raceplay. I may have forgotten something, so this will probably update later.

Honorable mention: 'daddy' kink makes my skin crawl, but if your pitch is interesting I can tolerate it.

Meh: Vore, hyper, inflation. I hate calling them "Deviantart Kinks" but that does end up a good descriptor. I am into a couple of these but not for canons, can't explain it just don't like it.

Ships I'm primarily interested in:

Dabihawks, Dabiskep, Todocest of many flavors, Dabizawa, Dabibaku, Bakudeku, Kiribaku, Todobaku, Endhawks, Erasermic, Mightmic, Erasermight, Dabishigs.

Open to others (and I love a good crackship).

(I'm willing to break out my not-quite-confident guys for some of these, just forgive any fumbles.)

Misc shit

I'm of the opinion the characters would have fouler language were this manga higher rated, so expect my guys to drop a couple harsh words here and there. If you're offended by the word 'fuck', we won't get along.

I've got no hard pref for positions, I'll write them all.

Response times vary from "100 responses a minute" and "once every couple days" depending on how much work I have on. If I'm slacking and not responding every three days though, time to whallop me with the cartoon mallet.

I'm a grown ass man with an honesty clause. I will be upfront if I've fallen out of love with a thread, and if I feel up for coming back to it later. I expect the same of you, please.

My active hours are somewhat random and work dependent, and can sometimes be entirely flipped in a couple days.

RP through Discord only. We can make a server!

Third person paralit, 2 paragraphs minimum, no need to match my length if I go off the rails!

I really, really, really love headcanoning/"what-if"s/spitballing. This doesn't always have to become a thread, I really dig discussing what could have happened with current threads if XYZ was different, this isn't a wistful sigh wishing things were different. I'm going to be talkative OOC, you will get memes if they're relavant to what we're doing - or if I figure you'd just like em, I am not going to treat you like an RP token machine.

I don't expect that much legwork in return, but please at least be willing to do dumb spitballing OOC a little.

[eliteprepsat]

Now that many college application deadlines have passed, it is time for many of you to prepare for the college admissions interview. The college interview is often met with uncertainty and, occasionally, downright fear. I’ve had my fair share of students express no desire to interview with colleges, yet these fears are almost always unwarranted. Keep in mind, the college interview is an opportunity for the school to get to know you better and vice-versa. Think of it as a supplement to your college application, allowing the admissions office to put a voice to your application.

It is important to note that not all schools conduct interviews (large state schools simply have too many applicants), and not all schools who do will interview every applicant. However, granted the opportunity, you should accept any offer to interview with a school. Doing so is a fantastic way to demonstrate interest and has the potential to add another dimension to your college application. Here are some college interview questions you should be prepared to answer in a competent and compelling manner.

1. "Tell me a bit about yourself."

I remember a couple of my college interviewers asking this question. It’s an excellent way to introduce yourself and open up the conversation on your terms. I spoke about my background and upbringing, but you can discuss anything you’d like, provided that it is a substantive answer addressing key points you want to share. Highlight specific aspects of yourself and try to avoid generalizing or rambling with your response.

2. "Why do you want to attend this school?"

If you wrote a “Why Us” supplement for the school you are interviewing with, this is a prime opportunity to communicate your passion and depth of knowledge on why this school is a perfect fit. You should have at least three distinct reasons that reflect why you want to attend their institution. Show that you have done your homework and are knowledgeable about how the school’s offerings can help you reach your goals.

3. "Why do you want to major in ________?"

College is, first and foremost, an academic experience. Whether you know what you want to major in or not, be prepared to discuss your academic interests and/or ambitions. If you know what you want to major in, talk to the interviewer about that subject with depth and passion. If you are still unsure about your major, consider talking about various academic interests and why they appeal to you.

4. "What do you plan to contribute to this school?"

Here is your opportunity to demonstrate how your unique skills and qualities will manifest themselves on campus. Think about the ways you want to get involved (activities, clubs, community service, sports, etc.) and share how your past experiences will allow you to add to the dynamic of their college community.

5. "Who has influenced you the most?" / "Who is your hero?"

There are a number of different directions in which you could answer this question, but remember to provide a response that reveals more about your character. You could speak about someone close to you: a relative, friend, or teacher. You could also speak about someone you haven’t met, real or fictional, who has had a profound impact on you.

6. "What is your greatest weakness?"

Answering this question can be tricky, especially if you haven’t thought about a response prior to being asked. Self-awareness reveals maturity, and acknowledging your weaknesses can go a long way towards your growth. Try to recall a moment when you experienced failure and then explain how you overcame it or are working to overcome it. Alternatively, you could think about something you want to be better at and use that as your topic.

7. "What do you in your free time?"

Remember, there can be plenty of free time in college. This is the opportunity to talk about your passions outside of the classroom. Identify specific activities or hobbies that you enjoy and explain why. Consider what those activities reflect about your personality, and let that guide you in answering this question.

8. "Do you have any questions for me?"

Generally, this will be the final question of the interview, and it’s a chance to reverse the roles a bit. Have one or two questions prepared to ask your interviewer. Here are a few examples: What was your favorite thing about attending ______? What do you wish were improved about your experience at ______? What advice would you give to an incoming freshman at ______?

Preparation, confidence, and enthusiasm are the keys to a successful college interview. Of course, there are a number of other questions that could be asked, but if you’ve done your homework, you should be equipped to handle any of them. If you don’t have an immediate answer to any question, take a moment to reflect on it and then answer as genuinely as possible. By the end of the interview, it should be clear that you would make an excellent addition to their campus. At the end of the day, the school wants to put a face to the candidate from the application. So relax, be your best self, and showcase all the remarkable experiences that have led you to this point!

[armoricaroyalty]

dev diaries #4 - on the language of 'deserving'

This isn't what I said I'd write next but whatever.

The next few story posts are all about romantic and sexual relationships, and I've been thinking a lot about the tropes and language that are used to describe those things, within fiction and without.

Very often, I see discussions about whether or not a male character "deserves" a particular woman as a love interest, and it's always bothered me on a level I couldn't quite articulate. To me, "deserve" implies that there is some kind of point-based metric by which the worth of individuals can be measured out so we can figure out who is owed what, romantically. I've seen dissections and take downs of this notion that a hero deserves a love interest from the perspective of male entitlement, especially as it comes to the culture of the 1980's and 1990's, wherein the hero completes a journey and is awarded a passive, biddable love interest as a prize for his trials. People correctly describe that kind of messaging as sexist and objectifying, reducing the role of women in a story to mere trophies and prizes for the male protagonists.

I am in 100% agreement with those arguments, but I don't think I've seen much discussion about this language of "deserving" from the perspective of romances and other media where women are more often protagonists. I think it's really easy to pinpoint the ways in which "deserving" a love interest can be toxic in action films and comedies, but I think it's a lot harder to describe the ways in which that perspective is limiting in romances and dramas.

To my thinking, focusing on whether or not a man "deserves" the cool female protagonist of a romance still strips her of depth and agency, even if she's at the center of the narrative. It reinforces this idea that men are incompetent, fumbling, clumsy, and women are innately above it all. It establishes unequal footing and paints the woman into a corner -- if the dynamic of the relationship is about the man having to do something in order to deserve the woman, it limits the narrative's capacity for her to be flawed and dynamic, to have agency of her own. I find it infantilizing because it turns the woman into a perpetual mommy, someone who is constantly going to be monitoring the man's behavior to make sure that he maintains his state of grace and continues to deserve her affection.

I don't think it's bad, in fiction or in real life, to have a relationship where one person strives to be the best version of themselves for their partner. I don't think it's bad, in fiction or in real life, for people to think about how they deserve to be treated. But I think that it's bad to frame relationships or love interests as something that can be earned, owed, deserved--those kind of acquisitive models and ways of thinking are, to my mind, flattening and reductive.

I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of Freddy and his romantic relationships. He's a character who's flawed and those flaws have gotten in the way of his romantic relationships. He has hurt people by being selfish, immature, uncommunicative--these are things he needs to develop before he can be a good partner to anyone. But I still find myself so resistant to the framing that he is currently undeserving.

I think a large part of my :/ reaction is just a general distaste for the concept of what is deserved and by whom. A city near me is instituting a policy wherein some low-income families earning less than half the living wage are being $500 monthly subsidies, no strings attached. And the comments sections are full of people who think that these families don't deserve the money, full of people obsessed with the idea that some people are worthy of it and others aren't, full of people who think that we need to find ways to ensure that no one undeserving benefits by accident.

For me at least, I have a hard time uncoupling these different meanings of what it means to 'deserve' something from one another. You cannot bring objectivity to this because the idea of worth and merit are inherently subjective. Perhaps we are all deserving of grace, comfort, love, an extra $500 a month -- I think we'd all be a lot better off if we let go of the acquisitive little goblins in our brains who want to make sure that nobody else has anything we think we're owed.

This is a joke, but also not: I've been thinking about this tweet since I saw it, and that's a large part of what inspired this post.

[fwoosheye]

Sometimes you have to include problematic things to lift problematic issues. And in the context of historical fiction (and here I mean fictions based on real life historical events even if the characters might be fictional, NOT fics that take place in a setting that is inspired by history, etc) if you do it like this you might accidentally "remove" or hide what progress that was actually done at the time if you remove all the stuff that would be problematic today.

This is especially true of you include Actual. Historical. People.

Like the example above, we all know Reagan would never have respected a non-binary person's pronouns, and letting him do that in a game is giving him way too much cred. Let the man be remembered as the trash he was.

And in The Imitation Game (2014), the movie about Alan Turing (the man who cracked the nazi's code and was later prosecuted for his homosexuality which was illegal in the UK 1952) not only misrepresented his accomplishments but also his person as narcissistic instead of kind as he's been described as by others, the movie also pretty much accused him for being a traitor and a spy which he never was and never was even accused of.

Even if your intentions are good, removing problematic stuff would imply that the problematic thing never happened. If we look at the game with Reagan in it again, it's great that the game creators apparently decided to make it possible for people to choose how their character should be addressed as in the game and have npc:s respect that, more games need that, but to have a real life historical figure so that when he wouldn't have done that? I suspect it's probably because of technical limitations, so I'm not mad about it per say, but it does imply Reagan was a better person than he was. And for those who don't learn anything about him because they aren't from the US, it might paint a faulty picture and that paves the way for more misinformation. Of course a game shouldn't be used as an accurate source of history, but you get my point: Good intentions can go wrong if not done with careful thought and research.

Of course if your character is completely fictional you can make them however you like! Your 1852 man can be what we would call a feminist today, that's not the issue, but he must likely wouldn't go about it like we do today or use the terms and expressions we do. Perhaps he does think it's a woman's choice of she should give birth or not, but he probably wouldn't call himself pro-choice, you know what I mean? Like...

History must be allowed to exist as it truly was back then.

There have always been people around who have had feministic views and worked for them, which is a big part of the reason society have grown to be what it is today (eg people being allowed to vote at all).

History is a lot more queer than most people think (there's a reason the song History Hates Lovers exists).

Speaking of that song though, that kinda might be another reason why people might feel iffy about the removing of "problematic" stuff in fiction (whether that removal is of eg. trans people themselves or the removal of the bigotry against them): Removing, hiding or denying parts of history have been used a lot by various groups throughout history as a means of control. One of the more famous examples was when nazis burned the library of the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin because it 1) was founded by a Jewish person, and 2) included queer stuff. A lot of leaders all across the world had memorials and symbols etc from previous kings/religions/etc vandalised and/or suppressed to strengthen their own position — colonialism being one example. Plenty of schools around the world have banned some books because they cover subjects they don't want kids to know about or question (things that are lgbt, books about why book banning is a bad idea, books that are anti-athorian, etc etc). And as mentioned in the song, historians have often denied that romances were romances because they didn't like same sex relationships. And so on. So, like... Even if it's done in all well meaning, doing it like this might not be the best way to go about it (especially as fascists will happily be hypocritic if it means they can use it as an excuse to paint feminism and lgbtq+ etc in a bad light). So by all means do include the stuff you want to highlight in your story, but research the history well so you can back up why it makes sense in your story, and don't remove the problematic stuff if it is something that really ought to be there...

And as I mentioned in the beginning, this rant is about stories that are supposed to take place in our real world history. If it's like, a history inspired fantasy you can go shamelessly hog wild bat shit crazy. Use only neo pronouns because He and She are exclusive for the Gods or whatever reason you want to use. Piss off meninist babys by having more than five women in a story (which is like the equivalent of it being 90% women apparently) and let them have a narrative that isn't sexy eye candy fridged hottie. Have the bigots in your story be genuine asshats that don't respect pronouns and then let them fall/die in a suitable way. Or use a made up antagonists who wouldn't even consider using the wrong pronouns because they have better stuff to do than wasting energy and time on remembering a random Hero's old pronouns and name when they only needed the Hero's current ones to keep track of them. They got a world to conquer and it ain't gonna do that in its own, geez.

But yeah don't be afraid to include problematic things in your story and let it be a problematic issue. Problematic content does not automatically equal a problematic story.

If you remove everything “problematic” toward women and minorities from sincere historical fiction I am biting you biting you biting you.

Sometimes “he would not fucking say that” is when the guy living in 1852 is a third wave feminist.

[writingwithcolor]

Space based story with prison camps: problematic parallels?

Trigger warnings:

Holocaust

Unethical Medical Experimentation (in the post and resources)

ivypool2005 asked:

I'm writing a sci-fi novel set on Mars in the 25th century. There are two countries on Mars: Country A, a hereditary dictatorship, and Country B, a democracy occupied by Country A after losing a war. Country A's government is secretly being puppeted by a company that is illegally testing experimental technology on children. On orders from the company, Country A is putting civilian children from Country B in prison camps, where the company can fake their deaths and experiment on them. (1/2)

My novel takes place in one of the prison camps. I am aware that this setting carries associations with various concentration camps in history. Specifically, I'm worried about the experimentation aspect, as I know traumatic medical experimentation occurred during the Holocaust. Is there anything I should avoid? How can I acknowledge the history while still keeping some fantasy/sci-fi distance from real experiences -- or is it a bad idea to try to straddle that fence at all? Thank you! (2/2)

We are far from being the only people to have suffered traumatic medical experiments.. 

--Shira

TW: Unethical Medical Experimentation (in the post, and all of the links)

Medical experimentation in history

Perhaps without intending to, you have posed an enormous question. 

I will start by saying that we, the Jewish people, are not the only group to have unethical, immoral, vicious experiments performed on our bodies.  Horrific experimentation has been conducted on Black people, on Indigenous people, on disabled people, on poor people of various backgrounds, on women, on queer people... the legacy of human cruelty is long. Here are some very surface-level sources for you, and anyone else interested to go through. Many, many more can be found.

General Wiki Article on Unethical Human Experimentation

US Specific Article  on Unethical Human Experimentation 

The early history of modern American Gynecology is largely comprised of absolutely inhumane experimentation, mostly on enslaved women (with some notable exceptions among Irish immigrant women)

An Article on Gynecological Experimentation on Enslaved Women

I  also recommend reading Medical Bondage by Deirdre Cooper Owens

The Tuskegee Experiment 

First Nations Children Denied Nutrition

Guatemala Syphilis Experiment

Unit 731

AZT Testing on Zimbabwean Women

Project MKUltra

Conversion Therapy

Medical Experiments on Prison Inmates 

Medical Interventions on Intersex Infants and Children

Again, these are only a few, of a tragic multitude of examples. 

While I don't feel comfortable saying, as a blanket statement, that stories like this should never be fictionalized, it feels important to emphasize the historicity of medical experimentation, and indeed, medical horrors. These things happened, in the real world, throughout history, and across the globe. 

The story of this kind of human experimentation is one of immense cruelty, and the complete denial of the humanity of others. Experimentation was done on unwilling subjects, with no real regard for their wellbeing, their physical pain, the trauma they would incur, the effect it would have on families, or on communities. These are stories, not of random, mythical "subjects," but of human beings. These were Black women, already suffering enslavement, who were medically tortured. These were Indigenous children, who were utterly powerless, denied nutrition, just to see what would happen. These were Black men, lied to about their own health, and sent home to infect their spouses, and denied treatment once it was available. These were Aboriginal Australians, forced to have unnecessary medical procedures, children given brutal gynecological exams, and medications that were untested.. These were inmates in US prisons, under the complete control of the state. These were prisoners of war. These were pregnant people, desperate to save their fetuses, lied to by doctors. These were also Jewish people, imprisoned, and brutalized as part of a systematic attempt to destroy us. 

The story of medical torture, of experimentation without any meaningful consent, of the removal of human dignity, and human rights, is so vast, and so long, there is no way to do it justice. It is a story about human beings, without agency, without rights, it's the story of doctors, scientists, and the inquisitive, looking right through a person, and seeing nothing but parts. This is not some vague plot point, or a curiosity to note in passing, it is a real, terrible thing that happened, and is still happening to actual human beings. I understand the draw, to want to write about the Worst of the Worst, the things that happen when people set aside kindness, and pick up cruelty, but this is not simply a device. This kind of torture cannot be used as authorial shorthand, to show who the real bad guys are. 

On writing this subject - research

If you want to write a fictional story that includes this kind of deep, abiding horror, you need to immerse yourself in it. You need to read about it, not only in secondhand accounts, and not only from people stating facts dispassionately. You need to seek out firsthand accounts, read whatever you can find, watch whatever videos you can find. You need to find works recounting these atrocities by the descendants, and community members of people who suffered. 

Then, when you have done that, you need to spend time reflecting, and actively working to recognize the humanity of the people this happened to, and continues to happen to. 

You have to recognize that getting a stamp of approval from three Jewish people on a single website would never be enough, and seek out multiple sensitivity readers who have personal, familial, or cultural experience with forced experimentation.

If that seems like a lot of work, or overkill, I beg you not to write this story. It's simply too important. 

-- Dierdra

If you study public health and sociology, it is often a given that the intersection of institutional power and marginalized populations produces extreme human rights abuses. This is not to say that such abuse should be treated as an inevitability, but rather to help us understand, as Dierdra says, how often we need to be aware of the risk of treating our fellow humans poorly. Much of modern medical history is the story of the unwilling sacrifices made by people unable to defend themselves from the powers that be. Whether we are talking about the poor residents of public hospitals in France during the 18th century whose bodies were used to advance anatomy and pathology, to vaccine testing in the 19th century, to mental asylum patients in the 20th century who endured isolation, lobotomies, colectomies and thorazine, one can easily see this pattern beyond the Holocaust. 

Even when we shift our focus away from abuse justified by “experimentation”, we have many such incidents of institutionalized state collusion in abuse that have made the news within the last 20 years with depressing regularity. Beyond the examples mentioned above, I offer border migrant detention centers and black sites for America, Xinjiang re-education sites and prisoner organ donation in China, Soviet gulags still in use in Russia, and North Korean forced labor camps (FLCs) for political prisoners as more current examples. I agree with Dierdra that these themes affect many people still alive today who have endured such abuses, and are enduring such abuses. 

More on proper research and resources

Given that you are going to be exploring a topic when the pain is still so fresh, so raw, I think you had better have something meaningful to say. Dierdra’s recommendation to immerse yourself in nonfiction primary sources is essential, but I think you will also want to brush up on many established works of dystopian fiction featuring themes relating to state institutions and the exploitation of vulnerable populations. While doing so, read about the authors and how the circumstances of their environments and time periods influenced their stories’ messages and themes. I further recommend that you do so both slowly and deliberately so you can both properly take in the information while also checking in with your own comfort. 

- Marika

[fatehbaz]

Imagining futures; escaping hell; controlling time; living in better worlds.

------------

What we see happening in Ferguson and other cities is not the creation of liveable spaces, but the creation of living hells. When a person is trapped in a cycle of debt, it also can affect their subjectivity and temporal orientation to the world by making it difficult for them to imagine and plan for the future. What psychic toll does this have on residents? How does it feel to be routinely degraded and exploited [...]? [M]unicipalities [...] make it impossible for residents to actually feel at home in the place where they live, walk, work, love, and chill. In this sense, policing is not about crime control or public safety, but about the regulation of people’s lives -- their movements and modes of being in the world.

[Source: Jackie Wang. Carceral Capitalism. 2018.]

------------

Pacific texts do not only destabilize inadequate presents. They also transfigure the past by participating in widespread strategies of contesting linear and teleological Western time, whether through Indigenous ontologies of cyclical temporality or postcolonial inhabitations of heterogenous time. [...] Pacific temporality [can be] a layering of oral and somatic memory in which both present injustices and a longue duree of pasts-cum-impossible futures still adhere. In doing so, [jetnil-Kijiner’s book] Iep Jaltok does not defer an apocalyptic future. Instead it asserts the possibility, indeed the past guarantee, of Pacific worlds in spite of Western temporal closures. [...] In the context of US settler colonialism, Jessica Hurley has noted “the ongoing power of a white-defined realism to distinguish possible from impossible actions” [...]. In other words, certain aspects of Indigenous life under settler colonialism fall under the purview of what colonizing powers define as the (im)possible. [...] Greg Fry, writing of Australian representations of the Pacific in the 1990s, notes that the Pacific was regarded as facing “an approaching ‘doomsday’ or ‘nightmare’ unless Pacific Islanders remake themselves”. From the center-periphery model [...], only a Malthusian “future nightmare [...]” for Pacific islands seemed possible. [...] Bikini Island, where the first of 67 US nuclear tests took place from 1946 to 1958, was chosen largely because of its remoteness [...]; nuclear, economic, and demographic priorities thus rendered islanders’ lives “ungrievable” [...]. The [...] sentiment was perhaps most famously demonstrated in H*nry Kissing*r’s dismissal of the Pacific: “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?” [...] Such narratives were supposed to proclaim and herald the end of Pacific futures. Instead [...] Pacific extinction narratives [written by Indigenous/Islander authors] conversely testify to something like the real resilience of islanders in the face of a largely deleterious history of Euro-American encounters. More radically, they suggest the impossibility of an impossible future. Apocalypse as precedent overturns the very world-ending convention of the genre. By turning extinction into antecedent, [...] [they aspire] toward an unknown future not tied to an apocalyptic ending.

[Source: Rebecca Oh. “Making Time: Pacific Futures in Kiribati’s Migration with Dignity, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s Iep Jaltok, and Keri Hume’s Stonefish.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies. Winter 2020.]

------------

With the machinery finally installed on the property of the Manuelita estate, Don Santiago Eder launched the first industrial production of refined white sugar in Colombia on the “first day of the first month of the first year of the twentieth century.” Such deeds, mythologized and heroic in their retelling, earned Santiago Eder respect as “the founder” and his sons as “pioneers” in the industrialization of provincial Colombia. Their enterprise [...] remained the country’s largest sugar operation for much of the twentieth century. In 1967, [...] E.P. Thompson described the evolution and internalization of disciplined concepts of time as intimately tied to the rise of wage labor in industrializing England. His famous treatise on time serves as a reminder that the rise of industrial agriculture affected a reorganization of cultural and social conceptions of time. [...]. The global ascendancy of the Manuelita model of work contracts and monoculture in the second half of the twentieth century underscores the acceleration of the Plantationocene, but the historical presence and persistence of alternative [...] time should serve as a reminder that [...] futures and the demarcation of epochs are never as simple as a neatly organized calendar.

[Source: Timothy Lorek. “Keeping Time with Colombian Plantation Calendars.” Edge Effects. April 2020.]

------------

For several weeks after midsummer arrives along the lower Kuskokwim River, even as the days begin to shorten, the long, boreal light of dusk makes for a brief night. People travel by boat [...]. When I asked an elder about the proper way to act toward Chinook salmon, he instructed me: “Murikelluku.” The Yup’ik word murilke- means not only “to watch” but also “to be attentive” [...]. Nearly fifty years ago, Congress extinguished Alaska Native tribal autonomy over [...] fishing [...]. The indifference of dominant [US government land management agency] fisheries management models to social relations among salmon and Yupiaq peoples is evocative of a mode of care that Lisa Stevenson (2014) characterizes as “anonymous.” When life is managed at the level of the population, Stevenson writes, care is depersonalized. Care becomes “invested in a certain way of being in time,” standardized to the clock, and according to the temporal terms of the caregiver, rather than in time with the subject of care herself (ibid.: 134). Stevenson identifies care at the population level as  anonymous because it focuses exclusively on survival – on metrics of life and death – rather than on the social relations that make the world inhabitable. Thus, it is not namelessness that marks “anonymous care” as  such, but rather “a way of attending to the life and death of [others]” that strips life of the social bonds that imbue it with meaning […]. At the same time, conservation, carried out anonymously, ignores not only the temporality of Yupiaq peoples’ relations with fish, but also the human relations that human-fish relations make possible. Yupiat in Naknaq critique conservation measures for disregarding  relations that ensure not only the continuity of salmon lives but also the duration of Yupiat lifeworlds (see Jackson 2013). Life is doubly negated. For Yupiaq peoples in southwest Alaska, fishing and its attendant practices are […] modes of sociality that foster temporally deep material and affective attachments to kin and to the Kuskokwim River that are constitutive of well-being [...]. As Yup’ik scholar Theresa Arevgaq John (2009) writes, cultivating relations both with ancestors and fish, among other more-than-human beings, is a critical part of young peoples’ […] development  [...]. In other words, the futures that Yupiaq peoples imagine depend on not only a particular orientation to salmon in the present, but also an orientation to the past that salmon mediate.

[Source: William Voinot-Baron. “Inescapable Temporalities: Chinook Salmon and the Non-Sovereignty of Co-Management in Southwest Alaska.” July 2019.]

------------

[C]oncentration of global wealth and the "extension of hopeless poverties"; [...] the intensification of state repression and the growth of police states; the stratification of peoples [...]; and the production of surplus populations, such as the landless, the homeless, and the imprisoned, who are treated as social "waste." [...] To be unable to transcend [...] the horror [...] of such a world order is what hell means [...]. Without a glimpse of an elsewhere or otherwise, we’re living in hell. [...] [P]eople are rejecting prison as the ideal model of social order. [...] Embedded in this resistance, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, is both a deep longing for and the articulation of, the existence of a life lived otherwise and elsewhere than in hell. [...] [W]hat’s in the shadow of the bottom line [...] -- what stands, living and breathing, in the place blinded from view. [...] Instincts and impulses are always contained by a system which dominates us so thoroughly that it decides when we can “have an impact” on “restructuring the world,” which is always relegated to the future. [...] “Self-determination begins at home [...].” Cultivating an instinctual basis for freedom is about identifying the longings that already exist -- however muted or marginal [...]. The utopian is not only or merely a “fantasy of” and for “the future collectivity”. It is not simply fantasmatic or otherworldly in the conventional temporal sense. The utopian is a way of conceiving and living in the here and now, which is inevitably entangled with all kinds of deformations [...]. But there are no guarantees. No guarantees that the time is right [...]; no guarantees that just a little more misery and suffering will bring the whole mess down; no guarantees that the people we expect to lead us will (no special privileged historical agents); [...] no guarantees that we can protect future generations [...] if we just wait long enough or plan it all out ahead of time; no guarantees that on the other side of the big change, some new utterly-unfathomable-but-worth-waiting-for happiness will be ours [...]. There are no guarantees of coming millenniums or historically inevitable socialisms or abstract principles, only our complicated selves together and a [...] principle in which the history and presence of the instinct for freedom, however fugitive or extreme, is the evidence of the [...] possibility because we’ve already begun to realize it. Begun to realize it in those scandalous moments when the present wavers [...]. The point is to expose the illusion of supremacy and unassailability dominating institutions and groups routinely generate to mask their fragility and their contingency. The point is [...] to encourage [...] us [...] to be a little less frightened of and more enthusiastic about our most scandalous utopian desires and actions [...], a particular kind of courage and a few magic tricks.

[Source: Avery Gordon. “Some thoughts on the Utopian.” 2016.]

[bestworstcase]

listen. it is possible to acknowledge the clear influence of the 2016 US presidential election on the political storyline in rwby v7 AND engage substantively with the the actual text. i'm being snippy because this is a Huge Pet Peeve of mine which isn't something i would expect anyone to just intuit from the body of the post as written so i want to be clear that i am not like

irritated at you

or even in disagreement with the General Point because yeah. i've remarked before on the political utility of grimm to aspiring autocrats and authoritarian regimes and how fear of grimm is a vector for anti-faunus bigotry via scapegoating so like I DO GET WHAT YOU'RE SAYING

BUT

while v7 is pretty goddamn plainly a political fantasy informed by its time and place, and of course in the more general sense rwby is a story written by americans for whom american politics will naturally be the habitual point of reference and therefore there are, indeed, any number of ways these fictional polities can be read as commentary,

atlas is not the united states.

in general i find the fannish habit of treating fictional polities as 1:1 fictionalized representations of real polities to be Really Irritating (<- the aforementioned Huge Pet Peeve) for various reasons – i think it's reductive and often just a thought-stopping appeal to stereotype particularly when the real polity is not the USA, and insulting to the writer(s) in the same way that it would be insulting to regularly engage with fictional characters as fictionalized representations of real people. It's Fiction. It's Made Up.

with regard to "atlas is the US" in particular, the problem is that… no it isn't, and i think that the fandom reflex to read atlas as an allegorical united states is a contributing factor in a wide selection of fuckstupid takes about things that happen in v7-9.

because, like – for all its innumerable flaws and failings, the US is a democratic republic. we're governed by our elected representatives in the legislature and our elected president. the GOP has lately completed its collapse into a fascist clown cult (may they spend the next four years eating each other alive without achieving anything substantive amen) and things are very bad, but american democracy has not collapsed and the existential threat to american democracy is that the median american voter is fucking stupid. that was true in 2017-2020 and it's still true now.

before the great war – eighty years ago! this is, as i am always saying, recent history! – mantle was a fascist state. whether its prewar government had any trappings of democracy or not, the regime was certainly not democratic in any real sense. after that war, it's implied the state was obliged by the terms of the vytal accords to institute a democratic system of government, which – if we take the text at face value and do not Imagine that (for example) what is shown is only a small executive body with legislative power being vested in a larger representative assembly that is just never mentioned because it isn't important to the story* – seems to have been done by people with very little interest in this "checks and balances" nonsense.

(*which, to be clear, is an approach i embrace for Fanfic Purposes. but this post is about a textual reading.)

like. five seats. five. of which just three are elected representatives, and the two by appointment can be filled by one person who gets two votes. even if appointments must be confirmed by unanimous vote, it's not hard to get three people to agree on a candidate and it's also not a particularly heavy lift for a single political party to win all three seats.

you win all three seats and install your guy as headmaster-general and then you can lose two seats and still have the majority, and if it takes a unanimous 3-0 vote to oust an appointee then you're locked in until and unless you lose the third seat.

there are three possibilities; either:

this system was deliberately intended to be trivial to capture because it was designed by powers that be of the old regime.

this system was designed by people who were uninterested in or unable to envision what a fair, representative government would look like or how it would function.

there was a much more robust democratic system designed after the war, but it collapsed fairly quickly (a la vacuo) and the present council is a slapdash fig leaf raised by the military leaders who seized the moment.

all with the eventual outcome of mantle/atlas having basically at most dabbled in, flirted with democracy before snuggling back into the warm(?) safe(?) familiar embrace of stratocratic rule with a dash, a garnish if you will, of vestigial democratic-republicanism for civil affairs. in all likelihood this would have occurred through a gradual expansion and concentration of executive power and erosion of checks on that power and in that sense there are comparisons that can be made to democratic decline in the US, but a) these issues are endemic across all modern democracies because we're having a global trend toward right wing authoritarianism right now and b) the historical context and political situation in atlas as presented from v2 onward are really just not comparable to what is happening in the US within the past decade.

and the issue with this sort of square peg round hole allegorical reading of atlas is that it, i think, obfuscates the textual reality that is presented – that atlas is a military dictatorship with a very thin veneer of democracy and this has been the case for decades. ironwood is a deconstruction of the benevolent dictator trope, and of course for that to work at all, you have to pick up the cues in v2-3 that mark him as a dictator.

if that cueing is missed (e.g. because a viewer took Big Military and the Action Hero presentation to mean "atlas is Fantasy USA") then the glimpses of atlesian politics in v4 read very differently and mantle being… a fascist police state once we get there is, from what i've gathered, a lot more jarring than it is if you saw this

and went "ah. police state" about the hitherto open unanswered question of whether ironwood was a loose cannon or an autocrat. this is the autocrat move. (loose cannon would be getting dressed down by the atlesian president or PM or whatever.) lol

atlas was a dictatorship the whole time btw

[asleepinawell]

hiii not sure if it’s okay to ask a poi question but here it goes - i recall seeing you expressing (at least some level of) discontent with what Harold has done on the show (to root, to shaw and all those hypocritical decisions throughout). would you like to share more about your thoughts on this character? tks

always okay to ask poi questions. since the fandom is pretty small these days i was going to put my answer under a read more line so people could ignore it more easily if it’s a subject that bothers them but apparently you can’t add read more lines in ask answers? thanks tumblr! so if this is a topic that annoys anyone, please, just skip it. also, while some of this is facts or based on facts a lot of stuff is obviously my opinion and therefore not canon and not the only opinion etc etc.

in general, i wasn’t crazy about the way harold treated any of the other characters (with the exception of john who he had a pretty great relationship with). for root, there was the refusal to call her root, which i found very gross and uncomfortable (like, in general you should respect what people ask to be called, but also it was linked to the traumatic death of her childhood friend and he absolutely knew that so fuck that shit). he even said something along the lines of 'john reese is what you prefer to be called' to john right in the first episode? he was okay with using reese's fake name, but not hers because he made her identity into a power game.

he also tended to be..hmm, patronizing is the wrong word (and lbr root was extremely patronizing to everyone) but more that he treated her like ‘rehabilitating’ her was his pet project or something. i mean one thing that always struck me was his ‘what happened to you’ line in bad code and then the subsequent decision to put her in a mental institution instead of, you know, jail, which is where every other perp they ran into tended to go. he saw her as broken and flawed and in need of his help which, to me, came off as hypocritical and belittling.

also, putting someone in a psychiatric institution where they get pumped full of drugs when they don’t need to be? really fucked up! even if you argue root needed therapy/was depressed whatever, that’s not what they were treating her for. they were treating her for ‘delusions’ and ‘hearing voices’ which were...real things. like, the machine was speaking to her. harold knew that. he let her get put on all sorts of medication and put in solitary confinement and oh yes also her doctor was a really fucked up dude, something harold could easily have dug up if he’d bothered. also the whole ‘killing off a woman to advance a man’s character development thing’ is, uh, a bad trope. to put it mildly. i could write a lot more about his shit with root but let’s move on.

in some ways, his attitude towards shaw bothers me most. he consistently treats her like she’s violent and unhinged because she has aspd and despite the large amount of evidence to the contrary. she is, in fact, the most cool and controlled member of the team (not counting carter) and the least likely to go off half-cocked. shaw does play into this, but mostly only with harold and only through her words, not her actions. she knows what he thinks of her. when she’s captured by samaritan, harold gives up on her very quickly in a way he would never have done for john (and probably not for root either at that point). shaw’s reaction to sim!harold in 6741 of ‘did you even look for me’ says a lot about what she thinks he thinks of her. his whole ‘binary moral compass’ line to her is also, uh, heavily projecting. shaw and carter had the strongest moral compasses of the group. by a long shot. 

moving on to the machine. so first and foremost, if you’re creating a sentient being, whether that’s having a kid or making a self-aware AI, you don’t create something with the intention of locking it up and ignoring it forever. (and he was creating her for the bush/cheney administration???? who TM pointed out was terrible if he somehow had managed to miss that. root called them something like the worst people imaginable and she wasn’t exaggerating). was it too dangerous to let TM be free from the get go? maybe! but then don’t fucking make an AI you think can destroy the world, buddy. there are a lot of reasons he made TM and none of them make this acceptable to me. once TM had clearly proven to be not a threat and trying to help he continued to ignore her and act like she was dangerous.

harold always needed very badly to feel like he had the moral high ground and not be the person who made a bad decision, which yes, is probably partly due to the trauma from what happened to nathan but that doesn’t make it okay when being paralyzed by being unable to make a decision got people killed. more than once! also, most of his morals got tossed out when they weren’t convenient. wouldn’t kill the senator to save the world because killing is bad! next episode he’s like if anything happens to grace kill all of them. cool story, still murder.

i wanna conclude this rant by talking about harold as a character vs harold as a person. meaning, harold as a fictional character who is used as a narrative device in a story as opposed to harold himself without the context of him being fictional. i don’t mind characters who say and do things i dislike. it’s very important to have characters you dislike as people imo. feels like an understatement. but lambet, for example, is a slimy asshole. the story is aware of this. he gets an ending a slimy asshole deserves. harold has a lot of flaws, and causes a lot of damage, gets his friends killed, and his stubborn refusal to budge on his arbitrary moral high ground lets samaritan take over and almost makes team machine lose. he gets a happy ending. with the woman he lied to (and caused a lot of pain and grief by lying to). root ends up dead, shaw gets tortured and fights her way back for root only to have her die which is kind of handwaved as ‘well she has tm with root’s voice good enough’, and john, after having rediscovered his will to live and have a life in the end of s4 goes right back to his whole dying for someone else thing. only harold gets the happy ending.

the show was actually pretty good at highlighting harold’s flaws and making them interesting, and then it kind of forgot that at the end in terms of story outcome. like, if harold had suffered enough to get a happy ending, then why didn’t anyone else get one? so my annoyance was with the narrative’s failure to satisfactorily conclude the characters’ arcs. (and for the record, i’m not one of the people who think he should have died. i don’t think it would have served a point. also death doesn’t equal redemption to me).

so, yeah, not a fan of him. don’t write him in my fics since my dislike would take time and focus away from writing about the people i do like. would probably be less bitter if they’d ended the show better. i was 300k words fic level of bitter. there was some post i saw going around recently about how if your found family show doesn’t end up with your found family together then you’ve kind of missed the whole point of found family and yeah, that.

[bloodbenderz]

humaniterations (dot) net/2014/10/13/an-anarchist-perspective-on-the-red-lotus/ this article from oct 2014 is very dense — truly, a lot to unpack here, but I feel like you would find this piece interesting. I would love it if you shared your thoughts on the points that stood out to you, whether you agree or disagree. you obv don’t have to respond to it tho, but I’m sending it as an ask jic you feel like penning (and sharing) a magnificent essay, as is your wont 💕

article

i know this took me forever 2 answer SORRY but i just checked off all the things on my to do list for the first time in days today so. Essay incoming ladies!

ok im SO glad u sent me this bc it’s so so good. it’s a genuinely thoughtful criticism of the politics in legend of korra (altho i think its sometimes a little mean to korra unnecessarily like there’s no reason to call her a “petulant brat” or say that she throws tantrums but i do understand their point about her being an immature and reactionary hero, which i’ll get back to) and i think the author has a good balance between acknowledging like Yeah the lok writers were american liberals and wrote their show accordingly and Also writing a thorough analysis of lok’s politics that felt relevant and interesting without throwing their hands up and saying this is all useless liberal bullshit (which i will admit that i tend to do).

this article essentially argues that the red lotus antagonists of s3 were right. And that’s not an uncommon opinion i think but this gives it serious weight. Like, everything that zaheer’s gang did was, in context, fully understandable. of course the red lotus would be invested in making sure that the physically and spiritually and politically most powerful person in the world ISNT raised by world leaders and a secret society of elites that’s completely unaccountable to the people! of course the red lotus wants to bring down tyrannical governments and allow communities to form and self govern organically! and the writers dismiss all of that out of hand by 1. consistently framing the red lotus as insane and murderous (korra never actually gives zaheer’s ideas a chance or truly considers integrating them into her own approach) 2. representing the death of the earth queen as not just something that’s not necessarily popular (what was with mako’s bootlicker grandma, i’d love to know) but as something that causes unbelievable violence and chaos in ba sing se (which, like, a lot of history and research will tell you that people in disasters tend towards prosocial behaviors). so the way the story frames each of these characters and ideologies is fascinating because like. if you wanted to write season 3 of legend of korra with zaheer as the protagonist and korra as the antagonist, you wouldn’t actually have to change the sequence of events at all, really. these writers in particular and liberal writers in general LOVE writing morally-gray-but-ultimately-sympathetic characters (like, almost EVERY SINGLE fire nation character in the first series, who were full on violent colonizers but all to a degree were rehabilitated in the eyes of the viewer) but instead of framing the red lotus as good people who are devoted to justice and freedom and sometimes behave cruelly to get where theyre trying to go, they frame them as psychopaths and murderers who have good intentions don’t really understand how to make the world a better place.

and the interesting thing about all this, about the fact that the red lotus acted in most cases exactly as it should have in context and the only reason its relegated to villain status is bc the show is written by liberals, is that the red lotus actually points out really glaring sociopolitical issues in universe! like, watching the show, u think well why the fuck HASN’T korra done anything about the earth queen oppressing her subjects? why DOESN’T korra do anything about the worse than useless republic president? why the hell are so many people living in poverty while our mains live cushy well fed lives? how come earth kingdom land only seems to belong to various monarchs and settler colonists, instead of the people who are actually indigenous to it? the show does not want to answer these questions, because american liberal capitalism literally survives on the reality of oppressive governments and worse than useless presidents and people living in poverty while the middle/upper class eats and indigenous land being stolen. if the show were to answer these questions honestly, the answer would be that the status quo in real life (and the one on the show that mirrors real life) Has To Change.

So they avoid answering these questions honestly in order for the thesis statement to be that the status quo is good. and the only way for the show to escape answering these questions is for them to individualize all these broad social problems down into Good people and Bad people. so while we have obvious bad ones like the earth queen we also have all these capitalists and monarchs and politicians who are actually very nice and lovely people who would never hurt anyone! which is just such an absurd take and it’s liberal propaganda at its best. holding a position of incredible political/economic power in an unjust society is inherently unethical and maintaining that position of power requires violence against the people you have power over. which is literally social justice 101. but there’s literally no normal, average, not-politically-powerful person on the show. so when leftist anarchism is presented and says that destroying systems that enforce extreme power differentials is the only way to bring peace and freedom to all, the show has already set us up to think, hey, fuck you, top cop lin beifong and ford motor ceo asami sato are good people and good people like them exist! and all we have to do to move forward and progress as a society is to make sure we have enough good individuals in enough powerful positions (like zuko as the fire lord ending the war, or wu as the earth king ending the monarchy)! which is of course complete fiction. liberal reform doesn’t work. but by pretending that it could work by saying that the SYSTEM isnt rotten it’s just that the people running it suck and we just need to replace those people, it automatically delegitimizes any radical movements that actually seek to change things.

and that’s the most interesting thing about this article to me is that it posits that the avatar...might actually be a negative presence in the world. the avatar is the exact same thing: it’s a position of immense political and physical power bestowed completely randomly, and depending on the moral character and various actions of who fills that position at any given time, millions of people will or won’t suffer. like kyoshi, who created the fascist dai li, like roku, who refused to remove a genocidal dictator from power, like aang, who facilitated the establishment of a settler colonial state on earth kingdom land. like korra! she’s an incredibly immature avatar and a generally reactionary lead. i’ve talked about this at length before but she never actually gets in touch with the needs of the people. she’s constantly running in elite circles, exposed only to the needs and squabbles of the upper class! how the hell is she supposed to understand the complexities of oppression and privilege when she was raised by a chess club with inordinate amounts of power and associates almost exclusively with politicians and billionaires?? from day 1 we see that she tends to see things in very black and white ways which is FINE if you’re a privileged 17 yr old girl seeing the world for the first time but NOT FINE if you’re the single most powerful person in the world! Yeah, korra thinks the world is probably mostly fine and just needs a little whipping into shape every couple years, because all she has ever known is a mostly fine world! in s1 when mako mentions that he as a homeless impoverished teenager worked for a gang (which is. Not weird. Impoverished people of every background are ALWAYS more likely to resort to socially unacceptable ways of making money) korra is like “you guys are criminals?????!!!!!” she was raised in perfect luxury by a conservative institution and just never developed beyond that. So sure, if the red lotus raised her anarchist, probably a lot would’ve been different/better, but....they didn’t. and korra ended up being a reactionary and conservative avatar who protected monarchs and colonialist politicians. The avatar as a position is completely subject to the whims of whoever is currently the avatar. and not only does that suck for everyone who is not the avatar, not only is it totally unfair to whatever kid who grows up knowing the fate of the world is squarely on their shoulders, but it as a concept is a highly individualist product of the authors’ own western liberal ideas of progress! the idea that one good leader can fix the world (or should even try) based on their own inherent superiority to everyone else is unbelievably flawed and ignores the fact that all real progress is brought about as a result of COMMUNITY work, as a result of normal people working for themselves and their neighbors!

the broader analysis of bending was really interesting to me too, but im honestly not sure i Totally agree with it. the article pretty much accepts the show’s assertion that bending is a privilege (and frankly backs it up much better than the original show did, but whatever), and i don’t think that’s NECESSARILY untrue since it is, like, a physical advantage (the author compares it to, for example, the fact that some people are born athletically gifted and others are born with extreme physical limitations), but i DO think that it discounts the in universe racialization of bending. in any sequel to atla that made sense, bending as a race making fact would have been explored ALONGSIDE the physical advantages it bestows on people. colonialism and its aftermath is generally ignored in this article which is its major weakness i think, especially in conjunction with bending. you can bring up the ideas the author did about individual vs community oriented progress in the avatar universe while safely ignoring the colonialism, but you can’t not bring up race and colonialism when you discuss bending. especially once you get to thinking about how water/earth/airbenders were imprisoned and killed specifically because bending was a physical advantage, and that physical advantage was something that would have given colonized populations a means of resistance and that the fire nation wanted to keep to itself.

i think that’s the best lens thru which to analyze bending tbh! like in the avatar universe bending is a tool that different ethnic groups tend to use in different ways. at its best, bending actually doesn’t represent social power differences (despite representing a physical power difference) because it’s used to represent/maintain community solidarity. like, take the water tribe. katara being the last waterbender, in some way, makes her the last of a part of swt CULTURE. the implication is that when there were a lot of waterbenders in the south, they dedicated their talents to building community and helping their neighbors, because this was something incredibly culturally important and important to the water tribe as a community. the swt as a COLLECTIVE values bending for what it can do for the entire tribe, which counts for basically every other talent a person can have (strength, creativity, etc). the fire nation, by contrast, distorts the community value of bending by racializing it: anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is inherently NOT fire nation (and therefore inherently inferior) and, because of the physical power that bending confers, anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is a threat to fire nation hegemony. and in THAT framework of bending, it’s something that intrinsically assigns worth and reifies race in a way that’s conveniently beneficial to the oppressor.

it IS worth talking about how using Element as a way to categorize people reifies nations, borders, and race in a way that is VERY characteristic of white american liberals. i tried to be conscious of that (and the way that elements/bending can act in DIFFERENT ways, depending on cultural context) but i think it’s pretty clear that the writers did intend for element to unequivocally signify nation (and, by extension, race), which is part of why they screwed up mixed families so bad in lok. when they’ve locked themselves into this idea that element=nation=race, they end up with sets of siblings like mako and bolin or kya tenzin and bumi, who all “take” after only one parent based on the element that they bend. which is just completely stupid but very indicative of how the writers actually INTENDED element/bending to be a race making process. and its both fucked up and interesting that the writers display the same framework of race analysis that the canonical antagonists of atla do.

anyway that’s a few thoughts! thank u again for sending the article i really loved it and i had a lot of fun writing this <3

[itsonlystrange]

Can we please stop invalidating Bylers or Milevens. This ship war has gone on for too long. We each have our own side of tumblr/twitter/Instagram and nobody is asking for either to go on the other side. Some people WILLINGLY go onto Mileven tumblr or twitter just to get mad at Milevens who are minding their business and some people WILLINGLY go onto byler tumblr/twitter to comment hate and then get mad abt it when THEY DID THIS TO THEMSELVES.

Mileven and Byler are some peoples comfort ships. And so invalidating either when nobody knows what’s going to happen in the actual show is just rude. We won’t know until season four, and whatever happens, we have to remember to be respectful about it. I don’t want to see any Milevens calling Bylers delusional or any Bylers making fun of Milevens bc their ship wasn’t end game.

BOTH SHIPS ARE GREAT!

And you have to admit, both Mileven and Byler have had some amazing moments. It’s not like either don’t have any potential

As someone who used to ship Mileven for two years straight, I see the potential they had. And even though I don’t ship them anymore and will probably be disappointed if they are end game, I won’t go around having a hissy fit and you shouldn’t either.

Mike and Eleven have had some soft and cute moments, whether you ship it or not, they have. Mike and Will have had some soft and cute moments, whether you like it or not, they have.

Mike loves both of them, whether that be platonic or romantically. He loves them. And he’d probably die for either of them. So can we PLEASE stop pretending that Mike doesn’t care about El, or that he doesn’t care about Will. Stop pretending like when Mike visits the Byers he’s only going to spend time with El. And stop pretending that if Byler were to happen Mike would forget about El’s existence.

I believe that no matter what happens, Mike will continue to love and respect both of them. He will always and I mean ALWAYS care about Eleven and Will. That’s a fact. He is a caring person.

So no matter what happens, we have to respect the duffers choice.

And I’m not saying we can’t have an opinion! We totally can! We are allowed to critique this type of media! That’s okay!

However saying “byler will never be canon you’re delusional. Go get help and go to a mental institution because you are stupid.” That is NOT an opinion. You’re invalidating someone’s comfort ship.

And saying “Mileven is horrible and Mike hates el and el hates mike and they dont care about eachother.” That’s NOT an opinion. That’s invalidating someone’s comfort ship.

So regardless of what happens, (because they BOTH have a great change at being end game ships) we must remember that the directors have had this planned for awhile! So it’s not like they’re pulling it out of their asses if they make Mileven or Byler end game. It would have been made to be from the start.

You don’t have to agree with how Mileven or Byler is presented. You don’t have to ship either. You don’t have to find them cute. You don’t have to do any of that. But you DO have to respect it and it’s shippers.

And admit it, Mike is a total softie with both El and Will. And I know that whatever happens it’ll be good. And even if I personally wouldn’t enjoy an end game Mileven, I would NEVER go out of my way to invalidate that. And even though I WOULD enjoy an endgame byler, I would FEEL for the Milevens because- imagine having your comfort ship not end up to be canon! That shit hurts! And same for if Byler isn’t canon!

I hope that all shippers can see from everyone’s point of view (unless you ship minorxadult, or anything disgusting like that.)

And I hope all Milevens and Bylers can learn to respect eachother.

And PLEASE for the LOVE OF GOD, I know that if Byler becomes canon we’re gonna wanna get cocky, and I know the same goes for if Mileven is end game, but please don’t go around saying “I told you so!” It’s never fun and it just makes people feel worse. People are ALLOWED to have faith in something. They’re ALLOWED to enjoy a ship.

And FRIENDLY REMINDER:

Statements like “Byler is endgame” or “Mileven is end game” shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Even I, who always says Byler will be end game, have no idea what will happen in season four. So we can dream all we want but it’s all up to the duffers.

SO PLEASE: let shippers have faith in their ship. Mileven and Byler are pretty vibey and I try to respect it as much as I can.

AND ALSO:

To anyone who has seen my previous Byler vs Mileven posts, I want you to know that although I do have my own opinions on Byler and Mileven- I never want you to stop shipping what you want! And I will always respect whatever you choose to ship (aslong as it’s legal and appropriate) this is just a fictional show! None of its real! And I hope you all know that I love Mileven shippers with my heart, even if I don’t love the ship. And I think both are awesome!

LETS ALL BE RESPECTFUL <3 it’s not that hard! Unless you are a toxic shipper, I will respect whatever you choose to ship. (Again, unless it’s inappropriate, but that goes without saying.)

And whatever becomes end game, I hope we can respect the brothers choice. Because at the end of the day, none of us know for sure what’s going to happen. And so we should just keep our heads up and respect everyone’s side of the fandom. And we need to stop getting so pressed when someone says they don’t ship something that you happen to. Not everyone will share your opinions. And as long as that person isn’t invalidating anything or hating on you, then you should respect them too!

Sorry, anyways. I went on a rant there.

TLDR; ship what you want and respect all shippers please! Even if you don’t ship it personally, you HAVE to respect a ships existence and when it comes to byler and Mileven, you gotta admit that both of them have a good shot at being end game ships. Whatever happens, I’ll always respect Mileven shippers and the ship itself even if I don’t like the ship personally. And If it is end game, then congrats! I love all shippers (as long as it’s appropriate) and I hope you do too!

PS: I’m tagging this In the Mileven tag but if anyone is bothered by that I will take it out!

[the-far-bright-center]

That's a good point, and admittedly I was making bit of an assumption there. I appreciate your valuable perspective as an atheist. Even though I do consider myself a 'religious' or 'spiritual' person, I also grew up believing strongly that the concept of clergy or any kind of man-made religious authority was outdated and should be done away with. My dad was something of a scholar on the topic of the history of world religions, and so I likewise grew up with the understanding that religions go through periods when the institutions supporting them may become corrupted or even may be destroyed/dismantled entirely. For this and many other reasons I don't view religious institutions—whether real or fictional—as somehow static, incorruptible, or above criticism. And finally, as a medievalist, I am well-aware of the long and tumultuous history of medieval Christianity and just how intertwined the Church and State were in medieval Europe. The Jedi Order in the Prequels-era strongly reminds me of the Knights Templar, a monastic order that had started out mainly with the purpose of protecting pilgrims from theives and marauders while passing through the Outremer on route to the Holy Land, but which eventually amassed a huge amount of wealth and power, and became used as advance shock troops during the Crusades. They, too, had an apocalyptic downfall, orchestrated by King Philip IV. I guess my perception of the Jedi Order *as an institution* is that it was essentially well-past its 'expiration date' already by the time we're introduced to it in The Phantom Menace.

For the reasons stated above, it's difficult for me to relate to those who 'stan' a fictional religious institution for its own sake. But also because... I just think the individual characters and their relationships are far more interesting and compelling than a fictional religious order that has clearly lost touch with the average beings of the galaxy whom they are supposed to be serving. My view of the *Order* as an entity doesn't even mean I hate the Jedi or that I think their philosophy or spiritual beliefs don't have any merit. Some of it absolutely does, and I'm glad that the resolution of the Lucas saga in RotJ points to Luke restoring the Jedi in a new and better form. Where I differ from those who are obsessed with defending the Prequels-era Jedi Order ‘no matter what’ is that, first and foremost, I embrace the fact the story is a family saga and that the Jedi as a concept exist to serve the Skywalkers' storyline, not the other way around.

'the jedi council's treatment of ahsoka in the bombing arc was perfectly correct'

I'm sorry WHAT

'yeah we did expel a child and let her be military trialled for something that we did not have, beyond reasonable doubt, evidence to confirm it was her, which is the legal standard of criminal proof. she almost got executed and only her overly emotional former master did anything to prevent it, from the jedi. and then we called her almost execution for something she never did a trial of the force after being a child soldier for three years. then we gave her absolutely shit all when she left! hm, wonder why she doesn't return our phone calls' :/

anyway the jedi council had a duty of care to ahsoka and they fumbled it, hard. big L for them.

[scripttorture]

Not sure if this would really be relevant, but you're the best resource I can think of for prison systems. In a secluded supermax prison with all male staff & all male prisoners, they suddenly get a single (like 19 or 20 y/o) female prisoner who "can't go anywhere else & needs to be kept heavily restrained." What's the warden's best option for making sure she's safe & treated with respect for the first few days/weeks till they can get female guards? Modern setting, mostly American style prison.

I feel like I know enough about this to be helpful but I’ve never claimed to be an expert on prisons and I think you should try to double check what I say. Partly because I think that the ‘best option’ in a case like this would be heavily biased by opinion and what you consider the best outcome to be. I don’t want you to mistake my opinion for fact or discount the idea that you might think differently presented with the same evidence.

 I also think this is the kind of case where there’s a big difference between what should happen and what would likely happen.

 It’s also worth stating at the outset that, in my opinion, the American prison system is set up in a way which inherently makes abuse more likely. And that makes a difference. When the system itself is already set up in a way which makes torture more likely the efforts of individuals within those systems are… less likely to be effective.

 We’re talking about a system where solitary confinement is the first rather then the last resort. Use of solitary confinement over the safe period (1 week) is routine, with prisoners in maximum security facilities often being kept in isolation for months or years.

 Which causes mental health problems to a disabling degree and drastically increases the chances of suicide or self mutilation.

 Rape is still common and while it’s often discussed in terms of attacks by fellow prisoners, a lot of attacks are by guards. Especially when you’re talking about women prisoners and juvenile prisoners. Incidentally it was only in 2012 that the US started recommending against cross-gender searches of women prisoners.

 And a lot of guards in American women’s prisons are men. I found figures of 40% based on data from 2007 and up to 70% for federal facilities from 2011. Both of these were cited figures from books I don’t have full access to. I can’t confidently say how accurate these figures are or how the authors came by them. I can confidently say that there are male guards in female prisons and that this has been linked to abuse (based on the testimony of rape survivors in American prisons).

 While we’re on the subject the kind of restraint use I think you’re referring to is torture. You can find descriptions of its use in Chinese prisons over here.

 Essentially humans are not designed to withstand long periods with little to no movement, or holding the same position for a long time. It is unhealthy. It causes a significant amount of damage to the body. Sometimes it’s lethal.

 Now if you didn’t know this that is OK.

 I’m here because I know a lot of this kind of information isn’t common knowledge and that it’s hard to find. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing something, we all learn sometime.

 We’ll circle back to restraint tortures and alternatives in a moment. For now let’s focus on prisons

 I think that the most likely thing to happen in an American prison is that this character would be thrown in solitary confinement and kept there.

 You can read about how harmful that would be here.

 I also think that it’s unlikely an American prison, having decided to house a woman in a male prison, would hire female guards specifically to accommodate one prisoner. And I think a woman in this environment would be especially vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.

 You can read about that here.

 There’s an in-depth Reuters investigation on the deaths of women in American jails that you can find here. It contains a graphic description of a dead baby, born in a jail, as well as descriptions of systemic racism towards black women and abuse of the mentally ill. (Seriously if you’re a black woman and pregnant or a mother of a young child don’t read it.)

 If you want to write a female character being put into an institution designed for men in America… that’s what it looks like. Higher rates of preventable deaths.

 Here’s the thing though: You do not have to make the situations in your story as bad as they are in real life.

 There is nothing wrong with deciding that the characters in your fiction get treated with more care and respect then is the norm in real life. It might not be realistic but we are writing fiction.

 And there is a difference between a story which is unrealistic in favour of the torturer and one which is unrealistic in favour of the victim.

 Having said that: If you want to create a fictional, less abusive prison system for this story it will not look anything like an American prison.

 I have… some rather complicated feelings about the idea of setting the story in America and then presenting the prison system as better then it is. Remember that I am a pacifist and I was raised in Saudi Arabia. I say this because I feel as though the abuses in the American prison system are whitewashed in the media America exports.

 If I was writing a story set in Saudi which involved imagining a better, less abusive prison system I’d feel confident my readers would know this didn’t reflect the reality. I feel like they would understand without being told that I was trying to imagine a better version of my home rather then trying to accurately show the prisons there.

 I do not think that would be the case if you did the same thing in an American setting.

 I’ve talked enough about the negatives. Let’s move on to how we can make this idea work.

 The way I see it the big choice here is whether you want to keep the setting and the abusive use of restraints or whether you want the character to be safe and treated with respect while incarcerated.

 If you’re picturing the character being held in a way that renders her more or less completely immobile (like a restraint chair or a bed) then there’s a pretty decent chance she’d die within the first couple of weeks regardless of any other abuse. There’s a reason restraints aren’t commonly used in hospitals and mental health facilities any more: they increase the chances of sudden death. Even in young healthy people.

 There’s a case you can read about here that’s a decent example. Young, 27 year old man, partially restrained for ten days after a mental health episode. Dead from a heart attack in ten days.

 Obviously not everyone who is completely restrained for weeks dies of a heart attack. But bed sores exist. So do bladder infections caused by catheters and muscle wastage and a host of other ailments that are cured by simply letting someone move around.

 Honestly combined with solitary and the high chance of sexual abuse I think that full body restraint is probably throwing too many tortures into the story. Because all of these individually are complex issues and the harm each of them does is routinely downplayed. Handling all of them in the same narrative would be really tough and the restraints are the easiest one to get rid of.

 If you’re picturing something more like the restraint torture (constantly wearing hand and leg cuffs) described in the Chinese case I linked to above, survival is a lot more likely. That’s to do with the degree of movement victims are capable of.

 A person who is immobile with their muscles under strain is in a stress position. The death rates for those rise sharply after 48 hours. A person who is immobile when their muscles aren’t under strain (eg restrained to a bed with six point restraints) is not in a stress position. But they’re at greater risk of a heart attack or stroke and after weeks they’ll start to develop bed sores (assuming they’re not lying in a pool of their own waste.)

 A person who’s restrained in a way that lets them walk, but slowly, lets them stand, but not straight, is experiencing a restraint torture. They probably won’t get kidney failure (the cause of death in stress positions) and they’re less likely to get a heart attack or a stroke.

 There are still serious health effects. Muscle wastage and weakness afterwards is very common. Survivors of this particular torture tend to report chronic pain and joint problems. I’m not entirely sure what causes this but since it’s very consistent I’d guess it’s a physical effect of long term restraint use.

 Survivors also tend to report some mobility problems afterwards. There’s a loss of fine motor control and often some difficulty performing day to day tasks that require raising and lowering the arms. Like putting on a jacket unaided or hanging washing on a line or taking things down from a cupboard above the head. This could be due to nerve damage, damage to muscles or ligaments at the joints or both.

 These sorts of restraints don’t leave victims in a stress position; which is why they can survive for months or more rarely years while restrained (stress positions are only consistently survivable up to 48 hours.) But nonetheless they do leave victims in a constant state of pain. The restraints dig in. The position and inability to straighten is painful, especially for the joints. A lot of victims report being unable to sleep because of the restraints.

 And sleep deprivation causes it’s own problems which you can read about here.

 I might be on the wrong track here but generally no one has to be restrained. So the inclusion of that in the ask made me think this story might have elements of fantasy, sci fi or super hero genres: a character with a special ability that can only be used under certain circumstances.

 I had a problem with something like that in one of my stories recently. The character in question can manipulate how people think and feel using her voice. And I racked my brains trying to think of a way the police in the story could keep her imprisoned once they caught her. I looked up all sorts of sedatives, thought about solitary and all kinds of over the top abusive stuff that fiction teaches us is a go-to practical solution.

 I didn’t want to use them. I didn’t want her to be tortured.

 And then it hit me: her guards could just wear noise cancelling headphones.

 Sometimes the answer really is that simple.

 Think about this character’s power set, if that’s part of the problem here. Really consider what she can do and how she does it. Have you got an underlying chemical process going on? If it’s magic what’s the cause and effect for it? What are her limits? What is her range?

 Use that to think about when the power breaks down and why. And if you’re writing fanfiction based on a canon with poorly defined magical abilities…. Make something up to define how she does what she does.

 Focus and concentration is a commonly used way of doing this. I saw a brilliant program a while back where the main character actually had no idea how his powers worked and was as surprised and elated as everyone else when they did. I try to come up with strict, simple definitions of a character’s powers/abilities. Then I work to try and find inventive ways of applying that. Find a method that works for you and don’t be afraid to try a few different approaches.

 Unless you’ve written yourself into a corner, chances are this character (like mine) doesn’t need to be restrained or isolated.

 And if you have written yourself into a corner, you can write yourself out of it again. Either with the choices you make now or by going back and editing what you already have.

 On a similar note if you want this character to be in a better, less abusive system does she have to be in a male prison and does she really, absolutely have to be in America?

 Because if you want the lowest possible rates of violence and abuse today that means the Scandinavian prison system. You can find out more about it here and here for Norway.

 You can read more about global prison systems here.

 The gist of it is that there are huge systematic differences. Prison guards in Norway are trained for 2-3 years on specially designed course and the ratio of staff to prisoners is almost 1:1. (For contrast in the UK, which is closer to the US system training takes 12 weeks and the ratio is 1:4.) Prison guards in Norway are well paid, facilities are well staffed and guards are allowed generous breaks and holidays.

 This creates a system where staff are not overly stressed, sleep deprived or pressured to achieve unreasonable ‘results’. Training focuses on conflict resolution, this along with a less pressurised working environment this creates a better overall environment for staff and prisoners. Force is really considered a last resort and staff are provided with the tools, training and support necessary to make that a reality.

 There’s also effort put into the physical construction of these facilities: cells aren’t cramped, overcrowded or unsuitable for human habitation.

 I’m not trying to claim these prisons are perfect. There is still a big trend of prolonged solitary confinement use in Norway and other Scandinavian countries. There is still abuse in prisons.

 But- Well I can’t compare directly with US prisons because I didn’t find statistics using similar measures for violent attacks. However I can compare with the UK. With a prison population of about 3,200 Norway had 181 attacks on staff. The UK, with a prison population of 83,300, had a little over 10,000 attacks.

 I think if you really want to write something with the least potential for abuse then you’re better off imagining an international (or explicitly Scandinavian) institution built more along the lines of the Norwegian system.

 If you’ve got your heart set on an American, male prison being the only place this character can be then I think the ‘best’ thing a well intentioned warden in that position could do is throw her in solitary and have her kept on suicide watch.

 The safe period for solitary confinement is about a week.

 After that she’d start to show signs of mental health problems which would get worse the longer she was held. By about the 1-2 month point these problems are probably going to be permanent. Beyond that the chances of self harm and suicide attempts starts to rise. So does the chance she’ll have a psychotic break and start hallucinating. After a year you’re looking at multiple suicide attempts and chances of self mutilation. By which I mean things like trying to destroy your own hands, legs, face etc.

 The decision about what’s right for your story is always yours. You know these characters, the setting and the kind of narrative you’re telling best.

 Pick the options that best fit with what you want from the story and the characters. Because that’s the best decision for the story.

 But if you’re writing about an abusive system don’t gloss over the abuse. If you’re writing about a torturous practice in prisons (like solitary confinement) don’t ignore the life long damage it causes.

 I hope that helps. :)

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