#the amount of propaganda this dude must have been in

[cynderrfall]

To the traitorous few

[web-novel-polls]

Best (Web Novel) Hater Tournament

Last Updated: July 27th, 2024 - Please check the original post for updates

Submissions Closed - Masterpost here

[Plain Text: Submissions Closed /end pt]

Rules:

Must be from a web novel or adaptation

Can be a hater of any kind or just have the hater soul

Please submit one character per response (no limit overall)

Tournament Tag: #best hater tournament

Arthur Galvhan from Unlucky Clover

Submission: Legitimately nominating him because he's such a hateful piece of shit that his irrational hatred causes the apocalypse. That is simply an impressive amount of being an absolute asshole. 

Han Sooyoung from Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint

Submission: She spent years hating on a web novel similar to her own through an anonymous account and hate reading the comments it's sole reader posted. Even after the novel came to life, she still kept criticizing its horrible writing and protagonist. 

Hua Cheng from Heaven Official’s Blessing 

Submission: Treats nearly everyone that isn't Xie Lian with derision

Wiki Link

Jiang Cheng from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

Submission 1: Hates Wangxian's relationship. 

Submission 2: Dude devoted more than a decade of his life to hating on his dead kind-of-brother (it's complicated) how has he not been submitted already? bonus points for his actor's many faces of utter disgust in The Untamed 

Mod Propaganda: Haterism so bad you can start fandom discourse just by name-dropping him. 

Wiki Link

Jun Wu from Heaven Official’s Blessing

Submission: 

(Spoilers) Tossing his old pals into lava and then destroying an entire generation of gods wasn't enough! He also ground the old generation of gods up and made them into the foundation of the new Heavenly Realm, so everyone steps all over them whenever they're walking around. Also an over simplified explanation of the entire plot is basically Jun Wu hears one phrase that sets him off and decides to be a giant hater because of it, destroying a whole kingdom within like three to four years in the process. This guy is the epitome of "...and I took that personally."

Wiki Link

Lan Jingyi from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation 

Submission: jingyi hates su she so much even though they've never interacted before and then absolutely obliterates him verbally in front of almost every sect leader, what a legend

Lan Wangji from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation / MDZS

Submission: Just because he's quiet doesn't mean he's not a hater. He gets his hate across economically. Jin Guangyao? Hated. Su She? Hated. Jiang Cheng? Don't even ask. Loathed entirely. Anyone else not in his immediate family (including problematic cancelled husband Wei Wuxian)? Not even worth his time. Bro even hates himself (sometimes) 

Mu Qing from Heaven Official’s Blessing

Submission: https://www.tumblr.com/bonesblubs/708661194148511744/inspiration 

Mod Propaganda: Mu Qing can split a tower bell in two yet can’t admit he wanted to be friends with someone he’s known for 800+ years without trying to immediately kill himself. Randomly started reciting a poem about his least favorite coworker’s dick just to fuck with him (Feng Xin). Said he’d kill a bride like Xie Lian if she was sent to him. 

Wiki Link

Shen Jiu / Original Shen Qingqiu from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving 

"Even if all of this could be redone from the beginning, in the end, the conclusion would remain the same. My heart is full of malice, my insides hatred and resentment. Today, Luo Binghe wishes for me to die horribly, and I only have myself to blame." - Shen Jiu, The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, Volume 4: Chapter 24 (Reddit 1, 2)

Submission: Both the Shen Qingqius are haters just in very different ways 

Mod Propaganda: The Scum Villain that beefed with a 14-year-old out of jealousy & tried to kill him. 

Wiki Link

Shen Yuan/Qingqiu from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System 

Submission 1: He was an anti fan that literally got so mad at a novel he was reading that he died and then was transmigrated into the novel he hated (besides the main character) as the villain. The author of said novel also transmigrated and they formed a love/hate broship.

Submission 2: 

My man is the hater-est hater to ever hate, except like Kendrick Lamar. He hate-read a webnovel with over 20 million words, and left scathing commentary on every single chapter. Even the author Shang Qinghua, of the webnovel PIDW, which by subtext was very very popular, knew Shen Yuan (Peerless Cucumber) as the legendary anti-fan.  He hated it (everything except the protagonist Luo Binghe) so much that after reading the last chapter, he choked and died (...slight exaggeration). Shen Yuan also proceeded to transmigrate into the novel, make everyone fall in love with him, use the power of headpats and 'a smile from the cold beauty' to overturn the genre from harem-esqe to danmei, bending the protagonist. Tldr, the power of Shen Yuan's haterism turned Cool Edgy Awesomely Powerful Protagonist Luo Binghe to soggy wet clingy white lotus bing-bong Bingmei, and it's honestly better off this way <3 

Submission 3: he's an internet hater screenname Peerless Cucumber who hates this webnovel so much he dies and transmigrates into it to fix the entire plot and also he's left so many hate comments the author (fellow transmigrator) knows and remembers who he is after being in the webnovel world for decades. Dedication.

Su She from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation / MDZS

“Stop thinking so highly of yourself. Who told you I cursed Jin Zixuan in order to frame you? Back then, I wasn’t working for Sect Leader at all. I cursed him simply because I wanted to!” ….Su She, “Those as arrogant as him--I’ll kill every single one who comes my way!” - Su She to Wei Wuxian, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, EXR, Chapter 104

No propaganda submitted

Mod Propaganda: Haterism so bad he straight up made a new sect. Cursed Jin Zixun. Has beef with a guy who barely knows he exists. 

Wiki Link

Yin Hanjiang from Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know 

Submission: Second half of the novel YHJ in particular, hater energy unmatched! Righteous sects? fuck them up. His own sect? on eggshells. His best effort at not murdering someone is to start wiping his weapon with their clothes. General vibe of 'if anything happened to Venerable i'd kill everyone in this room and then myself AND SOMETHING JUST HAPPENED TO VENERABLE'. Anyway get their asses babe <3

Yu Ziyuan from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

Submission: I would not blame anyone who went through the first half of the story believing that Yu Ziyuan hated every single person she ever met because she talks shit about her husband, her son, her adopted son, and her daughter whenever she gets the chance to. Sometimes all at the same time. She projects so much raw hater energy that she psychologically scarred her son for life. 

Dealer's Choice

Qi Rong from Heaven Official’s Blessing

“Obviously, those things weren't within the realm of consideration for Qi Rong. He swore like there wasn't a single person in the Three Realms he didn't want cursed to death. He called Pei Ming a rotten manwhore, Little Pei a kiss-ass, Jun Wu a faker, Ling Wen a damned bitch, Lang Qianqiu a moron, Quan Yizhen dog shit, the Water Master blackhearted, the Wind Master a tramp–he probably didn't know Shi Qingxuan was actually a man.” - Heaven Official’s Blessing (Tumblr)

[magicalgirlfia]

Some Dome Octarian Society Headcanons

Honestly we only see the military side of the dome dwelling Octarians and it really makes me wonder what their society must be like.

We really don’t see much about what life is like outside of just stuff about the army and I wanted to base this off the fact that nobody is in the wrong and that “everyone is just doing their own thing”.

The most valued occupations are STEM careers, especially those who work in engineering and technology.

Militants and medical professionals are a close second followed by musicians, composers, and artists, most of whom receive support from the government to create music and art for them (ex; Turquoise October making Octotronica and the propaganda we see in the sunken scrolls)

Most octarians are pushed to and do chose their careers from a very young age. After or during their equivalent to middle/secondary school octarians usually do internship style programs instead of a traditional schooling, thus why there are so many child soldiers.

All schools are funded by the government and so they are where a lot of propaganda and nationalism are instilled in people.

Marina is a special case and was able to skip most/all of the required schooling and go straight to an internship program due to her intelligence.

Many of the octarians who live in the domes as of around ME2022 have chosen to be there for one reason or another. For example, while some octarians are still conditioned to be loyal to the army, some have genuine loyalties to Octavio, some are pressured by tradition or a feeling of obligation, and some people just don’t want to leave because they have lives there. Nevertheless, post ME2018 the Octarian domes have many fewer inhabitants than usual.

Lots of their infrastructure is built off of the skeletons of the formerly flooded old human dome cities which have been built upon almost beyond recognition.

Octarian anthologists know a lot more about about human society due to this and they became so advanced due to the fact that they could somewhat build off already existing technology. This is why the Sunken Scrolls contain so much information about the Splatoon universe pre mollusk era- they’re written by the octarians.

Biological family is not something with a big focus, especially when many of the members of society have been created through asexual reproduction. They raise kids with a “it takes a village to raise a child” mindset.

Although there are special cases where children will be raised by one specific person or multiple people, they aren’t necessarily the kids biological parent(s)

Later on in life this applies to the group that someone chooses to work with, as they usually have to live and work in close proximity to each other and form strong familial friendships with one another.

Blackouts are a regular occurrence and most of the population keeps a lot of candles at hand for emergencies. It’s very difficult to create renewable energy due to the fact that things like sun, wind, and weather have to be artificially created.

This is due to the amount of electricity that is presumably used on Octavio’s weapons. And also raves. Like chill out dude.

But I digress. Due to that, power eggs are some of the only sustainable and reliable energy sources which is why keeping good relations with the Salomonids is absolutely essential.

Due to their close relation, a good chunk of the population knows the salmonid language or have at least heard terms in it before. It’s not the majority of course but it’s more than you’d expect, especially considering that not many will actually ever interact with them.

I think that styles based off of poppy/preppy ME2017 inkling fashion are very popular with rebellious teenagers.

That’s all I have right now. Maybe I’ll come up with more in the future and also maybe I won’t.

[motorclit]

A particular r*ght-w*nger (l*bs of t*k t*k) is going after the furry community now.

I'm legit waiting for the suggested criminalization of having a favorite color or favorite dinosaur. I'm legit waiting for imagination and fun to be brought to the chopping block with plain, clear intention that nobody should be happy unless you're obscenely wealthy.

You like laughing and the laugh isn't socially acceptable? Ban it.

Do you enjoy cartoons and other forms of fun art? Ban it.

Do you dance anything but a stupid square dance? Ban.

Caring for houseplants or cats? Straight to ban.

Don't let them catch you playing a musical instrument.

Don't let them catch you wearing alternative clothing (especially DIY).

You're not allowed to have sex but you better be popping out babies so figure that out but don't expect a nod of approval from your fashy overlords.

Ooh, whole words could be banned like "rizz" or maybe even classics like "dude" cuz slang is suddenly seen as some sort of indicator of a criminal or some stupid bullshit.

Wait! You can't pick your outfits anymore! You must wear the uniform of your socio-economic caste, now!

Seriously, they go after stuff that doesn't need to be gone after because they crave power and control. And when certain key mouthpieces bring up the concept in no more than one post, their whole cult eats it up.

My parents have been thoroughly brainwashed BEYOND HELP since 9/11, and no amount of talking to them or even showing them irrefutable proof that they've been lied to will do anything because they DO NOT CARE. They WANT the mythologized and romanticized "good ol' days" to be "brought back" because... 'Murica or something. (It's the brainwashing propaganda boomers we're brought up with)

My parents are also EXTREMELY GULLIBLE. My mom believed the old westerns on TV were how the west truly used to be like, and my dad swears to this day that people back in the day spoke with the trans-atlantic accent instead of just celebrities and other certain prominent people who were heard by the public on TV and radio. My dad falls for photoshop every goddamn time. My mom falls for click bait headlines and doesn't read articles (same with dad) and she believes literally anything that comes across her FB timeline. NEITHER ever knew how to use Google (back when Google was usable!)

I don't know how long it'll be before things like any and all unpunished violence against anyone not a fascist becomes a guarantee, so I beg everybody to please learn how to protect yourselves in SOME way!

Don't let 2024 be the start of the acceleration of 1984.

[qqueenofhades]

I want to hear about gay knights. Please.

Ahaha. So this is me finally getting, post-holiday, to the subject that was immediately clamoured for, when I volunteered to discuss the historical accuracy of gay knights if someone requested it. It reminds me somewhat of when my venerable colleague @oldshrewsburyian​ volunteered to discuss lesbian nuns, and was immediately deluged by requests to do just that. In my opinion, gay knights and lesbian nuns are the mlm/wlw solidarity of the Middle Ages, even if the tedious constructionists would like to remind us that we can’t exactly use those terms for them. It also forces us to consider the construction of modern heterosexuality, our erroneous notions of it as hegemonically transhistorical, and the fact that behaviour we would consider “queer” (and therefore implicitly outside mainstream society) was not just mainstream, but central, valorized, and crucial to constructions of medieval manhood, if not without existential anxieties of its own. Because medieval societies were often organized around the chivalric class, i.e. the king and his knights, his ability to make war, and the cultural prestige and homosocial bonds of his retinue, if you were a knight, you were (increasingly as the medieval era went on) probably a person of some status. You had a consequential role to play in this world, and your identity was the subject of legal, literary, cultural, social, religious, and other influences. And a lot of that was also, let’s face it, what the 21st century would consider Kinda Gay.

The central bond in society, the glue that made it work, was the relationships between soldiers, battlefield brotherhoods, and the intense, self-sacrifical love for the other that is familiar to anyone who has ever watched a war movie, and dates back (in explicitly gay form, at least) to the Sacred Band of Thebes. Medieval society had a careful and contested interaction with this ideal and this kind of relationship between men. Because they needed it for the successful prosecution of military ventures, they held it up as the best kind of love, to which the love of a woman could never entirely aspire, but that also ran the risk of the possibility of it turning (homo)sexual. Same-sex sexual activity was well-known in the Middle Ages, the end, full stop. The use of penitentials, or confessors’ handbooks, as sources for views or practices of queer sexual behaviour has been criticised (you will swiftly find that almost EVERYTHING used as a source for queer history is criticised, shockingly), but there remains the fact that Burchard of Worms’ 11th-century Decretum, a vast compilation of canon law, mentions same-sex behaviour among its list of sins, but assigns it a comparatively light penance. (I don’t have the actual passage handy, but it’s a certain amount of days of fasting on bread and water.) It assigns much heavier penalties for Burchard’s main concern, which was sorcery and the practice of un-Christian beliefs, rituals, or other persistent holdovers from paganism. This is not to say that homosexuality was accepted, per se, but it was known about, it must have happened enough for priests to list in their handbooks of sins, and it wasn’t The End of The World. Frankly, I am tired of having to argue that queer people existed and engaged in queer activity in the Middle Ages (not directed at you, but in general). Of course they did. Obviously they did. Moving on!

Anyway. Returning to gay knights specifically, the fact remained that if you encouraged two dudes to love each other beyond all other bonds, they might, you know, actually bang. This was worrisome, especially in the twelfth century, as explored by Matthew Kuefler, ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’ and Ruth Mazo Karras, ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179-214 and 273-86. I have written a couple papers (in the ever-tedious process of one day being turned into journal articles) on the subject of the Extremely Queer Richard the Lionheart, some material of which can be found in my tag for him. Richard’s queerness has been argued over for a long time, we all throw rotten banana peels at John Gillingham who took it upon himself to deny, ignore, or minimize all the evidence, but anyway. Richard was a very masculine and powerful man and formidably talented soldier who could not be reduced to the stereotype of the effeminate, weak, or impotent sodomite, and the fact that he was a prince, a duke, and a king was probably why he was repeatedly able to get away with it. But he wasn’t alone, and he wasn’t the only one. He was very much part of his culture and time, even if he kept running into ecclesiastical reprisals for it. It happened. If you want a published discussion that covers some of my points (though not all of them), there is William E. Burgwinkle, ‘The Curious Case of Richard the Lionheart’, in Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Literature: France and England, 1050-1230 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 73��85. Also on the overall topic, Robert Mills, Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 

Peter the Chanter, a Parisian cleric, also wrote De vitio sodomitico, a chapter of his Verbum abbreviatum, fulminating against “men with men, women with women [masculi cum masculis […] mulieres cum mulieribus]” which apparently happened far too often for his liking in twelfth-century Paris (along with cross-dressing and other genderqueer behaviour; the Latin version of this can be found in ‘Verbum Abbreviatum: De vitio sodomitico’ in Patrologia Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris: 1855), vol. 205, pp. 333–35). Moving into the thirteenth and especially fourteenth centuries, this bond only grew in importance, and involved a new kind of anxiety. Richard Zeikowitz’s book, Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of Male Same-Sex Desire in the 14th Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), explores this discourse in detail, and points out that the intensely homoerotic element of chivalry was deeply embedded in medieval culture – and that this was something that was not queer, i.e. unusual, to them. It is modern audiences who see this behaviour as somehow contravening our expected stereotypes of medieval knights as Ultra Manly No Homo Men. When we label this “medieval queerness,” we are also making a judgment about our own expectations, and the way in which we ourselves have normalized one narrow and rigid view of masculinity.

England then had two queer kings in the 14th century, Edward II and Richard II, both of whom ended up deposed. These were for other political reasons, but their queerness was not irrelevant to assessments of their character and the reactions of their contemporaries. Sylvia Federico (‘Queer Times: Richard II in the Poems and Chronicles of Late Fourteenth-Century England’, Medium Aevum 79 (2010), 25–46) has studied the corpus of queer-coded historical writing around Richard, and noted that while the Lancastrian propaganda postdating the usurpation of Henry IV in 1399 obviously had an intent to cast his predecessor in as unfit a light as possible, the accusations of queerness started during Richard’s reign, “well before any real practical design on the throne […] and well before the famous lapse into tyranny that characterized the reign’s last few years. In poems and chronicles produced from the mid-1380s to the early 1390s, and in language that is highly charged with homophobic references, Richard II is marked as unfit to rule”. E. Amanda McVitty (‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77) examined how the treason trials of high-status individuals centred on a symbolic deconstruction of his chivalric manhood, demoting and exiling him from the intricate homosocial networks that governed the creation and performance of medieval masculinity.

This appears to have been a fairly extensive phenomenon, and one not confined to the geopolitical space of England. Henric Bagerius and Christine Ekholst (‘Kings and Favourites: Politics and Sexuality in Late Medieval Europe’, Journal of Medieval History 43 (2017), 298–319) traced the use of ‘discursive sodomy’ as a rhetorical tool employed against five late medieval monarchs, including Richard II and his great-grandfather Edward II, John II and Henry IV of Castile, and Magnus Eriksson of Sweden. In all cases, the ruler in question was viewed as emotionally and possibly sexually dependent on another man, subject to his evil counsels and treacherous wiles, and this reflected a communal anxiety that the body of the king himself – and thus the body politic – had been unacceptably queered. Nonetheless, as a divinely anointed figure and the head of state, the accusations of gender displacement or suspected sodomy could not be placed directly on the king, and were instead deflected onto the favourites themselves, generally characterised as greedy, grasping men of ignoble birth, who subverted both social and sexual order by their domination of the supposedly passive king. 

None of this polemic produced by hostile sources can be read as direct confirmation of the private and physical actions of the kings behind closed doors, but in a sense, this is immaterial. The intimate lives of presumably heterosexual individuals are constructed on the same standards of evidence and to much greater certainty.  In other words, queerness and queer/gay favourites could not have functioned as a textual metaphor or charged accusation if there was not some understanding of it as a lived behaviour. After all, if the practice did not physically exist or was not considered as a potential reality, there could have been no anxieties around the possibility of its improper prosecution.

This leads us nicely into the deeply vexed question of adelphopoiesis, or the “brother-making” ceremony argued by some, including John Boswell, as a medieval form of gay marriage. (Boswell, who died of AIDS in 1994, published the landmark Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality in 1980, and among other things, controversially argued that the medieval Catholic church was a vehicle for social acceptance of gay people.) Boswell’s critics have fiercely attacked this stance, claiming that the ceremony was only intended to join two men together in a celibate sibling-like relationship. A Straight Historian who participated in a modern version of the ceremony in 1985 actually argued that since she had no sexual inclinations or motives in taking part, clearly it was never used for that purpose by medieval men either. (Pause for sighing.) 

The problem is: we can’t argue intentions or private actions either way. We can understand what the idealized and legal designation for the ceremony was intended to be, but we cannot then outrageously claim that every historical individual who took part in it did so for the party line reason. Maybe medieval men who joined together in brother-making ceremonies did live a celibate and saintly life (this would not be surprising). It seems ludicrous to argue, however, that none of them were romantically in love with each other, or that they never ever ever had sex, because surprise, formulaic documents and institutional guidelines cannot tell us anything about the actions of real individuals making complex choices. Even if this was not always a homosexual institution (and once again with the dangerous practice of equivocating queerness with explicitly practiced and “provable” sexual behaviour), it was beyond all reasonable doubt a homoromantic one, and one sanctioned and organised according to well-known medieval conventions, desires (for two men to live together and love each other above all) and anxieties (that they might then have sex).

The medieval men who took a ‘brother’ would probably not have seen it as a marriage, or as the kind of household formation or social contract implied in a heterosexual union, but as we have also discussed, the definition of marriage in the Middle Ages was under constant contestation anyway.  The church was constantly anxious about knights: their violence, their (oftentimes) lack of religiosity, their proclivity for tournaments, swearing, drinking, and other immoral behaviour, the possibility of them having sexual affairs with each other and/or with women (though Andreas Capellanus, in De amore, wrote an entire spectacularly misogynistic handbook about how to have the right kind of love affair with a woman and dismissed same-sex relationships in one sentence as gross and unworthy, so he was clearly the No Homo Bro Knight of his day). So, as this has gotten long: gay knights were basically one of the central social, religious, and cultural concerns of the entire Middle Ages, due to their position in society, their necessity in a warlike culture, the social influence of chivalry and their tendency to bad behaviour, their perceived influence over the king (who they may also have given their Gay Cooties), their disregard of the church’s teachings, and the ever-present possibility that their love wasn’t celibate. So yes. Gay knights: Hella Historically Accurate.

The end.

[ohnobjyx]

you answer about celebrities being prudent with dating got me curious as western boys in bands, especially in the rock/alternative/rap scene, seem to have a reputation for dating/sleeping around a lot, do asian idols just not date/sleep around a lot or are they just better at hiding it because they are expected to?

Hi, anon! I’m slowly working through all the asks, but I remembered yours when I was watching this week hotpot episode from SDoC S3 (I’m wondering if I should write a post compiling all the candies, but I have so many asks pending).

To start with the answer, let’s put the disclaimer first: I don’t know celebrities, I’m a simple fan just like all of us. Whatever they do in their private life it’s their own thing, and I just simply try to place an objective view of their situation here.

Just a clarification: when we talk about idol or celebrity, I’m talking about those that are pretty successful in the industry (with their number of fans ranking in the millions). These are the tip of the iceberg in the industry however. The bulk of them have less fans, but are also less subjected to scrutiny by the public.

1. First of all they are prudent because it isn’t widely accepted as “good” that people date/sleep around a lot, especially among the older generations. However, many young people also feel that it’s unacceptable, and their opinions may vary from “they must be very promiscuous or they flicker a lot” to “if they haven’t been able to keep a relationship for long, there must be a problem with this person”.

2. We’ve already talked about the fact that celebrities are expected to uphold a clear and good moral example for their fans. They’ll be heavily criticized if they do things that aren’t socially approved, and it’ll impact negatively on their work prospects. So, I suppose that in the case any celebrity did date/sleep around, they’d have to be masters at hiding their “affairs”.

Let’s just imagine how a male idol’s gf fans (the type of fans that fantasize being their idol’s gf) would react if their idol publicly dated around with many girls. I don’t think that would end well.

3. Like I said at the beginning, I’m going to talk about those idols and celebrities that have more success in the industry.

So, when we talk about dating/sleeping around, there’s something that we can’t ignore: time.

I don’t know about the workload of the boy bands (especially, as you said, in the rock/alternative/rap scene) but the workload of an Asian idol is terrifying.

Let me show you a few examples:

a. Even before he debuted in the boy band, dd spent almost everyday hours dancing, no free weekends and barely vacations, since he was 13 and entered the company. As a child, he got myocarditis when he was learning to dance. As soon as he got discharged, he went back to dancing, and spent his summer vacations (just a month in China, btw, August) dancing from 1 pm to 9 pm everyday, to recover the lost ground (this really was a test for his love for dancing, but just imagine it: he could do 8 hours a day just because he liked it, how many hours would he pull when pressed by the company?)

b. To anyone unfamiliar with Asian culture, the Lunar New Year’s Eve is the most important celebration in Asian culture, a night when family gathers together to celebrate the arrival of the new year. Asian idols usually are full of work, even that same night, so they almost never spend the New Year’s Eve with their families. A famed actress (in her fifties), once said in a program: “my father died last year... and one of the things I regret the most is that I haven’t spent a single New Year’s Eve with him in the last 20 years”.

c. In 2015, a year after his debut with Uniq, dd posted on w/ibo: “Just another year that I can’t be with my parents on New Year’s Eve... just a little sad” (and from what I know, he hadn’t spent a single New Year’s Eve at home since his debut).

d. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with Running Man, another c-variety show that’s very popular in China (I recommended it, btw). They did a night-life special last year, and when the director announced the theme (that they’d start filming by 4 pm and continue through the night), the host were like “just that?”:

“Then like our usual jobs”, “I can stay awake longer than an owl”, “I’m also good at spending all-nighters”.

One of them actually said: it seems that they don’t really get what an actor’s job is... everyone say how many days and nights have you gone by without sleeping in you busiest times? Angelababy (that’s her stage name, yes): “When I was a model... I really spent  three days and three nights   without a single moment of sleep.” Li Chen: “Before I came here to film yesterday, I spent 4 days filming night scenes for my drama, so 4 nights without sleep.”

Song Yuqi: “If we count sleeping an hour a day... I went a full week without a full night of sleep. Yesterday was the longest I’ve been sleeping in the last month”.

Their attitude is what surprises me the most, to be honest... It’s like, “of course we would spend a whole night awake, no problem!”

e. One of the previous hosts from this show once said that from his daughter’s birth to her first birthday the amount of time he spent with her totalled to three months.

4. I actually remembered your ask yesterday when I was watching the hotpot episode because of this:

The hosts mentioned getting back at their hotels after filming at 6 am (I think they had been filming the episode during the day and most of the night, and wanted to film a part of the dance using the first daylight). Actually, dd was talking about ZYX making noise in his room practicing dance moves at 6 am (wtf dude, you just pulled an all-nighter, please sleep).

There was a stalker photo of dd taken at 3 am when dd was coming out of the filming site for SDoC S3, one of the other day (just imagine it: you’re leaving the workplace, after a hard day of work, and instead of getting into the car peacefully you have to escape from these people). 

This kind of workload is insane. When they aren’t filming, they are travelling to filming sites, filming tv shows episodes, filming commercials, doing interviews, photoshoots, practicing whatever show is coming up next, reading scripts, and a long list of things they do. Almost without a single moment to rest.

I remember an interview of another actor, in which he said that if he had a free moment in his schedule or a free day, he spent it sleeping and talking with his family.

I’m not saying that with this kind of schedule keeping a relationship is absolutely impossible, but it resembles greatly a long distance relationship, no matter where your home actually is. So dating around a lot is quite of... difficult? (at least in my opinion). And about sleeping around... maybe it’s just me, but if I had a free night with their workload... I’d pass out as soon as I was in my room, and that’s all the sleeping I can envision.

(Btw, this kind of work pace is a trend in China. I've been told that it’s actually common to have surgeons doing 36-hour shifts... here I was thinking that 24h shifts were outrageous).

5. However, it’s not impossible. It wasn’t so long ago that a scandal got out about an actor who was married and with an adult son AND still had time to keep a mistress.

I hope I haven’t rambled too much, anon, and that you find my answer useful!

Edit (thanks to @gremlin-02!): “you're missing the part about propaganda. chinese idols have to hold up "chinese culture/good morals/examples of good citizens" they are not gonna be promoting a play boy idol since it "corrupts" the family values and state system.”

You are absolutely right, and it’s also a point that supports the second part of this post. We tend to forget about it, but the national propaganda has shaped the country from its core. Without it, the country would be very different today. Not better or worse, just... different, since propaganda, for all its bad reputation, has played a large part in their economic growth and their position in the world economy today.

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #4- Man, Talk About Timely, Huh? It’s Time for the Plague Storyline!

Issue #4 opens up with First Aid writing in his diary about the less-than-stellar working conditions at Delphi medical center, and it’s not because Ambulon caught him reading Wreckers fanfic during office hours for the eighth time this week.

So, here’s the thing: you can’t be demoted from doctor to nurse. That’s not how that goes, because doctors and nurses aren’t on the same career path ladder. A doctor can have certain accesses and privileges taken away if their performance slips, or can be moved to a different ward or transferred to another facility, but outright demotion to nurse status isn’t a THING. If anything, First Aid would be performing nurse duties to cover for the fact that Delphi seems to have a grand total of three staff members for the entire outpost. Hell, they’ve had to outsource their mental health checkups to a guy who was in orbit over Cybertron until a couple months ago.

But anyway, something’s up at Delphi, and it all started when they let a couple of Decepticon surrendering combatants inside. These two dudes were running from the Decepticon Justice Division, a group who basically super-murder any Decepticon who’s decided to do a runner from the Cause. The DJD’s base of operations is in the same general area as Delphi, which seems like maybe not the best idea for the Autobots when it came to outpost placement, but it seems to be working out pretty well for the surrendering combatants.

Pharma shows up, and is ready to throw them back outside- he’s the big boss, so he can make that kind of call- but after a little detective works they figure out that the two don’t have their t-cogs anymore, having had them removed for religious purposes. Ambulon sees them as the exact opposite of a threat because of this, not to mention him having a soft spot for surrendering ‘Cons, and manages to convince Pharma to let them stay, and also not violate the Autobot Code, Article 7, which states that all surrendering combatants must be granted safe haven. Ultra Magnus would be proud.

They lock up the Decepticons, slate them for a patch up, then things get complicated as it turns out, they’ve got a branched spark. The last time we saw a branched spark, things didn’t turn out so hot, and it looks like things have started going similarly downhill.

But enough about the horrific deaths of dozens of robots on a frozen planet, it’s time for bar shenanigans!

While Skids prepares to commit an act of violence on a droid that’s done absolutely nothing to him and is just trying to do its friggin’ job, Swerve reveals to Ratchet that he’s decided to follow his dreams after all and open a bar. He doesn’t have all the paperwork turned in yet, per se, but he’s working on it. He hands Ratchet a free drink to celebrate the off-panel event of the Lost Light having found itself on the map again, and Ratchet, who’s apparently never heard of a shot, gripes about the portioning.

Of course, he might have a bit of a point, as the drink seems to shrink more and more as he talks to Swerve about the fact that they’re both giant nerds who were subscribed to Wreckers: Declassified.

Was non-war-related entertainment just not allowed for the last four million years? No wonder the war went on for so long- everyone was so steeped in it they forgot how to function like regular people. Since the logs were beamed directly into the brain, I can only imagine the amount of physic damage that last entry caused.

The reason Ratchet’s brought up everyone’s favorite podcast is that there was a new entry last night- odd, considering that Ironfist’s been dead for a couple years at this point. It was just a series of seemingly random numbers, or at least it would have been, if Ratchet wasn’t a good doctor who kept up-to-date on his medical news.

My my, I do wonder which Wreckers: Declassified subscriber could have sent those statistics on Delphi out into the aether.

As luck would have it, the Lost Light isn’t terribly far away from Messatine at the moment, which is the planet Delphi is on. Ratchet decides it’s time to check things out.

Over in Rodimus’ very pink room, Ultra Magnus wants to have a discussion about Tailgate, and the fact that he wants to be a Decepticon. This is, obviously, a problem, considering the fact that everyone on the ship, who wasn’t stuck in some sort of hole or alternate dimension for the last six millions years, is staunchly anti-Decepticon. Magnus laments on the fact that now that the war is over, he has to start seeing people as people, as opposed to cogs in the machine. Magnus is one of those guys who functions better with structure, which the Lost Light doesn’t really have a ton of.

Rodimus tells Magnus to lighten up a bit, before he pulls something trying to bring military regulation into civilian life, and says that he’ll handle the whole Tailgate thing.

Back down on Messatine, Ratchet’s dragged Drift and Pipes of all people into his little visit to Delphi, and they’re rocking up to the scene on the MARBs- Mobile Autobot Repair Bays. This is Pipe’s first space adventure, and he’s really happy to be here!

We’ll see how he feels a little later in the day.

As the boys make their way over to the plot, Drift and Ratchet lay a bit of groundwork down for future storylines, then arrive outside Delphi to find the door locked and spray painted with a big ol’ X.

Shane McCarthy slipped James Roberts a twenty to set up a slowburn between his OC and Ratchet. Let’s see how that pays off.

Pipes decides to do a thing and crash through the entrance like a hooligan. It goes about as well as one could expect, though we do a pretty sweet and unnecessary flip from Drift out of it.

We’re going to need to soak Pipes in rubbing alcohol for a good hour.

Ratchet yells at Pipes for busting into a medical outpost that clearly wasn’t meant to be cracked open like a cold one, not to mention knocking over at least three hospital beds.

Then a sick guy shows up and Drift flips the hell out and slices up a guy so hard Pipes has to remove his visor to watch the insanity unfold.

The whole “sword murder” thing doesn’t really gel with the idea of “do no harm”, so Ratchet and Drift get into it a bit before First Aid shows up and starts drawing on Pipe’s face.

Back on the Lost Light, Rodimus is keeping his promise and dealing with Tailgate, with the help of Rewind, resident historical archivist and the guy who’s about to rock Tailgate’s fucking world in under 12 seconds.

Okay. So.

The thing about recorded history is everything has a bias. No matter how impartial the recorder attempts to be, no matter how detached, there will ALWAYS be at least a little bleedthough. Now, while it’s unlikely Rewind’s been in direct combat, because he’s friggin’ tiny and turns into a data slug, and while he doesn’t seem the patriotic type, he’s still an Autobot. He’s only been on one side of the war, so most, if all all of his archive, is built from the framework of being surrounded by Autobot mindsets and propaganda. It would appear that this isn’t the first time Rewind’s done something like this, if he already has the upload time committed to memory down to the tens decimal. If he’d been asked to do this prior to the conclusion of the war- very likely, considering it ended a few months ago- what are the odds that he was asked to frame things a little more in favor of his own team? Pretty good, I’d think.

Guys, I don’t think Tailgate is having a good time with the history lesson.

Needless to say, any concern over Tailgate wanting to be a Decepticon is pretty soundly quashed after this.

Back over with the plague plotline, First Aid gives Ratchet the rundown on the symptoms they’ve run into at Delphi.

You fucker, you got that line from Wreckers: Declassified.

Delphi hasn’t been able to call for help, because even if they didn’t have their hands full of liquified robot, communications have been out since something went off and broke pretty much everything in the outpost, general health and well-being included. First Aid suspects a dirty bomb, curtesy of the DJD. The tour of the facility ends in the medical bay proper, where Ambulon is hard at work trying to keep folks alive.

Ratchet looks over the scene, and notes that the older patients in the ward aren’t crying their literal eyeballs out. Weird, that.

Ambulon shows off their super-secret patient, who is kept in shadow for the reader, to keep the suspense going for a bit longer. Mystery patient’s been in an “everlasting coma” since he got here, and while Ambulon and Pharma don’t think anything can be done, First Aid’s willing to get weird with it.

Earlier in the issue, it was mentioned that Ambulon didn’t think First Aid took any initiative. Turns out, First Aid does, and has, just not on things Ambulon agrees with.

It was at that point that Ratchet decided he rather liked First Aid.

Back with Tailgate, he’s returned to his room to confront Cyclonus, who’s busy doing something on the computer. What exactly isn’t revealed, and never will be.

Tailgate is really cross about the fact that Cyclonus let him walk around on a ship full of Autobots claiming he wanted to be a Decepticon. Of course, it’s not like Cyclonus knew he was going to be such a loudmouth about it, otherwise maybe he would have told him to maybe NOT do that, if only to prevent his life getting further muddied up by a war he wasn’t even around for.

Tailgate’s gotten really worked up over this, because that’s just how he is as a person, and even goes so far as to punch Cyclonus in the arm in his frustration. He apologizes almost immediately, but the bear’s already been poked, unfortunately.

Oh, honeybunches, you are going to be regretting that move for the next five years.

But not before the customary “pulling away from the one guy who’ll even talk to you because you don’t know how to properly react to anything anymore" thing.

Back on Messatine, we find out where Pharma got to- he’s been locked into the quarantine room by accident, and will remain there until all technopathogens are completely dead. This will take millions of years.

That seems like poor planning for such a room.

Or, at least, it would be, if Ambulon was still running the show.

How the fuck has Ambulon survived this long without dying of stupidity?

As Ratchet starts trying to get Pharma out of his glass case of emotion, Pipes is starting to not have so much fun on his first-ever field trip.

Yaaay, space adventure!

Ratchet warns Drift not to kill Pipes- repeatedly- and Drift manages to do that, though it looks a little dodgy for a second, as he bonks the little guy on the head and knocks him out. Ratchet’s managed to get Pharma out, and Pharma immediately runs for the prison cells, saying he’s figured it out.

Ambulon carries what’s left of Pipes back to the emergency ward, and Ratchet holds the little dude’s hand while they get him hooked up to some feeds. Drift starts bleeding from the eyes. Awesome.

Enter Pharma.

Today just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?

Turns out those two Decepticons from earlier got out of their cells somehow, and they’ve got guns. Things aren’t looking too good for the Autobots.

Well, I mean, if he says it’s fine, then I guess…

Yep, our mystery patient is none other than Fortress Maximus, warden of Garrus 9, victim of Overlord, and glorified lock-pick for the Aequitas chamber. He’s looking a lot better than the last time we saw him, in that he’s got some limbs attached to that torso of his, and also eyeballs. Good for him.

[georgefancys]

police violence and propaganda in ITV’s Endeavour

“That’s not what my dad says... he says you’re all bastards.” - Tommy Cork, Endeavour, ‘Neverland’.

- first of all, I’m white, so if any black people or other poc want to weigh in, please please do. this isn’t going to be a post about race specifically (mostly because there’s barely anything to talk about, Russell Lewis loves him some white characters) but obviously since a hugely disproportionate amount of police violence in real life is towards black people, that has to be a part of the conversation.

- second of all, all cops are bastards. yes, in the uk too.

- it’s not like i’ve seen anyone in the fandom defending fictional police officers or anything (unlike, say, some people in the brooklyn 99 fandom), so this isn’t a response to anything i’ve seen, but if we’re all going to be stanning a cop show i think this needs to be addressed.

- i’m not any kind of expert, i’m just taking information i’ve learnt elsewhere and applying it to Endeavour.

- i’m very willing to debate on stuff, but read the whole post before you do.

Police corruption

so, the overarching plot in Endeavour, from the pilot to the season 6 finale, is police corruption. However, the corrupting influence is not the police force itself. Instead, it’s the Freemasons, a “secret” society. All the corrupt police officers in Endeavour, from ACC Deare to DS Chard to DS Lott are either Masons themselves, have Masonic connections, or are being bribed/blackmailed by Masons. The point of the corruption plotline is that the police are not corrupt themselves, it’s an external influence that is causing the police force problems. Our main characters are the good police officers!! They hate corruption!!

Fred Thursday

Fred Thursday is a narrative foil for Morse. His family life is a reflection of what Morse doesn’t have. This is a large part of season 1, mostly in Fugue and Home. However, he also does morally ambiguous things that Morse doesn’t agree with. For example, in the season 1 episode Rocket, Thursday is xenophobic towards a German engineer, which Morse is vocal about disagreeing with. We the viewers aren’t supposed to agree with Thursday about this, but there’s never a point where Thursday goes ‘oh yeah I probably shouldn’t hate this German dude who obviously isn’t a nazi’. He keeps his views, and this is never addressed again.

In the season 5 episode Quartet, Thursday covers up for a woman who pushed her abusive husband down the stairs, saying that he must have tripped. Morse also vocally disagrees with this. However, I think the writer intended Thursday’s actions here to be more sympathetic. Which yeah, fair enough, right? The wife doesn’t deserve to go to jail for defending herself. But the problem here is Thursday’s interpretation of justice. At no point, even after seeing evidence of domestic abuse towards the wife twice (and it’s implied that there was more that occurred prior to the episode that he knew about) does he arrest or question the husband. He thinks that because the husband died, that’s justice done. He didn’t actually try to carry out justice using the legal system. And I know that legally domestic abuse can be a tricky thing, especially in the 60s, but Thursday essentially ignores his duty as a police officer to intervene in the obvious domestic abuse situation, and then covers up for the wife. And the line that genuinely bothers me so much, and is what makes me think we’re meant to interpret his actions as good:

Thursday: God was out, he left me in charge

Like, no, Thursday, you’re a police officer and it’s your job to carry out the law, not allow an abuse situation to escalate to the point where the wife is forced to kill her husband in self-defence and then lie about it. And i’m positive that this was a quote featured on the official Endeavour Twitter page when the episode aired, so I think we’re meant to be like ‘oh yeah, that’s reasonable’, not ‘uhhhhhh wtf’.

Another, more recent example: season 7. During episode 1, ‘Oracle’, Thursday believes that Carl Sturgis is guilty of the murder of Molly Andrews - his girlfriend - on the towpath. He is questioned. He says he is innocent, and also has an alibi for the murder. Morse believes that Sturgis is innocent; Thursday believes he is guilty.

[SEASON 7 SPOILERS]

Thursday then spends the rest of the season following Sturgis around, trying to find evidence that he’s the towpath killer. Morse finds out about this and tells him to stop. He doesn’t stop. A different man is caught in the act at the towpath, and after being chased by a group of young women, is hit by a car and dies. It’s decided that he was the towpath killer.

Then, Strange searches a house that turns out to be owned by Sturgis. During this search, Strange finds a kidnapped woman, Jenny Tate, in an upstairs room. It turns out that Sturgis did kill Molly Andrews, and all of the other young women at the towpath, and that the man who died at the towpath was a copycat killer. Thursday’s actions here - stalking Carl Sturgis - are justified by the narrative because Sturgis was guilty all along, despite there being evidence to the contrary, and lawfully Thursday should not have been pursuing Sturgis after he was released from police custody.

But the worst thing Thursday does is literal police violence - and on quite a few occasions.

The “Good” Police officers

Now, I’m going to talk about two instances within the show where Thursday uses unlawful violence, and people within the CID cover up for him.

1. Coda.

(disclaimer: i haven’t watched this episode in ages, so if i get a fact wrong i’m sorry but i know the general gist is right)

Thursday is interrogating Bernie Waters, a young man with connections to the Matthews gang. He wants information about... something, I think it might be regarding a possible power struggle within the gang, or a crime somewhere. Morse is waiting outside, unaware of what Thursday is doing. He goes into the warehouse where Thursday and Waters are, to find Thursday... it’s unclear what he’s doing, honestly, the scene is framed so we can’t see properly, but it’s enough to cause Waters pain, and when Thursday lets go, Waters is bending over and breathing heavily.

Now, Morse doesn’t agree with this, and tells Thursday so. Morse: ‘I don’t remember anything about that in the Sergeant’s training manual’. He knows that Thursday isn’t above iffy conduct (he punches Teddy Samuels in the face in the pilot, and pays a newspaper salesman for information in Home). But in the end, out of loyalty to Thursday, Morse doesn’t mention it to Bright. (Similarly, in the pilot, Morse is outright asked by the CS if Thursday punched Samuels, and Morse says no, he didn’t.) Thursday gets away with it.

So, Morse is the so called “good” police officer. Telling Thursday he doesn’t agree with his methods isn’t going to get him to stop. He’s the one who people say, oh, but he doesn’t commit acts of violence towards members of the public. He just turns a blind eye to the officers that do do that.

And I don’t care that Waters is a criminal, or has connections to this gang. Police officers don’t beat up people so they give up information. That isn’t lawful.

2. Prey.

I had a conversation with another member of the fandom about this recently, and we both agreed that it really bothered us. For a large portion of the episode, the CID has in custody Mr Hodges, a park warden who offered a lift to Ingrid Hjort, a missing young woman. He’s also implicated in a similar case from around a year ago, in which a woman was sexually assaulted and left in a coma. He’s in custody for much of the episode, constantly changing his story about Hjort, but maintaining that they can’t prove his guilt. In a search of his property, Strange finds underwear belonging to the woman from a year ago, which would prove his guilt in that case. However, before Strange can return and present this evidence, Morse and Thursday are questioning Hodges again. Hodges says ‘I didn’t do it, and you can’t prove that I did’, while leering at Thursday. Thursday says ‘Can’t prove it, he says’, stands up and starts beating Hodges.

Again, this isn’t presented as a good thing. Morse attempts to pull Thursday off Hodges, and afterwards CS Bright yells at him, saying they’d just received evidence from Strange.

However, a plotline in this season is a bullet in Thursday’s lung, left from when he was shot at the end of the previous season’s finale, Neverland. This causes him pain and frequent coughing fits. And, you know, he’s dealing with a lot at home, like his son saying he wants to join the army. Bright understands this. Thursday is under a lot of pressure.

Then, Bright tells Thursday that he will write in his report that Hodges fell down the stairs on the way back to his cell.

So this time, instead of having a junior officer showing loyalty by not reporting an incident, we have a senior officer lying to protect his subordinate. And again, it’s framed like Bright is proving his loyalty to Thursday, but... police officers should not beat up people they’re questioning. Like Bright said, they had just gathered enough evidence to charge Hodges, so this was unnecessary.

Other incidents of note

There’s a lot to talk about in Inspector Morse and Lewis too, but I’m not going to elaborate on them in this post. If you want me to, drop me a reply or DM and I will. These include:

- Morse lying about his identity in order to gain entry to a suspect’s college rooms (Inspector Morse, ‘The Dead of Jericho’)

- Morse and Lewis entering a possible suspect’s flat without a warrant (Inspector Morse, ‘Last Seen Wearing’)

- Lewis entering a member of the public’s house and threatening her child by shouting in his face and grabbing his arms (Lewis, ‘Expiation’. This is called out in the episode by CS Innocent, however she doesn’t actually punish him in any way, and it’s framed as if Lewis’s actions were perfectly reasonable because the child was withholding information. It’s also worth noting that this child is black.)

- Hathaway threatening a teenager after he possibly is lying during a murder investigation (Lewis, ‘Intelligent Design’. The teenager commits suicide soon after, and it’s strongly implied that while the threats weren’t the sole cause of him killing himself, they were the breaking point for him.)

- Lewis and Hathaway hounding a suspect for the entirety of an episode despite him not being guilty of anything (Lewis, ‘The Mind Has Mountains’)

- Edit: Morse lying about a woman's involvement in several murders in order to get her a lesser sentence (Inspector Morse, 'Service of All the Dead')

General points

Often in police shows, the police officers commit actions which, while illegal, are framed within the show as being necessary evils. For example, two detectives have strong reason to believe a suspect is guilty. Instead of obtaining a search warrant, they enter the suspect’s house without one and search the place for evidence. They end up finding evidence that the suspect is guilty. Despite the fact that the detectives broke the law by illegally searching the house, they are justified by the fact that they found enough evidence to prosecute the guilty person. We, the viewers, are meant to find these illegal actions reasonable because they ultimately lead to justice being served; the ends justify the means. Well, no. In the case of police officers breaking the law, they don’t.

Conclusion

Endeavour is hardly the worst example of ‘copaganda’, i.e. propaganda specifically designed to paint the police force in a positive, rosy light. It’s set in the 1960s, it isn’t relevant in the 21st century. Nevertheless, I believe that any show where the main characters are police officers is a form of copaganda, even if unintentionally. We are meant to side with the protagonist in any media (unless they’re an antihero, which is not the case in Endeavour). In Endeavour, the protagonist is Morse, who is a police officer. The majority of the main characters are also police officers. No matter how morally grey Thursday is painted as, he is still a protagonist.

I’m not saying we should stop watching Endeavour. It’s one of my favourite shows. But, when a show incorporates police officer characters and police violence, we need to think critically about it. We need to challenge the ideas put forwards in the show instead of just accepting them. Yes, there are more important things to be worrying about right now, but I wanted to make this post because the murder of George Floyd and the ongoing riots in Minneapolis made me consider the implications of television shows which paint the police force as the good guys, because we live in a world where the police force are not the good guys. And when our media is telling us that they are, we need to stop, take a step back, and think about why that is.

Resources:

Official George Floyd memorial fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd

Minnesota Freedom Fund (raising money to pay bail for those arrested in the Minnesota riots): https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/donate

Change.org petitions to hold the police officer who murdered George Floyd accountable: https://www.change.org/p/mayor-jacob-frey-justice-for-george-floyd?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_22414602_en-US%3Av4&recruited_by_id=2b2e5010-a181-11ea-8693-a9223455fd7b&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial

 https://www.change.org/p/minneapolis-police-dept-hold-minneapolis-police-accountable-for-killing-george-floyd-as-he-begs-don-t-kill-me

Black Lives Matter website: https://blacklivesmatter.com/

A report of the independent review of deaths and serious incidents in police custody. This is very long, and even so only a general overview, but I would recommend Trends in deaths in police custody and suicides following police custody and section 13, Police Misconduct: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/655401/Report_of_Angiolini_Review_ISBN_Accessible.pdf

Some graphs showing deaths in police custody in England and Wales over the past decade: https://www.inquest.org.uk/deaths-in-police-custody

Article about increase in deaths in police custody in the UK: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-custody-deaths-uk-latest-increase-2017-a8462616.html

[therealtsk]

On Criticism, Fanfiction, And Writers

I’d like to preface this with the fact that I am a fanfic author. I’ve made no attempt to hide this. I don’t feel any need to. Fanfiction itself isn’t anything to be ashamed of. I’ve enjoyed my time in my fandoms, and I honestly think that I’ve become a better writer because of what I’ve been through. I’ve seen fanfiction shilled as a place for new writers to learn characterization and plotting without having to worry about worldbuilding and such, and that’s true...if you have people who will give you good feedback. Otherwise, you’ll learn all the wrong lessons from writing fanfic, because most of the people who read fanfic are not there to help you improve. They’re there to enjoy something for free.  I’d like to focus on that last bit: for free. Fanfiction is free entertainment. So long as you have access to the internet, you can read fanfic for free. And that’s why, I think, criticism of fanfic is oft so looked down upon.  “Dude, this was written and produced for free. Why are you criticizing it?”  “The author just wanted to write something for fun. They decided to share it with us, and you’re telling them they suck? Wow.”  “Why are you giving crit! No one asked?!” To some degree, I agree with all of this. Posting crit in the comment section of a fic when is not asked for is rude. Full stop. And there are many, many people who don’t know how to give crit. There are many, many people who will use the guise of criticism to shit on something they don’t like. I have no love for those people. I’ve seen many authors bullied off of platforms or forced to change their fics due to the sheer amount of vitriol and hate from the anonymous masses of the internet. I have only enmity for those people.  However.  Let’s lay out three things. Number one: crit is not always for the author. As a matter of fact, this is what most reviews of books, movies, games, ect are. They’re not directed at the author, they’re directed at an audience. The author can choose to read this or not, but if someone chooses to discuss the failings of a fic without directing it at the author, I hardly think that person is evil. Obviously, there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed. I’m not a fan of bashing. Criticism should always be con-structive rather than de-structive.  Number two: crit is necessary to grow as a writer. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to the “I write fanfic for fun” gang- and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it is a solid fact that you are not going to improve as a writer without people giving you feedback. And even the nicest, most gently phrased crit is going to hurt. You have to learn to live with that hurt. This makes me sound elitist, but if you cannot handle criticism in any way, shape, or form, do not post to a public forum. Even if it’s frowned upon to send crit to authors who aren’t asking, people do it. It’s a shame, but they do it. If you wanna write fanfic but don’t want to deal with crit, share it with friends. Disable comments on AO3. But if you want to improve as a writer, you’re going to have to learn how to deal with it.  Number three: nothing should be immune to criticism.  I think that it is inherently dangerous to state that anything should be immune to criticism of any kind. Criticism is how we protect ourselves from propaganda and hate speech. Criticism is how we defend ourselves against the spread of toxic norms and ideas. Criticism is how we push back.   Fanfiction can contain vile things. I’ve read fanfics that had my stomach churning. I’ve read fanfics that are offensive and I’ve read fanfics that I earnestly believe shouldn’t have been posted.  “But fanfic is harmless!”  No. It isn’t. Fanfic, like every other form of literature that exists on this planet, has the power to influence. In the age of the internet, nothing online exists in a vacuum. Ideas, the most potent and resilient of viruses, spread rapidly and spread unseen. And you’re mistaken if you believe that people can’t implant insidious things in fanfic. Just the last week, I’ve seen trauma exploited and romanticized. I’ve seen relationships with minors normalized. I’ve seen nazis excused and rapists defended. I’ve seen a lot of shit. And it’s important to call that shit out. To be brave enough to criticize authors who put those kinds of things in their works. If fanfic becomes immune to criticism, then how do we push out those kinds of ideas, when they’re buried into the works like worms buried in the dirt?  In the lawless land of the internet, we must be the arbiters of our own communities. And criticism is essential to that.  If you see someone bashing, tell them to stop. If someone is getting needlessly bullied for trying to defy fandom norms, defend them. But constructive, fair crit should not be treated as a crime. If it is, we’re failing to protect ourselves. 

[too-lit-for-fanfic]

The Dead Don’t Die; A Review. (Spoilers - it was shit a disappointment)

Hey guys! It’s Roen, one of the owners of this account! I’ve just watched ‘The Dead Don’t Die’, directed by Jim Jarmusch and honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed in a film for a long time, and that’s saying something. The star-studded cast was completely wasted, the talented likes of Adam Driver, Bill Murray and Steve Buscemi have some enjoyable scenes, though they were few and far between, and at the best of times barely raised a smile to my face.

Let’s start on a high note, the cops. Genuinely stole the show for me. Driver and Bill Murray? Yes please. They worked so well off each other and the chemistry was really good. The dynamics between their two characters was very refreshing as well, unlike the same bland emotionless voids everyone else (aside from Buscemi) appeared to be. Loved the little nod to Star Wars, the red car scene was probably the best in the movie, actually enjoyable to watch the two with their bits of banter, actually believable characters. Just get rid of the female cop, I’m all for diversity and inclusion, but again; she added nothing to any of the scenes she was in and had little to no chemistry with the other cast. You can’t have the entire set of characters acting nonchalant and then have one just fucking bawling their eyes out all the time. Got annoying real fast. The romance between the female cop and Ronnie (Driver) was not believable at all to me. I think they were aiming for a relationship like Tim and Dawn from the UK The Office but it fell so short. Not a fault of either actor, they did the best they could with the material given, however it just seemed like a pointless side piece left out to dry in the sun for too long.

Steve Buscemi, aka Farmer Miller was probably the best consistent character. I am a massive fan of a Buscemi so that probably has something to do why I liked his performance so much but i believe the little bit of *flavour* to his voice, the passion, the anger, just made the character stand out so much more from the rest. I would have loved to have seen more of his character, he only had like three scenes which was a massive injustice. I feel as if the framing/filming of the movie could have been done so much better than it was. It may just be the directors style but it felt as if there were so many pointless scenes, like the extended amount of silence in the car with the three fucking hippies that amounted to absolutely no character development that didn’t even fucking matter because they died practically the very next scene. It was just so infuriating how so much screen time was wasted on insignificant details (like any scene with the alien, the unneeded bonding between Bill nd the delivery man, the extra bit of the two diner workers just chit chatting, the hippy trio section) when it could have been spent on actually interesting characters like Miller. Also, that hat was comedy gold.

The homeless dude pissed me off to no end. What even was his purpose? He was like some bootleg token The Lorax, wandering about the woods high off of mushrooms commenting on the capitalist ideology of the townsfolk. Did he offer anything to the plot? No. Was he interesting in the least?!for the first five minutes. Could he be removed form the story by a disembodied Martin Freeman voice? Absolutely. I don’t know if this is just the directors style but what the fuck. The last bit on phones and technology and capitalism was such a slap in the face to the audience. Propaganda. Like okay, we’ve payed to sit here and wasted over an hour of our lives to watch one of the most disappointing movies recently released, with fucking Scottish aliens, even though it was marketed as a zombie movie, to be lectured on the usage of technology? Fuck off. Pick a genre and stick to it. So much valuable screen time wasted. I think the problem with this movie in particular was, there was such an abundant cast that the movie couldn’t really spend that much time on any of them, not allowing itself to develop their characters or for the audience to form an actual bond with them. If you are to do this with such a large cast some groups must eventually merge in order to provide a semi coherent story. A big downfall on the directors behalf.

I don’t really have much to say about Bill or Hank. They were okay, bu weren’t given enough screen time for me to actually care about them dying. Their characters needed some more spicing up. I’m not dissing the actors for this though, they matched the tone of the movie very well, some things are just irreparable. Could have been done better, could’ve been done worse. The beginning scene with the delivery man and Bill was unnecessary and devoured valuable screen time, so did the awkward as hell interaction between him and the Selena Gomez character.

I don’t even know who the three teen actors were. I’m not throwing shade, but for such a star studded cast i would of thought all man members would have some notoriety. Maybe they do, please correct me if I’m wrong, I just didn’t recognise them form anything I’d seen. Their acting was alright but the few scenes they had were just so pointless. They added nothing to the story and didn’t influence the plot in anyway; at least the Scottish alien lady inadvertently got the two main characters killed, that was something. Was this part of the political propaganda the film was trying to push? If so it went completely over my head unlike all the other in your face narration. Ate up valuable screen time that could of been spent developing far more interesting characters. What even happened to them anyway? The just sort of ran off screen and that was the last we saw of them. Maybe the director forgot about that side plot, I don’t blame him, they were just as forgettable to the audience.

Don’t even get me started on the fucking.. i don’t even know- Scottish Alien?? I thought this was a zombie movie but okay. She’s literally the token badass that just fucks off in a spaceship after ultimately leading the main characters (the cops) to their death by requesting they meet her there for no apparent reason than to flex she can be free and they can’t. Honestly, personally I think this was just an excuse to subvert expectations and throw a curve ball in there for the audience. I’m sorry but just because something’s shocking or doesn’t necessarily fit doesn’t mean it’s going to wow audiences, plot twists have to make sense. If they don’t it’s just bad writing and incoherent story telling. It was worse than the *subverdion* of Game of Thrones.

Overall it was such a waisted potential and an actual chore to get through. Would not recommend, at all. If you like this film I’m genuinely happy for you and glad you’ve found something else to enjoy. However, I feel that this is the long awaited final nail in the coffin for zombie movies (which is a shame because I love the likes of Shaun of the Dead). No matter how talented the cast, and by-god did they try to make the script work, if you have lousy material and a dead story there’s only so much they can do. As a Brit, however, I do feel it may be partially down to personal preference (although the shady plot and general inconsistencies are universal) particularly in relation to the comedy. Not to be insulting but I think I was expecting more witty/intelligent humour akin to Blacladder of Shaun of the dead, the contrast with the laconic style just really didn’t do it for me. Don’t think I laughed once apart from that red car scene. However if you enjoy that type of humour good on you, it’s just it something I connect with very well.

REVIEW ENDS HERE, BELOW IS MY INTERPRETATION OF EVENTS.

‘Oh it’s easy to throw criticism, I beg you couldn’t have done any better.’ Is an argument I am anticipating, so let me pitch to you my possible plot for the movie. First of all, get rid of the three juveniles in that delinquent-prison - seriously, what the fuck was their purpose in this film? Offered nothing to drive the plot forward, didn’t effect the story, had no even slightly funny scene - and replace their screen time with the buddy-cop-duo of Adam Driver/Ronnie and Bill Murray/Cliff. Just get rid of the female cop, the chemistry was better without her input. Bill and Hank? Had potential but I think they should’ve partnered up with Steve Buscemi’s character Miller to form an unlikely passive aggressive, comedy gold, getting by on the scrape of their teeth, trio. The homeless man, again, had potential. Instead of having him as some fucking narrator with a sociology degree I would have placed him along with the Billy-Hank-Miller trio. There could have been some great scenes filled with tension between Miller and him. Out of town hippy trio? Still a thing, but for two scenes max.

Now that the playing field has been set let’s get into my rendition of the story. We start off in the diner with Harry and Frank watching the news and having some not so friendly banter. Insults based on race, lifestyle and beliefs are thrown (the hat, which was hilarious, stays) to establish character dynamics. Scene ends with Frank/Buscemi leaving the diner as the theme tune begins to play. Cut to Ronnie and Cliff stood in a cell looking over the dead woman, Ronnie’s flippancy should remain whilst Cliff should behave like a much more real human, this adds a conflict of character that the movie only briefly explored. The two are in the midst of passive aggressively talking to one another over the body - Ronnie forgot to call the people to collect it - as a client steps into the station. Cliff engages in conversation with the client who is informing him of Miller/Buscemi and Homeless dude getting into a fight on Miller’s driveway. In the background, Ronnie, in an attempt to hide the dead body, drags it off into the background, horribly failing at subtlety.

Once the client is gone the body is placed in the receptionists chair, to ‘make it look like they got around to hiring that new member of staff’ and the duo drive to the scuffle. In the car they briefly chat about the scientific events occurring with the theme playing in the background, develops the world they’re in and further establishes their dynamics and relationship. Once they arrive Miller and Homeless dude are close to throwing hands, Miller with one chicken in his arm and a shot gun in the other and homeless dude with a skinned animal in his. Ultimate cop duo extinguish the scene with jokes thrown in, homeless dude just fucking slaps Miller with the skinned rabbit, Miller nearly shoots him, that hat gets briefly confiscated by Cliff. Scene ends with the four parting ways, cops in the car, Miller up to his house in search of the rest of his chickens and homeless dude off into the wilderness.

Diner deaths happen, but the lady screaming with the mop is considerably shortened. The following scene with cops pretty much stays the same, except the female officer is no longer present. That tiny red car for the absolute tank that is Adam Driver? Absolute gold we are keeping that. Homeless dude, who had seen the dead the night before absolutely fucking recks the crime scene losing his shit trying the convince Cliff. Ronnies already on board but must maintain the law. Homeless bro gets detained by Ronnie but manages to run off with only one hand cuffed. Immediate cut to Hank talking with Billy about weapons and zombies yada yada yada except this time he’s actually a traumatised old man. As Billy goes on a tangent about zombies I imagine Hank to be like ‘Moose’ played by the old guy in Jumaji: the next level. Completely gormless but hanging off of every word.

Scene at motel happens, along with the amazing line ‘fuck farmer Miller’ delivered perfectly by Murray.

Skip to night time; cop buddy duo set out on the town with a load of guns and other assorted weapons they managed to scrounge up, their mission is to keep the poeple of the town safe, do they succeed? No. Cliff accidentally drives someone over believing them to be a zombie. At the same time Miller, absolutely fuming about his chickens, is off in the woods behind the store Billy and Hank are camping out in in order to catch the homeless dude in the act of skinning a chicken. Billy and Hank have completely boarded up the front door but unlike in the film, they realise there’s a back door because Miller comes bursting through searching for another shot gun, the undead right on his trial. The trio officially buddy up, gather weapons and set off into the woods, absolutely shit but sumultaneously amazing fight scene ensues as they make their way out of the town.

Our unfortunate trio stumble across homeless guy literally eating one of Millers chickens in the woods. Miller tries to shoot him but is stopped. Banter is tossed, a mini argument happens, everyone has some chicken (Miller begrudgingly). We cut bsck to the cops who now discover the hippy trio dead at the motel, that scene is the same. Cutting back; At the prospect of teaming up Miller throws his chicken away and stomps off into the woods, Billy and Hank following. Homeless dude chases them and attaches himself with the one free hand cuff to Miller. He now has to come.

At some point Cliff absolutely totals the car, I’m not against keeping the zombies in wheels scene. And the two cops are backed into the graveyard. The amazing four are already there struggling to survive. Miller and homeless man keep trying to run in different directions and falling over, Frank has no idea what to do with a pair of branch cutters, Billy is far too happy to be able to finally use his vintage sword that turns out to be pretty shit in the end. Fight scene ensues.

Miller and homeless dude are the first to go, they couldn’t get along if their lives depended on it, which it did. The group scramble and in the process the pair can’t make up their minds. They die arguing. Something along the lines of ‘thank god for that’ but funnier is said by someone idk who. The next to go is Billy. His flimsy sword actually brakes and he’s left weaponless. Hank goes next, he’s been bit and Murray has to shoot him. I picture the scene from Shaun of the Dead, with Ronnie telling Cliff he has to shoot him.

The final scene is when Cliff and Ronnie finally reach another town, beaten up and evidently bruised. The only problem is, the towns already been overrun. The two share one last exasperated look before they charge in to battle, the screen fading to black as the theme song plays. Akin to the ending of Balckadder season 4 But less emotional.

(I know it’s not perfect but by god it’s not any worse than the actual fucking film. If anyone else has any thoughts or ways they think the story should have progressed please message me! I’d love to hear what you guys think!)

[curious-minx]

The Art Patron (SHORT STORY)

Somewhere in between purchasing a full set of decorative Simpsons plates, a perfectly cromulent companion to my custard yellow walls, and generating writing prompts for aspiring writers to never do, I made a discovery that will change my life forever. 

My love language is tinsel wrapped gifts of the highest and personal order. I wanted my lady love to have a very special Kansas Day. She wasn’t from Kansas, nor did she care much for the Simpsons. She liked them just fine. Oh! A fellow is offering the artistic service of turning “ME!” into a Simpson! My walls could use all of the soggy rubber ducky yellow art it can get and seeing as the only pictures I have of myself are in the womb I think this would be one step closer to adulthood. Click, yes, sir please Turn Me into a Simpson button. Huh…$500. That’s really steep. I close the laptop and pace  around my small, growing increasingly smaller bedroom, and  I trip over a foam dumb bell. I am black and bruised. I have even made myself start bleeding. Dammit I guess I have no choice but to turn myself into a Simpson now. How else will I remember how I looked before I broke my face, but I don’t own any pictures of myself!

I have been grocery shopping recently at Sal’s Little Big Sega Bodega! She’s surely got me on camera. I huff down the thirty six flights of my storied building and tip my doorman handsomely. Listen to the heels click and clatter, Big City Blues are calling me. Sal’s Little Big Sega Bodega is one of the only approachable monuments to commerce on this fiscally icy block. I waltzed right in through the copyright infringing doors and blast a salutations to Sal herself. Sal puffs on a waterlogged stodgy and turns a page in a dirty magazine about Russian propaganda. There is a man dressed up in a Sonic the Hedgehog suit cleaning up a bloody mess pooling around the cramped store.

The man dressed as Sonic tells me,“Surf’s up, homie.” The gory puddle ripples and soaks. I step around armed with an armful of Clickers, a steady Shenmue stress ball and a  pre-wrapped Alex Kidd Enchanted Castle hoagie, I will have to pick out the pickled capers but it’s still a nice mayo dense sammie.

“Sal, fair clerkess I am hoping you are having a good day.” I am going to crack into the Sal safe one chit at a chat.

“Nope. Keep it moving, kid. Take your change.” She slides my change across the counter and even though I typically despise when people refuse to make hand to hand contact with lending of money I can accept Sal when she does this. She has clearly lived a life.

“I understand, the ToeJam and Earl flavored condoms don’t stock themselves.”

Sal snaps back, “Look-I know you appreciate all of this geeky shit, but this is my livelihood.”

“Sal, I really think you should take an improv class. You would learn not to start all of these customer interactions marinated in sea salt brine saltier than Ecco the Dolphin’s home...I will see myself out.” Damn I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ask for a simple favor. An old woman with a brawny  pale tattooed man on leash has entered the store just as I am leaving. The old woman takes off her wig, revealing a bald shiny head and a pistol. She begins shoving the pistol at Sal. Sonic turns on the Jet Set Radio to full blast and slips in the bloody puddle.

I don’t want to call the police, but I call the police.

“Hello, I don’t like you.”

“911, what is your emergency.” The tone of the pig operator is harsh and accusatory. I try to swallow, but I am choking on my enchanted hoagie.

“Bang! Bang! Cops and robbers! 72nd and Pacific Ave! Be here or be square!” I hang up the phone and in my burst of adrenaline have to remind myself to not smash my own phone. I go around the corner and wait for the cops who show up. Hours go by and the Sega bodega burns, robbed and pillage. What a world. The cops finally show up when they finally feel like it and are asking Sal the typical useless questions.

“An old woman and her lackey robbed me blind and you’re just going to file some paperwork?!”

“Listen, sweetheart, this is a big bad world. Shit happens. Buck up.” Office Doomsdairy tips his cardboard hat at Sal and takes a Chocolate Milk that has one of the Super Monkey Ball Monkeys winking on the carton. The cop chugs the whole milk carton and slides Sal a twenty.

“Buy yourself something happy, you look like a miserable bitch. Also, I grew up in a Nintendo household you’re lucky I don’t arrest you for being on the wrong side of the console wars! God dammit! I hate all of these sexual harassment protocols! I used to have a partner I could wisecrack to! Thank you for calling 911, have a nice day.” The cop is leaving and I puff my chest like a mighty Maine puffin and say to the officer, “Wait!”

The cop responds, “Dude, I’m on break. Buzz off.”

“No officer, you should take a look at the security camera footage. You will see that Sal isn’t lying!”

“Yeah, sure whatever.” The filthy cop and I go back inside and now with the Wrong side of the Law by my side I can finally get my security camera footage.

“Why don’t you just take a picture of yourself? You have a phone don’t you?” Asks a nagging insipid voice that sounds rough and grainy against my thoughts. I shove the voice away and continue standing by the dirty Lawman’s side.

“So uh I think I need to see the security livestream. You do have a security camera right?”

“Yes, officer, I have security.”  Sal makes a throat cutting motion over to the Sonic man behind her who sadly puts away his Golden Axe. Sal lifts open her gate for the officer to step through and he immediately turns on the bathroom security footage and begins fast tracking and rewinding the footage stopping at every womanly shape. He does this for a while and clutches at his foam padded pants.

“Hey kid, this technology bewilders me. Maybe you should find the crime.” The cop stretches and scrolls through his phone while I fumble with this alien technology hoping to click the right video feed. I eventually stumble, click onto a feed of the main entryway and rewind to the robbery. I look over and notice that the cop is injecting himself with a violent red powder and kicking at Sal’s managerial locker. I rewind further and find a good headshot of myself prior to my accident. Seeing as I stop in every day it doesn’t take long for me to find yesterday’s beautiful face. I cringe and take out my own phone and take a picture of my image on the security camera display monitor. I fast forward back over to the unfolding of the crime. Another cop appears, Officer Wrathsberg.

“Fuckin hurry up Doom! What’s the hold up? You jerking off to potty pics again? And who the hell is this civilian? Get out of here!” I take my leave and hurry back home with a visage of myself in tow. I tip my doorman again and rush back up my thirty six flights of stairs. Back home. My plants are still wilting, my cat still isn’t back from her shopping trip, and my walls are still the color of Big Bird’s sperm. I upload a picture of a picture of myself and take another $500 out of my savings. I am going to be turned into a Simpsons.

The Simpsonfy me fill out form is of a considerable depth. They want to know a lot of personal information that I am frankly insulted no one has ever asked me about before. Some questions make me reconsider my entire worldview. I am going to be one terrific Simpson. I finish the survey and look for a way to tip the artist, but their cryptic Paypal does not offer a tip button so I add on an extra $25 to the $500. I wait. In the amount of time it takes for someone to open and close an app I get a response.

“Thanks. I will see you tonight.”

“Wait, what?” I say out loud and really wish I hadn’t. Going to take hours to get this kind of negative energy out of my house. I type up, “No thanks, please find attached the photograph of my visual likeness to assist you on what I am sure to be a lovely portrait. Thanks again and I hope you have a nice Kansas day!”

I close my laptop and masturbate because I am grateful for being an artistic patron. I feel what Walt Disney must have felt every time he flexed and brought a new animated confection to the world. The wait for the portrait will be excruciating.

My lady love, who is totally not my sister, Franchesca has returned home! I rush to the front door like a toddler puppy hybrid too cute for his own good embracing the warm glow of the Feminine return, and she grunts out a hello. She peels off every article of clothing off from her body and leaves it behind like a scorned Pompei cast away and excuses herself to the shower. I bend down and sweep up her sticky and sweet bundle of clothes and fold them into the clothing hamper. I wait for her shower and she joins me in the rhomboid rumpus (and rumble) room clad in nothing but her Parisian robe.

“So, how was your day?” asks Franchesca, and I look into the depths of her expansive molasses colored eyes.

“Pretty good! I got you a Kansas Day gift! Do you want to open it now or later?” I hand her the wrapped stack of decorative Simpsons plates.

“Um sure? Kansas Day? Is this because I told  you about that anime convention orgy I attended in Kansas? Either way, it is appreciated.” She unravels my gift which is wrapped in such a way to provide a user-friendly experience. She stares  at the top plate on the stack, Lisa and Bleeding Gums Murphy saxing together in the moonlight. The best plate. Franchesca puts it down, not even considering the other four plates in the set.  

“Thanks so much! I am sure one of these will look great hanging up on her walls the color of sick lemon. The purples will work real nicely. Now if you don’t mind me I think I will have a nice lie down for awhile. Wake me if you need anything.” Franchesca retires to her separate bed chambers leaving the pile of decorative plates and wrapping paper. I don’t bother picking them up. I don’t know what sort of reaction I was expecting, but this one left me cold. At the very least she could have dramatically smashed one against my head if she hated them so much. I slink away to the liquor cabinet.

I bend down to the  liquor cabinets’ sleepy filigree doors and whisper into them, “I will take one big and brown, please.” I take out a mostly full bottle of pre-made Whiskey Sour. Too many times I have gotten super sloshed making my own cocktails and making a huge mess in the kitchen, and as anyone who has ever met me always leaves with one and only one impression: “I can tell that he’s not the biggest fan of messes.” I messily chug straight from the bottle until I sputter out the synthetic 65% concoction. I pour another glass in a frosted novelty glass of a franchise I don’t even like and sink into my chaise beanbag lounge. At least when I wake up I will finally be a Simpson.

////

My throat is too dry to swallow. My eyes, too blurry and caked over to blink. My arms were too roped and bound to move. I try to speak but only weakness comes out. Every inch of my body feels like it is experiencing a tingly chemical burn. I produce a groan! That’s progress. The room isn’t spinning, but it’s not a stable clear image for me either.

“Congratulations Mister Branche, you’ve officially been made into a Simpson.”

“Dooough.” I am trying to ask what the hell is going on, but my mouth is also too heavily caked over in a rubbery mask to move. My vision is starting to reappear and I am not too sure I want to keep seeing what I am seeing.

“Hush, now do you want an official Simpson name? I was thinking Albert Sacksworth, but I am always open to my clients suggestions. No rush, but I will need a decision in less than twenty four hours if we are going to sign your official Simpsons birth certificate.

“Dooough.” I am trying to say that this is an outrage and as a fellow literalist I am sickened by this criminal negligence, untie me you scoundrel!

I am released into the world as a Simpson character. I only have eight fingers now. I will use all eight of these fingers to climb my way back into my lady loves’ arms.

The End.

[femvulvaphile]

let’s break that weird shit down, then

“We’ve been here since the beginning. I know your hate group, your little Nazi sub-sect, has this lie you like to spread that we suddenly spring into being from whole cloth in the 1970s, but that fighting all through history? WE’VE. BEEN THERE. FOR ALL OF IT.” cool but that’s literally not what I said. transwomen’s and women’s fights are inherently different. Sex-based oppression doesn’t DIRECTLY affect transwomen: you will never be shunned for menstruating, you will never be afraid of having your prepubescent vulva mutilated for the sick pleasure of a men five times your age, you will never be afraid of being impregnated against your will, or of miscarriage of a wanted child, or of all the pregnancy and birth complications who are still killing women all over the world. you will never know what it’s like to have men catcall and grope you when you’re nine years old just because your boobs already began to grow.   

"The demonization of trans women is a relatively recent invention in the grand scheme of human history and it is one that you have helped re-surge into the modern world.” that’s bullshit. the “demonization” you’re talking about can refer to one of two things: either the conservative view that transwomen are “deviant men” (which I definitely agree is shitty), or the radical feminist view that transwomen retain their male socialization and so, as a group, can represent danger to women (which is backed up by research, btw, and the amount of “receipts” in the form of news reports of transwomen hurting and murdering cis women AND in the unending threats and harassment that radfems receive online and irl).

"The idea of ASAB and tying it to gender in some inviolate and unchangeable way is something colonizing white people brought to this country, and others they invaded.” cool but that’s bullshit? pretty much every culture on earth has a history of identifying biological sex and applying sociological roles to them. that’s not a white invention, that’s not the fruit of colonialism. the concept of “gender” as behaviors and roles based on reproductive function has existed for as long as people have existed. some cultures have stricter rules about them, others are more loose. some cultures refuse to acknowledge non-conforming people as their “original gender”, and then you have things like two-spirit or hijras.

"Whether you realize it or not, and…let’s be honest, you probably do, your actions, your hate group, is just a laser-guided subsection of what fascism and white supremacy stands for.” wtf tho. fascists and white supremacists and nazi want a “pure” world without “lesser” groups, like black people, jewish people, homosexuals, gnc people. how is female-only radical feminism the same? are you aware that plenty of radical feminists are woc themselves, and even jewish? are you aware that the vast majority of people you’d call “terfs” aren’t even american, or english speakers? we literally just want men to stop fucking murdering us.

“Without colonization, without white supremacy, your argument, your constant, hammering on “male” as if to conjure some demon from the word, would mean nothing.” male violence has been a reality in human history. it’s not a theory, it’s not up to debate. it’s a fact. you know it is, according to your original post talking about men posing the most danger to transwomen. women all over the world are victims of men. it doesn’t change whether we talk about it, or use the words male, men, amab.

"I don’t mean that in the rhetorical sense, I mean literally, your words would not have a cogent basis without that.” again, bullshit. male violence is everywhere, in every culture, in every part of the world, regardless of how much contact with europen colonization the culture has had. japanese men are violent, russian men are violent, french men are violent, english men are violent, american men are violent, cuban men are violent, argentinian men are violent, brazilian men are violent. nazis didn’t invent misogyny.

“How fucking dare you invoke my dead sisters, how fucking dare you bring up that most of us getting murdered are PoC, while peddling Nazi approved propaganda.” uh. it’s “nazi approved propaganda” to say that women face violence from men and therefore need safe spaces from them? and I brought up the groups that murdered transwomen belong to because YOUR GROUP likes using them, using your so-called dead sisters, as argument points, as proof that a white middle class educated men with a dress and lipstick is somehow more oppressed than any woman on earth.

“Meanwhile, asshole,” oh cool name calling when I wrote a relatively calm and non-offensive post. “I was talking about SHARED SPACES. LGBT focused communities, the ones you are perpetually try to focus trans lesbians out of because you view us as the worst of what you already consider the worst.” yeah, maybe we wouldn’t need to do that if “lesbian” transwomen could stop demanding so much from women, or if they’d stop claiming protagonism when they don’t even experience SAME-SEX ATTRACTION, which historically has been, you know, the entire defining poing for “lgbt” people.

“You didn’t even notice it, did you? You were just launching into Pre-Written Terf Rhetoric #5 without so much as reading what I actually. Fucking. Said.” dude, you’re calling me a nazi literally just because I said women deserve female-only spaces and transwomen should create their own safe spaces away from men instead of demanding entry and protection from women.

"Your insistence that we’re “straight men” only serves to try and push us out of those communities as well." you have more in common with straight men than with lesbians, tho. you don’t experience same-sex attraction, you’re not female, you can impregnate a female lesbian (depending on transition specifics, but let’s be honest: the big problem is the transwomen who claim “there’s no need to need to transition bc my dick is a woman’s dick”), if you’re not “passing” you don’t need to fear homophobic violence from strangers.

“Jesus fuck, like did you even notice that was the fucking point? Like your shoving us aside as non-women is already fucked up but that wasn’t even the point of this particular post.” the point of your post was vilifying women who question the notion that “transwomen are exactly the same as women”. the point of your post was putting the blame on women, “terfs”, for what men do.

"The idea that men view us as also men is so beyond laughable I can’t even properly convey it.” they view you as “DEFECTIVE” men. they definitely don’t view you as women. men are violent towards you as a result of toxic masculinity - a non-conforming male is a threat to their notion of rigid male-female roles. the violence towards you is closer in motivation to the violence towards gay men, rather than the one towards women.

"But I’m just going to say: You don’t live our lives. You don’t live our experiences.” yes. just like you don’t live the lives of women. which is exactly why I said transwomen do deserve safe spaces, but not by invading female-only safe spaces.

"If you don’t know how wrong you are it’s because you’re incapable of treating our words as anything but the words of the target of your hate and thus discarded.” you’re lumping me in with nazis (I’m a latina gender-non-conforming lesbian, I’d be raped and killed by actual nazis faster than you could type “op is a terf”), refusing to actually ACKNOWLEDGE the things I said, bringing up way more arguments than the ones on your original post, and then blaming me for not being able to read your mind.

“The power you hold is that you have been aligning yourself with right-wing christian groups,” bullshit. again: women can’t even get men to stop raping us. how exactly do you think we have any power, any voice, over THE most misogynistic men on the planet?

"the power you hold is that your ilk has been speaking to audiences wherever they can find them in academia for decades,” again, bullshit. women have been in academia for, like, two years, in comparison to how long men have been dominating every public and private space.

"the power you hold is that you went into the communities that might have helped us stay alive and sowed false accusations to turn others against us,” b u l l s h i t. YOU came into OUT communities demanding we treat you as equals, when we are observably NOT equals. sex-based oppression doesn’t affect transwomen the same way it does women. men’s violence is distinctly different based on your sex.

"the power you hold is in helping, insidiously, to uphold the institutional biases that keep us marginalized, alone, and dying.” the same can be said of modern trans rights activists, tho. you’re all contributing to the strengthening of gender as a hierarchy - and not because you need to conform to survive. no, your original message (the one we can still hear from drag queens and transvestites from stonewall, for instance, that your kind likes to claim as “transwomen”) has been corrupted to the point where people look at a feminine gay boy and tell him he must be trans, he must transition, he must be a woman because he likes makeup and is attracted to men. your kind tells parents of vulnerable children that their little boys and girls will KILL THEMSELVES if they don’t take hormones as soon as possible. your group tells lesbians they need to suck dick to be proper lesbians. your group supports (and breeds) more murderers, rapists, and pedophiles than radical feminism could. your group tells women of color, lesbians, survivors of all sorts of male violence, that they’re the problem. you tell us we’re even worse than men. you tell us to die, you threaten us with rape, with baseball bats. you punch sixty year old women who dare take a picture of people trying to silence women. you rape and murder a twelve year old girl. you rape and forcibly impregnate a female trans person, and then brag about it. you support rapists and pedophiles being housed in women’s prison because of their “gender feels”. 

you tell women to shut up about their own experiences. you tell women they’re not the “right kind” of women. you tell women they’re not woman “enough”. you tell them to sacirfice themselves for yet another male.

“And yes, before you even start, I’m blocking you. I don’t debate Nazis or Nazi bootlicks.” still nowhere near being a nazi, but alright.

bonus:

“also do they just have a terf blog name generator somewhere, i swear all terf blogs read like a bunch of synonyms for vagina and spellings of rad and possibly a wolf reference or phile or fetishist, all put in a random name generator” that’s hilarious to men because I literally saved this url after I seeing an asshole claim that lesbians aren’t allowed to call themselves lesbians if they don’t suck dick, and that they’re actually vagina fetishists. the person used -phile on something, I can’t recall what, and I immediately thought “hmm, yes. I love vulvas. I’m a vulvaphile. A female vulvaphile.” 

[fishdavidson]

Dream Journal 2017-05-18: Why Is Everyone Trying To Test My Empathy?

Real-life confession time! I took a quiz on the internet last night. That’s not a very world-shaking confession, but I don’t normally buy into whatever crap answers an internet quiz is shilling because they often try to answer things that really shouldn’t have answers in the first place, like “What kind of taco are you?”

But in this case, I took a more legitimate quiz to determine which of the 16 Meyers-Briggs personality archetypes I fell into. I am late to the party on that front, but now I have been sorted into the house of the INFP-T (an empathetic powerhouse colloquially called “The Mediator”). This is the point normally I would link you to the quiz, but my friend, @fantastical-jess, has alerted me that tumblr is cracking down on posts with external links in a misguided attempt to combat spam. So instead of properly sourcing things, for now you will have make Google find the sources for you.

What does this have to do with my recent dream, though? It got my subconscious brain thinking about how empathetic I am, and that bled over into the dream world. But it doesn’t feel like a dream at first. It feels like I’m already awake and just going through an entire day in crappy old regular reality.

I’m walking down the street, and someone nearby starts to feel ill. “Oh, no!” I say. “You look ill; you must be feeling terrible!” My empathy is well-placed, because this person does appear to have come down with an acute case of The Sickness.

Some school-age kids are playing in a nearby field, enjoying their summer vacation from school. They appear to be playing soccer or something similar, when one of the kids falls and scrapes his knee. That poor child! Not to humble-brag, guys, but I have a lot of empathy right now. Like a whole bunch.

I am also carrying a sterile bandage for whatever reason. Now it is put to use patching up that nameless kid. Everyone is back to normal and thankful that I am so damn empathetic.

A woman in a black turtleneck and eyeliner comes up to me while I am basking in the intrinsic rewards my empathy has brought me. My hands are on my hips, and my head is tilted into the gentle breeze. I am the living representation of the people that show up in propaganda posters. A rustling of paper in front of my face brings me out of my reverie.

“Are you aware of this recent study that says people who wear black clothing and eyeliner are significantly more empathetic than average?” the woman asks me. I GOT NEWS FOR YOU, SISTER! AIN’T NOBODY IN THIS DREAM GONNA BE MORE EMPATHETIC THAN FISH DAVIDSON. Somehow I cranked up my empathy levels to maximum and I totally understood where this study was coming from. Maybe people who wear clothes and eyeliner like that are actually more empathetic than average.

BUT THE FUNNY THING ABOUT AVERAGES IS THAT THEY CAN BE SKEWED BY OUTLIERS. I become so empathetic that a metaphorical black hole of emotion opens up and this lady is forced to acknowledge that she might be more empathetic than most people, but no one is more empathetic than me.

I go about my business and run into my friend Shawn. He’s a nice dude. He offers to drive me somewhere nearby, and I accept. We get in his car, and I am telling him about that stupid empathy study that said fashion choices and eyeliner can make you more empathetic. He is doing his best to empathize with my incredibly vapid and selfish problem, and ends up accidentally running his car over a parking block and scraping up the underside of the vehicle.

There’s an immediate “Oh, no! That sucks!” reaction from me. And then I become aware that there have been a suspiciously high number of situations that evoked my empathetic response today. I am convinced that I am part of some experiment to uncover the maximum amount of empathy a person can have. I am also convinced that I don’t want to be part of any secret experience, so I scream something about not being a cog in a machine and exit the vehicle in a dramatic fashion:

I’m making obscene gestures with my hands and screaming “NOBODY ELSE GETS EMPATHY FROM FISH DAVIDSON TODAY!”

And thus the world became a worse place for everyone but Fish Davidson, who now had a great deal of extra free time because he wasn’t trying to be nice to everybody in the damn world.

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

This is the part where I would link the source of the image, but again, tumblr is being stupid and thinks that properly sourcing things is equivalent to spamming. So now all I can do is tell you that the picture came from a site called Whisper and hope that the Google machines can find it.

[travisandersondatingblog]

Are STDs Stigmatized on TV?

“You are what you eat.” You know the phrase. If you consume massive amounts of donuts, you will become a literal donut. Just kidding, you know what we mean though. If you eat well, you will live well. The same can be said for what you’re feeding your brain, i.e. your media consumption. Propaganda is a real thing Y’all, and we’re here to talk about it.

We’re here to talk about the way media intake affects our brains. Captain Planet taught us to care for the environment, Full House taught us to always do the right thing, and modern television has taught us that STDs do not exist outside of a punchline.

We first must ask the question:

Do STDs Even Exist in the Television World?

In some shows, yes. STDs are an actual topic of conversation, but it is oh so rare. We see TV characters get it on pretty regularly. A lot of times, this can be the climax (pun intended) of the show. Some may say that television has gotten a bit too steamy. We, on the other hand, are all for normalizing and destigmatizing sexual health. So… we don’t really care what you’re doing per se, we just want you to be doing it safely and in an open/informed way.

In 2017, fans pointed out that the popular HBO show Insecure did not do the best job at showing its characters’ decisions when it came to safe sex. There was no pause for any kind of discussion about sexual status or protection before engaging in casual sex.

Prentice Penny, showrunner of Insecure, responded to the criticism on Twitter saying, “I really hope people can watch #InsecureHBO without asking if they use condoms. In the writer’s room, we always assume they do.” He goes on to say, “I guess because we are a TV show and it’s fictional. And there’s a lot of things we don’t show but people assume it anyway. We are not a PSA, documentary, non-profit organization. I’m done discussing this.”

It doesn’t necessarily fall on one show’s shoulders to spread public awareness on any issue that their fans seem to be interested in. Equally, even though no show portrays every single time that someone burps or flushes the toilet, it’s not like we assume that they literally never do these things. However, it is concerning how few storylines, in general, include anything to do with safe sex at all.

Does Television Talk About Safe Sex?

The best example of a show that loves sex but hates talking about safe sex, may be Game of Thrones.

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Westeros obviously isn’t a real place, but there certainly seems to be lots of sexy time, and there don’t seem to be any repercussions outside of the occasional pregnancy and penis removal. This is especially weird because aren’t the GoT writers trying to kill off characters at every chance possible anyways? Apparently there have been subtle implications of condoms being used, however, condoms don’t protect from all STDs, and there weren’t exactly convenience stores on every corner of those long journeys, so our bet is they either had to pack them and lug them around across the countryside, or simply do without.

So anyway, yeah, in 2017, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill did a study which analyzed a sample of popular television programs and found that 0.02 percent of sex scenes feature any kind of conversation around contraception. That’s kind of crazy right?

But don’t All Sexually Active Adults Use Condoms?

A national health report released by the CDC in 2017 revealed that only about one-third of those who are sexually active in the U.S. use condoms. While that may seem like a dismal statistic, it’s actually pretty high compared to the .02 percent of times that condoms were featured on screen surrounding sexual activity. But just imagine how many more people would be encouraged to wear condoms if they witnessed their favorite characters doing the same! Now, this is not to say that television should be a moral compass for your personal life, but we do subconsciously pick up what we digitally consume. We want to be like our TV idols. I think we’ve all gone to our hair salon at one point or the other, stating that we want to look like Rachel from Friends. In the words of my ever-so-wise hairdresser, “We can cut your hair like that, but your face will still look the same.”

What’s the Big Deal?

So I know what you’re probably thinking at this point, “Well STDcheck.com, STDs aren’t really that common, so what is even the point of showing them on tv?” We’re glad you asked.

The CDC estimates at least 20 million new cases of STIs occur per year, and ASHA (American Sexual Health Association) measures that one in two sexually active individuals will contract an STI by the age of 25. The estimated total direct cost of STIs to the U.S. is about $16 billion. That’s right: It costs us money to have STIs!

And how much does it cost to show our favorite TV characters talking about safe sex? Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Taking this route could easily reduce the growing rates of STDs and could save the U.S. literally billions of dollars.

Are TV characters immune to STDs?

All TV characters must be immune to sexually transmitted diseases, as we’ve established that they don’t use protection (unless you’re really sticking to your guns that we should all just assume they use protection).

But yes, back to the question, everyone in the TV world is immune. Let’s go through three examples.

Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother was said to have dated a total of 200 women by the fourth season of the show, with five seasons after that, it’s reasonable to believe that number went up drastically. While it should be noted that he actually does use a lot of condoms, these do not always protect against STDs. Being as experienced as he is, you’d really think he’d have some sort of conversation with his numerous lovers about his status.

Jerry Seinfeld from Seinfeld was said to have dated 73 women throughout the course of the show. There is an episode with a condom mishap for George, but their main concern is pregnancy! You would think that Jerry would be a little more knowledgeable, and warn his friends of the other dangers of not having safe sex.

Don Freaking Draper from Mad Men. Obviously, he had lots of sex, right? He (officially) slept with a total of 17 women throughout the course of the show, but we feel that there may have been more. A lot of this sex was super spontaneous, like, he had just met them. In the 50’s/60’s there definitely wasn’t as much awareness surrounding safe sex, so the show could technically have just been being historically accurate. Side note, Betty Draper does get lung cancer from smoking all the time, so there are some health consequences in the Mad Men world. Just nothing in the nether regions.

Notice anything missing in this list? Oh yeah, women! We had a hard time finding a super sexually active female TV character to add to this list. Maybe because women aren’t usually written as players? Or sexually active? Never to fear, we have a few femme fatales to discuss, but we’re saving them for last.

TV Shows That Do Talk About STDs, Get it Wrong

Yes, now we’re getting to the brass tacks of the matter. When TV does discuss STDs, it is incredibly misinformed! Again we’ve got three stellar examples of misinformation being spread when it comes to STDs.

Girls is a TV show that’s all about destigmatizing all kinds of things when it comes to women’s reproductive health. They even talk about peeing after sex to avoid UTIs! The “protagonist” of the show, Hannah, is tested for HPV. This is strange, as most women under 30 are encouraged to screen for cervical cancer using a Pap test instead of testing for HPV.  She tests positive for HPV and is extremely distraught. She exclaims that she will now need her cervix “scraped out,” though this is not a medical treatment for HPV at all, in fact, there is no treatment for HPV. Hannah accuses her boyfriend of giving it to her, and he informs her that he was tested the week before and that he’s clean. Funny enough, there is no form of HPV testing for men.

Michael Scott of The Office is well known for blowing things wildly out of proportion. Upon the development of a cold sore in The Office episode, “Sex Ed,” Michael calls all of his former lovers to inform them that he has herpes and to find who gave it to him. Dwight Schrute encourages Michael to seek revenge from whoever transferred the disease. The entire episode is written with the viewpoint that Michael is acting ridiculously. One of his ex-girlfriends even states, “you don’t have herpes, it’s just a cold sore.” Obviously, Michael should have been tested to be sure that he even had herpes or HSV. Herpes can lie dormant for years, and it can be contracted by even receiving a kiss from a relative as a child. To assume that one of Michael’s ex-girlfriends must have given it to him was just silly, and let’s not even talk about seeking revenge (We’ll save that for another blog post). “Just a cold sore” is herpes. Herpes is very common and really not that big of a deal. Doctors often discourage getting tested unless you show symptoms because the emotional trauma is said to often be of higher impact than physical.

Dr. Gregory House of the TV show, House, is a pretty quirky dude. He deals with an assortment of abnormal medical conditions throughout the show. In one particular episode called “Clueless,” he diagnoses a man with herpes and informs the man that his wife is cheating on him with their son’s karate teacher. House has never met the wife or the karate teacher. So, the couple comes back to House and demands to know which one cheated, the wife stating that she has never slept with the karate teacher. House explains that herpes can also be transferred through the use of infected toilet seats. The husband accepts this as a resolution, but the wife says that it’s not possible, and is still in disbelief. House proclaims the husband the cheater, as only a cheater would believe such a thing, and view it as an easy out.

So we’re clear herpes can not be spread by a toilet seat, but it’s also most certainly NOT only spread by cheaters! This is one of the biggest lies that television has spread regarding STDs. When a TV character contracts an STD, it is often because they did something wrong. Anyone can contract an STD, and it does not necessarily make you a cheater if you are in a long-term monogamous relationship. Many STDs can be transmitted outside of sex.

Does TV Ever Get it Right?

We all know the age-old phrase, “when in doubt, look to the Golden Girls.” Just kidding, we just made that up, but it’s actually pretty true.

Betty White’s character, Rose, receives a letter in the episode “72-hours” where she is informed that she may have contracted HIV from a blood transfusion six years prior during gallbladder surgery. It takes 72 hours for her to receive results, and during those 72 hours, she gets a glimpse at what life with HIV may be like. Sophia, the oldest of the Golden Girls begins to avoid using Rose’s bathroom, or even any of the dishes that she’s ever used. Blanche consoles Rose, stating, “ AIDS is not a bad person’s disease, Rose. It is not God punishing people for their sins.” Sophia conceded, “I know intellectually there’s no way I can catch it, but now that it’s so close to home, it’s scary.”

In the end, all four of the golden girls visit the hospital together for support. Rose is given the clear and ultimately does not have HIV, but the episode reinforces the idea that HIV is not just a “gay disease” and that it can truly happen to anyone.

This episode aired in 1990, when there was still a great deal of stigma surrounding people with HIV and Aids. So, who’s really more woke, a show made in 1990 or modern television? Either way, just remember that TV is not real life. Just because your favorite character doesn’t get tested, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t! It’s important to be aware of your status. If you aren’t, get tested today!

The post Are STDs Stigmatized on TV? appeared first on STD Exposed - Sexual Health Blog.

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[notapuzzlepiece123-blog]

Hey people,

You ever have that one friend who ends up supporting A$ but out of pure ignorance and genuine want to help rather than malice, and happend to be a gamer of some sort?

Well, I wrote a thing that’s kinda poetic and has a pretty good metaphor to explain why A$ is bad to said gamer-friend! It’s pretty simplified but I think it gets the point across. There’s a kinda bitter-ish at the end but that’s just me writing my book so you can take that part out if you’d like. Actually, modify it as you need if you’re using this to explain to a potential ally at all. If any of this seems wrong/inaccurate let me know. I don’t think there are too many (if any?) issues but I’d never know if someone didn’t point it out.. Anyways, here’s the thing:

GOD Mode (Game of Life)

 It’s not like playing on boss mode—more like, GOD mode. Imagine going through life with the most well-known organization claiming to speak for you when, in reality, it’s essentially trying to murder you. Imagine that this organization actually promotes filicide, eugenics, and genocide for ten-plus years, which was basically since the organization’s inception. Imagine that this organization’s propaganda has been so wildly successful that every time you come out as “one of them” you don’t get the job (so you can’t pay your rent and risk being evicted), and statistically you’re six to ten times more likely to be violently assaulted, and the people who do this could be anything from your significant other to a random dude on the street.

Imagine now that despite this being society’s doing, that you are portrayed as a disease that must be eliminated and that you are suffering by your own self, and not those around you, the ones you thought you could trust but cannot any longer. They want consistently want to “cure” you despite the fact nothing about you needs cured, those of your “kind” even go to a sort of “therapy” that tortures you and leaves nothing but bruised/bleeding/whatever wrists and a shitty amount of PTSD. Everyone unwittingly supports a group that you know for a fact is complete and utter evil! They say you’re the ‘crazy one’ but you have actually been tortured! You have actually seen this kind of thing, you live it every day, with them after you!

This may sound like a cheesy video-game conspiracy plot, but this organization is actually Autism Speaks. The therapy that makes you bleed is called ABA. The people who are at the mercy of this web of lies and gaslighting are Autistic people.

I want you to remember that.

How it felt when it was merely in your head.

When this, this here, was merely a “mind game” so to speak.

[benrleeusa]

[Eugene Volokh] Short Circuit: A roundup of recent federal court decisions

(Here is the latest edition of the Institute for Justice’s weekly Short Circuit newsletter, written by John Ross.)

This week on the podcast: a special show featuring the Harte family, whose home was raided by a SWAT team after police found tea leaves in their trash. Why were police looking in their trash? Because months earlier, they’d visited a garden store. Their attorney, Rob Bernstein of Kirkland & Ellis, joins us as well. Click here for iTunes.

Citizen investigator: Crooked FBI agent gave mobster (Gregory “The Grim Reaper” Scarpa Sr.) info that he used to murder mob rivals. Even if that info was originally compiled for law enforcement purposes (and so exempt from the Freedom of Information Act), it was used for illegal purposes, and the FBI must turn related records over. D.C. Circuit: Not so.

Does ought imply can? Both Immanuel Kant and the D.C. Circuit say yes, and the latter vacates a writ of mandamus that the district court issued without expressly considering whether it was even possible for an agency to comply with it. (A dissenting opinion argues that compliance seems plenty possible and there was no need for the lower court to have made an express finding about it.)

Meat passes government inspection, is sold to middleman. The middleman repackages the meat, and labels it — without the supplier’s permission — with the inspection number assigned by the government to the supplier. D.C. Circuit: Which is misleading and unlawful. Dissent: “It seems to me a giant step in the progress of the administrative state to permit agencies to enforce regulations that do not exist.”

In exchange for $4k donation to charity, Lee, Mass., police chief derails prosecution of bed-and-breakfast owners with prostitution side business. The chief pockets the donation. First Circuit: Extortion conviction affirmed.

Man downloads Uber smartphone app, hails a ride 10 times, files price-fixing class action. (Uber then hires private investigators to dig up “derogatories” on plaintiff.) District court: No arbitration; the clause users agree to is not reasonably conspicuous. Second Circuit: Reversed. You gotta read the fine print.

Three Buffalo, N.Y., police officers allegedly participate in shooting of arrestee with BB gun. They’re indicted and enter a joint defense agreement (JDA), but one decides to plead guilty and testify against the other two. Other two: He can’t testify about a conversation we had after the JDA but before he began cooperating with the prosecution. Second Circuit: He can.

Security guard at nuclear facility allegedly suffers from paranoid delusions, abuses substances. He’s fired. Former guard: Which violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. Third Circuit: Nuclear security regulations trump the ADA.

Allegation: Zoo in Cherokee, N.C., keeps grizzly bears in concrete pits without shade or vegetation. Zoo: We only call them grizzlies for advertising purposes; they are actually European brown bears and so are unprotected by the Endangered Species Act. Fourth Circuit: They’re grizzlies, and (over a dissent) the zoo’s husbandry practices could be unlawful.

On visa application, Algerian immigrant, a North Carolina cabbie, reports he’s never been cited, arrested or charged. Yikes! He’s got some traffic tickets. (Also, he apparently has Islamic State propaganda videos posted on his Facebook page.) Feds: Deport him. Fourth Circuit: The trial judge made impermissible comments to the jury about the visa program. Conviction vacated.

Orthodox Jewish family sues school board under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), alleging that the individualized education program developed for their child with Down syndrome is insufficient because it does not provide religious or cultural instruction. Fourth Circuit: The secular education offered was all the IDEA required.

Professor: The major problem with slavery was that it violated slaves’ right of free association to not “ ‘associate’ with their masters.” Other than that it wasn’t so bad. New York Times: Professor says slavery wasn’t so bad. Fifth Circuit (2016): Could be defamation. Fifth Circuit (2017): Still could be.

Allegation: Suspected drunk driver (a retired cop and disabled veteran) declines to walk toward Round Rock, Tex., officers, attempts to pull his (recently operated on) arm away from an officer’s grasp. They take him to ground, administer knee strikes, break his back. Police: We were worried he might stagger onto the road, so we had to subdue him. Fifth Circuit (over a dissent): No qualified immunity.

Blood on the shirt of Battle Creek, Mich., bartender stabbed to death in 1995 does not match the victim or the defendant; blood on the bar matches the defendant, as well as millions of other people. The jury convicts. Sixth Circuit: Release the defendant unconditionally.

Attorney: North Dakota’s bar association fees automatically include funding for non-germane political activity, forcing me to take a manual deduction if I want to opt out of the bar’s political speech. But the First Amendment doesn’t allow them to put the burden of opting out of these activities on me; they should be required to ask me if I want to opt in. Eighth Circuit: Dude, you’re the one filling out the form and writing the check. If you write the check for the full amount, that’s opting in.

Motel operator: Beatrice, Neb., officials condemned motel for code violations that weren’t all that serious (in the view of the city’s building inspector) — all as part of an evil scheme of vengeance for the operator’s protected free speech. Eighth Circuit: Evil scheme or no, those were real code violations, so the officials all have qualified immunity.

Citizens would like to hold signs decrying homosexuality at military funerals, but Nebraska law forbids them from protesting within a city block. A constitutional violation? No. “The First Amendment guarantees free speech, not forced listeners,” says the Eighth Circuit; the law “strikes a balance between these competing interests of law-abiding speakers and unwilling listeners.”

Online white pages company (that also posts credit scores, among other things) inaccurately listed man’s age, marital status and other background data. Man: Which harmed my employment prospects and caused me anxiety. Ninth Circuit (on remand from the Supremes): He can sue.

Man sentenced to death by state court for 1999 murder outside Tulsa, Okla. But wait! He’s an Indian (Muscogee (Creek) Nation), and the murder happened in Indian country — shouldn’t he have been tried in federal, not state, court? Tenth Circuit: Indeed. Any land within the 1866 boundaries of the Creek Nation is Indian country, including most of present-day Oklahoma (even land owned by non-Indians) and the location of this particular murder. Conviction tossed, and it’s up to the feds to prosecute him.

When the Supreme Court ruled, in 1976, that bank records are categorically excluded from Fourth Amendment protection, the justices envisioned the piecemeal collection of records to assist criminal prosecutions. Today, that ruling— combined with civil forfeiture laws— has given federal agents free rein to troll virtually every American’s bank account looking for property to forfeit — without warrants and without criminal charges. In a recent amicus brief, IJ urges the Supreme Court to consider this history when it decides next year whether cellphone records (so-called “cell site-location data”) are protected by the Fourth Amendment.