#the only thing changed is that I won’t show anything about the nazi party or hitler but that’s not what these ppl are mentioning | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

starsgivemehp · 4 years ago

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The Argument Against and Defense of Hetalia

Let me preface this by saying that I have not watched the show or read the manga in a few years now, and thus I am working mostly off of memory and what fan content I see these days, which is not a lot. Also, I am a gentile, and I don’t claim to know a lot about the Jewish community or traditions. I am, however, a writer and I have plenty of practice analyzing and criticizing works of fiction from multiple angles. With that in mind, this essay is an attempt to explain everything that is wrong and not wrong with the show, the comic strips, and the fandom.

I’m putting this under a read more for sheer length, this was 11 pages on Google docs.

Let us start with the list of grievances assembled largely from one post, the majority of which I had to go digging for as the original person in this post who mentioned Hetalia said, and I quote, “i dont feel the need to link a source for [hetalia] because…” and then listed two things, one of which is incorrect entirely. But I digress, I will address each one at a time. The list of grievances is as follows:

It is called ‘Axis Powers’ Hetalia

One of the main characters is a personification of Nazi Germany

The entire point of the series is:

Advocating for eugenics

Racial fetishization

Advocating for fascism

Nazi sympathizing/propaganda

The entire franchise is terrible due to rape jokes, racism, and Holocaust jokes

Hetalia fans are all terrible due to rape jokes and other issues

Death of the author cannot apply to this fandom

There may be more that are in other reblogs of the post in question, and I may add addendums further in this essay, but for the time being, I will address each of these grievances and explain the validity or non-validity of each, from a position understanding of both fans and of non-fans. Thus, in order:

‘Axis Powers’ Hetalia

When people talk about Hetalia, they usually are referring to the anime due to its widespread popularity. However, Hetalia began as a series of strip comics posted on a forum by Hidekaz Himaruya (and I spent a while trying to actually find the original comics, but I can’t, there are links to his blogs there in what I’ve provided). It later was formatted into a manga, and then later became an anime. While it was originally titled Axis Powers: Hetalia and the first two seasons of the show are named as such, it usually is only referred to as Hetalia. The anime seasons after said first two seasons have all been ‘world’ focused: Seasons three and four were titled World Series, season five was titled Beautiful World, season six was titled World Twinkle, and the upcoming season seven is titled World Stars.

For the purposes of tagging everything, I tend to see the tags ‘hetalia’ and ‘hws,’ which is short for Hetalia: World Series. This name of the third and fourth anime seasons is the most widely accepted and used name for the series as a whole. While it is true that, years ago, people referred to it as ‘aph’ for Axis Powers Hetalia, the fans and the series have put that behind them, for good reason. It is understandable, even righteous, to not accept the title ‘Axis Powers.’ It does draw focus to the WW2 era, and place the fascists and nazis as the ‘main characters,’ or even, ‘the good guys,’ which is not the case. Obviously, the Nazis were terrible and the entirety of the Axis Powers did horrible, unspeakable things during the war.

It must be noted, to anybody who has not seen the show or read the manga, that the first one to two seasons do have a ‘focus’ on the WW2 era, per se, but it largely talks about interactions between countries, as they are the personified party, and makes extremely few allusions to the war itself, and none to the Holocaust. I will address that in a later section. For now, the point to make is that after these original two seasons, Hetalia branches out into a much wider worldview, adds several more characters, and focuses more on said characters in individual arcs and offerings of historical facts - as generalized as they may be. Nobody claimed that Hetalia was correct in everything it said, but it aims to play out some historical information in a simplified and humorous way. This is due to the fact that the characters are all singular people meant to personify entire countries, which leads us to point two.

The Personification of Nazi Germany

This is the second complaint of the strand of the post in question that I was presented with, quoted as “one of the main characters is a personification of nazi germany.” This is an entirely incorrect statement. ‘Nazi Germany,’ as people call it, is the state of Germany during the era leading up to and of World War 2. The country is still Germany, the people were still German, the Nazi part comes from the political regime in power, a real world nightmare. In the Hetalia series, the characters are called by their country names, because that is who they personify. This may change at times. For example, the character now known as Turkey was previously called Ottoman Empire. They come to be when civilization starts or a colony is introduced to a place. This can be seen in the strip or episode where China ‘finds’ Japan as a small boy and begins to teach him reading and writing - and Japan thereafter invents hiragana. It can also be seen in the comic where a young child, Iceland, questions who he is and why he knows his people are “different beings” than him. The country that speaks to him (I only have the comic here in my likes in that list, the name isn’t mentioned and it’s been a while, but it might be another of the Scandinavian countries) explains that he is Mr. Iceland, they don’t know why he is Mr. Iceland, but they know he is.

What I am attempting to explain with all of these other examples is that there is no ‘Nazi Germany’ character. There is a character called Germany (or Mr. Germany), and all of his adult life, he has been called Germany. He is never addressed by anything else. He does, however, look remarkably similar to a childhood friend of Italy’s, Holy Roman Empire (or just Holy Rome), but as far as it has been explained in canon, Holy Rome went off somewhere and, later on Germany and Italy met as strangers. The general consensus is, due to the area where the Holy Roman Empire used to be is around-ish Germany, the characters are the same. But never, in any of the comics, anime, or movie, is Germany referred to as Nazi Germany. I don’t believe the word ‘Nazi’ appears at any point in time, even, though I cannot claim I have seen every shred of content, so I may be wrong. But I doubt that very much, as it is not in the nature of the series to do such a thing. Moving on.

Advocating for Eugenics

I will start and end this section by saying that Hetalia was, in the original post, roped in with Attack on Titan, of which (as far as I know) the author advocates for eugenics - or the idea that certain people should not be allowed to produce offspring due to their race or other factors. There is no example of Hetalia content wherein this disgusting opinion is ever mentioned or supported in any way. This is at worst a flat-out lie, and at best lumping Hetalia in with a much worse show that does do this (but I won’t get into that, I have never seen more than a few episodes of Attack on Titan and I don’t care to see any more of it. Throw your opinions or defenses elsewhere, I care 0% about it entirely). I have no more need to prepare a more detailed response to this accusation. It simply is not true.

Racial Fetishization

This particular accusation is a difficult one. Fetishization may be a strong word, as the series is largely a comedy. Everyone gets their turn in the spotlight, so to speak, so I find it hard to plainly state that any one character is fetishized or displayed as the most powerful. There is, of course, Rome, who only appears in small segments as Italy’s grandfather and is, in the series, touted as an amazing empire who had it all. I do not believe this is what the accusation is referring to. This accusation seems to be some sort of insistence that the show and creator believe that white people (or possibly just Germans/Nazis/the Aryan race?) are touted as the most powerful and nobody else can compare. I can confidently say that while that is never said anywhere, there are a few issues. Hetalia, particularly the animated series, had (and may still have) a longstanding issue of whitewashing countries that should not be white. This includes Egypt and Seychelles (who both later got a darker skin tone, probably still not dark enough though) as the worst offenders, and even Spain, Turkey, Greece, and Romano (southern Italy), and so on. Yes, this is a big problem. There is no defense against that. It should not be the case. These characters obviously should have darker skin. I will note, however, that many fans are already completely aware of this, have been complaining about it since the beginning, and tend to draw these characters with more correct skin tones in their fanart. This is a case where yes, the original content is not good, but the fans make their own fixes. If you are angry at Hetalia for whitewashing, good. You should be. But I do not believe this should reflect on the entirety of the content and the fandom (And note that I am not linking any particular fanart here, because I want nobody to go attack any fans).

It is also important to note that yes, a large majority of the series builds upon stereotypes. No, stereotypes are not good. No, you should not assume that the personifications of the countries encompass all citizens of said countries. The entire premise of the show is one person = the embodiment of a country, and that person changes and adapts with the times in terms of uniform and personality. It is extremely hard to do this without stereotyping. Most serious fans are aware of this, and do not in any way believe that these characters represent everyone from these countries. It may be true that much younger fans used to, and it may be true that people do not want to watch the show because stereotypes are, arguably, bad. But do remember that this is a comedy, and every character is picked on. Every one. And it is understandable if this branch of humor is not for you. I, personally, don’t like Family Guy or South Park or any shows like that for their humor. I also don’t attack the people who do. I ignore it.

Advocating for Fascism

This is another area wherein I believe the accuser is simply lumping Hetalia in with the original poster’s subject, Attack on Titan. Again, I will not defend or attack that show, as I do not care about it at all. However, regarding Hetalia, I can confidently say that it does not advocate for fascism. While the first two seasons are (sort of) set in WW2 era, as previously mentioned, the fighting is not really a big part, and nobody is touted as correct - only struggling in the conflict. For example, there is a scene where Germany, post WW1, is shown making cuckoo clocks by hand and lamenting the fact that he has to make so many thousands in order to pay back France. This is by no means painting fascism as a good thing, or explaining anything about how poverty and other struggles lead to the formation and rise of the Nazi party. It is simply a scene where we see a man frustratedly making cuckoo clocks and complaining while France’s big head jeers at him in his imagination. The surrounding scenes and the end of this one are making note of how Italy keeps coming over to his house to try and be friends and Germany keeps kicking him out because Italy is annoying and whiny. The episode further goes on to mention that Germany is attacking France again, and Italy has suddenly become his ally, and he is not happy about it for the aforementioned reasons. Again, this does not in any way paint Germany as being ‘right.’ The purpose of the segment(s) is/are to show him disliking the annoying Italy (whom the show is named for) and trying to get him out of his house before eventually giving up and accepting that they can be friends. Is it all 100% historically accurate? No, not by a long shot. Does it paint him as sympathetic? Sort of, you feel bad for the guy making a thousand cuckoo clocks, but only in the sense that he is one person doing a lot of work, a completely fictional situation. But Italy - and the audience - obviously know that attacking France again is not a good thing, so does it advocate the Nazis or fascism? Also no.

Nazi Sympathizing/Propaganda

I pretty well covered this in the previous section, but I will expand. I have alluded to the first two seasons as “focusing” on WW2, in a way, and also mentioned that this is a generalization of sorts, so here I will attempt to clarify. The first few episodes do, indeed, touch on ‘the way they all met’ in a sense; Germany is starting a war and he reluctantly becomes allies with Italy, and less reluctantly becomes allies with Japan, who examines both of them and decides he is content with this situation. However, none of it is very serious, and these ‘formalities’ give way easily to more humorous personable interactions, such as Italy hugging Japan without warning and the touch-anxious Japan pushing him off and getting flustered, Italy petting a cat and then freaking out when he is licked because a cat’s tongue is rough, the two of them ‘training’ by doing your regular old exercising and jogging and Italy being late, etc etc. Stupid, personable jokes.

On the flip side, the show covers the Allied Powers quite a bit too. A lot of this is the five big ones - America, Britain (/England/UK), France, Russia, and China - all meeting around one table and squabbling about various things. I fondly recall one scene where China arrives late and has a bunch of workers suddenly building a Chinatown in the meeting room because he was hungry and wanted his own food, and the others protesting. They are then offered food and become okay with it, because food. Other such nonsense plays out in other, similar meetings. There is also a segment where the Axis powers are all stranded on an island for… some unknown reason… and they set about attempting to survive via campfire and fishing and such. Twice (three times?) the Allied powers ‘attack’ them on this island via China whacking them each with a wok and, as the three of them are in a sad heap, something interrupts the scene to make the Allies retreat. One time, it is Rome’s sudden and also unexplained entrance across the sky singing a song, and another time, it is England’s preoccupation with a cursed chair. Also, at one point, Austria is playing a piano. Does any of this magic logical, real life sense? No. It’s stupid and funny and has nothing to do with war. These are just personable characters thrown into weird situations so they can be funny, with some extremely mild historical context along the way.

I will note again that WW2 is pretty much completely dropped after these two seasons, with the war hardly addressed at all, and future seasons focus more on other characters. The Scandinavians get to all have fun together, the Baltic trio is mentioned, there is a lot about Switzerland taking care of Liechtenstein (wow I spelled it right after all these years, go me) and being stiff and formal with Austria. There is also plenty about people mistaking Canada for America, and England and France squabbling throughout the years, and Spain finding Romano cute but also very grumpy, etc etc… This series is largely Eurasia-focused, yes, and it can be criticized for not being as diverse as it should be. But boiling it down to ‘Nazi propaganda’ is outright, obliviously false.

I don’t know if this is the best place to put this particular note, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to place it, so here it will go. I would like to mention that in the series, some characters, like Germany and Russia, express outright fear of their ‘bosses’ in certain points in history. It is important to realize that Germany, Japan, America, etc… these characters are not the actual, real-life humans in charge of these countries, but people of a fictional, separate species than humans who grow up as the nation grows and have lives that are affected by these world leaders (we even watch in the show America shooting up from child to young adult as the colonies expand, and England comments on how quickly he grew up - but not as quickly as his people, of course. We’ll get to Davie later). The president of the United States is America’s ‘boss,’ and naturally, that boss changes every time the president changes. The emperor of China is China’s ‘boss.’ It follows, thusly, that at one point, Hitler was Germany’s ‘boss.’ The terrible person himself was alluded to, as far as I know, exactly one time, not by name, and no face was shown. In a very brief scene, Germany laments that his new boss is scary and he was just ordered to go force Austria to come live with him. Said boss is shown as, I believe, an evilly laughing shadowy figure. That’s it. That’s the scene. There is no other mention of Hitler, nor is there any mention of the Holocaust anywhere. One could argue that the show is then trying to say that the Holocaust didn’t happen, but I think such an accusation is frankly absurd. It’s a comedy, it was always a comedy, and what in the fuck would be comedic about a mass genocide in any way? Nothing. None of it is funny. Of course it is not brought up in a comedy.

Rape Jokes, Racism, and Holocaust Jokes

While I did somewhat address racism already in the section about whitewashing and racial fetishization, I have another clarification to make, especially regarding the jokes. A lot of people complain that there are rape jokes throughout the series, and that there are two Holocaust jokes. I will begin by saying yes, this is all true, those things did happen during the course of the show. However, it is important to note that all of those things happened in the English dub of the animated show, and none of these terrible jokes exist in the Japanese/subbed version, or the original comic strips.

The English dub is, on all accounts, pretty terrible. Everyone has an over exaggerated accent, there are the aforementioned jokes, there are name changes (England referred to as Britain, among them, very confusing), and the voice actors themselves make mention in commentaries that their goal in this job was, to paraphrase because I haven’t listened in a while, ‘to be as offensive as possible to absolutely everyone’ (and one of the English dub voice actors is even a convicted sex offender, but that’s it’s own mess). Not the most glamorous or noble of goals. One could say ‘at least if it’s everyone, it’s not really racism, is it? Just humor?’ There is a case for that. Many comedians will say that they poke fun at everyone to avoid singling anybody out as inherently superior. It cannot be said to be the best way to make humor, but it cannot be said to be the worst way, also. Overall, I don’t like the English dub, I don’t watch it, I prefer the subs. And yes, the subbed version has a few issues of its own, but I can say that at least, no, it does not make any Holocaust or rape jokes. Are those kinds of jokes excusable? Fuck no. They’re completely inappropriate. Should you judge the whole series and fandom based on the grossness of the English dubs? Also no, the people who did the English dubs have zero to do with the original creator, the animators, and the fans. Screw them.

The Fandom Being Terrible

I must again preface by saying I was never super active in the fandom at large. I had my own little niche of friends and I stuck to them and I didn’t often branch out. I did, however, go to cons back in those days, and saw plenty of cosplayers. The main complaint I see regarding the fandom is that most of the fans are completely rabid, make a bunch of rape jokes, and even dress up as ‘Nazi Germany’ (iron cross and red armband and all) and pretend to shoot up synagogues. Now, I have not seen cosplayers do the nazi solute or do such photoshoots, but I can believe that people have done it. I have seen plenty of rabid fans, and some of the OCs created for Hetalia, especially many interpretations of individual states (or Antarctica), were extremely cringey, racist, and overall just not good. And yes, these things are undeniably bad. They are very bad things! Those people should be ashamed. They should know better, regardless of their ages or anything, for fuck’s sake. The nazi salute is not a thing you do jokingly, pretending to shoot people is not a joke. Everyone is aware of this. The people who did, or maybe even still do, those things need a serious sit-down and to be woken the fuck up, because they are acting terrible.

However, it is extremely unfair to paint all Hetalia fans in the same light. That is a very stereotypical thing to do, no? As I mentioned earlier, I stuck to my little niche friend group of fans, and while we all had our own flaws and were younger and kinda dumber, we never did things like that. I never did things like that. Rape jokes were never funny, I never liked them, I never accepted them. I have people I still know who still like Hetalia and they never made those kinds of jokes either. I think, as the years have gone by, a lot of the more rabid fans have died out of the fandom. They’ve either grown the fuck up or they’ve went off to pollute some other fandom. Recognize that, especially in the beginning, the anime was low-budget and had a lot of that old and gross queerbaiting and stuff like that, so it was undeniably a magnet for crazy yaoi fans. But the majority of fanart, fanfics, and just overall fan stuff that I see these days are nothing like that. Overall, the fandom has seriously calmed down. A lot of the focus is much more on taking these characters and applying them to other historical events with more accuracy than the show might give. The history in these fanfics and fanarts may also be of questionable accuracy at times. I personally once wrote a fic where I made allusions to the death of Joan d’Arc and, later, the death of Elizabeth I, but did I add much historic fact? No, do I look like a history major spilling all this? The point of the fic was England - the character - maturing through starting to love one of his rulers and recognizing a terrible thing that he did before. It’s not the best piece of work out there, and maybe someone could point out a few things I did wrong with it, but for what it’s meant to be, it’s harmless. Takes on characters not actually in the series, like Ireland, Scotland, etc etc are generally pretty mature from what I see, fanart tends to just be the characters in various poses and styles. The overall love the fandom has, I think, is in the better character designs and in the very concept of the countries as people who laugh and cry and live through war and peace for thousands of years. And here is where I address the final grievance that I personally saw in the notes of the post which started this whole thought process and essay.

The Death of the Author

A lot of people might not fully understand what ‘The Death of the Author’ means. The death of the author is a belief rooted in the 20th century that the personal intentions, beliefs, and prejudices of the authors of certain works can have no bearing on their produced content, because once it is out in the public, every reader may then have their own interpretation and belief system. By publicizing the content, the author ‘dies’ and the reader is born.

There are some scenarios where this cannot apply. One example is JK Rowling, a very special case of a very problematic woman who happens to be so powerful, and so rich, that consuming any type of official (or even unofficial) Harry Potter anything can and will give her that much more power to spread her TERF bullshit. Let me be frank: Any time that consuming a product is allowing a bigoted or problematic person to gain extra money or extra power that they then use for evil, the death of the author cannot apply. You cannot use it as a moral justification. You might perhaps use it as the reason why you struggle to let go of a fandom near and dear to you, as Harry Potter is to so many people, but you absolutely must recognize that purchasing the books, the movies, or any other official content is outright supporting a TERF.

That in mind, there are dozens of other cases where the death of the author absolutely can apply. The easiest, of course, is with authors who are actually dead, such as Lovecraft. Lovecraft was a complete bigot and racist, an overall terrible person, and his works are saturated in that racism. But he is dead, and his work is very popular, and there are ways to take and use his work that do not contribute further to racism and bigotry. All you have to do is slap a non-racist cthulhu on a page. Make that cthulhu eat everyone equally. That’s a good cthulhu right there, a nice, safe cthulhu.

So where does Hetalia fall in this spectrum of can or cannot have death of the author? I believe it leans more to the side of yes, you can apply it. For one thing, you can definitely find the show for free in some places, and watch it without giving Himaruya a single cent. The comics are also available online for free, and while you might be giving your ‘support’ by being a viewer, I think overall, that’s not only negligible, but does not contribute anything bad? The author of Attack on Titan has many charges levied against him in the post which prompted this, and arguably, giving him any money is bad. But as far as I have seen, while Himaruya might have started out with a flawed premise and may have some whitewashing issues, I have seen nowhere that he funds any kind of racist, nationalistic, fascist, etc anything of any kind. This is not like Chick-Fil-A, where offering any kind of patronage is (or maybe used to be) sinking funds into terrible organizations. This is not supporting literal Nazis, as the complaints claim. This is a largely mediocre series with good parts and bad parts and zero ties to horrific organizations or ideals. Consuming good fan content does not make someone a racist or a bigot or a nazi sympathizer. Even rewatching some old favorite scenes or checking out the new season doesn’t make someone that. By all accounts, the show is flawed but not a means to fund nazis.

The Bad Anything Else

I will now take some time to talk about some other problems Hetalia has, because no, it is by no means flawless. I already discussed the whitewashing and stereotypes and the mess of the English dub, but there is more. I made mention of the fact that battles and seriously bad events such as the Holocaust are not mentioned, and this holds true throughout pretty much all of the series. There are certain points where ‘battles’ of a sort are seen, but only flash moments. One scene in particular that I really enjoyed as a tween and can now see the problems with is the whole revolutionary war scene. This was a scene split into two episodes (for some weird reason, even an unrelated episode in between, like, what? Why??) about a particular (unnamed) battle in the American Revolution where England faced down America, they each had a gun with a bayonet, and England charged America and his bayonet deeply scratched America’s gun, and America declared he was no longer England’s little brother, and the whole thing was played out as an extremely emotional scene. England is lost in the past of seeing America as a cute little kid he took care of, who has now grown up and is being reckless and stupid, and America is all righteous and independent and proving he’s a grown up, it’s all very emotional, I cried, other fans cried, there was much fanart.

This scene is problematic in a way. Boiling down an extremely nasty conflict following lots of really bad laws and protests to this one scene doesn’t do history any justice. It says nothing about the struggles of the American colonists, the struggles of the British empire, the awful things the colonists did to the natives, etc etc. It is one small scene and it focuses on these characters as humanoid, with feelings, and completely ignores the complexities of history. And yes, in a way, that is bad. But it is bad in the sense that nobody can - or at least should - take this show to be the end-all be-all of history. It is not. It is not often entirely correct, and it picks and chooses what points in the past several thousand years to play with, and trying to use it as a map for history is a bad idea. However, this focus on the countries as human-like and struggling can also be a good thing.

It is also important to note that there have been other problems. The portrayal of South Korea, for example, is extremely controversial, and while I do not know all of the specifics, I believe that it was banned in Korea due to this, and the character was entirely removed from the anime, among other things. Obviously, a bad take, a bad character. There are also just straight up not great characterizations in certain cases. I don’t, for example, like anything about how Belarus is portrayed as a crazy psycho constantly begging Russia (her big brother) to marry her? I think that that is ridiculous, and I know nothing about Belarus as a country but I am pretty darn sure that that is not how one ought to go about portraying the country. There are a few other examples, but my purpose here was not to pull up a list of every country and explain what is correct or incorrect about each characterization. It is enough to say that some characters were not portrayed perfectly. But with that in mind...

The Good Anything Else

It is the most important to remember that this, all of this, is fiction. This is a silly, silly fantasy series. The countries are not humans, they are some weird semi-immortal species that share a universal language and know they are not human and are referenced by humans as ‘those people.’ They are fictional constructs. But the good out of all of this is that they explore human emotions. The American Revolution scene should not be taken as how the revolution was, and who might have been right or wrong. But it is a very emotional story of a big brother unable to accept that his little brother has grown up and wants to make his own choices. That, right there, is a heartfelt scene that I’m sure plenty of real people can feel something about. And there are plenty of other scenes that really grab you by the heartstrings, especially given how crazy, stupid, and humor-oriented the rest of the show is. And I will take a moment and enthuse about some of the more popular scenes that I think are, in fact, pretty good.

There is one episode in season 5, Beautiful World, where an American woman visits France (the place). This woman, Lisa, is blond and bears a striking resemblance to Joan d’Arc. While visiting some historical place somewhere or another in Paris, France (the person) spots her and rushes up with an odd look. When she questions him, he apologizes and offers to give her a tour of the area, which she accepts. He then proceeds to lead her around and explain some history and show off some beautiful sights, and he mentions some stuff about Joan d’Arc. She butts in and lists off some stuff she knows, he beams and looks proud and says yes, she’s right. The end of the scene has the two of them standing alone somewhere and him commenting how young Joan was when she was killed, and that he always wished she could have had a better, nicer life. He then states that he is very happy that she got it, while giving this American tourist a gentle smile. She looks away for a moment, distracted by something perhaps, and when she looks back to ask just who the heck he really is, talking about a historical figure like he knew her, he is gone. It’s a very emotional scene in a quiet sort of way, because the watcher/reader understands that he took one look at this woman and instantly believed that she was, in fact, Joan d’Arc reincarnated into a totally different and totally average life, and he is so genuinely happy that a woman he saw as a hero gets this chance to live normally. Whether or not you may personally believe in reincarnation, and regardless of how often other times in the show France is shown as an obnoxious sexaholic, this is an extremely tender scene that lots of fans seriously love. It is very ‘human.’ And I feel like this is what the series as a whole strives to offer. These human moments. They may be peppered in a sort of lackadaisical style in the anime, but they are far more prominent in the comic strips, so it is important to realize that that kind of scene is more of what the creator likes to focus on.

Another very popular and touted scene is the Davie scene. I don’t remember if it was put in the anime or not, I read it as a comic. It was a scene set in colonial America, where the man himself was just a very small child. Little baby America was hanging out in a field with a rabbit and sees this boy, who introduces himself as Davie. Davie brings America to his house and opens up a botany book and points out a blue flower (possibly a forget-me-not) that he wants to see but that isn’t in the New World. America assures Davie that he will find him one of those flowers, and goes off to do so. He fails his search and goes back to Davie, who is older now, but Davie looks embarrassed and turns and walks away. Distressed, America runs to England and explains about the flower, and England says the flower is not there, but they do grow at home, and he will bring some the next time he leaves and comes back. America happily waits, and when England returns with a bouquet of the blue flowers, America takes them and runs off to Davie’s house. He is let in by a boy who looks just like Davie and presents the flowers, and the boy then puts them on (or maybe in) a coffin of an elderly man. America, smiling, does not seem to understand what is going on, and hopefully calls the boy Davie.

This entire scene, in the comic, has very few words. Davie’s name is repeated a few times, but most of the rest of the ‘dialogue’ is in images. The flower, England saying it is not there, etc. This makes the scene extremely poignant, and when we reach the end, we, the audience, realize suddenly that while baby America was fixated on finding a special flower for his new friend, years and years went by, and that friend grew up and got married and had children and eventually died, all while America remained looking the exact same age and understanding the exact same things. Look, folks, I don’t know about you, but that is some angsty stuff right there. I cried. We all cried. We all miss Davie. Mention the name to fans and you will get sobs. We love you, Davie.

Which brings me to my penultimate point, that this series is heartfelt and, while it avoids a lot of the bad of history, can be very poignant about what human nature is like. Human lives are long, very long, but also so very short, they fly by. Some lives end in tragedy, others are mostly peaceful, and maybe we get second chances if you believe in reincarnation, maybe not. Maybe it’s good that our lives are so short, maybe the fate of living forever and watching people you connect with die is tragic. Or maybe it would actually be really fun, having friends for thousands of years that you may squabble with at times but ultimately care for. Maybe nothing is simple and life is about finding joy where you can, and everyone needs to sometimes take a step back and realize that everyone is flawed, and there might be good and evil but the vast majority of people are in a grey area, trying to live their own lives and do what good they can for whatever reason they might give. I want to end with one last topic, one I have not yet addressed this whole time. The big white alien in the room, if you will.

Paint it: White!

There is a Hetalia movie, folks, if you didn’t know it, and it’s called Paint It White. This movie has just as many silly parts as any other Hetalia thing, but it also has a plot! In this movie, strange, all-white aliens are starting to invade the Earth. They arrive and anything they touch, they turn into completely identical white humanoid blobs, even the country personifications. With this scary and seemingly-unstoppable threat, the main eight - America, England, Russia, China, France, Japan, Germany, and Italy - all try to infiltrate the alien spaceship in frankly hideous uniforms to find out more and figure out a way to defeat them. Hijinks and disaster ensues, and at the end, each of them is fighting a mob and gradually being defeated. Italy is the last one standing, and as Germany is slowly being transformed into a blob along with the others, he tells Italy to smile. Italy then finds (or has? the plot isn’t great, it’s just there) a black marker and he suddenly starts going around drawing ridiculous faces on everyone. He draws fitting faces on each of his friend blobs, like a stern face on Germany-blob, a deadpan face on Japan-blob, etc etc. The invaders suddenly stop. They look at each other, marker-faced, and start to laugh. Then their leader of sorts comes out and is basically like “wow, we thought you were all stupid and you have wars and stuff, but this? This is beautiful. Wow. We all look exactly identical on our world, and these faces are cool and new and unique. We’ll turn everyone on your planet back if we can have this magical thingie you’re holding.” And of course Italy hands the marker right over, and everyone is put back to normal, and crybaby, scaredy-cat, useless Italy saves the world.

The plot is, obviously, not super great. It’s not going to win anybody any awards. But it has a very poetic premise. The strength of humans is that they are all unique. Every human has a different face, a different body, a different life. Our differences may cause conflict, but they are also something to celebrate. At the end of the day, Hetalia is an okay show that can get you hooked on history and tries its best to teach you that we’re all only human and there might be war and conflict and bad things, but you have to reach for the good things and find yourself good friends and have stupid laughs and enjoy life, however long or short it may be. I think that that’s a pretty decent message to send out to people.

The Bottom Line

In the end, this is a fandom like many others. Hetalia has its flaws and its cringe moments, and it certainly had its fair share of awful fans. But I truly believe that painting it overall as nazi propoganda and one of the most problematic and harmful shows out there is a blatant lie and disregards… just about everything of the actual content. I think it is difficult for someone to concretely say anything is super good or super bad without seeing at least some of it, or doing some research, and this business of blithely going along with what everyone else says just because they use big danger words does not do anybody any favors. Spreading misinformation is, I’m sure, the exact opposite of what most people want to do. And make no mistake, I am definitely not saying that everyone needs to like, or even watch, the show. If you never ever want to watch this show in your life, that is absolutely fine. Go forth and never watch it. But mindlessly following the herd and yelling overgeneralized, unsupported opinions about it is not a good thing. I beg of you, do research on the things you want to form or share an opinion on, think critically, and for the love of God, do not swipe a giant paintbrush to forsake every single individual fan of a show as a terrible, awful person. By all means, hate nazis, they are pieces of shit. Boycott things that support genocide and fascism, yes, fight for equality, yes. But do not go accusing without thinking, and do not overgeneralize. I leave you with the words of my old laptop bag that I bought years ago at a convention:

Make pasta, not war.

Thank you for reading.

#I wrote an essay #I could probably source this way more #but I've been working on it for hours #Just take it

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joannalannister · 5 years ago

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Anonymous asked:

Hey there, Lauren! I love your blog and metas! I have a question for you, in terms of the book, could you tell me when and where Daenerys shows signs of being a tyrant or a fascist? I see lots of metas say that she is, but from what I've read, I don't see any signs of that? Sure, she kills her enemies, but what powerful monarch doesn't? I just feel like the fandom has a very biased and double standard hatred when it comes to her, and I would like your opinion! Thank you!

Before I answer your question, we need some sort of working definition of fascism. To achieve this, I would like to quote a disabled person who helped lead the fight against fascism for years, and who died in the line of duty:

Over a year and a half ago I said this [...]: "The militarists in Berlin, and Rome and Tokyo started this war, but the massed angered forces of common humanity will finish it."

Today that prophecy is in the process of being fulfilled. The massed, angered forces of common humanity are on the march. They are going forward [...]

We will have no truck with Fascism in any way, in any shape or manner. We will permit no vestige of Fascism to remain. [...]

In every country conquered by the Nazis and the Fascists, or the Japanese militarists, the people have been reduced to the status of slaves or chattels.

It is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate, entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

We have started to make good on that promise. I am sorry if I step on the toes of those Americans who, playing party politics at home, call that kind of foreign policy “crazy altruism” and “starry-eyed dreaming.”

--President Franklin D. Roosevelt, July 28th, 1943 Fireside Chat

What did the fascist Nazi Party stand for in WWII?

Historically, there was no Nazi Party apart from their racial and social agenda. It was a party founded on racial distinctions, with a vision to dramatically transform their society. The Nazis disliked and persecuted anyone who they did not consider Aryan. They persecuted and killed Jewish people, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and communists, and they wanted to eliminate people with mental or physical ailments. The Nazis pushed women out of the workplace and actively promoted patriarchy. [x]

But where does GRRM come into this?

I wasn’t a complete pacifist; I couldn’t claim to be that. I was what they called an objector to a particular war. I would have been glad to fight in World War II. But Vietnam was the only war on the menu. [x]

GRRM’s ethical views are at their clearest and most concise while discussing slavery and dehumanization in his (most excellent and highly recommended) vampire novel, Fevre Dream:

I never held much with slavery […]. You can’t just go… usin’ another kind of people, like they wasn’t people at all. Know what I mean? Got to end, sooner or later. Better if it ends peaceful, but it’s got to end even if it has to be with fire and blood, you see? Maybe that’s what them abolitionists been sayin’ all along. You try to be reasonable, that’s only right, but if it don’t work, you got to be ready. Some things is just wrong. They got to be ended.

Some things are worth fighting for. Fascism requires opposition, some form of opposition, or it will steamroller all over you.

My regret now is not that I stayed my arm, but that I remained aloof in my window while others protested peacefully outside. It would be naïve to think that those marching in neo-Nazi parades could have a change of heart from such efforts, but I am more concerned with those who are not marching for anything. We must convince the apathetic to care, and stop those who are walking down the path of hatred before it becomes too late.

--David Olin, The View from My Window, Berkeley 2018, written for the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

Now, let me apply this to ASOIAF piece by piece.

In every country conquered [...] the people have been reduced to the status of slaves or chattels.

This is Tywin. This is Tywin enslaving people as part of his militaristic campaign of aggressive force in the Riverlands. This is Tywin sanctioning the capture and torture of innocent people. This is Tywin “using” other kinds of people and disregarding the fact that they are human beings. This is Tywin enslaving Arya Stark. This is Tywin impressing people to work in his gold mines on a whim, as we learn in AGOT. This is Tywin reducing people to the status of slaves or chattels. This is Tywin.

I don’t know how many different ways I can say it, but as I’ve said before and will say again: Tywin is the character in the ASOIAF books who most prominently espouses fascist ideology.

There are other characters in the main series -- Roose Bolton and Randyll Tarly, for example -- who also exhibit characteristics of fascist ideology, but I would argue that it is Tywin who is the fascist poster boy of ASOIAF ... and it is also Tywin who is one of the main villains who is drawing humanity’s attention south away from the true threat of the Others, who wish to turn every living thing into their slaves and playthings. (Littlefinger also comes to mind.) Tywin is an unwitting general in the Others’ army. Tywin is fighting the Others’ Campaign of Dehumanization on their behalf.

The Nazis disliked and persecuted anyone who they did not consider Aryan.

Substitute “Aryan” for “Lannister” and this is Tywin. ��a Lannister, and worth more.” It is Tywin who pushes an agenda of Lannister superiority and it is Tywin to whom non-Lannisters aren’t human, to the point that he had to marry his own cousin. He dislikes non-Lannisters so much he had to marry his own cousin!!!! It’s Tywin who passed down his obsession with blood purity to his children to the point that they literally have to fuck each other. It’s Tywin who puts his House (a proxy for his race) above the individuals in it; it’s Tywin who doesn’t care if Cersei and Jaime and Tyrion are ground to dust under his disgusting ideology as long as House Lannister reigns supreme.

"Spice soldiers and cheese lords," his lord father called them, with contempt.

This is Tywin.

Non-Lannisters aren’t fully human to Tywin. This is fascist ideology!!!!

It was a party founded on racial distinctions

This is Tywin and Kevan, refusing to allow the Westerlings to marry into their family because of “doubtful blood”!!!!! (”Ser Kevan seldom had a thought that Lord Tywin had not had first.”)

It was a party founded on racial distinctions

This is Tywin and his refusal to allow a betrothal between Jaime and Elia.

they wanted to eliminate people with mental or physical ailments.

This is Tywin and his hatred toward disabled Tyrion. This is Tywin and his refusal to allow a betrothal between Jaime and disabled Elia.

The Nazis pushed women out of the workplace and actively promoted patriarchy.

This is Tywin. This is Randyll hating on Brienne of Tarth. (And you can bet your ass Tywin doesn’t approve of women with swords.)

I don’t know how many ways I can say it: Tywin and others like him are the fascists.

Tywin is one of the cold fucks the AGOT prologue warns us about in the very beginning: “the real enemy is the cold.”

The central conflict of ASOIAF is between the living (the fire) and the dead (the cold), those who would recognize your humanity and those who won’t.

It is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate

^^ This is Daenerys Targaryen ^^

Daenerys Targaryen is a freedom fighter who kills slavers in the books.

Her breakup of the economic system of Essos (meaning SLAVERY) is more akin to a communist revolution than a fascist takeover imo. Daenerys associates herself with people of all races, all classes. She gives Missandei, who canonically has dark skin in the books, a place as one of her closest advisors. Unlike Tywin, Daenerys is not pushing an agenda of Targaryen superiority.

Daenerys is not perfect. She does not always get it right. Daenerys has got some things wrong. But I don’t think there has been any other option for Daenerys. You ... you can’t just look the other way when evil men are crucifying children, and I truly do not think that non-violent opposition would change anything in Essos. “Better if it ends peaceful, but it’s got to end even if it has to be with fire and blood, you see?”

Sometimes innocents like Hazzea have died on Daenerys’s journey.

And I fully believe that more people are going to die in TWOW, and that Daenerys will hold herself responsible, whether she is or not. I know that TWOW will give all the antis of every character a lot of ammunition. TWOW is going to be a dark and depressing book.

I think that Daenerys is going to reach a very low point in TWOW, just as Tyrion is nose-diving in ADWD, but I think that’s just what GRRM does with his greatest heroes. It’s the moment in a movie when the hero falls off the cliff, and the Evil Villain starts cackling maniacally and you think all is lost, and then you see the hero’s hand reach up over the edge and the music crescendos as the hero pulls himself up. Except the real villains that GRRMs heroes are battling are themselves. The cliff is a metaphor for our darkest impulses.

Characters tell Dany in AGOT that “she is nothing” but Dany’s story is about proving them wrong. It’s about her finding her own dignity and worth as a human being out on the Dothraki Sea, and becoming the master of her own fate. As her story progresses, she helps others to do the same, helping people to rediscover their dignity, to regain their names (or take new ones), to find the humanity that was stolen from them.

(This is why it’s so important to me that her story intersect with zombie!Jon, so that she can help a dead man remember what it is to be human and remember why it all matters. Because if none of it matters ... if a man can’t find a fuck to give, well, that’s Tywin Lannister, who was a cold dead man long before Tyrion shot him.)

I brought up FDR in the beginning of this post. Although FDR died before GRRM was born, he was one of the great American cultural figures of the 20th century and I have no doubt FDR’s legacy was a formative influence on GRRM. And that’s the thing - so many of these, these great American cultural figures of GRRM’s life died before their work was completed: FDR, JFK, MLK, so many others... The promised land is somewhere ahead of us, despite the opposition making accusations of “crazy altruism” and “starry-eyed dreaming.” No one is going to drive us there and drop us off; we have to get there by ourselves, and the journey isn’t an easy one. It’s a place we have to keep striving for, working for. A dream of spring...

It’s not Daenerys’s destiny, I think, to rule humanity in the long term; Dany’s destiny is, I think, to make sure that humanity doesn’t, well, lose their humanity. To make sure that humanity doesn’t fall into eldritch slavery.

The Others would make us automatons in their icy, inhuman regime. The Others would steam-roller all over humanity, and take away humanity’s freedom to choose, as Tywin Lannister tries to do to his children, trying to take all of their choices away and control them completely. The Others would take away our self-determination, our freedom to choose good or evil, our freedom to be the rulers of our own fate.

I don’t think it’s Daenerys job to be a ruler in the end. I think she’s fighting evil now so that other people can keep fighting that good-and-evil “human heart in conflict with itself” fight long after she’s gone ... I’ve never believed in a “Targaryen restoration” ending although I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it.

Like Moses, Daenerys won’t lead us into the promised land ... we have to get there ourselves.

And I’ve strayed from your question into a topic that’s more interesting to me because I cannot fucking belieeeeeeve that you are even asking me if the compassionate, caring, teenage-girl, sexual-abuse-survivor, messiah-figure Daenerys Targaryen is a fucking fascist when everything Daenerys “the fire is mine” Targaryen does is in narrative opposition to Certified Fucking Fascist Tywin Racist Lannister oh my god I cannot believe this is where we’ve come to as a fandom, I cannot fucking belieeeeeeve.

Anon. Honey. Baby. I say this gently, with love: Whyyyyyyyyy are you reading “Daenerys is a fascist” metas? That didn’t even work on the show.

When I googled “Daenerys Targaryen fascist” to try and figure out what you could possibly be reading to argue against it, the top result is an alt-right thinkpiece website about how dangerous Dany was all along in freeing slaves!!!! And the next results are people who think the iron throne actually matters when GRRM himself has said that the political war is a red herring.

The endgame rulers don’t even particularly matter because what matters in the end is that humanity wins against the Others and we still have control over ourselves, what matters is for that human heart conflict to continue to exist inside ourselves and that we rule over that conflict inside ourselves.

"We all must choose," she proclaimed.

Practice some self-care; go read Armageddon Rag, and remember this: TWOW is not going to save us.

#to my friends out there: shoutout to Comrade Drogon ☭#daenerys targaryen #tywin lannister #asoiaf meta #lannister thoughts #tywin meta #dany meta #fascist masculinity #fascist masculinity in asoiaf #asoiaf and the american mythos #the meaning of asoiaf #the war for the dawn #endgame #fascism

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quakerjoe · 5 years ago

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NO MORE: A CUPPA JOE FOR FRIDAY 13 MARCH 2020

I think if Biden's "it", I'm going to abstain.

I'm tired of the Dems doing nothing.

I'm tired of them forcing me to decide between two evils.

I'm not willing to surrender my minute, little slice of political power because of it.

I'll vote downballot and try to replace the old guard who are feckless and ineffective.

I'm tired of their propaganda shows, playing on their fame and reputation while answering to money, not us.

I'm tired of them NOT moving to get rid of the Electoral College.

I'm tired of them NOT moving to attack gerrymandering.

I'm tired of their inability to stand up to a party rife with the actual 'deep state' rich fucks, the nazis, and the kkk.

I'm tired of them playing gambling games with our lives instead of being a force to be reckoned with.

I'm tired of them being decades behind the times.

I'm going to have the balls to abstain.

I'm going to shoot a message into the wall for all to see...

"NO MORE"

Lining me up to vote for a lesser of two evils- the promise of PLUTOCRACY under Biden OR the threat of FASCISM under trump- seriously? I can't see myself attaching my name to that. NO MORE.

Screaming at me because I'm a Sanders supporter and then accusing me of being some fuckwit "Bernie Bro" because I disagree with you? NO MORE.

Here's the thing- WHEN the DNC fronts Biden, and you KNOW they will, we'll see 2016 all over again. When Biden loses, and you KNOW he will, all of these chicken-shit "Vote Blue No Matter Who" cucks will blame ME and those like me, the Progressives, for the defeat SOMEHOW. They always do. NOBODY was willing to own up to HRC's defeat in 2016; what should have been the EASIEST victory in political history.

Oh, and SPARE ME this horse shit about 'electibility' too. Stop sucking corporate media dick for a change. Do you think trump was or even IS "electable"? Let's be clear- BOTH trump AND Biden are all about sucking Wall St ass. BOTH want to give the super rich all the breaks and leave YOU with the bill. BOTH will shitcan Social Security AND Medicare/Medicaid. BOTH.

While Sanders is trying to get us on board with a health care system to literally save us ALL during a pandemic, Biden said, on live telly, that he'd veto the bill if it came to his desk because suddenly, despite voting FOR war with Iraq, NOW he's wanting to know where the money will come from.

So no, I won't be voting for Biden. The country is sick as fuck, and the DNC snake oil solution hasn't worked yet and it never will. The time for massive change is in the air, and that scares Americans because they're terrified of EVERYTHING. This is NOT the "home of the brave". If you couldn't stomach backing Sanders, then I say to you- YOU are a COWARD. As for me- NO MORE!

Right up until recently I was all "Vote Blue No Matter Who" just because I was against trump, and let's be clear- I AM. But using trump's shittiness as leverage for the Dems to allow another version of him who said "nothing's going to change much" to be their candidate is them force-feeding us all a steaming plate of shit. They expect us to eat it. Most of you will. I won't anymore. NO MORE.

Neither Biden or trump ca form coherent sentences or string a thought or two together. And while some of you are out there cavalierly throwing around the "You're a Bernie Bro!" card, your boy Joe is actually verbally abusing and threatening to fight voters, LIVE on camera! So take the Bernie Bro shit and cram it up your ass. You get to play that card NO MORE.

I highly doubt my abstaining from voting for Biden if/when he's the nominee will put a dent in history. I highly doubt this post will start a rally with congrats being thrown my way for having the stones to finally tell the DNC to go fuck themselves. I suspect that more angry responses will fly at me, accusing me of only helping trump. To be clear, I'm helping NEITHER. If anything, I have a better understanding of those who wouldn't vote blue no matter who in 2016. Perhaps I'm just late catching on, but I get it now.

America is ill. Corporate media is ass-fucking you ALL. Progressives get ZERO media coverage, and the GOP-DNC alliance is still conning you into choosing between High Grade Fuckery with GOP politicians of Diet Fuckery with Democrats. MY precious, singular, little vote is my ONLY true weapon, and I hold it dearly. For my own conscience, dignity, and self respect, it must be earned and not surrendered just because I don't like trump. EITHER WAY we're voting for pretty much the same fuckwad only one has an (R) on the ballot, the other a (D).

Perhaps the only way things will TRULY get better is if things proceed to get worse. Perhaps we're simply not "woke" enough yet. Perhaps we really DO want more trump, otherwise the DNC would have told Joe to sit down and shut the fuck up ages ago. Perhaps Warren would have got off her ass and endorsed her "fellow" Progressive immediately in 2016 or, this time around, dropped out before Super Tuesday and, along with Yang, and the "anti-Biden" hypocrite-turncoats like Booker and "I was that girl" Kamala Harris. No, these bullshit artists showed us their true colors and backed Biden. The jig is up. We watched them SELL US ALL OUT, instead of backing the candidate that better and more closely represented their own agendas, or so they claimed once upon a time.

This gaggle of liars and hypocrites will NOT get my vote. NO MORE.

In their actions, the Dems have made it clear. In Biden's own words they seem to want us to 'vote for the other guy'. Well, I choose to vote for neither. NO MORE.

If you want to keep empowering the Democratic Party to keep making feckless choices, displaying cowardice, and serving us hot bowls of filth to ear, that’s on you. I won’t be doing it anymore. I’ll vote for what I WANT, not for what I’m willing to settle for. This country has moved so goddamned far to the right that sanity and conventional ‘leftism’ is now considered evil and unspeakable.

Why is it a bad thing to want good things for ALL of us? Why are so many people so stoked to keep throwing all of our hard-earned cash to the rich instead of seeing our tax dollars make “We the People” safer, healthier, better educated, and worth being called “the land of the free and the home of the brave”? We throw away our rights, kill our economy, destroy the planet- let’s call it what it is, shall we? We totally shit where we eat and them blame the poor and powerless for the mess. We ALWAYS punch down in this nation instead of going after those doing the real harm. Frankly, I’m sick of the stupidity and ignorance the Democrats have displayed and I will support them NO MORE.

~Quaker Joe

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bigtittyhimmler-blog · 6 years ago

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Who Goes Nazi? Brooklyn Edition

If you’re anything like me, a twenty-something Twitter leftist with an advanced degree in the humanities, you hate absolutely everyone around you and badly want to kill them. You live in a brownstone playground of Timorese food and adult coloring books, and you want to suicide bomb the L train but leave a note blaming it on manspreading or whatever, so people don’t think you’re one of “those” random mass murderers (the bad kind). You hate having to tell people at parties that you “work in content,” and you hate the fact that they all also work in content. You hate that they all make content for outlets that are slightly cooler and more prestigious than the outlets you make content for. You hate that none of them have even fucked you for like thirteen months. You hate that you can’t even hate them for the ways in which they’re different to you, because there aren’t any. But fear not! There’s one thing you’ve got that nobody else does: you know that you’re definitely, 100% Not A Nazi.

But what about them? Imagine if the Nazis took over America and it was suddenly cool and prestigious to be a Nazi, and there were trendy Nazis on the TV the whole time, and they once again sold soap with slogans like “Dove: The White Pride Soap for Hating QTBIPOC and Not Amplifying Their Voices.” But also don’t imagine, because that’s exactly what’s happening.

This game was invented by Dorothy Thompson in her classic 1941 Harpers essay Who Goes Nazi?, in which she presciently pointed out that intellectuals are definitely more Nazi than aristocrats, but not nearly as Nazi as union leaders. But she set her essay at some dinner party in the Hamptons or wherever, and last time I went out there I went swimming in the sea and a wave hit me and I lost my bikini top and a bunch of bros in boat shoes started laughing and pointing at me in a way that despite my white privilege I still feel was somehow like imbued with racism, and then afterwards I just stayed inside for three weeks writing content and ordering groceries online, so the setting needs to be updated. Let’s look at your group DM. Which of these Twitter creatives who live in Brooklyn would go along with it and become a Nazi? (All of them.) And who never, ever would? (Me.)

Mr A isn’t actually in your group DM, and you’ve never encountered anyone like him irl, but you literally can’t stop talking about him, so he gets included anyway. Mr A is a short ugly loser, and he’s already a Nazi. He doesn’t even live in Brooklyn, he lives in his mother’s basement, and eats chicken tenders, and he doesn’t get laid, but in a different way to the way you don’t get laid, which has to do with patriarchy. Mr A is a Pizzagate. Mr A is a Gamergate. Mr A is a segregationist. Mr A opposes the reforms of the Emperor Diocletian (284-305). Mr A won’t shut up about the superiority of a “free silver” bimetallic monetary system over gold specie, and keeps on talking about the “gold shills” in a way that doesn’t really make sense until you realize that your own name is Goldschmidt, and yeah, he doesn’t really care about expansionary monetary policy at all, he’s talking about the Jews, and specifically you. Mr A is basically a pathetic worm whose life sucks and nobody likes him, but also he represents the whole of the repressive forces of society and he’s at the top of the social hierarchy. Everyone you’ve ever met is actually Mr A, wearing various masks. He is the source of all your problems. He must be killed, and once we kill him, we need to find more people like him to be the source of any problems we have left over.

Mr B is in your group DM, but you also have a separate group DM with everyone else except Mr B in it. He keeps trying so hard to be nice, and says stuff like “so how is everyone’s day today” with a smiley emoji, and when you’re talking to him you get this airless feeling like you’re about to suffocate in his treacly good-natured presence. Every time you see Mr B at a party you’re afraid that he’s going to blurt out that he loves you, but you can’t keep your distance too much because he’s so clearly autistic, and you don’t want to be ableist. Anyway once in the group DM he said that while he obviously thought divining for water with Y-shaped copper rods was good and important and valid, he didn’t understand what it had to do with socialism. That made everything better, because clearly he’s a Nazi. The whole group DM expended hours of emotional labor educating him about how dowsing is part of LGBTQ+ culture and how his dismissive bro-y attitude was reactionary and gross, and eventually he posted a video of himself crying and begging for forgiveness and promising to do better, because you guys were the only friends he had. This was classic white fragility, but in the end you let him stay. You just have the other DM now, where you make fun of him and it’s ok, because if the Nazis came and he had license to start being cruel and sadistic to other people, he’d definitely do it.

Ms C is one of those women who doesn’t like other women, and you know this about her because you can’t fucking stand the bitch. Plus she says stuff that’s really not ok, even though it costs nothing to have empathy and be kind. You’ve personally heard her use the D-word, the H-slur, and the L-pejorative, all while laughing and holding a glass of white wine by the stem, like she doesn’t need to consider the harm this does to others, just because she’s “funny” and “an artist.” She’s the Cool Chick. She makes nude self-portraits (the bad, skinny kind), and she’d throw you under the bus in a second for male attention and approval. She’d definitely go Nazi. But the worst thing about her is that she has the impudence to be bisexual and Asian, which makes it really hard to call her out. But then you realized that all Asian people are collectively responsible for the long history of anti-Blackness and misogynoir in their communities, and you’re thinking of holding her collectively responsible for the Rape of Nanking too, once you’re certain she’s a sushi Asian and not the dim sum kind.

Ms D’s boyfriend works in finance, or like accountancy or something, or I think I heard he was a musician? Maybe a drummer or possibly he used to bartend at a place where they had live music. Anyway they definitely have vanilla cishet sex in the missionary position and you can’t stop thinking about it, his body, her body, naked, moving, breathing, together, almost silent, tender, disgusting. She says she’s a socialist but doesn’t devote every minute of her waking life to getting mad about people online. This means she’s just vaguely following a trend, and if the trend were being a Nazi (which it is), she’d be a Nazi (which she therefore is). You can’t imagine yourself actually hitting her but it’d definitely be punching up to maybe poison her food?

Mr E used to be a comrade, but then he did a tweet that got 38.6k RT’s and now he’s moved to Los Angeles to spend his whole time in writers’ rooms. Last you heard he was pitching an animated show for adults about a snail with borderline personality disorder. It hasn’t even been greenlit yet, but you’re already thinking about all the ways in which it will be a missed opportunity and do harm and perpetuate tropes. Mr E will definitely turn out to have been a Nazi, and then you can start an anonymous petition to get the show cancelled so he has to move back to New York. Once he’s back you can send him a long email about how much it sucks his career burned out and how (even though you won’t say it in public) sometimes people do actually take the social-justice thing too far. That way he’ll be a comrade again, which is good, because we believe in rehabilitating people who have a genuine change of heart.

Mr F probably thinks he’s better than you. He’s a union organizer. So are you (you added “#Unionize” to your Twitter name), but his union stuff involves workers who aren’t in tech, content, or grad school, and he probably thinks that makes him more in touch with “the real workers,” who he probably thinks are just a bunch of cis white males in a factory, who are probably all racist and probably have thick, heavy dicks that intrude on your mind in a kinda #MeToo way a lot of the time. He talks about class, and you agree that class is important because you’re not a lib (you support Bernie, you just want him to Do Better). But from the way he says it you’re certain he doesn’t acknowledge all he/him lesbians as part of the working class. He’s trying to save a tiny sector of the workers from a necessary and important socio-economic shift that will impoverish them and make their lives worse, and that’s what being a Nazi is. This is why his union needs to stop dragging their heels, change all of their rules and priorities, and let you get him fired.

Ms G (me) will never go Nazi, because she is beautiful and kind and pure, and has all the good opinions instead of the bad ones. Because of this she’s allowed to do things that other people can’t do. She can totally fail to understand what having an authoritarian personality actually means, and construct a version of the Who Goes Nazi? essay in which the people who go Nazi are just people who are already right wing, having confused politics with personality, probably because she herself has no personality other than her politics. She can minimize, ignore, or even encourage the infliction of actual suffering when it happens to the wrong kind of people. She can write that “nothing that terrible has really happened” since the publication of Mark Fisher’s Exiting the Vampire Castle, even though Mark Fisher himself is mysteriously not around to appreciate that fact. She can do some shit with threatening to leak an unedited draft that I don’t even want to go into. She knows that the Nazis don’t come promising hatred but promising to be your friend, but it’s ok because she doesn’t really have any friends, just mufos. She’s doing great. She’s building a better, kinder world. She will never, ever be the Nazis.

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beesandwasps · 4 years ago

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Policy Predictions for Biden

Here are my predictions for the likelihood of Biden actually enacting policy which many of his supporters believe he will, based on my reading of his (and major Congressional Democrats’) history. Feel free to respond with your own predictions.

1. Climate Change/Environment

A. Green New Deal (or similar): < 1% B. Cheap consumer-targeted photovoltaic solar panels: 50% C. Punitive measures (Trade or Otherwise) against major polluters: < 1% D. Further reinforcement of the (false) “personal responsibility” narrative on Climate Change: 100% E. Sufficient reduction in greenhouse gases produced in the US by 2030 (the scientific deadline): < 1% F. Significant, but nevertheless insufficient, reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 (or a too-late sufficient reduction, such as by 2050): 25% G: Insignificant reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030: 50% H: No actual reduction in greenhouse gases at all: 25% I. Ban on fracking: < 1% J. Mild, ineffective, but showy restrictions on fracking: 50%

Reasoning: Biden’s public statements show that, despite claiming that he will listen to experts and scientists, he does not understand (or even have the necessary mental capacity to understand) the urgency of climate change. And he has, historically, been very protective of the profits of the rich/corporations, no matter what damage is done to the public. Meanwhile, semi-competent technocratic Democrats like Hillary Clinton favor “personal responsibility” as an approach to environmental issues, and thus favor initiatives like consumer solar panels and home recycling, even though the share of pollution created by corporations is so large that it is literally impossible to solve most environmental issues without addressing corporate malfeasance (and usually unnecessary to do anything else).

2. Healthcare

A. Single-payer (Medicare For All or similar): < 1% B. ACA with expanded Medicaid: 25% C. ACA without expanded Medicaid: 50% D. New bill which is ultimately even weaker than the ACA: 5% E. Let the now-right-wing Supreme Court strike down the ACA and then shrug shoulders and do nothing at all: 20% F. National lockdown over coronavirus: < 1% G. Mask legislation with teeth (and fight cops to enforce it): 20% H. Mask legislation (but not enforce it, so nothing changes): 75% I. Ongoing stimulus (i.e. regular payments): < 1% J. Single stimulus payment(s), each one negotiated separately: 95% K. Contracts to large corporations (such as Amazon) to deliver healthcare-related products and services to the public: 75% L. Free coronavirus vaccine when available: 10% M. Free coronavirus vaccine for the first year (or similar, insufficient limited-time duration) when available: 25% N. Subsidized, but not free, coronavirus vaccine: 25% O. Insufficient price controls on coronavirus vaccine, claimed to be “the best we can do”: 50%

Reasoning: Biden has said that he opposes single-payer, that it is too expensive (despite Obama admitting, when the ACA was passed, that only single-payer is viable in the long term), and that he will veto it. Instead, he wants to spend more money, overall, to patch the inadequacies of the ACA, incidentally continuing to inflate the profits of the parasitical insurance industry. Democrats have heavily criticized Trump’s handling of coronavirus (and rightly so), but have shown in the last 40 years that they will back down on any issue if there is any��resistance from the Republican party, so Biden’s policies in practice will probably look a lot like Trump’s, because the Republicans won’t want anything else. Centrist Democrats like Biden have demonstrated since long before the Clinton administration that they are committed to private, corporate healthcare, rather than public, and will not want to set any precedents that a public health crisis can be used to limit the profits of corporations.

3. Political Infrastructure

A. Legislation against gerrymandering: 10% B. Legislation to stop non-criminal voter disenfranchisement: 50% C. Legislation to end prisoner/former prisoner disenfranchisement: 10% D. Legislation against hackable voting machines: < 1% E. Expansion of the Supreme Court: 5% F. Other attempt to undo right-wing influence on the Supreme Court: 5% G. Shrug shoulders about the Supreme Court and say “this is just the way it is, we can’t do anything to oppose it”: 90%

Reasoning: the Democrats had chances to fix most of this stuff before, under Obama. Most of the issues were known at least as early as 2004, and they had a Congressional majority and the Presidency and a supermajority in the Senate and did nothing. This indicates that there are benefits to the Democratic Party in permitting these problems to continue — which means they won’t be fixed this time, either, no matter how much noise was made by the campaign. As for the Supreme Court: the Democrats could have eliminated the filibuster under Obama and acted on their campaign promises; instead they refused to do so, citing tradition, and then used the lack of a supermajority in the Senate from 2011 onwards as an excuse to not even introduce bills which might address problems. Obviously, Congressional Democrats (and the party leadership) primarily want an excuse to do nothing, and a right-wing Supreme Court is the ultimate excuse to do nothing.

4. Foreign Policy

A. Continuing the unwinnable war in Afghanistan: 100% B. Continuing our alliances with right-wing Saudi Arabia and Israel: 100% C. Continuing to provide support (arms/ammunition) for Saudi Arabia’s criminal war against Yemen: 100% D. Continuing drone bombing (including “double taps” and so forth): 100% E. Continuing to saber-rattle against Syria: 100% F. Refusal to sign a trade agreement with the UK if they violate the Good Friday agreement: 50% G. Continuing to call for trade war with China: <1% H. Continuing many of Trump’s trade policies with China but no longer calling it a “trade war”: 75% I. Serious repercussions for right-wing governments (such as Bolsonaro): < 1% J. More coups to install right-wing governments like Bolivia: 75%

Reasoning: Biden has always been a hawk, and despite most Democrats constantly deploring our outrageous military spending, when Sanders recently introduced an amendment to cut military spending by 10% and use the money for social programs, the supposedly more-left-than-Biden Harris would not vote for it — in fact, she voted to increase Trump’s military budget repeatedly. Under Biden or Harris, US foreign policy is going to be just as violent and evil as ever. (Heck, under Obama we destroyed the government of Libya and started a CIA operation to overthrow the left-leaning government of Brazil, which eventually resulted in the basically-a-Nazi Bolsonaro taking power. Biden is to the right of Obama, so things will, if anything, be even worse.)

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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June 29th-July 5th, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from June 29th, 2020 to July 5th, 2020. The chat focused on Without Moonlight by Tantz Aerine.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Without Moonlight by Tantz Aerine~! (https://withoutmoonlightcomic.com/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until July 5th, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic! Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I really like the flash forward aspect of the beginning - keeping the scene in the back of your mind really helps keep things tense as you see the story build towards the scene we see at the start.

(it also helps with the tone - it would be pretty jarring to go from kids stealing food from trucks to the scenes where bodies start dropping if we hadn't established that dark tone early on)

One thing I like about the comic is how the text colors switch based off languages - blue is greek, black is german, red is english, and i believe green is italian. Really makes the language switches easier to keep track of in the back of your head.

I like the comic's theme of... "your actions have consequences", essentially. There are dozens of moments where something bad happened because of one character's action or lack of action, and it's a matter of... when there are so many factors, who should be held responsible for these bad events?

RebelVampire

I like that the beginning of the comic is...more light-hearted despite the situation? I mean it's tragic and I don't mean to paint the situation lightly, but it's also kids and kids are like beacons of hope. So despite it all there were happy smiling faces. Before the chaos descended. My favorite moment in the comic so far was probably when Basil was rescuing Fotis and Wolff decides to let them go. It was a rare moment of humanity where there was no whose side is whose. Just two people doing a bro favor because neither thought a child deserved to be tortured. My favorite character is Basil. Basil really is just the down-to-earth dude he kind of finds that balance between doing what's right but with principle. And he also gets going when the going gets tough. And I'm sure nothing ever bad happened to him in this comic. My favorite characters interacting are probably Fotis and Martha right now. I like this dynamic that they're brought together by tragedy. So it's kind of interesting to see that bond, while also kind of experiencing this weird age gap where even though Fotis is much younger, he grew up almost instantly cause of tragedy. Something I like about the art is just kind of the grim color palettes. The comic is not overly bright, and I think this choice really enhances the grim situation of the comic. It also adds more of a sense of realism because WWII is serious business and was not fun at all for anybody. For themes, I love that the comic kind of explores demonization vs. humanity, especially through Wolff. It is always extremely to demonize the side you're not on, and we see Wolff both do this himself and be a recipient of it. And the comic really wants us to ask are they monsters, or are they still, unfortunately, humans doing really shitty things.

As for the comic's overall story, I love that not only is it historical in its setting, but just that the comic really throws no punches. You have people dying in gruesome ways, torture, espionage, double agents, greed, etc. Just like everything you'd expect regarding war. In regards to strengths, honestly, what I just said above. So many stories are really, really terrified to actually go deep into that grim reality that is war. And even fewer are willing to show that war very rarely has heroes since at the end, it's people killing people which is not cool. And I think this really makes the comic stand out since there are parts that are gonna stick with me for years.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. What is your takeaway in regards to the comic’s themes about war and the horrors and tragedy that happen because of it? In regards to these themes, how do you feel about Arthur Wolff, and do you think it’s possible for him to be redeemed and/or at least forgiven?

10. What do you think the comic has to say about survival and hope, especially when humans are faced with the most horrid of circumstances? What moment stood out to you the most regarding this? Also, who do you think will survive the story?

11. Do you think anything will actually happen to Orestes in regards to his actions so far? If so, what unintended affects might occur because of whatever does happen? Additionally, what do you think will happen to his contact, Iris?

12. How do you think the events of the story will continue to change Fotis, and will it be for better or for worse? What about the other children? Given the historical base, what do you think they’ll even do once the occupation ends?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

My takeaway from the comic is that war sucks, nobody wins, everyone suffers, and that even good people do some terrible stuff in the name of survival. However, within all that, we're all essentially human and have the capacity for good. Which is why I feel Wolff is an important character, since he's that shining beacon that reminds us that people on the worst side of history possible can still take a step back and go, "Wait a second." As for redemption and forgiveness, I think this is a yes an no. Can he redeem and forgive himself as far as he's personally concerned? Maybe someday. Will others? Probably not in a million years. In contrast to the above, I think that the comic also has strong messages that, even in the face of desperation, humans, as a whole, have a tendency to fight and that, much like everybody in Star Wars, will always have hope. As for the moment that stood out to me the most, I think it was actually the beginning when the kids are risking everything to get supplies. They know it's dangerous, and yet they persevere and don't give up despite being who'd you think would give up first. As for who will survive, maybe Alex cause Alex is toeing the line of safety and staying out of the spy drama. I think Orestes still won't be dealt with for a while, and if anything, will be the victim of vigilante justice because someone didn't want to wait for even a sham trial. I think that they won't realize in his traitorous ways though he really did help out, and will find themselves more at odd with the Nazis. As for Iris, she probably gonna die. Cause that's what happens when you play double agent. I think the events of the story really aren't gonna do good for Fotis, and, at the very least (and assuming he's not dead), he's going to be bitter and have a ton of PTSD. Probably the same for all the children, and I think overall they'll just feel lost once the occupation ends cause normalcy forms fast.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

Thank you so much for all the thoughtful analysis and commentary @RebelVampire ! I'm so glad that you have found all these themes in my story

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

I am most looking forward to seeing if Fotis has some epiphany about the horrors of the path he's on. Right now I kind of think he's just kind of...going through the motions and acting mostly on anger. And so I'm interested to see if this will be the case throughout the rest of the story or if at some point his brain stops for a moment and goes "Hey wait a minute these are some pretty serious implications." I think either could change how his character development proceeds. My final words are that I admire this comic's bravery and risks. A lot of creators don't want to write about things like WWII because it's still a little too close to home and painful. But I think these topics are important to show with historical fiction cause not only is it an opportunity to teach about lesser known history in greater detail, but an opportunity to otherwise humanize an event that comes off different when you're just reading facts in a book. So bravo to this comic for doing that.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

@RebelVampire Thank you so much! You honour me. Researching this comic has been both a revelation and a painful affair. As for Fotis, you're very right he IS very angry and very grieved at this point in time. We'll see how he will be soon! I can't begin to say how much your words warm my heart thank you again.

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Without Moonlight this week! Please also give a special thank you to Tantz Aerine for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Without Moonlight, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: https://withoutmoonlightcomic.com/

Tantz’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/withoutmoonlight

Tantz’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/tantzaerine'

Tantz’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/TantzAerine

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic bookclub #webcomic book club #comic tea party #ctp #without moonlight #tantz aerine

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racefortheironthrone · 5 years ago

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Thoughts on Powers of X #2

We’re working on a deadline here, so let’s get to it!

Once Again, We Return...to Octopusheim (X^0):

In this section, Charles and Moira go to Octopusheim to share what they’ve learned with Magneto in order to gain his support for their whole mutant unity masterplan.

Thanks to the timeline infographic from last issue, we know exactly when this particular meeting at Octopusheim is happening - it’s Year 43, four years before the “Moira/Xavier/Magneto schism,” six years before the Genoshan genocide, and nine years before the present day. This timing is quite interesting, because it suggests a high degree of patience on their part. After all, it’s been twenty six years since Moira first introduced herself(herselves?) to Charles, which is a lot of time to not make moves. On the other hand, having a head start didn’t help in earlier lives, so there may be some other rationale.

There’s a really interesting echoing of Giant-Sized X-Men #1, with Xavier explicitly in the role of recruiter once again (we’ll see other pitches of his throughout the rest of HoX/PoX). The difference is that rather than relying on his normal posture of benevolent, almost wizardly, superior knowledge, Charles is using an admission of mutual fault to put them on an even level, which is necessary to gain Magneto’s trust for the psychic link to Moira.

Incidentally, when it comes to character voice, Hickman does an impressive job of nailing not just Magneto but the specific era of Magneto when Chris Claremont re-invented him as the Miltonian anti-villain holding the world to ransom in the name of enlightened despotism and mutant self-protection. “Who determines waht is truly good and truly evil?...I do. I decide.” is particularly well-observed, right down to his ironically Nietzschean self-conception.

At the same time, Moira’s query is clearly meant to shift the terms of discussion from the scientific (”you’re a specialist, specializing in the behavior of mutants”) to the religious. As her warning that “my truth is profound and life changing. It’s primal...” suggests, Moira is testifying in the Protestant sense of the word.

What follows is a series of psychic images of failure that bring the Satanically-proud Magneto to his knees, but remain really ambiguous: his death by Sentinel could be from pretty much any life other than 9, although 4 or 5 seem most likely; given his costume, the image of him in chains seems to be from the Trial of Magneto, which could be in Life 4 or 10; the central image of him with furious glowing eyes could be generic or perhaps a reference to the couple times he’s used artifical power-boosters; the image of him in a SHIELD tank being observed by Nick Fury is unclear; and him fighting the Shadow King is particularly singular, since the Shadow King has yet to show up in the narrative. Interestingly, we don’t see Moira showing him his death at Apocalypse’s hands in Life 9.

For his own part, Xavier is preaching a much more secular argument: mutant unity in order to not merely survive but thrive, which is very Adam Smithian. I’m not the expert that Nir Revel is when it comes to drawing parallels between Israeli history and HoX/PoX, but even with the one course I’ve taken in Israeli history, I could see the parallel between the bargain that Magneto strikes with Xavier (”I won’t acquiesce to sympathy or doubt...I won’t give an inch, I will check you at every moment of weakness”) reads a lot like the compromises made at the founding of the State of Israel between the leaders of the various political parties.

Then again, I think the allegory works for political leaders at the time of the founding of any number of nation-states, which is one of the things that makes the business of nation-building so very difficult. At every step, there are innumerable obstacles of the moment, yet the decisions made on how to overcome them will always have unforeseeable long-term consequences. Something to keep one’s eye on for the future.

Does It Need Doing? (X^1):

In a direct follow-up from Powers of X #1 and House of X #1, Cyclops gets briefed on the Mother Mold/Nimrod mission. Incidentally, I think this segment is a great counter-example to the somewhat overblown statements from some in the fandom that all of these characters are mindless pod-people who are acting out of character; throughout this briefing, Scott is consistently snarky in a very dry way that feels very in character to me.

Magneto’s pointed reference to Operation Paperclip with regards to Orchis I think further emphasizes an ongoing theme that Hickman’s working on with regards to nation-states, nation-building, and nationalism: no nation is free from sin. Even after fighting “the good war” against fascism, the U.S recruited Nazi scientists to give it a technological edge in the Cold War for the same stated reasons of necessity that drive both Krakoan and Orchis policy.

Following on from House of X #2, not only are humans a mere road-bump compared to Sentinels, but even Mother Mold itself is viewed as a secondary problem compared to the hostile AI singularity that is Nimrod.

And further showing how everything links to everything, this mission happens because of the information that Moira brought back from Life 9/X^2. More on this in a bit.

Machines Are Pure Information (X^2):

Speaking of which, we shift to another briefing on Krakoa, one life and a hundred years distant, in which Rasputin and Cardinal brief Apocalypse about the fruits of their own partially-successful clandestine mission.

While Apocalypse is very Apocalypsy in this segment, what with the idea that civilization is the fruit of war and that he’d happily sacrifice Rasputin and Cardinal both for the information he’s received, it is really interesting to see him talk about the powers and perils of information and the dangers of analysis paralysis; this last topic is particularly important as the series continues to explore the nature of these vast, universe-spanning consciousnesses. More on this in a bit.

Speaking of which, we see Nimrod the Lesser getting really distracted by trying to figure out what the mutants were up to, something that will arguably be his downfall. Incidentally, Nimrod’s casual execution of two humans for mouthing off to him not only suggests the lie at the heart of the Man-Machine Supremacy, but also that whatever kind of A.I he might be, he absolutely did not pass the “Heller-Faust line,” because he’s clearly a sociopath who lashes out violently due to emotional impulse.

Going back to Asteroid K, we go back to a discussion of how the machines’ problem is that they “archive every moment of everything,” which makes it impossible for them or anyone else to actually make use of the data. If we apply the same problem to the Phalanx and the other universe-spanning consciousnesses, which for all their vaunted intelligences seem to restrict themselves to consumption of resources and calculation of data without any higher purpose, I’m left wondering whether these singularities are actually idiot gods capering at the heart of the universe.

By contrast, the mutant resistance find their purpose in transcending the bare necessities of survival in the name of transcendant meaning.

Nimbus Infographic:

This infographic, read together with the one that ends the issue, is where we really start to see what X^3 is about, namely Hickman’s thinking on technological/mechanical transhumanism.

To begin with, we learn that the people I’ve been referring to as blutants describe themselves as “post-human,” which suggests that the “human-machine-mutant war” ultimately ended in some sort of synthesis between mutant and machine. Not only do the post-humans have “seer-selves,” but we see that Nimbus started as the “copying - and integration - of their minds into a single thinking machine.”

Moving on, it’s interesting to note that the language of X^3 is entirely focused on terms of assimilation between cultures - will it take place as a consensual “suitor-alliance” or forceful consumption of the lesser by the greater? Is there a difference, when we’re talking about the “ascension” of copied minds?

It’s not a good sign that Nimbus’ interaction with Niburu is all about using “force...to inject” a planet with consciousness, or that the Worldmind decides to take a detour to “consume multiple Saturinian and Jovian moons ino order to increase its...intellect.” Over and over again, intellect and consumption go hand in hand, but we never see intellect actually getting used for anything meaningful (transcendant or otherwise).

Universal Predators (X^3):

Speaking of which, we see in the next section that the whole project of the post-human Outreach project is to negotiate the terms of ascension so that their culture is “preserved” rather than “mined,” in a context in which civilizations interact seemingly only in terms of predator and prey.

It’s particularly ominous that the Phalanx’s opening words are that they “ate your worldmind,” in a process that involves a lost struggle for “sovereignty” - a term that should ring particularly ominously given Krakoa’s struggle to be recognized as a sovereign nation-state.

That the post-humans’ goal is ascension is likewise troubling, because of how closely it tracks the self-abnegating human religion of X^2 (which we’ll see in the next issue) and suggests that the post-humans have abandoned the biological transhumanism of the X^2 mutant resistance.

Types of Societies Infographic:

This infographic reads very differently in the wake of Powers of X #5, suggesting a trans-universe taxonomy of intelligences, with each rung on the ladder thinking it’s the biggest and baddest out there, only to become fodder for the next higher up.

As people have noted, Xavier’s backup of mutant minds through Cerebro potentially puts Krakoa on the ladder, since they’re potentially far above the SI:1 (Machine) level if they ever combine the backups.

At the same time, we’ll see in future issues a number of biomachines - the eight-person long-distance communications system we see in Powers of X , the Five-person (or six-person, given the integral role that Xavier/Cerebro plays) resurrection system, the six-person Krakoan systems (Interface, Transit/Monitoring, Defense/Observation, Secondary/External, Overwatch/Data Analysis), and possibly the five-part Cerebro system - that would seem to be a parallel to the SI:10 (HIve) level of machine consciousness.

Similarly, Cerebro’s database of mutant minds (or the population of Krakoa) could potentially go straight up the chain from Intelligence (SI:100-10,000) to Phalanx (SI:1,000,000)...if the database was turned into a consciousness of its own following the uncommon Kree model, although that would seem to run counter to Krakoan taboos.

Speaking of my skepticism about the intellect of these machine consciousnesses, the deception at the heart of the Technarch (SI:10,000) and Phalanx relationship suggests that, on a universe-wide scale, the Technarchs seem to be rather mindless drones whose only purpose is providing resources to their masters.

One thing that’s slightly odd about Hickman’s description of the Worldmind (SI:100,000) is that, based on its descriptions here, it really should be a Type I Kardashev civilization rather than a Type II, since the line between I and II is planetary vs. solar system-wide energy usage/control.

A final note on the ambiguity of the suitor-alliance vs. consumption relationship - while the post-humans view Ascension as an alternative, this infographic describes Ascension as “consuming” for the purpose of “adding to its intelligence needs.” Either way, you’re just food for thought.

#xmen #xmen meta #powers of x #hoxpox

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ladysophiebeckett · 6 years ago

Text

a loophole

Santa Clarita Diet\The Good Place Crossover AU

(spoilers for both shows)

for you my love, @ssaalexblake . happy birthday. I apologize for it being so late. And not making an edit for this. also this is dialogue only. so, again, I’m sorry. pls enjoy

Summary: The Good Place fights for Joel and Sheila Hammond.

Joel: ‘Everything is Fine’? Everything is not fine. I’m dead. My wife is dead. We’re dead. We’re real dead! Like, for real dead!

Shelia: Joel, calm down. I’m sure this Judge—this very fair and might I add stunning—Judge, will explain everything.

Gen: Ya Dead.

Joel: Oh my god.

Sheila: I can’t die!

Joel: We can’t die!

Sheila: We don’t die!

Joel: We’re realators!

Gen: You know you lose points every time you mispronounce that.

Joel: FORK!

Shelia: Points?

*****

Joel: So you can make anything appear?

Janet: Yes. Except people who are currently alive. I also cannot ‘make’ people. I already did that and my Void cannot go through that again.

Joel: Right, my Void can’t do that either.

Janet: You don’t have a Void. You are not a Janet. You are a Joel.

Joel: …Right. I’m a Joel. Huh. That feels oddly reassuring.

Janet: I’m here to help.

Joel: Thank you, Janet and if it is at all possible, I would like to request a quart of ice cream—

Janet: I physically cannot do that.

Joel: But—

Janet: I can give you frozen yogurt in any flavor. We have all of them.

Joel: I’ll have another shrimp cocktail.

Janet: Of course.

********

Shelia: So this is your house?

Eleanor: Yup. ‘Icelandic Primitive’.

Shelia: That’s your essence?

Eleanor: Um, no. I mean, yes. Now. What? You don’t think I can be Icelandic Primitive?

Shelia: I didn’t say that. I just don’t think it captures you.

Eleanor: You’re not a real estate agent anymore—

Shelia: Rea-Hm. Realtor.

Eleanor: Still can’t pronounce it huh?

Shelia: It’s a surprisingly hard word.

Eleanor: Real-tor. Real-TOR. Realator. Oh.

Shelia: See?

*******

Shelia: Is it just me or does everything feel a little bit off?

Joel: You feel it too? It was the shrimp wasn’t it?

Shelia: Yes!

Joel: They said they were jumbo but they were medium at best. God, I miss writing yelp reviews. I would give ‘The Good Plates’ 3 stars.

Shelia: 3 stars? That’s a little harsh. You weren’t nearly as hard on Japopos and their clams literally killed me.

Joel: It’s the taste. It’s off. Like they’re using lemon instead of lime. They’re both part of citrus family but their taste is very distinct.

Shelia: …Right. That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s off. This is supposed to be paradise.

Joel: It is. Sort of. Except no ice cream. We can’t curse. We live in this house—which is not our essence at all.

Shelia: I thought this house was your essence?

Joel: Why would my essence be a Spanish Colonial? Yeah I want to spend eternity in a Chris and Christa Knock Off Home. I’d rather die again.

Sheila: Oh my god.

Joel: Shelia, we’re already dead, again. It’s not offensive.

Sheila: Joel.

Joel: Sheila.

Sheila: The Spanish Colonial isn’t my essence either.

Joel: But I thought---

Sheila: No. I’d rather spend eternity in—

Joel: Our starter home.

Shelia: This isn’t The Good Place.

*******

Eleanor: Let me get this straight—this couple from Santa Clarita dies. They’re zombies—

Sheila: The term is ‘Undead’.

Joel: We don’t like the ‘Z’ word.

Eleanor: ---You pop into Earth for 5 seconds and in those 5 seconds you see these, Undead people, and you feel bad for them? So instead of being impartial, you hide them here?

Gen: It’s complicated.

Eleanor: What about our experiment? This puts it in jeopardy. Somehow—I don’t know how but it does.

Gen: It doesn’t because this is case is different from yours.

Joel: Can someone explain what’s happening?

Eleanor: How is it different? They’re bad people and you’re trying to hide them in a controlled Good Place that’s supposed to help us show that your point system is flawed. That’s unethical. You’re being unethical.

Gen: If Chidi were here--

Eleanor: Don’t bring him up.

Sheila: Who’s Chidi?

Joel: That moral philosophy professor. We met at that welcome party. He couldn’t stop talking about almond milk.

Sheila: Oh. The guy with the stomachaches.

Gen: As I was saying—If Chidi were here—he would understand.

Eleanor: Well he’s not. And I am. So explain your oh so complicated reasoning.

Gen: Joel and Sheila Hammond are good people.

Joel and Sheila: Thank you.

Gen: But they’re also bad people.

Joel and Sheila: Fork.

*****

Sheila: We’ve been judged on points our entire lives?

Gen: Yes. And when you died the first time your point system paused for approximately 20 seconds. And when you came back your points rebooted. While Joel…

Joel: Lost a lot. Because I’m the reason she died.

Shelia: It wasn’t your fault.

Gen: It was. Every murder you committed had a positive and negative impact.

Eleanor: You’re murderers?!

(Joel and Sheila stare at Eleanor)

Eleanor: Oh wait. I already knew that. Why am I surprised? Oh wait. It’s because you ate your victims. Mr. and Mrs. Hannibal Lecter everybody.

Shelia: I’m sensing judgement.

Joel: We only killed bad people.

Shelia: You’re taking this way worse than Abby ever did and she was only 16 when she saw us bury Gary in the desert.

Eleanor: What the fork? Ugh. I hate the swear wards. It’s a bunch of bullshirt.

Joel: How do you think we forkin’ feel? Abby would hate it here.

Shelia: I know. I miss her.

Joel: Me too.

Eleanor: Who the fork is Abby?

Sheila: Our daughter.

Eleanor: Zombies raising a daughter in suburbia.

Joel: Undead Realators doing our best to provide for our daughter.

*****

Eleanor: So killing Nazi’s is okay.

Gen: Yes. Nazi’s are terrible people and them getting murdered was a good thing.

Joel: See? We’re good people.

Gen: But the point system gives you an even amount of good people points and bad people points.

Sheila: Because even though they were bad people, the act of murdering—

Joel: --Despite who you are murdering—

Gen: Correct.

Eleanor: …What are their points?

Gen: Are you ready? It’s a doozy.

Joel: But we saw our points when we got here.

Shelia: Unless…those weren’t real.

Gen: Yeah, they’re not. Take a look.

Eleanor: Oh. I wish Chidi were here.

Gen: Told ya.

*****

Shelia: Well then. The Solution is simple Gen. Can I call you ‘Gen’. I feel like we’re very familiar now that I see that you hold our afterlives in the palm of your hand.

Gen: You may. ‘Judge Gen’ was only fun for the first millennia.

Eleanor: This isn’t simple at all.

Joel: Yeah it is. Sheila goes to The Good Place—

Sheila: Joel no---

Joel: And I go to The Bad Place. It’s logical. The points are pretty self-explanatory. Which is something I never thought I’d say because I am very bad at math. Remember when I calculated our first commission and I was off by a 1000 dollars?

Sheila: There has to be something---

Eleanor: It’s ONE POINT! Can you just--

Gen: Why do you think I hid them away with you? I was buying time. As a Judge, I have to be impartial but when I saw their case—

Eleanor: You thought that if we could properly prove that bad people could change in the afterlife, it would show that the point system was flawed. But then they died, again, and they were already good people but the point system would separate them. And you were hoping that if our case succeeded it would support their case---

Gen: Yes.

Eleanor: So this whole time you were just hiding them from The Bad Place because if they knew about them they would go to some afterlife trial—like Mindy St. Claire’s case. And they would end up in some Middle Place but still not together.

Gen: Separate Middle Places. Yes.

Sheila: We’re not separating!

Joel: Shelia look at the points! They don’t lie!

Shelia: The points don’t matter! Haven’t you been listening! It’s flawed! Look, I don’t care about The Good Place. Let them take me instead. It’s my fault anyway. I’m the reason you died the first time.

Joel: And I’m the reason you died the first time.

Shelia: I’m the reason you died the second time! If I had been—

Joel: It wasn’t your fault.

Sheila: It was supposed to be date night---

Joel: Sheila, it’s okay. I made a vow that night. Do you remember? I swore to be loyal to you and only you. I promised to protect you, to protect our family—no matter what. No matter the sacrifice. This is me—honoring that.

Sheila: That’s not fair.

Joel: Maybe not, but it’s the right thing to do. I go to The Bad Place. How bad can it be? I used to eat people. And bleed black ooze. Which was gross to me every time. I never got used to that.

Sheila: There is no Good Place for me without you. As corny as this may sound…You are my Good Place.

Joel: And as corny as this may sound, you’re mine.

Eleanor: Fork. Does anybody have a tissue?

Gen: Here’s my sleeve.

*****

Sheila: Thank you for letting Joel have ice cream one more time.

Gen: It’s the very least I can do. I recommended a burrito but he said no.

Shelia: He loves them, but they make him gassy. I tried to explain that that won’t happen here—

Gen: Oh it will. Trust me.

Sheila: Oh. Hmm. Well, look I’m not gonna pussy foot around it—I can say ‘pussy’? Huh. A loophole. Anyway, no time. I’m not gonna pussy foot around it. Let me take Joel’s place instead.

Gen: I can’t do that. The points—

Shelia: Fork the points. It’s one point. You managed to hide us here with fake points. So just—give him one of mine.

Gen: Do you know how hard it was to even to do that? It’s not easy Sheila. I know I make it look easy—these robes are very misleading. But—

Shelia: I don’t care. Let me take his place.

Gen: I will look into it. But I can’t make any promises.

*****

Joel: Did Sheila talk to you?

Gen: (sighs) Yes.

Joel: Did she ask to take my place instead?

Gen: No.

Joel: Okay, good—

Gen: She demanded it.

Joel: Dam it. Dam? Oh. Dam. Like the beaver or that thing that stores water. A loophole. Did not see that. Anyway, no time. Don’t listen to her. Whatever she told you. This—it’s the right thing to do. I just have one request.

Gen: You already had your last meal--

Joel: The ice cream was great, thank you, but no. Something else.

Gen: I can’t let you go back to earth and tackle Chris to the ground. He is 6’5, he would still win.

Joel: That’s not—Really? Even as a—

Gen: Those 3 inches make a difference.

Joel: Whatever. Not what I wanted.

Gen: It’s one of the things you wanted.

Joel: Anyway. I just—can you promise me—Can you guarantee that Sheila not only goes to The Good Place but that she’s happy? I’m not a big fan of this ‘soul mate’ thing—but I can’t stand the thought of Sheila being alone.

Gen: I can promise you that she will get into The Good Place.

Joel: And?

Gen: That’s it. What happens after is beyond me. I can’t promise you anything.

*****

Sheila: So he goes into one vault and I go in the other?

Gen: You’re gonna get a little sick but it’ll pass. Just don’t breath through your mouth. The vomit just flies---

Joel: Why does that sound grosser than anything we’ve ever done?

Eleanor: Are you sure there isn’t anything else you can do?

Gen: No. This is it. Say your goodbyes. Anymore time wasted and—well nothing happens. Time isn’t a thing here. We could all chill and catch up on Grey’s Anatomy. They have thirty-six seasons. Thirty-Six! But we’re only delaying the inevitable.

Sheila: This is it then.

Joel: Forty-five years.

Sheila: We only made it to one Bop.

Joel: I have no regrets.

Sheila: I do. Just the one.

Joel: What’s that?

Shelia: We should have mailed that deed to Gary’s niece. It would have reduced our carbon footprint. And then maybe—

Joel: I don’t care. I would do it all over again.

Eleanor: (crying) How does keep happening to me?

*****

Eleanor: I can’t believe it. They’re just gone? They’re good people. Like, real good people. I mean, a little problematic because of the murder. But it was just one point--

Gen: Yup. One point. Unless---

Eleanor: Unless what?

Gen: They were human and still accumulating points.

Eleanor: Wait. What?

Gen: Think about it.

Eleanor: You know I am not good at that.

Gen: You humans are so slow. On earth they were Undead. Then they died, again. When they arrived to your neighborhood Good Place, they were human. The points rebooted.

Eleanor: What?!

Gen: It’s complicated. Serbia is…complicated. Being dead and then undead and dead again—it’s everything cancelling each other out. It’s like—

Eleanor: A loophole.

Gen: I cannot confirm that.

Eleanor: You—their points---

Gen: Are even.

Eleanor: I don’t---

Gen: Let’s just say, they both asked something of me in their final moments. And it evened them out.

Eleanor: But they went into different vaults?

Gen: Leading to the same place.

*****

Sheila: What are you doing here?

Joel: What are you doing here?

Shelia: I’m taking your place!

Joel: She promised me you would go the real Good Place.

Sheila: Unless this is—

Joel and Sheila: Fuck!

Sheila: Wait--

Joel and Shelia: Fuck?!

Sheila: FUCK!

Joel: FUCK!

Sheila: HOLY FUCKING FUCK !

Joel: MOTHERFUCKING FUCK !

Janet: Hello!

Joel: FUCK!

Janet: My name is Janet.

Shelia: We’ve met.

Janet: No, we haven’t. I’m your neighborhood’s Janet. There are millions of me for every Good Place neighborhood.

Sheila: Say that again?

Janet: Hello, my name is Janet—

Shelia: No, the other thing.

Janet: There are a millions of me—

Shelia: No—

Joel: This could take hours—Janet where are we?

Janet: This is The Good Place. Neighborhood #6969.

Joel: Wait—

Shelia: Later, Joel. No, not that like that. Well maybe like that—

--Fin—

#ssaalexblake #santa clarita diet #the good place #my fic #a lot of this doesn't make sense but i trust you to just go with it #you will have questions---i may have some answers

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bikerfaggot · 6 years ago

Text

Bruce wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. Even though the set hadn’t yet started, the room was humid and smelled of cigarette smoke. He hated it. Open amphitheater concerts were what he vastly preferred, but those were hard to come by, especially at this time of year. His November layers lay backstage in a heap, piled on top of his car keys and Steve’s phone.

“Hello, everyone,” their band’s lead singer, who went by the stage name Valkyrie, greeted. Bruce drew himself out of his thoughts, giving the crowd a toothy grin. “We’re Punch Nazis! and we hope you enjoy our show.” She gave a whoop and produced a flask from her belt, waving at Bruce to count off.

He did, his sticks hitting the snare hard for the opening beat. Everything else went quiet in his mind as they played for the fifteen minute set, almost making him forget that this was their audition for battle of the bands. He refused to acknowledge, and by extent, get anxious over—that though, because he didn’t want to be the reason they didn’t make it. Sam and Steve strummed like this was life or death, so Bruce did the same, giving his performance an energy that he was unable to describe. He twirled his sticks between beats, double kicked the bass, and just generally turned things up a notch. Finally, it was over, and he was dripping in sweat, his arms and the backs of his shoulders burning.

Steve leaned in close to his mic and thanked the audience, before encouraging them all to “go out and punch a Nazi tonight.” Bruce smiled and stood, tucking his sticks into the back pocket of his jeans. The band exited the stage together and was greeted by Bucky, Sam’s boyfriend and the band’s occasional second bass. When he felt like it. He clapped Steve on the shoulder, excitement rolling off of him in waves.

“Guys, guys,” he said, waving at Brunnhilde to keep her from continuing backstage. “I think that that was the best I’ve seen you play.” His smile was huge, and Sam had to squeeze his hand just to get him to stop bouncing on his toes so violently. “I’m serious, the judge out there looked blown away!”

Bruce’s eyes widened. “You saw her?”

“Yeah, of course I did!”

He blinked in faux surprise. “Oh, I thought you just stood back here and ogled Sam when you weren’t on stage.” Bucky turned red and pointed a finger menacingly at Bruce’s chest, though he was barely containing a laugh.

“I’ll kill you, Banner. Don’t think I won’t.” Bruce had to bite his tongue to keep from snorting, and the two of them stared at each other in tense silence for a few seconds.

Bucky was alright, Steve had dragged him to one of the first practices and everyone hit it off really well with him (especially Sam). Bruce couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew him from somewhere, though. Maybe he looked like his mom’s brother or something. He hadn’t seen his uncle in years, so maybe that was it. Looks aside, the dude was chill. He could play bass better than just about anyone Bruce had ever met and his stone cold, yet somehow still friendly, demeanor fit in well with the group’s dynamic.

Bruce was the first to break, just as Sam started to hide his laughter from behind Bucky. Soon enough, the band was in happy shambles, the stress from their audition melting away in the hugs and shoves being exchanged. The next audition started, and Punch Nazis! moved farther backstage, where the sound from the set became warped and muted. Bruce liked the way it sounded back there, but it turned out Brunnhilde wanted to check out the competition, so they headed to the house, working their way through the thick crowd.

The band that was auditioning was fronted by a kid in a bright red hoodie who couldn’t have been more than seventeen. They were good, though, and Bruce shifted around on his feet with anxiety as he thought about their chances of beating the other seven bands who would be allowed in. If their band even made it through auditions.

He worried all through the next three auditions, his stomach twisting into knots and his head pounding. Steve gave him a knowing pat on the shoulder and leaned in close, the shitty stadium-style seat creaking loudly as he moved. “Bruce,” he whispered, eyes locked onto the stage, “we’ll make it in. Don’t worry.” Bruce gave a weak smile and nodded as his teeth started to grind together. Better to not get even more anxious, he reasoned silently. He let a shiver rack his body, even though he was still sweating from the heat and humidity in the venue. Sometimes the vibration helped to calm him down. This time the effect was mediocre, but he accepted it and focused his attention on the next band, which was coming on stage just at that moment.

The band was composed of four people with long hair, though only two of them appeared to present as women. Bruce’s anxiety faded into the background as his interest was piqued. The lead singer, a tall, dark skinned man with long dreadlocks, looked into the audience with knowing eyes, his gaze steady even through the glaring stage lights. Bruce got uneasy looking at him, like the man knew every single one of his secrets, so he looked at a different member. She was seated at the drums, her dark hair pulled in a half-up, half-down ponytail. Bruce smiled, though he knew she couldn’t see him, and watched her technique for a few seconds before his eyes slid to the next member. Her hair was inky black and came about to her shoulders, and her acid green bass was covered with the decal of a snake. Her lips were curved in a mischievous smile, again making Bruce feel uneasy.

He blinked.

He had no idea why he all of a sudden was so interested in one of the rival bands.

And then the guitarist started a solo, and Bruce’s attention was drawn in again. He hadn’t even heard the set starting, even when he was watching them all sing or play their instruments, until this. It wasn’t anything too fancy, no, but the solo finally broke through Bruce’s cloudy mind—and ears—to draw him back into reality. The guitar player, with his long blond hair, played like a god through the rest of the set, and Bruce knew, deep in his soul, that he would have to speak with these band members at some point during the competition, even though he was sure that they could grind his average playing ass under their heels.

As soon as they left the stage, Bruce became restless again. He motioned to Steve that he had to go somewhere, and darted backstage before the band could leave. He didn’t know what he was going to say when he got to them, but his heart started to beat faster and faster as he passed crew members taking their instruments off stage.

All of a sudden, he rammed into someone, and his heart stopped dead. It was the bassist, but she had put on a leather jacket since coming backstage. She sneered at him and he blurted a quick apology before stumbling over a compliment about her performance.

She narrowed her eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Bruce,” he responded quickly. She intimidated him, a lot. “Bruce Banner.” The woman nodded, a smile starting to return to her lips.

“I’m Loki,” she said, and Bruce waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. She just stood there, her eyebrow raised.

“Well, I came back to tell your band that-” He paused, his tongue suddenly frozen. The guitarist had appeared behind Loki, and his bright grin was enough to make Bruce want to pass out right then and there.

“‘That’?” Loki prompted, unaware of the man approaching.

“Oh, uh,” Bruce stammered, “you guys did great.”

She nodded again, practically oozing suspicion. “Thank you, Bryce.” He didn’t dare correct her. He nodded and gave a small smile, turning quickly to return to the audience. Bad idea, he told himself, as the guitarist asked Loki who he was. “He said his name was Bruce Banner,” he heard Loki say, and he felt a pang of confusion. Had she said the wrong name to intimidate him even further?

If so, it had worked.

After auditions, Punch Nazis! was apprehensive. Many bands that they had seen were fantastic, and the band’s insecurity in their sound kept them assuming the worst. The official webpage of the Battle of the Bands was supposed to update with the bands who had made it late the next day, so the members of Bruce’s band gathered in Bucky and Sam’s apartment to have a “depression party,” as Bucky called it.

Steve aggressively shoved his tortilla chip into the guacamole that Brunnhilde had brought as he watched the rest of the group refresh Bruce’s laptop over and over.

“Guys,” Bruce whispered half-heartedly, “you’re going to break her.” He closed his eyes and listened to the excruciating noise of the group slamming their fingers onto the touchpad.

Then, it stopped. He heard a gasp, then someone grabbed him, their fingers almost digging through his sweater.

“Bruce,” Sam said into his ear, “look!”

So he did. And it may have just changed his life.

The first round was held just a few days later, all eight bands crowded backstage of the same venue that they had auditioned in. Bruce was nominated by his friends to check which band they were competing against, but as he approached the paper with the listings on it, he saw Loki again, and froze in his step.

“Ah, hello, Bryce,” she said, walking closer. “It appears that you’ve made it in.”

Bruce nodded, his mouth suddenly dry. She was still trying to intimidate him? “And you as well, though I-” His mouth got even chalkier as the guitarist, yet again, started to walk up behind Loki. “-I knew you would. Your audition was fantastic,” he said quickly, having learned from last time. The guitarist made eye contact with him and appeared to start walking just a little bit faster, though Bruce may have been imagining it. He got there in no time, though, and that was a big problem. Bruce would have issues speaking in front of, or God forbid, to, this man.

“Bruce was your name, wasn’t it?” The guitarist asked, holding out a hand. Bruce snapped back to the moment, reaching briskly to accept the handshake.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s Bruce.” He saw Loki roll her eyes with a flourish of the hand, and Thor’s eyes flicked to her for just a moment before he let go of Bruce’s hand.

“Excuse my sister, she can be quite dramatic, both in the realm of ‘melo’ and ‘over.’” That earned a quiet laugh from Bruce, who suddenly felt the room around them quiet.

Just like a rom-com, Bruce, he thought, smiling up at the still-stranger.

“Oh!” Thor said after a beat. “How could I forget to tell you my name! I’m Thor Odinson, the guitarist in Battle Axes.”

“Bruce!” Steve called out as Bruce made his way back to the group. “Who are we versing?”

Bruce flopped into a worn leather chair and blinked at his band-mate. “What?” He asked.

Brunnhilde stood and pointed at him. “Oh my God, you didn’t even check, did you?”

“Check what?” Bruce murmured, a warmth curling through his chest.

“I’m going to go do it,” she responded, rolling her eyes and marching off quickly.

She returned just under a minute later, her boots resounding dully on the concrete floor. “Guys,” she said, breathless, “we’re on in five.”

Despite almost being late for the very first round of the competition, things were going well. Bruce had a mild splinter from his first set of sticks cracking, but he had pulled another pair out without missing a beat. Literally. After the set, the band met backstage; apparently, a certain other fairly aggressively named band was just finishing their backstage meeting. Thor gave Bruce a thumbs up as Battle Axes took the stage for their performance.

Bruce turned and watched him make sure his guitar was connected to the amp, but his vision was soon blocked by a very angry, alcoholic college dropout. “You could’ve lost this for us, Bruce.” He looked up at her and apologized sincerely, but his eyes wandered back down to the stage, where a man with long, golden hair played guitar like a god. “Oh dear Jesus, Bruce! Was it him?” Brunnhilde seemed angry again, and Bruce realized it was probably because of all of the staring.

“Yeah,” he admitted meekly. “It was. Sorry.”

She sighed and started to walk away, gently knocking her hand on the back of his head. “You can’t date him until we wipe the floor with their band. You got it?”

Bruce got it.

Bruce wiped his brow and set the drumsticks across the rim of his snare, picking up the decorational set and wedging them into the back pocket of his jeans. Final sets were over, and now it was time to be judged: Punch Nazis! vs Battle Axes. The two bands lined up next to each other, and Bruce watched as Brunnhilde smiled at Sif across the stage. Looked like she finally got over the “mortal enemies” thing. He took his chance to look over at Thor before things got bad for one of them, only to see Thor already looking at him. Thor raised his hand in a “call me?” gesture, almost making Bruce laugh out loud in front of the judges. However, he knew this was going to happen because of all of the times they had snuck into the green rooms to talk in a quiet place and sat on broken amps backstage to tell each other jokes. Calling each other post-competition was the crucial next step.

Bruce subtly asked Bucky to switch him places in the line-up, and Thor started making his way toward the center as well, until they were only a foot or so away from each other. Bruce pulled the drumsticks out and handed them over, watching the way Thor’s face scrunched up when he saw the ten digit number scrawled on both of them.

“So,” he said, leaning in so that Bruce could hear him, “I guess it is I who will be doing the calling.” Bruce laughed, motioning to the sticks.

“Sure hope you don’t break both of those, too,” he jabbed, earning a gasp.

“I thought you said you’d never talk about that again!” Thor accused, though there was no real bite. Bruce shrugged, his attention suddenly being snagged by a judge walking up to the microphone.

“Alright, everyone. It was very close between these two fantastic bands, but the winner of the New York City Annual Battle of the Bands is-”

Bruce didn’t hear the winner, as he was too busy telling Thor that the event desperately needed a shorter title.

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drdemonprince · 6 years ago

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I guess I am at heart, when I think about how I individually relate to people, kind of anti-civilizationist or at least anarcho-communist with an emphasis on the “anarcho”.

I don’t really believe in trying to force people to do things. Or to socially pressure, cajole, or coerce. I don’t believe generally in guilting or shaming someone into action, or using more warm social manipulation like love-bombing or conditional approval/acceptance or anything like that. I think social control is pretty terrifying and sickening in a lot of its iterations, and I do think that putting some vague ideological concept of “society” above the person is fucked up. The Child as Political Tool really rocked my world in that regard.

It’s a thing that I do not love, let’s say, about online political discourse, or discourse in general. The boundarylessness of it. The intensity with which a person acts as though they must change a person’s opinion, they must make them understand, they must cow them into silence, they need to be heard and agreed with, it is a mortal emotional threat for there to be so many people out in the world with the wrong opinion, and moreover, that we MUST push people into not only thinking correctly, but DOING correctly. We need to MAKE people go out and engage in a particular action, stop buying a certain product, stop watching a certain show, start engaging in a new form of activism, start giving things up, and if they don’t, they need to be shamed.

I’m conflating a lot of shit here. Too many things. There are times when even I, with my very like, politically tolerant marketplace of ideas bullshit bias (and it is a bias, and a lot of it is bullshit), believe in pushing for things. It is GOOD to silence Nazis. It is good to make it socially unacceptable to buy from Chik-fil-A. it’s good that it’s socially unacceptable to say the N-word. Those are changes brought by social pressure and they have an impact on people’s safety! They’re coercive in the mildest fucking way, who could argue with that. Certainly not me! I’m glad we have that power to change behaviors before we change minds. We can’t make every racist stop thinking bigoted words, but we can make it so socially beyond the pale to say those words in public that they don’t do it.

I guess it’s the changing minds that is the harder part. The impossible part, really. I see so many people get so... understandably but impotently worked up over the fact that other people think or feel a certain way. I get it.!! I get so mad when I think about my family’s politics. I fight with them, I cry, I scream, I hate myself over it, I hate them over it, I have had, historically, no boundaries between my mind and theirs, I want their minds to resemble my mind.

But. I can’t actually make their minds change. I can’t make anyone believe something they don’t have receptivity to believing. It just makes me pissed and scared and sad to try, and it makes them defensive at best, and it wastes my energy when I could instead be having a conversation with a consenting party.

Like. Am I making sense here? You can’t change someone’s mind. Someone has to be open to hearing a new view, willing to actually engage with it. Willing to read it and think about it. And then they have to change their own mind, on their own time.

And it’s... so self-destructive to fixate on the people we can’t reach. I’m talking small scale shit here. Nazi’s need to be shut down. Dangerous bigots need confrontation. We can’t change their minds, but we can change their behaviors. And we have to. But is there value in me fighting on Twitter with some dope of a cis guy who thinks he understands trans issues better than trans people do? No. Why am I trying to change his internal state when he clearly is so arrogant he won’t listen to me?

I have this framework, ultimately, that all I can do is put knowledge out into the world, and wait for other people to seek it out and consent to consume it. I can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do. I don’t want to make someone do what they don’t want to do. I’d much rather not associate at all with someone whose actions go completely against my own morals. I can’t give them my morals. They are a free agent to the same extent I am, to the extent that freedom exists.

But that can also be a really privileged thing to say. It’s at the heart of the “go run away and live in the woods with the land” pastoral fantasy people have. The desire to detach from all responsibility. But I also ... kinda... think people don’t have a responsibility to society beyond the calling that they feel inside themselves. Guiltiling a person into being more responsible does not work. But we can make persuasive statements about why a person ought to use their privilege well and advocate for causes. We can shine a beacon of light and truth and provide resources for those who are willing to make themselves into the people they need to be. But we can’t actually make someone do that.

So I guess, in sum: you can’t change someone’s mind, a person has to be willing to change their own mind. you can’t make someone engage in a behavior they don’t want to engage in. but you CAN make some negative behaviors so socially unacceptable that people don’t engage in them publically at least. that seems like a must, if you want to keep marginalized people even remotely safe. still turning this over in my mind.

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lightsandlostbells · 6 years ago

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Druck season 2, episode 1 reaction

we’re baaaaaack

I said I would finish my Skam S3 analyses before I caught up on the remake reactions, and I’m working on the one for 3.10 (the finale), but I also didn’t want to fall behind on another show. So here are some thoughts on Druck’s first week back!

Episode 1

Clip 1 - “Their tongues battled for dominance”

It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for, Druck has come back from the war. And our very first shot is an extreme closeup of some very tongue-oriented kissing, thanks for that.

Is it Matteo and a girl?

WAIT IS THAT KIKI AND ALEXANDER

HOLY SHIT

I definitely feel like Druck was playing with Skam fans’ expectations here. They know we’re expecting a kiss to open the season, but we’re expecting it to be Matteo and some girl, so Alex and Kiki throws us off. We’re also expecting Alex and Kiki to be completely over by now, not hooking up again - that changes the direction of the season, for sure.

I don’t know how much Mia’s issues will reflect Noora’s, but considering that Noora’s season opens with scandalous sex pics/media, and that it ties into not just what happens with Niko but Noora’s overall issues about sex that are threaded throughout the season, it’s kinda interesting to open with this sloppy kiss for Mia’s season, if she has similar hangups.

The lyrics of the song are on point:

You're a poison and I know that is the truth All my friends think you're vicious And they say you're suspicious

The other girls watch in horror and befuddlement, like the OG girl squad did with Isak. HI, GIRLS! Lovely to see you again. Sam is the only one who seems not entirely appalled by this coupling.

FUCK FUCK FUCK, Alex drives off in his car with Kiki. Kiki is so eager, staring at him with such wonder. It really makes you feel bad for her, when this dude was such a jerk to her previously! He apologized but he still acted like that! And now she’s back with him. Not great.

I guess this is an unpopular opinion, from what I can tell, but … I like Kiki. Not necessarily as a human being, I completely understand why people find her the least tolerable, meanest Vilde, but something about her character just feels real to me. Like this is a version of Vilde I completely buy as a person I’d meet in real life. Hell, she does remind me of people I’ve met in the past.

Lmao, the camera swivels between each girl, I guess to emphasize the confusion/bafflement in the group. Mia does not get what Kiki sees in him. Amira’s like, he’s hot. Sam’s like, what’s wrong, they’re finally together! Sam, my beautiful girl, they weren’t a sitcom couple. This wasn’t the will-they won’t-they flirtation of the century. They did, and it was a disaster.

Mia says they’re not a couple, Sam is like … but they spend every night together? This is kind of adorable coming from her, tbh.

Amira points out that Sam spends every night with her camel and Sam’s points out that they’re together! Lmao, I love this bit of continuity. Shout-out to Carmen!

Mia thinks Alex will drop Kiki once he finds another girl. Well, he probably will, it’ll just be Mia. Amira says, pfft, that’s all western relationships. Mia is like … do you want us all to become lesbians? Mia, there is a segment of your audience who would be completely OK with that.

Mia and Hanna air kiss and I know it’s not gonna happen but by God I wish it would. I’m so apprehensive about how they’ll handle Mia’s sexuality this season, with her smooching Hanna last season to get Axel off her back, but also her being bi via word of God.

Amira says she has to go to prayer. Mia asks whether Amira was just there? Amira says no and leaves. So maybe Amira is doing something else and keeping a secret from the girls? I guess one other possibility is that Mia (a non-Muslim) doesn’t realize how much Muslims are supposed to pray, but I think the first is more likely from a story perspective. Anyway, it’s small but I like little nods to Amira’s religion, things like her mentioning going to pray so it feels like it’s more integrated into her character.

Sam asks the girls to swing their legs and it’s super cute. It was also an IG story she made, so that’s a nice inclusion. It’s cool when they tie in the clips to actual social media posts (much like how Matteo posted a video of Hanna and Jonas last season that seemed to be taken within the clip itself).

People got seriously fucking mad with this clip, lmao, but honestly, it’s such a big departure from the original that I wasn’t pissed. There’s too much we need to know about how the Kiki/Alexander relationship will play out in the long run before I get angry at what’s happening.

In the credits after the clip, we see a pillow fight scene with the girls. I’m gonna guess that’s maybe a snippet from the Easter cabin episode (or whatever’s taking place of the cabin episode). I wonder if we also got a slumber party scene as a makeup for not getting the full girls’ sleepover in S1? It was just Mia and Kiki.

Clip 2 - Santa Claus is coming

Mia observes their toilet at home at German Kollektivet. It is gross. There’s pee all over the seat, what even looks like a curly hair??? I want to puke. I take it back, I’ll watch Kiki’s and Alex’s tongues for an hour if Druck never shows me anything like this toilet again.

Mia angrily stomps over to the bedroom of German Eskild (Hans) and bangs on the door. German Linn comes up to her, saying Hans has a visitor. Mia explains that Hans peed all over the toilet seat, Linn asks if she should clean it up. Mia says if they always do it for him, he’ll never learn. This is a small moment and not necessarily like, groundbreaking feminist commentary, but it’s why I have some faith in Druck for this season? Mia is adamantly against women cleaning up men’s messes (literally and certainly figuratively). I’m not saying she’s a perfect feminist, but she actually seems like a believable feminist teenage girl, with a lot of feminist principles that seem integrated into her life, which not all of the remakes have captured, imo.

Mia bangs on the door, Hans doesn’t open it, so eventually she does and of course Hans is getting his dick sucked. He’s wearing a Santa hat. There are so many directions you could take this joke that I can’t settle on anything, sorry.

I will say that I’m pretty sure there are multiple shitty Christmas slasher movies where the killer is driven to hack people up because they spied someone in a Santa costume having sex, and that scarred them for life or whatever, so Hans better watch his back. And clean up the toilet from now on.

Hans makes excuses for his wayward urine, Mia asks him to clean it up. Hans is like, tomorrow! Hans, people are probably going to use the toilet between now and tomorrow. It is not going to take you long to do the bare minimum and spray down some cleaner and then wipe it off.

Uhhhh the other dude who’s putting on his Santa jacket seems kinda cute. Good job, Hans? Except apparently the guy, Michi, is boring and talks too much about Trump, Nazis, refugees, etc. So bringing in those aspects of S2 a little early, which is nice and topical. (But lol @ Mia and Hans talking about how boring this guy is when the door is still open a crack.)

Mia asks why Hans meets with him then, and Hans says it’s because Mia is always in school and who knows what Linn is doing? He was lonely. And by lonely, let’s be real, he means horny. Something neither Mia nor Linn can satisfy for him.

Hans compares Michi to a boomerang: you throw him away but he always comes back. Mia is appalled by this. You all suck! Not “you all” as in gay people, “you all” as in men. Hans is like … well, you’ve got me there!

I liked that already, this scene ties into the plot thematically. Hans is basically doing the same as Alex, or at least what Mia thinks is happening with Alex. Hans is using Michi for hookups, Alex is using Kiki. Throwing her away, but like a boomerang, she comes back. Mia thinks what Amira said earlier about relationships is right. Guys are awful.

Hans didn’t make the best first impression here, with comparing Michi to a boomerang, and being dismissive of serious political issues, but I mean, this is only his first scene, and it’s not like Eskild’s first appearance revealed too much about him except that he thought Disney was a good fellatio soundtrack.

Clip 3 - Hello, Jotteo

Hanna and Mia walk to school. Mia says that her parents decided to go to Berlin without telling her, and they got into a fight. Her relationship with them is a nonstop cycle of arguing, basically. So Mia is going to do nothing for Christmas, basically, just stay at home and read - which sounds nice, personally, but also probably not that nice when it’s because you’re estranged from your family and have nowhere to go. Hanna is like, not on my watch! She invites Hanna to Christmas Eve with her and her dad. Yay, Hanna’s dad! I liked that guy, I hope we get to see him again.

Jonas and Matteo show up! Interesting because obviously Mia didn’t escape to Hanna’s yesterday to see Hanna and Jonas all snuggled up watching TV and talking about dating (like Noora did).

Hanna and Jonas seem a little awkward together. MY BABES. You still love each other!

Also, these are some fucking stoners, man. Are they high already? It’s like 8 in the morning. School hasn’t even started. They’re like, we have to go take a biology test! They’re laughing like this is the funniest shit ever.

Mia asks if Hanna has talked with him lately. Hanna is like, “Jonas?” at first, and I can’t wait to hear how that relationship is going (or not going) but Mia meant Matteo. Hanna has no idea how she’d bring up that they found porn on Matteos’ phone and that they think he’s crushing on Jonas. Mia is like, just drop in a subtle hint, like asking if he watches Queer Eye! Lmao, Mia, have you seen Matteo’s hair and wardrobe? Bless him, because I love this messy, perpetually stoned version of Isak, but if he’s watching Queer Eye he’s sure as fuck not taking inspiration from it.

Hanna says she and Matteo don’t have much contact lately, because of Jonas. It’s not working out just being friends and he doesn’t seem willing to give as much on his end. Mia asks if Jonas has a new girlfriend, Hanna says no, that they promised to tell each other when that happens. Something tells me that isn’t going to go so smoothly this season. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jonas gets a girlfriend but Hanna doesn’t hear about it from him. I mean, Eva didn’t hear about Jonas being with another girl straight from him, and they were on much better terms than Hanna and Jonas (superficially, at least).

Mia seems doubtful, too. I’m sure her current “Men are the worst” attitude isn’t making her more optimistic.

Clip 4 - Mia vs. Alex in class

Mia is in class. Kiki’s sitting next to her; Alexander is on the opposite side of the room; because he got held back, they’re in the same grade. Mia looks to him. I will note that Alexander does a kind of laugh to himself before he looks up, so maybe he sensed that Mia was scoping him out?

Mia, who is looking very pretty by the way, pulls up her shirt so it’s not baring her shoulders so much. I vastly appreciate that they did this part differently than in the original! In that one, William texts Noora that she looks good in the shirt, causing her to put on a jacket - it’s his direct advances and comment making her uncomfortable. In this scene, Alexander is just looking at her - which might make her uncomfortable but at least he wasn’t doing it in an overly lascivious way.

We also see him respond to that, and it’s hard to tell because he doesn’t avert his eyes totally or anything, but he doesn’t completely keep staring at her.

Like in Skam, their teacher is filmed below the neck, although this guy’s nipples aren’t the main attraction. Rather, it’s his festive reindeer sweater that draws the eye. (NGL, this gives me an idea for one of the S3 remakes where instead of checking out the female teacher’s boobs, the Isak is like … staring at his male teacher’s nips poking through a polo shirt or whatever.)

This is like a history/social studies class and the teacher has been talking about institutional oppression. He asks for comparisons between apartheid in South Africa and the Third Reich.

A girl is like, why can’t we talk about something relevant like Syria? Lmao, random girl, of course it’s important to talk about Syria, but what’s this insinuation that it’s not relevant to talk about past atrocities? This is part of why we study history, to draw comparisons between the past and present. Not to mention the repercussions of those periods are still felt today.

Mia and Alex’s argument about Israel being an apartheid state is more in line with how I think Noorhelm was meant to be, with the two of them having debates and William challenging Noora’s opinion. However, it never really worked for me because I felt these arguments leaned too heavily on not just like ... intellectual debate for the spirit of it, but Noora objecting to something William had done, and then William trying to argue why it was actually OK. There weren’t many debates about stuff unrelated to their relationship and William’s behavior, not much verbal and mental sparring for the pleasure of it. So maybe this isn’t an enjoyable debate, per se, but it’s at least a heated one between two parties with different strong POVs, on something besides trying to justify one’s own behavior.

When Alex quotes David Ben-Gurion, Mia says there’s a difference between a German saying that Israel is an apartheid state and an Israeli saying so. Alex is like, nah. Mia asks, so there’s no difference when I insult your sister and when you do? He seems to get a touch more serious and says while emotionally there’s a difference, practically there isn’t. No one should insult his sister.

People were reading very literally into this comment, that she’s aware of his sister, but I think she’s just presenting a hypothetical scenario as an analogy. It’s not that she actually knows he has/had a sister. It’s that her hypothetical scenario happens to have more baggage attached to it than she realizes. Assuming that Alex maybe has a dead sister, this is actually a very good moment! It makes sense why he’d get more emotional over her at this mention, like it struck a nerve even if it’s not what Mia really meant.

The teacher is like, thanks for your contribution, it totally misses the point! Lmao, between that comment and the reindeer sweater, I like this guy.

Behind Mia, Kiki seemed pretty into Alex’s talk, by the way.

As the class packs up, Mia says Alex is a dick, Kiki says he’s not and that Mia doesn’t even know him. He’s insecure and just wants his parents’ attention. Mia is like, lol, didn’t know he was sensitive and vulnerable. She says it like a joke, but Kiki takes it seriously and says it’s all a front.

Mia asks why Alex is repeating his grade, Kiki says he didn’t want to talk about it. INTERESTING. I know from a Doylist perspective, this is so they can keep Alex on the show rather than him graduating, but I really hope they integrate it into his characterization. But he also said it’s none of Kiki’s business so like, he’s still an asshole. Mia agrees with me. He doesn’t have to tell her but don’t be a shithead about it.

Alex accompanies Kiki out of the classroom and gives her his hand, but appears to shoot Mia a look as he leaves.

Clip 5 - Kiki’s a vegan

Mia rides her bike in the morning and passes Kiki on the street. They have class now, but Kiki still needs to go home and shower. Mia is surprised because they’re pretty far from Kiki’s house, meaning Kiki has to run even more. However, Kiki seems pleased about how much she’s run.

Mia invites Kiki to go shopping with her and Hanna, and Kiki wants to go somewhere with vegan croissants. Mia is surprised by Kiki suddenly being a vegan. Kiki explains that she saw a documentary - not about factory farming, but about how healthy it is. Although then she adds she thinks factory farming is bad when she sees Mia isn’t pleased - that’s a nice touch because Kiki seems like she thought Mia was judging her for not being politically aware enough, and that Mia’s going to go on an activist diatribe or something, when Mia is really concerned because of Kiki’s extreme workout and diet.

Mia clarifies that she thinks veganism is great, it’s just that Kiki is working out so much as well as becoming a vegan. She said they talked about it and Kiki needs to be careful about this stuff. Kiki says she doesn’t see the problem with eating healthy and doing sports.

I like that moment because it’s kind of toeing the line, like … well, what is wrong with working out and eating healthy? And Mia can’t quite object to that in itself. On the surface, Kiki is making it sound reasonable. It’s just that we know more is going on with her than simply adopting healthy lifestyle habits. She’s taking it way too far.

Clip 6 - Mia vs. Alex, take two

Mia sees Axel in school and confronts him, saying they need to talk. He doesn’t seem that into it. When she asks him what he’s doing with Kiki, he plays dumb, she tells him that she’s going to get her hopes up for something serious. Alex is all, define serious. He says that he’s hanging out with Kiki and no one else, so what else is he supposed to do, propose to her?

If he’s explained to Kiki that this is a FWB thing, then honestly, it’ll be on Kiki not to hope for something more serious. It’s certainly not the best course of action for him because of how he behaved last season, and he should know by now that Kiki will probably take it too seriously. However, if he’s made his stance clear to Kiki that this isn’t a serious relationship, then it’s on Kiki to listen to that.

I like that her posture seems more stiff and ramrod straight, and he’s leaning against the railing, relaxed. She’s on guard and trying to make a point to, he’s not threatened by what she’s saying.

He says “If I didn’t know you were a lesbian, I’d think you were jealous,” and arrrrgh. Best case scenario, this at least suggests he has been backing off Mia because he thinks she’s a lesbian and not approaching her, and he respects that. However, I don’t think he buys that she’s really a lesbian (and this is confirmed by the end of the episode) so it comes across like a taunt instead. “If I didn’t know you were a lesbian” is him being ironic because he doesn’t believe her.

Mia says if he hurts Kiki, she’ll kill him. She walks away and Alex seems more amused than anything. He better take her seriously, she’s seen Santa getting a blowjob so the desire to kill should be setting in any moment.

Clip 7 - Gym class

Mia and Hanna are in gym class. They’re on the bleachers. They are both faking having their periods because they hate volleyball and PE. I can respect the fuck out of that. Jonas is playing volleyball, and he and Hanna are having some awkward eye contact.

Hanna mentions that Kiki is a vegan now. She doesn’t get how one can go without meat, but Mia has more serious concerns about Kiki’s sudden veganism.

The girls talk about Alexander and whether he’s doing this thing with Kiki as a tactic to make Mia jealous. God, I hope not. I hope he legit thinks she’s unavailable and is trying to move on or something. Because even taking the end of the episode into consideration, he wasn’t pursuing Mia on his own. He wasn’t texting her, calling her, starting conversations with her outside of class, and it was when Mia kept initiating contact and pushing him that he said he’d break up with Kiki if Mia went on a date with him. I’m not excusing him for that, but best case scenario, he was doing this thing with Kiki without the end goal of exchanging her for Mia.

The ball flies at Hanna, Jonas comes to pick it up and says sorry. I truly hope that was an accident, because otherwise, dick move. Anyway, another little beat of awkwardness between the two.

Clip 8 - Christmas party

Party time! Linn sits on the couch, appropriately. She’s wearing a Santa hat, so she’s a little bit festive, at least?

The girls bake cookies, Hans seems to be making drinks. When Mia goes to the fridge, we get a nice glimpse of her, Hans, and Linn in some photo booth pics, awww.

Amira recreates the Salt Bae meme, which is fucking adorable, I love her.

Mia is a very pretty girl but I have to say that the styling is suiting her even more this season, and this is a really great look for her.

Kiki checks her phone. As we know from the social media, she had something planned with Alex. She’s sent some texts to him, but he’s ignoring her. Though I wonder if they actually had something planned, or if Kiki just assumed they did.

The doorbell rings and it’s Jonas, Matteo, and Carlos! I think they’re integrating the boy squad more into this season because they know fans love Jonas and Matteo, but that’s hardly something I’ll complain about. I live for more combined girl/boy squad content.

Hanna doesn’t seem totally OK with Jonas appearing - not like, shook to her core, but that she’s a little ruffled.

Carlos greets Kiki and says she looks good tonight and I don’t want to pair up any random boy and girl who interact, but if it will get her off Alex, then by all means, deliver us German Magnus/Vilde.

Mia asks Hans if he invited Michi (the guy from the BJ Santa clip) and he says no. Michi isn’t the kind of guy you date, he’s the guy you get to rim you. Well ... thanks for letting us know!

But it’s kinda interesting to me, because Hans is pretty dismissive and not complimentary of this guy, but at the same time… it’s his choice to just hook up with him and not go for anything serious. Mia seems like she’s meddling or judging a bit, disapproving of Hans doing this. I wonder if it’ll come into play later and if Hans will get as tired of Mia’s meddling as Kiki does. Still, it’s a nice parallel to her interfering with Kiki’s affairs, too.

This is a small, cute Christmas party, I dig it. The squads dance to All I Want For Christmas, the girls hug, it’s cute. Matteo sits at the table drinking, awww. Get up and dance, dude!

I wonder if Matteo not dancing is part of him checking himself not to be ~too gay? Or maybe he’s not in the mood because he’s been going through shit at home? Or he’s too drunk to get up? There are a lot of references to him drinking and getting stoned this season, and I mean, that’s not a great thing for him, but it’s a very interesting development in terms of what it will mean for his arc.

Hans and Matteo have met now! Maybe they didn’t talk much, but they were in the same room!

WHO WAS TOUCHING MATTEO’S HEAD, I CAN’T TELL

Matteo and Kiki share a moment where she’s singing to All I Want For Christmas at him and he’s just at the table. Are they actual friends or something? Elaborate, please!

Everyone’s having a good time until Hans suddenly cuts the music, then they’re angered. How dare he cut off Mariah!

Hans announces they’re going to the club and goes into the bathroom to take party drugs. He says he’s going to pee, but the others are aware he’s taking drugs. Matteo mentions that Hans said he partied last week and it took him 72 hours to notice that he didn’t eat anything. Oh no, Kiki’s going to latch onto that. Mia seems wary.

Later, after the party’s over, Mia is cleaning up when the doorbell rings. Kiki comes back in. She’s going to party with Hans and Sam. Cotton pads fall out of her purse. Wait, Kiki is eating them??? Uh-oh.

Mia asks her not to take drugs, she saw how Kiki reacted when they were talking about Hans. Kiki gets mad and asks why she doesn’t get on Hans’ case. Mia says it’s because Hans doesn’t eat cotton pads as a snack. Kiki gets very upset. Mia wants to know if this is because of Alexander.

Truthfully, I don’t think dating Alexander helps, necessarily, since Kiki will feel like she needs to be at her best to hold Alex’s attention, and if he’s not 100% interested in her, she’ll find the faults in herself rather than him. It doesn’t help that he’s already told her she’s not worth it, and even though he apologized, she might still feel the memory of that. But this problem with Kiki goes well beyond her dating Alexander. I’m not absolving him of everything, obviously, but I think she’d be engaging in these behaviors regardless of what he thought, even if it’s for his approval. Mia is using Alexander as a scapegoat here for a much broader issue with Kiki. Like I have no doubt that these problems originated before Alex.

Kiki yells at Mia to stop interfering in her life and that she’s obsessed. I’m really interested in what Druck is doing with these two, because there are two sides to this. I think when it comes to Kiki’s eating disorder, while Mia ultimately can’t control what Kiki does, she’s not wrong to mention her concerns. This is one situation where your friend’s health and physical well-being are at stake. Mia has likely been where Kiki has and recognizes the signs. When it comes to Alexander … Mia probably should back off by now. She’s made her case, she’s stated her concerns. Kiki is making her own choices with who she’s hooking up with. They may not be great choices but they’re Kiki’s to make. But mixing the two sides is that Mia thinks the relationship with Alex is exacerbating Kiki’s eating disorder, so Kiki’s romantic life is entangled with her health.

Mia lies in bed later. She goes through her text messages, first Hans, then Axel. If you look closely, you’ll notice that she sent something to him about the David Ben-Gurion quote being misattributed, which means they kept up the debate outside the classroom. Mia, I know you want to win the debate, but contacting Axel again to make your point isn’t going to convince him that you don’t care about him.

Mia texts Axel to leave Kiki alone. Again, this is messy because I think this is probably crossing the line, Mia’s said her piece already, and this is Kiki’s life. I’m glad they’ve emphasize that Mia thinks this situation is making Kiki’s eating disorder worse, though, because that is a very serious problem and if Mia thinks Alex is making it worse, then it’s easy to understand why she would keep intervening.

Mia is texting something like “Do you want to ...” before Axel writes back, and I’d be really interested to know what she was going to say.

Aaaand Alex wrecks a lot of the good will we wanted to give him by telling Mia he’ll break up with her if she goes out with him and admits she made up all the lesbian stuff. Ugh. So he’s a) willing to break up with Kiki and hurt her just to get with Mia b) putting pressure on Mia dating him c) not taking her being a lesbian seriously which is sadly a common attitude among straight dudes. Obviously lesbians can’t be real, it’s impossible for women not to want me men! Even if he thinks she made it up about her sexuality, he should fucking leave it at that. I mean, she made it up for a reason and that reason is that she doesn’t want to date him, take a hint. Whatever Mia’s flaws have been in this whole situation, that doesn’t let Alex off the hook, either.

We close on Mia from above in her bed, with some distance. I like that, it makes her seem smaller and less in control of what she feels she has to do.

General Comments/Social Media

I’m really happy to see this show back! So far this was a promising start; I think they’re working on some of the production issues of last season and listening to the fans, so that’s encouraging.

This week there was a TON of effort put into the social media, with many IG posts and stories and multiple text messages. There were also clips every day, sometimes more than one. This was a really smart choice, because the constant flow of content grabbed people’s attention - remember that one week in S1 where the show took an unexpected hiatus and people wondered if Druck had been cancelled mid-season? Not great for holding viewers’ interest. I very much hope they can keep up the steady roll of content - personally I would not be surprised if they tone it down a little after this week, and the large amount of content this week was to drum up hype for the show, but I hope we can keep it at higher levels than last season.

However, the constant content and the increased promotion seem to have worked, because the amount of views per clip and subscriptions to Druck’s channel have increased quite a bit! A lot of the clips seem to have as many or more views as clips from S1, which have been out for months. At the beginning of the week there was something like 63,000 subscribers to the channel, I think? As of writing this, they have almost 100,000. They gained more than 35,000 subscribers in a week. That’s incredible! I also noticed several of the clips and episodes were trending by the time I watched them, so that’s got to help attract new viewers. When there are new clips out frequently, they can keep trending, which will grab the attention of new fans. I poked through the comments and there seemed to be a LOT of people who are not existing Skam fans, but German viewers discovering Druck for the first time, which is amazing.

I realize it’ll be very messy with the timeline, but I hope that we can squeeze in at least one more season of this show, hopefully two so we can get both Amira and Matteo seasons. If the momentum keeps up, it’ll be a huge shame to end the show when it’s doing so well. Don’t pull a Julie Andem, Pola Beck. (Lmao, I’m willing to drop realism and pretend this is like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Veronica Mars when they graduated high school after 2-3 seasons and then all happened to go to the same university.)

About Mia being a lesbian or bisexual, or having a romance with a girl - as much as I would love for this to happen, I’m not going to get my hopes up. I don’t want to be disappointed. What I do hope is that the stuff with Mia isn’t queerbaiting - I really hope that she isn’t straight. I get that she’s probably not going to be a lesbian and that she’ll likely end up with Alex, because otherwise it would be an enormous diversion from the source material, one that would not go over well with a big part of the fanbase that loves Noorhelm and is looking forward to seeing that story again. But let her be bi, at least. I get that it’s a pipe dream to hope for Mia/Hanna or Mia/Kiki, but let the f/f content be stronger than it was in S2 of Skam. Make it better than just drunken makeouts between ostensibly straight girls.

The thing is, I do understand if they have her get together with Alex. However you might feel about it personally, Noorhelm is a popular ship (S3 was the biggest internationally but I know S2 was huge in Norway) and there will be tons of people looking forward to it. So really, I’m not expecting them to throw out that relationship and the Mia/Alex endgame. Later in the season, I might change my mind. But right now, while I’m expecting some of the story details to change (as they already have), I’m not going to predict a radical overhaul of S2. I think I’ll be more disappointed if I expect them to reinvent this story so dramatically and they don’t. And if they do? I can be pleasantly surprised.

There’s going to be a fuck ton of drama this season in the fandom - hell, there already is - because Noorhelm is already polarizing, and we’ll be seeing people who still want this ship to succeed and people who don’t. But I do want to point out one thing: a huge amount of people, until the final clip, were being positive about Alex and Mia/Alex’s potential, pointing out ways they preferred Alex’s behavior to William’s. This included people who straight-up hated Noorhelm. I think this says a lot, that many people are willing to get on board with the pairing if it gets rid of the stuff they disliked about the original S2. Of course many others are never going to like this storyline, and many people who had high hopes then dropped them after Alex’s text message to Mia. We’ll see how fandom attitudes change or stay the same over the season.

I like how they’re characterizing Mia this season. They seem to have a clear idea of her motivations, they’re giving her flaws that seem naturally integrated into her character. One of the best ways to create a character, imo, is to think of their flaws and their strengths not as existing on completely separate spheres, but as personality traits existing together that have both positive and negative qualities. For instance, Mia is kind and protective of her friends, overall a positive trait, but that leads her to interfere with their lives, which can be a negative trait.

There were a ton of IG posts and text messages, both this week and before the season even started. I might have missed something - I didn’t expect Druck to hit me so hard with SM content, lmao.

One pre-season text had Hanna wanting to meet up with Jonas, and he initially agreed, but then when she asked for details he didn’t reply, and on the day of, he suddenly couldn’t meet. Oh, kids. This is such a different dynamic from Eva and Jonas in their S2, when they appeared to be on friendly terms and were hanging out together, totally platonic, nothing to see here!!! Unfortunately, Hanna and Jonas still have some friction.

There was a really excellent text message prior to the start of the season, about the girls meeting with college/career advisers at school. It did the double duty of both telling us about the girls’ aspirations and dreams for when they graduate, as well as exposing various difficulties and societal inequalities that they face. For instance, Kiki wants to go to university because no one in her family has done so before, but the adviser tried to talk her into some apprenticeships. Amira jokes that it’s because the adviser saw Kiki’s grades, but that also sees like an issue of classism - Kiki expresses interest in university but the adviser discourages her, possibly based on her background and not coming from a family that went to university. Sam wants to study fashion design and the adviser said that goal fits, presumably due to her personal style. With Amira we see blatant racism in the system, as she wants to become a chancellor, but the adviser laughs and singles out her hijab as a reason why she’ll find it difficult. Hanna was told to do better in school, continuing her academic struggles from her season (the Evas have never been great students). Mia, on the other hand, is told she could be anything. And true, I think Mia’s supposed to be a good student, but note the disparity in that a young white girl is told her future is full of limitless possibilities, whereas Amira (who I’m pretty sure is also a good student) is told how she’ll struggle to achieve her dreams.

I think that sort of sets up some of the tension to a degree with Mia’s character. I’m not sure how much we’ll go into this, but Mia (and the Nooras) have frequently been like the golden girl of Skam. Like I agree that S4 made a lot of mistakes in giving Noora too much importance at the expense of Sana, but I also think there was an awareness that Noora was perceived so differently than Sana even though in many ways they were similar, because of racism, and how Sana knew this and was hurt by it (it was just that S4 was a weird mishmash of knowing this and portraying it critically, and indulging in Noora’s greatness and playing it straight). So we could have that with Mia and Amira at some point. But also, I think this is a big issue with Mia and Kiki (and Noora and Vilde). Because we saw Vilde basically have to deal with Noora being seen as a ��better” version of her. For example, Vilde planned to tell off William and have that as her big moment; but William tore her down and Vilde ran off in distress, and it was Noora who stepped up to roast him and put him in his place. What Noora did was great but it snatched Vilde’s moment. Noora is pretty and skinny, she stuffs herself with pancakes and is model thin, something that Vilde aspires to be. Vilde has a crush on William and he uses her and throws her away; Noora gets William’s attention and she doesn’t even want it, then ends up in a serious relationship with him as William decides Noora is the girl worthy of his loyalty. We saw a lot of this play out with Mia and Kiki already in S1. Now in S2, the tension between the two is going even harder than with Noora and Vilde. Vilde never snapped at Noora the way Kiki does in this episode. Honestly out of everything, I think I’m most interested in seeing how that relationship develops over the season. Remember that Mia is the only one who was there to help Kiki with her pregnancy scare last season, so now they’ve got this other big situation and secret between them.

Girl Sam invited one of the boys to the Christmas party, but it’s not clear from the texts which of them it was. I’m pretty sure it was Jonas since he says Sam invited them in the clip, but still, that’s one downside of Druck’s text system, we can’t always tell who the conversations are between. Although on the other hand, I do think there are instances where that ambiguity could add some suspense and mystery. (She greets mystery boy as “Hi bitch!” which is pretty funny and suggests they are on reasonably friendly terms.)

I wonder if Sam invited the boys on behalf of Hanna? Then Jonas would have an excuse to hang around Hanna without the pressure of it being one-on-one, or seeming too much like a date/like they were back together. And he might respond more positively to a “neutral” party like Sam rather than Hanna, with all their history.

By the way, Hanna had a pic of her and Jonas before the season started that’s like “When lovers become friends!” and she looks significantly happier about it than he does.

Carlos (the Elias from S1) got an IG and his name (car_lospolloshermanos) is a Breaking Bad reference. I remember him as being fairly decent and not too shitty in S1, so it’d be nice to see him as a member of German boy squad.

Kiki posts a pic of her healthy vegan meal and Matteo responded by posting his currywurst. Lmao, so they’re friendly enough that they can have this banter???

Matteo posts a bunch of memes on his IG. How Isak of him.

Amira had some utterly beautiful pics of her summer where she’s riding a camel and visiting the pyramids in Egypt.

There were so many Christmas party pics and videos! I loved the effort put into it. The kids were adorable.and the activity made it feel more like an actual party.

We’ve had Skam and the remakes take place on holidays, but never on Christmas, so I’m quite excited to see what Druck gives us! Even if it’s just Mia, Hanna, and Hanna’s dad chilling out, that’ll be good enough for me. Plus, we should get New Year’s too - what if we get a clip that drops around midnight on New Year’s Eve?

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

I’m not German, so if I missed any language or cultural context, feel free to let me know!

#druck reactions

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cynicallycritical · 6 years ago

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MCU Civil War: Team Steve vs Team Tony =Part One: Steve =

So I was reading some Stony fanfiction (as you do) when I noticed a pattern among writers and fans when it came to understanding and interpreting Steve’s and Tony’s side during the Civil War movie. Overwhelmingly, most of the fics were geared toward Steve bashing. Even when the fic in question was framed in a more neutral outlook on the topic or leaned toward Steve’s defense, the comments were wholly tipped toward ripping Steve apart despite him being the sympathetic voice in the story.

Even on Tumblr, those that claim to like Steve and Tony equally, are highly defensive when it comes to decisions made by either character. So much so that there can hardly be a middle ground and fans feel like they have to take a side. Instead of taking the situation in as a whole and understanding it from the perspective of both parties.

I think this pattern mostly has to do with how both Steve and Tony were characterized in the movies following up to this one which led more fans to easily relate and sympathize with Tony and was more hesitant to do the same with Steve. This has to do with how the movies catered to exploring Tony’s character in his own movie while Steve’s movies were mostly in favor of advancing the overall plot of the MCU.

Of course this could be designed by Feige and the writers to make a more compelling plot out of the MCU storyline and of course they succeed with how much that one movie impacted the characters up through Endgame, but that only works on the surface. When you go deeper this storyline does a disservice to Steve’s character by streamlining his characterization in favor of plot and therefore allowing the audience to abandon one character for another (for the most part) instead of dividing them into having a constructive debate.

So this is going to be long (and a bit rambly) so bear with me. (Also I will be basing this study solely on the MCU; I don’t read comics, I don’t know anything about the comics, don’t ask about the comics. Thanks.)

Part Two.

So let’s start off with Steve. Based on the MCU Timeline the first movie is Captain America: The First Avenger. Our first introduction to Steve is in a recruiting station reading a newspaper waiting to enlist in the army. The first thing he says (about the war) is “A lot of guys getting killed over there.” A man next to him, also reading the newspaper about the war, sayings jokingly, “Kinda makes you think twice about enlisting.” To which Steve staunchly replies;

Then he gets rejected with the infamous 4F stamp.

Dejected he goes to the movies and in the previews, he looks on with envy and admiration at the men that are taking apart in the war effort that he so desperately wants to be a part of, when suddenly some guy starts yelling at the screen for the movie to start. “You wanna show some respect?” Steve says.

Which promptly leads him into getting his ass kicked by the guy in an alleyway.

What this introduction tells us about Steve, first and foremost, is that he is an idealist. Steve doesn’t stand up for individuals, he stands up for values. Steve doesn’t want to go to war for himself or in favor of American nationalism (though you can argue against that. I won’t hold it against you.) Steve wants to go to war for the simple fact that he “doesn’t like bullies.” To Steve fighting in the war is a good thing to do because there are bad people doing bad things. It doesn’t get simpler than that.

Steve is in it for the community as a whole and is in favor of harmony. This is all we get from Steve’s characterization in about 3 minutes. What we get is a pretty much morally good guy with little character flaws aside from being sickly and a bit naive. I would even argue that he has no character flaws because, despite his idealism, the audience has little critical defense against a guy that just wants to beat up Nazis. Being an idealist or naive does not hold the same negative connotations as, let’s say, being a narcissistic egomaniac.

The movie goes on and Steve’s character doesn’t change. His ideology and values are the same. He risks his life to save Bucky and the rest of the captured soldiers, going against authority because it is the right thing to do. He puts the plane in the water, essentially killing himself because not doing it is risking more lives than just his, ie it is the right thing to do. Steve is painted as a hero in the most basic sense of the word. Steve is not so much a person, but a symbol. And that is one of the failings of the MCU.

In this brief introduction and throughout the rest of his origin story, Steve is portrayed not as a person that the audience can relate to, but someone that they can admire. The MCU depicted Steve first and foremost as Captain America before they painted him as just a regular man. Before he was “just a kid from Brooklyn” he was a guy that defended and upheld his objectively correct moral beliefs. Steve was not made to be relatable (in reference to his origin story in the movies) he was made to be a steadfast reliable leader. And it is in this position that people are less likely to give him leeway on questionable decisions because he is portrayed as someone who is always supposed to be in the right.

I say that this is a failing of the MCU because in making Steve a symbol you take away his humanity. People are less likely to read the subtext of his character and just take him at face value. Because he is presented as someone with little to no flaws and has not been challenged in a fundamental way to develop his character, he is made to be a person that, going forward can never make mistakes. And once he does, people resent him for that because making such obvious mistakes should be impossible for Captain America.

But it is the subtext of Steve’s character that people seem to ignore because of Cap’s overwhelmingly positive image. Let’s not forget that despite how good of a guy he is and how morally good his character is, Steve is still just a guy. A normal, albeit sickly, guy who wants to do good and get rid of evil people. There is nothing challenging about him. His views aren’t stepping on anyone’s toes. He is completely selfless. But behind that Steve is “just a kid from Brooklyn,” because outside of his origin movie, during the first Avengers movie and onward, only then are his morals and views challenged and only then must he struggle in developing his character. But by that time it is too late.

To the audience, Steve is already defined as a symbol and compared to how Tony was introduced and is later developed, people are far more emotionally attached to Tony than they are to Steve. Not to say that Steve’s character or his story isn’t compelling; it is. But a person watching his movie is less likely to worry or be concerned over his predicament because it was explicitly shown that Cap can and knows how to handle himself. To the audience, Cap doesn’t need to be defended because despite any setbacks it is something that can be easily overcome because it is not an internal struggle, but an external one.

SO! This has gone on long enough. I’ll do a part two on Tony maybe on how he differs from Steve in his portrayal, and then a part three on the actual Civil War movie. Let me know what you think!

Part Two.

#marvel mcu #steve rogers #captain america #cacw #character study #tony stark #iron man

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frommountainstolonestars · 6 years ago

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Tumblr

So, I know I’m late to the game with this, but let’s talk about Tumblr’s new policies. As of yesterday, their community guidelines changed to eliminate all “adult content” from their website. Included in their adult content is anything depicting “female-presenting nipples” with some supposed okays like mastectomies or art.

Let’s talk about Tumblr’s setup really quick. Before creating your Tumblr blog, you must agree to their terms of service and community guidelines. In years past, the guidelines were lax in regards to adult content. Tumblr was meant as a place to express yourself. After Tumblr’s acquisition by Yahoo, guidelines began to change.

The terms of service are still basically the same. Some key points include:

“Subscribers retain ownership and/or other applicable rights in subscriber content, and Tumblr and/or third parties retain ownership and/or other applicable rights in all content OTHER than subscriber content.”

and:

“The rights you grant in this license are for limited purposes of allowing Tumblr to operate the services in accordance with their functionality, improve, and promote the services, and develop new services.”

and:

“You agree that you won’t violate Tumblr’s community guidelines.”

My key understanding of this, is that our content that we create is ours, and Tumblr can’t really chose what we can and cannot post as long as it follows the community guidelines.

In 2018, the guidelines changed to read this:

“If you regularly post sexually explicit material, we ask that you mark your Tumblr as explicit.”

and:

“Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female presenting-nipples and any content-- including photos, videos, GIFs, and illustrations-- that depict sex acts.”

Also pertinent is this guideline:

“Hate speech. Don’t encourage violence or hatred. Don’t post content for the purpose of promoting or inciting the hatred or dehumanizing individuals or groups based on race, ethnic or national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, disability, or disease.”

This hate speech is a big point of contention because as Tumblr’s automatic process has started flagging ANY exposed skin, it leaves Nazi, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist/nationalist blogs to flourish despite the fact that their guidelines condemn hate speech.

But the Nazis are not the key point of this post. The key issue is the amount of websites limiting “adult content” out of fear that companies like Apple will ban them from their app stores or label them as 18+ only and thus restrict their user base.

One of the man reasons we are seeing websites like Craigslist, Reddit, and Tumblr crackdown on “adult content” is mainly due to Congress passing the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act which essentially condemns any website that has adult content or sex of any kind.

Someone said of this act, “... by making internet platforms legally liable for the things uses post on them, the law encourages sites to crackdown indiscriminantly on all sorts of sexual discussions-- including, ironically, online spaces where sex workers share information that helps them protect themselves against abuse.”

Of important note is that Tumblr’s new adult content guidelines went into affect on National Protect/Support Sex Worker’s Day.

Now, Tumblr and other websites are privately owned. But, the CDA section 230 says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

My understanding of this is that websites are protected, so it shouldn’t matter what their users post.

CNN said it best, “If private platforms outright ban certain types of protected speech, it sets an uncomfortable precedent for the values of free speech.”

Another person said, “Efforts to filter the Internet, no matter how noble they may seem, will always be incompatible with the principles of free expression.”

Websites are essentially limiting materials to the American public which should have their access to their First Amendment rights of free speech and expression.

In fact, the Supreme Court has seen cases on censorship (which is basically what Tumblr and other websites are doing) and said in Reno vs ACLU, “... That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statue was enacted to serve... It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the government interest in protecting children form harmful materials. But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults.”

I suppose the main issue here is that Tumblr and other such websites are private companies and do not have to follow the Amendments in the same way the government does.

However, I have two thoughts on this. 1) Citizens United gave corporations the right to freedom of speech, so shouldn’t that mean they also HAVE to follow amendments in the same way the public does. 2) If a government act, such as the one passed by Congress, is influencing your company, your actions aren’t fair to your users.

I’m not advocating for children to have access to porn, but outright banning adult content forces people to find seedier and seedier places. Additionally, it TRULY limits the LGBT+ community because finding porn for them/us to consume becomes more and more difficult.

My last point on this: we live in a society that condemns sex. “Female-presenting nipples” are INHERENTLY adult content. LGBT+ community is INHERENTLY adult content. That’s what these websites banning this content tells us. We don’t teach sexual education in America. We don’t teach SAFE sex in American. We don’t teach CONSENT in America. We condemn sex workers and now we limit where people can find their adult content which will send those consumers to dangerous sites or expose people further to adult content.

This is purely Puritanical... and it’s FUCKING ridiculous. Sex and porn are not inherently evil. Maybe if we taught teenagers and young adults about these things earlier, we wouldn’t be so against anything sexual. These things are not evil, so why treat them that way?

#tumblr #tumblr ban #FUCK TUMBLR

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dukeofriven · 6 years ago

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Hussie, Hitler, And Boy I’m Tired

I said earlier that I didn’t want to put on my hip waders and muck about in the Homestuck tags. *pulls off hip waders* I went anyways. I went even though I was feeling pretty good because I had a nice dinner and got to watch the New Years Bake-Off special. I went anyways, and I did it for you, my eight followers who aren’t pornbots. It turns out the Homestuck fandom of Tumblr is as scary and hyperbolic as ever, and has taken one lousy bit of badly written crap and extrapolated that backwards into ‘Homestuck has always been a racist anti-semetic pile of garbage and everything about it is terrible and Andrew Hussie needs to die.” I’m not paraphrasing, by the way. Someone out there is chanting ‘die Andrew Hussie die,’ because he had the gall to... clumsily dunk on Hitler like a fifteen year old trying to impress his English teacher with edgy comedy? This new stuff is too dumb to be offensive, especially in an era with, y’know, Hitler-praising alt-right Neo Nazis actually being mainstream media figures. Hey Tumblr fandom? Can you... mm not chill, chill’s not the word I’m looking for what is it... oh yes. Can y’all fuck off for once?

Tumblr doesn’t deserve to enjoy things because it doesn’t know how to enjoy things responsibly. It lurches from adoration to hatred without pause, and as a writer it gives me nothing but an anxiety. I cannot produce anything imperfect, I cannot ever write crap because if I do then all my work will be tainted by it forever. On Tumblr you are always judged by your worst effort, which is a fucking god-awful standard for large media franchises of any kind. You know who one of the greatest, most thoughtful, socially-driven authors of the twentieth century was? Terry Pratchett. You know what’s kind of sexist and lazy and awful? The Colour of Magic. You know what’s weirdly colonialist and smug and all-around shit? Snuff! Neither of those shitty books invalidate the forty other Discworld novels. The existence of Anchorman’s bloviating nothingness doesn’t erase Will Ferrel’s warm and desperately human performance in Stranger Than Fiction. The Forced Kiss Equal Romance kiss in Blade Runner doesn’t erase the rest of the movie piercing question on the nature of what it means to be human. And on and on and on. Andrew Hussie’s sneeze-shart dogshit history rewrite that was so embarrassingly bad it got pulled from the internet didn’t erase Rose/Kanaya, or gay Dave, or Joey Claire tap-dancing her little heart out to try and defeat a monster. And even if Andrew Hussie does a JK Rowling and produces nothing but ill-thought-out crap from here until the day we all die in the great Disney Final Merger of 2023, it still won’t invalidate the good moments that made you happy. I mean if Andrew Hussie toddles out of retirement onto a talk show in a bathrobe to discuss his new revelations on the Puppetgrandmasters of Scion who all have worryingly Semetic names, I’m not going to be so naive as to pretend that his earlier media can be consumed in some kind of vacuum, that the future cannot affect the past. but I am saying that the good that happened in it - the things that affected you in positive ways - are not ethereal. It mattered to you then, and that’s okay. Tumblr’s hyperbolic responses seem to be rooted in embarrassment and self-flagellation. People seem so terrified by the thought that anyone might associate them as a fan of something - gasp - linked to controversy that they... well, they say shit like “die andrew hussie die.” Hey dude. Hey. You need to redirect that anger, my friend. There’s actual Neo-Nazis in the streets. On the TV. In the US government. I guess what I’m trying to say is... Woof. Okay. You know, to give Andrew Hussie partial credit here, its nice to see someone actually write Adolf Hitler the way he really was - a pant-shitting constantly whiny toddler of a human being who endlessly threw tantrums and got to where he was largely on the strength of other people’s bad decisions. Remember kids: the biggest myth Neo-Nazis have ever perpetrated is that Germany under Hitler was well-run, well-organized, and anything other than a collection of squabbling dysfunctional fiefdoms run by party hacks propped up by a bureaucracy and military too bound by inertia, ego, and cultural racism to do anything to stop a lunatic from ripping their country to shreds. That whole ‘trains running on time’ thing? It’s nonsense. Go study the conduct of the war once Germany had exhausted all its pre-war stockpiled resources and ran out of useful shit to loot, once it had to start relying on its leadership for the things that make wars winnable - supplies, reinforcements, fuel, winter clothing. Watch the way from 1942 onwards Germany stumbled from one disaster to the next, as Hitler fired more and more generals and drew more and more authority to himself and his fellow party cronies. Hitler should not be feared as a man of competence or skill - he was a buffoon, a clown of a human being fuelled entirely by petty, vindictive spite and an unlimited capacity for cruelty. And before anyone goes ‘well if he was so objectively pathetic how the fuck did he take over Germany’ I direct you to google the last two years of American politics and the words ‘Donald Fucking Trump.’ [I recommend, on these war subjects particularly, Sir Antony Beevor’s bleak and sobering works, particularly Stalingrad, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, and Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble.] Sorry this... kind of got away from me somewhat, but I really hate it when people get mad that someone didn’t take Hitler seriously (and, to be strictly fair, this is not what everyone is mad about in regards to Andrew Hussie, either). You should never take Hitler seriously. Take hate seriously - take violent words, and calls for purity, take his ideas of superiority and racial preeminence and anti-semitism seriously as the evils, the horrors as they are. But the man himself? He literally stank - a combination of his halitosis, chronic flatulence, and was constant diarrhea. [I am not exaggerating] He was a sad pathetic clown, and Andrew Hussie chose to write him as such. He just... went too far. It happens. It’s not good writing. It’s fucking shit, to be honest. Boring shit. The Minions movie decided to have the Minions sit out the entirety of WWII by having them get stuck in a cave or some such. Honestly that’s a better option than what Andrew Hussie went with - and ‘be more like the Minions movie’ isn’t advice I give that often. You want to be disgruntled that an author wrote something this bafflingly tone deaf and tedious? Sure. I know I am. But to chant for his death? Are you fucking kidding me? Look! Look out your window at those marching Neo-Nazis trying to establish a white supremacist state? What the ever-loving fuck are you people doing in here getting ready to string-up a man whose crime was making Adolf Friggen Hitler too petty???????? Tumblr. Tumblr, for the love of god this has to stop. This ‘Ceasar’s wife must be above reproach’ shit has to stop - it’s killing fandom, it’s killing good media critique, it’s burying proportional fan response, and its just exhausting. Why can’t you ever just let something be lousy without it being literal death warrant? There’s real demons out there - I can see them out the window, and every time I turn on the TV. Maybe - just bloody maybe - not every single crime deserves the exact same level of disapprobation and punishment? Maybe we could read some content and say “boy that sure had some lousy implications and also was just really poorly written” and then... stop there? Wouldn’t that be nice, for a change? We could dislike something without feeling like it required activism on our part. We could say ‘this piece of media was shit, but it didn’t advocate for a white ethno-state, so I will continue to think of it only until the end of this sentence.’ I am not advocating for an end to media criticism for anything that isn’t openly hate speech (but if you think that I am I am going to assume you’re already so needlessly enraged about this whole matter that I’m a bit puzzled why you’ve bothered to read this far since its obvious we don’t agree on many fundamental issues.) What I am calling for is the end to death threats against people who don’t mean you harm. Because that’s lunacy. That’s beyond the pale, actually, that’s really disturbing and sickening and you should seriously reconsider your relationship with media. Because there are people out there who do want to hurt you. Their lives are fuelled by hate, their philosophies are driven by it, as are their politics. I assure you that when a time traveller steps through a portal trying to prevent the rise of ‘the great Trump War of 2020′ the inciting incident will not be ‘Andrew Hussie trivialized the holocaust by citing its origins as a grudge Adolf Hitler bore Albert Einstein over a rivalry in secret clown ninja school before being taken on as an agent of a baking-obsessed alien space witch and bumped into power by the Peters principle.’ Because just by writing that sentence I have already reaffirmed a very simple truth: this is way, way too stupid to give the slightest shit about. So let’s tell Andrew Hussie that his new work is... mmm.... kind of like a shit if a shit had a shit that was itself shat out by a shit and then vomited on by another shit who had eaten nothing but shit since Sunday. Let’s tel lhim “hey dude, your clownish work summoned the spectre of anti-semetism, and you can do better.” Frankly, I think that message was already sent, since in the two hours between me going to make and eat dinner and then coming back to my computer, the new material was discovered, read, disseminated, and removed. Two hours. Sure, maybe a bit of lag due to what does and does not hit my feed but come on - this all took place in an afternoon. It’s already down. Our voices were heard - we didn’t think this was very good, and apparently Whatpumpkin agrees enough that they didn’t mount a defence of it. Rather than take the next logical step, though - which seems to be calling for the death of Andrew Hussie and removing all of Homestuck from the internet and maybe nuking Toby Fox from orbit just to be extra-sure? - we could do... something else. Talk about the release date for Stranger Things, maybe. Track down some local Neo-Nazis and punch them. Read some Antony Beevor books and really educate ourselves on what a smelly fuck-up Hitler was so we can chant that at Neo Nazis at their next rally. Or you could watch the New Years Bake-Off special. It was pretty good.

#homestuck #andrew hussie #hitler #hiveswap #hiveswap friendsim #whatpumpkin #skaianet #bake-off #terry pratchett #homestuck analysis

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