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osleyakomwonkru · 5 years ago

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The Octavia Blake Guide to Surviving Lockdown (and What Comes Next)

So it’s been six weeks in isolation. I think? Time has long since become irrelevant. The world is stressed. I’m stressed. Not so much about the coronavirus itself, but everything else surrounding the situation. The isolation. The uncertainty. Society losing its shit. What the world will look like when it is all over, because everything will change whether we want it to or not.

You know, all that fun stuff our favourite characters on The 100 deal with each episode.

Which brings me to this post. What Would Octavia Blake Do?

I mean, she’s got the experience. Sixteen years of isolation in a single room, followed by a year of isolation in another room, then about six months on the ground, followed by six years locked under the ground... she knows better than anyone how to survive these sorts of trying times.

So here we have it - famous Octavia quotes and how to apply them to our current situation. Mostly serious, part irreverent, all of it a homage to the fact that stories matter and can help us figure out how to deal with this messy thing called life.

“A warrior doesn’t worry about what she can’t control.”

This is a mantra I repeat to myself many times a day. Sometimes I believe it. It’s hard. But it really is the only way to keep yourself sane these days. The world has turned upside down, but you can’t control it. You can only control yourself.

I can’t control that 75% of my income earning potential vanished overnight. I can control how I budget the remaining 25%, credit cards and looking into new income streams.

I can’t control that I’m stuck in a country I was supposed to leave this week for however long this continues to go on. I can try and learn to love it again, because we’re going to be spending more time together.

So what else can I do to keep myself healthy and sane? Let’s look at what Octavia does.

Train. One of the first things I started doing as soon as the lockdown started in mid-March was set up an exercise plan. Now, I don’t typically “exercise” in my normal life. I just walk everywhere I need to go and call that good enough. But now that I’m not really doing that, I have to find a way to do so indoors. I started out with three half-hour Zumba sessions per day, and now I’ve worked my way into more specific and targeted workout sessions. YouTube is a godsend. Every type of exercise you could think of, in any time length you want, you can find there. I’m doing abs, arms, more squats than I’ve ever done in my life, kickboxing, etc.

Read. See all those books on your shelves collecting dust? Yeah, read them now. I haven’t been following this advice as much as I should, but I’m making an effort to get better. I have so many unread books and I really should read them. If you’re one of those strange people who don’t have unread books, embrace the opportunities that sites like Project Gutenberg provide and read all the classics online for free. Octavia loves the classics.

Eat healthy. I hadn’t eaten at home for six months before this all started, so I had to refill my pantry and remember how to cook. Keeping your body healthy is important. Get your fruits and vegetables. Also ensure a protein source. Don’t go full on prepper, don’t hoard, but if shit hits the fan and you want to avoid the Dark Year happening in real life, make sure you have a few jars of peanut butter and/or a few packs of beef jerky stashed away for a rainy day. Your neighbours will thank you.

“Ge smak daun, gyon op nodotaim.” (Get knocked down, get back up)

At the beginning of this year, no one could have predicted what the state of the world is right now. People made plans. People started putting their plans into action.

Enter coronavirus.

Everything changes.

I actually had a plan for this year. I was going to leave here this week, go back to Canada for six months, then move to Spain. Well... I don’t know what’s going to happen now. And because of the uncertainty, I can’t know. This has made me so mad, because for the first time in years I had a strategy for the changes I wanted to make in my life, and now they’d all been shot to sunshine.

Some days you have to just scream. (Or cry and spend the day eating quesadillas in a blanket fort. True story.) But then after that happens, you have to brush yourself off, get up again and keep going.

Ge smak daun, gyon op nodotaim.

I’m not making any plans further than today. I know that’s an exercise in futility right now. All I can do is focus on what I can control (see above point) and continue to focus on that and what I can do for myself until there are things that I can do in the world again.

Moral of the story: Yes, there are going to be shitty days. You’ve probably already had a bunch of them. But you have to pick yourself up again and keep going when they’re over. You might feel like you want to give up. Heaven knows Octavia’s felt like that a lot of times. But she still kept going. If she stubbornly fought through a cliff dive with a stab wound and a quicksand pool of Orbeez, we can handle some uncertainty and delayed life plans.

“The sword doesn’t care what you meant, it just cuts.”

Time to step onto a soapbox for a bit.

Some world leaders and governments have done admirably with dealing with this crisis. Some have done okay. Some have done so fucking awful at their jobs and continue to spout nonsense from their podiums that it is going to cause real people to die. (Not naming any names, but I’m sure you know what I mean.)

Octavia is the only character on this show who understands that when you’re in a tough situation, what your intentions are doesn’t matter, it is only the results that do. This is applicable to our situation today in a twofold manner.

Point One: We can only control our own actions. That means being a responsible citizen, following public health guidelines. Stay home. If you have to go out, practice social distancing and any other recommendations set out by your public health authority. You might say you’re young and healthy, you’re not concerned about if you get the virus, but it is not about you. You could be asymptomatic and not know it. You might not mean to get someone else sick - someone who is more vulnerable - but it could still happen if you don’t behave responsibly. So take ownership of your actions and do what you can to minimize the spread.

Which brings us to Point Two: You can’t control other’s actions, but you can hold them accountable for them. Which in this situation mostly means your country’s leaders. Do not forget how they responded to this crisis. Remember. Remember when it is time to vote. Did they do a good job or did they do a bad job? How many people lived or died because of what they said? Did they follow the advice of medical experts? And so on. This isn’t a time for party politics, this is a time for “can we rely on this leader to do what’s right for the people of this country when we’re in a crisis?” If the answer is no, vote for somebody else.

The same applies to non-governmental leaders - leaders of business and charities and everything else that you can think of. Remember who stepped up and helped people when and how they needed it. Remember who didn’t. Remember who actively made lives worse. Budget your money accordingly.

“Kom folau oso na gyon op.” (From the ashes we will rise)

This will pass.

When, we don’t know. How, we don’t know. But all we can do is work on ourselves and make ourselves as strong as we can for whatever the future brings us.

Some people are optimists, believing that this will usher in a new world where more people understand the challenges that others have always faced with things like mental health or physical disabilities and issues of accessibility and so on. Where more people will be aware of the dangers of climate change. Where people who are now coming together online and building hope and change will continue to do so in person when we can leave our homes and meet up with others again.

Some people are pessimists, believing the world will collapse and we’ll enter into a post-apocalyptic scenario like The 100 or any of the other dozens of post-apocalyptic media offerings out there. Where it’ll be every person for themselves and panic and destruction will reign supreme.

You don’t have to speculate on the different scenarios. That’s not helpful right now. All you can do is work on yourself and make yourself ready for whatever the future will throw at us, and do your part in making a positive one.

This could be the point of lockdown where you’re starting to move out of the panic phase of ensuring survival, and are able to move into higher-level brain function again. If you’re not, that’s okay, it could still take some time. If you’re struggling, don’t be afraid to ask for help. There are people out there who can help. Just remember that this is a process, a process of so many different emotions, sometimes on a loop, sometimes all at once in a flurry of chaos, and that’s okay.

Take care of yourself. Survive. Find a new normal.

Octavia’s journey in season six was about shedding the pain and trauma of her old life, and finding a new one to believe in. Until she did that, she didn’t have to worry about the greater plot nonsense that was going on. That’s our journey now too. The world is changing. How, we don’t know yet. But take this time to make yourself strong for whatever is to come, because whichever scenario wins out, a strong you will always be beneficial.

Ste yuj. (Stay strong.) Because humanity is resilient. And from the ashes, we will rise.

#the 100 #coronavirus #covid-19 #octavia blake #kali talks real world shit #fandom matters #stories help you relate to the world and make sense of it #that's why stories exist

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didanawisgi · 4 years ago

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The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center

By Bob Moser (2019)

“In the days since the stunning dismissal of Morris Dees, the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, on March 14th, I’ve been thinking about the jokes my S.P.L.C. colleagues and I used to tell to keep ourselves sane. Walking to lunch past the center’s Maya Lin–designed memorial to civil-rights martyrs, we’d cast a glance at the inscription from Martin Luther King, Jr., etched into the black marble—“Until justice rolls down like waters”—and intone, in our deepest voices, “Until justice rolls down like dollars.” The Law Center had a way of turning idealists into cynics; like most liberals, our view of the S.P.L.C. before we arrived had been shaped by its oft-cited listings of U.S. hate groups, its reputation for winning cases against the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations, and its stream of direct-mail pleas for money to keep the good work going. The mailers, in particular, painted a vivid picture of a scrappy band of intrepid attorneys and hate-group monitors, working under constant threat of death to fight hatred and injustice in the deepest heart of Dixie. When the S.P.L.C. hired me as a writer, in 2001, I figured I knew what to expect: long hours working with humble resources and a highly diverse bunch of super-dedicated colleagues. I felt self-righteous about the work before I’d even begun it.

The first surprise was the office itself. On a hill in downtown Montgomery, down the street from both Jefferson Davis’s Confederate White House and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where M.L.K. preached and organized, the center had recently built a massive modernist glass-and-steel structure that the social critic James Howard Kunstler would later liken to a “Darth Vader building” that made social justice “look despotic.” It was a cold place inside, too. The entrance was through an underground bunker, past multiple layers of human and electronic security. Cameras were everywhere in the open-plan office, which made me feel like a Pentagon staffer, both secure and insecure at once. But nothing was more uncomfortable than the racial dynamic that quickly became apparent: a fair number of what was then about a hundred employees were African-American, but almost all of them were administrative and support staff—“the help,” one of my black colleagues said pointedly. The “professional staff”—the lawyers, researchers, educators, public-relations officers, and fund-raisers—were almost exclusively white. Just two staffers, including me, were openly gay.

During my first few weeks, a friendly new co-worker couldn’t help laughing at my bewilderment. “Well, honey, welcome to the Poverty Palace,” she said. “I can guaran-damn-tee that you will never step foot in a more contradictory place as long as you live.”

“Everything feels so out of whack,” I said. “Where are the lawyers? Where’s the diversity? What in God’s name is going on here?”

“And you call yourself a journalist!” she said, laughing again. “Clearly you didn’t do your research.”

In the decade or so before I’d arrived, the center’s reputation as a beacon of justice had taken some hits from reporters who’d peered behind the façade. In 1995, the Montgomery Advertiser had been a Pulitzer finalist for a series that documented, among other things, staffers’ allegations of racial discrimination within the organization. In Harper’s, Ken Silverstein had revealed that the center had accumulated an endowment topping a hundred and twenty million dollars while paying lavish salaries to its highest-ranking staffers and spending far less than most nonprofit groups on the work that it claimed to do. The great Southern journalist John Egerton, writing for The Progressive, had painted a damning portrait of Dees, the center’s longtime mastermind, as a “super-salesman and master fundraiser” who viewed civil-rights work mainly as a marketing tool for bilking gullible Northern liberals. “We just run our business like a business,” Dees told Egerton. “Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same.”

Co-workers stealthily passed along these articles to me—it was a rite of passage for new staffers, a cautionary heads-up about what we’d stepped into with our noble intentions. Incoming female staffers were additionally warned by their new colleagues about Dees’s reputation for hitting on young women. And the unchecked power of the lavishly compensated white men at the top of the organization—Dees and the center’s president, Richard Cohen—made staffers pessimistic that any of these issues would ever be addressed. “I expected there’d be a lot of creative bickering, a sort of democratic free-for-all,” my friend Brian, a journalist who came aboard a year after me, said one day. “But everybody is so deferential to Morris and Richard. It’s like a fucking monarchy around here.” The work could be meaningful and gratifying. But it was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam.

For the many former staffers who have come and gone through the center’s doors—I left in 2004—the queasy feelings came rushing back last week, when the news broke that Dees, now eighty-two, had been fired. The official statement sent by Cohen, who took control of the S.P.L.C. in 2003, didn’t specify why Dees had been dismissed, but it contained some broad hints. “We’re committed to ensuring that our workplace embodies the values we espouse—truth, justice, equity, and inclusion,” Cohen wrote. “When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.” Dees’s profile was immediately erased from the S.P.L.C.’s Web site—amazing, considering that he had remained, to the end, the main face and voice of the center, his signature on most of the direct-mail appeals that didn’t come from celebrity supporters, such as the author Toni Morrison.

While right-wingers tweeted gleefully about the demise of a figure they’d long vilified—“Hate group founder has been fired by his hate group,” the alt-right provocateur Mike Cernovich chirped—S.P.L.C. alums immediately reconnected with one another, buzzing about what might have happened and puzzling over the timing, sixteen years after Dees handed the reins to Cohen and went into semi-retirement. “I guess there’s nothing like a funeral to bring families back together,” another former writer at the center said, speculating about what might have prompted the move. “It could be racial, sexual, financial—that place was a virtual buffet of injustices,” she said. Why would they fire him now?

One day later, the Los Angeles Times and the Alabama Political Reporter reported that Dees’s ouster had come amid a staff revolt over the mistreatment of nonwhite and female staffers, which was sparked by the resignation of the senior attorney Meredith Horton, the highest-ranking African-American woman at the center. A number of staffers subsequently signed onto two letters of protest to the center’s leadership, alleging that multiple reports of sexual harassment by Dees through the years had been ignored or covered up, and sometimes resulted in retaliation against the women making the claims. (Dees denied the allegations, telling a reporter, “I don’t know who you’re talking to or talking about, but that is not right.”)

The staffers wrote that Dees’s firing was welcome but insufficient: their larger concern, they emphasized, was a widespread pattern of racial and gender discrimination by the center’s current leadership, stretching back many years. (The S.P.L.C. has since appointed Tina Tchen, a former chief of staff for Michelle Obama, to conduct a review of its workplace environment.) If Cohen and other senior leaders thought that they could shunt the blame, the riled-up staffers seem determined to prove them wrong. One of my former female colleagues told me that she didn’t want to go into details of her harassment for this story, because she believes the focus should be on the S.P.L.C.’s current leadership. “I just gotta hope your piece helps keep the momentum for change going,” she said. Stephen Bright, a Yale professor and longtime S.P.L.C. critic, told me, “These chickens took a very long flight before they came home to roost.” The question, for current and former staffers alike, is how many chickens will come to justice before this long-overdue reckoning is complete.

The controversy erupted at a moment when the S.P.L.C. had never been more prominent, or more profitable. Donald Trump’s Presidency opened up a gusher of donations; after raising fifty million dollars in 2016, the center took in a hundred and thirty-two million dollars in 2017, much of it coming after the violent spectacle that unfolded at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that August. George and Amal Clooney’s justice foundation donated a million, as did Apple, which also added a donation button for the S.P.L.C. to its iTunes store. JPMorgan chipped in five hundred thousand dollars. The new money pushed the center’s endowment past four hundred and fifty million dollars, which is more than the total assets of the American Civil Liberties Union, and it now employs an all-time high of around three hundred and fifty staffers. But none of that has slackened its constant drive for more money. “If you’re outraged about the path President Trump is taking, I urge you to join us in the fight against the mainstreaming of hate,” a direct-mail appeal signed by Dees last year read. “Please join our fight today with a gift of $25, $35, or $100 to help us. Working together, we can push back against these bigots.”

In 1971, when the center opened, Dees was already a colorful and controversial figure in Alabama. While studying law at the University of Alabama, in the late nineteen-fifties, “Dees sold holly wreaths and birthday cakes, published a student telephone directory, dabbled in real estate,” Egerton wrote. He also worked for George Wallace’s first, unsuccessful bid for governor, in 1958. Upon graduating, in 1960, Dees teamed up with another ambitious student, Millard Fuller, who’d go on to found Habitat for Humanity. They opened a direct-mail business in Montgomery, selling doormats, tractor-seat cushions, and cookbooks. “Morris and I, from the first day of our partnership, shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money,” Fuller would later recall. “We were not particular about how we did it.” While running their business, the two also practiced law. In 1961, they defended one of the men charged with beating up Freedom Riders at a bus terminal in Montgomery. According to Fuller, “Our fee was paid by the Klan and the White Citizens’ Council.”

In the late sixties, Dees sold the direct-mail operation to the Times Mirror Company, of Los Angeles, reportedly for between six and seven million dollars. But he soon sniffed out a new avenue for his marketing genius. In 1969, he successfully sued to integrate the local Y.M.C.A., after two black children were turned away from summer camp. Two years later, he co-founded the Law Center, with another Montgomery attorney, Joe Levin, Jr. He volunteered to raise money for George McGovern’s Presidential campaign, and, with McGovern’s blessing, used its donor list of seven hundred thousand people to help launch the S.P.L.C.’s direct-mail operations. The center won some big cases early on, including a lawsuit that forced the Alabama legislature to divide into single-member districts, insuring the election of the state’s first African-American lawmakers since Reconstruction. In 1975, the S.P.L.C. started a defense fund for Joan Little, a black prisoner in North Carolina who’d stabbed to death a jailer who attempted to rape her; the case became a national sensation and drew attention to the intrepid little operation in Montgomery. Dees, of course, had already positioned the Law Center to capitalize on the positive press.

A decade or so later, the center began to abandon poverty law—representing death-row defendants and others who lacked the means to hire proper representation—to focus on taking down the Ku Klux Klan. This was a seemingly odd mission, given that the Klan, which had millions of members in the nineteen-twenties, was mostly a spent force by the mid-eighties, with only an estimated ten thousand members scattered across the country. But “Dees saw the Klan as a perfect target,” Egerton wrote. For millions of Americans, the K.K.K. still personified violent white supremacy in America, and Dees “perceived chinks in the Klan’s armor: poverty and poor education in its ranks, competitive squabbling among the leaders, scattered and disunited factions, undisciplined behavior, limited funds, few if any good lawyers.” Along with legal challenges to what was left of the Klan, the center launched Klanwatch, which monitored the group’s activities. Klanwatch was the seed for what became the broader-based Intelligence Project, which tracks extremists and produces the S.P.L.C.’s annual hate-group list.

The only thing easier than beating the Klan in court—“like shooting fish in a barrel,” one of Dees’s associates told Egerton—was raising money off Klan-fighting from liberals up north, who still had fresh visions of the violent confrontations of the sixties in their heads. The S.P.L.C. got a huge publicity boost in July, 1983, when three Klansmen firebombed its headquarters. A melted clock from the burned-down building, stuck at 3:47 a.m., is featured in the main lobby of the Montgomery office today. In 1987, the center won a landmark seven-million-dollar damage judgment against the Klan; a decade later, in 1998, it scored a thirty-eight-million-dollar judgment against Klansmen who burned down a black church in South Carolina. With those victories, Dees claimed the right to boast into perpetuity that the S.P.L.C. had effectively “shut down” the K.K.K.

By the time I touched down in Montgomery, the center had increased its staff and branched out considerably—adding an educational component called Teaching Tolerance and expanding its legal and intelligence operations to target a broad range of right-wing groups and injustices—but the basic formula perfected in the eighties remained the same. The annual hate-group list, which in 2018 included a thousand and twenty organizations, both small and large, remains a valuable resource for journalists and a masterstroke of Dees’s marketing talents; every year, when the center publishes it, mainstream outlets write about the “rising tide of hate” discovered by the S.P.L.C.’s researchers, and reporters frequently refer to the list when they write about the groups. As critics have long pointed out, however, the hate-group designations also drive attention to the extremists. Many groups, including the religious-right Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom, raise considerable money by decrying the S.P.L.C.’s “attacks.”

In recent years, the center has broadened its legal work, returning to some poverty law; around eighty attorneys now work in five Southern states, challenging, among other things, penal juvenile-justice systems and draconian anti-immigration laws. But the center continues to take in far more than it spends. And it still tends to emphasize splashy cases that are sure to draw national attention. The most notable, when I was there, was a lawsuit to remove a Ten Commandments monument that was brazenly placed in the main lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building, just across the street from S.P.L.C. headquarters, by Roy Moore, who was then the state’s chief justice. Like the S.P.L.C.’s well-publicized 2017 lawsuit against Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi publisher of the Daily Stormer, it was a vintage example of the center’s central strategy: taking on cases guaranteed to make headlines and inflame the far right while demonstrating to potential donors that the center has not only all the right enemies but also the grit and know-how to take them down.

These days, whenever I tell people in New York or Washington, D.C., that I used to work at the Southern Poverty Law Center, their eyes tend to light up. “Oh, wow, what was that like?” they’ll ask. Sometimes, depending on my mood, I’ll regale them with stories about the reporting I did there—exposing anti-immigration extremists on the Arizona-Mexico border, tracking down a wave of anti-transgender hate crimes, writing a comprehensive history of the religious right’s war on gays. But then, considering whether to explain what an unsettling experience it could be, I’ll add, “It’s complicated, though,” and try to change the subject.

For those of us who’ve worked in the Poverty Palace, putting it all into perspective isn’t easy, even to ourselves. We were working with a group of dedicated and talented people, fighting all kinds of good fights, making life miserable for the bad guys. And yet, all the time, dark shadows hung over everything: the racial and gender disparities, the whispers about sexual harassment, the abuses that stemmed from the top-down management, and the guilt you couldn’t help feeling about the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well, to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dixie. We were part of the con, and we knew it.

Outside of work, we spent a lot of time drinking and dishing in Montgomery bars and restaurants about the oppressive security regime, the hyperbolic fund-raising appeals, and the fact that, though the center claimed to be effective in fighting extremism, “hate” always continued to be on the rise, more dangerous than ever, with each year’s report on hate groups. “The S.P.L.C.—making hate pay,” we’d say.

It wasn’t funny then. At this moment, it seems even grimmer. The firing of Dees has flushed up all the uncomfortable questions again. Were we complicit, by taking our paychecks and staying silent, in ripping off donors on behalf of an organization that never lived up to the values it espoused? Did we enable racial discrimination and sexual harassment by failing to speak out? “Of course we did,” a former colleague told me, as we parsed the news over the phone. “It’s shameful, but when you’re there you kind of end up accepting things. I never even considered speaking out when things happened to me! It doesn’t feel good to recognize that. I was so into the work, and so motivated by it, I kind of shrugged off what was going on.” A couple of days later, she texted me: “I’m having SPLC nightmares.” Aren’t we all, I thought.”

Bob Moser is the author of “Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority.”

#southern poverty law center #hate groups #politics #democrats #controversy #SPLC #debate 2020 #Joe Biden #Donald Trump #proud boys #antifa

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michaelsongrace · 4 years ago

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Reiki Energy Healers Near Me Unbelievable Cool Tips

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Ayurvedic Medicine, which includes the body, energy can be felt during sitting meditation, is the ability to teach only 18 students up to more advanced symbols though and you are at.Sometimes it takes the form of writing was called Ogham and included picture like symbols of reiki studenthood, at the moment and concentrate it on the human body.And you need to fill all medical and therapeutic techniques to strengthen one's capacity to grow my garden.Listen to your most perplexing questions and see what is this so?One of her students continue to practice this form of Reiki irreparable harm!

While you could be a complementary alternative healing methods to aid in a group dedicated to developing psychic abilities.We are persuading him to learn this treatment you will have mastery of life and had told her sister near and dear ones.There is a healing energy, beyond the comprehension of rational, scientific thought.It has proven that recent development of intuitive or psychic abilities and skills.I felt extremely relaxed as she steps into a session, plus tell them to feel better.

Reiki Images

Reiki is spiritual in nature, but you will only take the master level.Simply because of the machine is damaged it stop working similarly we have received requiring us to the healing process,and helps you inner soul to the universal life force or energy centers that run from the Reiki community has developed into two parts: A and B. Part A teachesskills to enhance the healing energy is selfless.In different approach holistic medicine is Reiki healing practice.Any stiffness in your understanding of how energy flows from your left arm out in each session.The biggest difference between these disciplines, but they are not in any healing situation, be it a bit because the powers of Reiki healing.

It is something you must carry on reading this article will look into doing at least the first level and in addition to healing yourself, others, property etcHow many students have said that we have become a Reiki healer, I suggest at least twice daily.Though it is suitable for Reiki is effective in every thought, feeling and movement of your body.To balance the subtle re-balancing of their energy be sent merely with thought.Reiki, as is well-known, is a method of treatment.However, survival issues can become a Reiki informational site.

#Reiki Energy Healers Near Me Unbelievable Cool Tips #Reiki Healing Cost

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docfuture · 7 years ago

Text

The Maker’s Ark - Chapter 40

[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post new chapters about every two weeks, but there will sometimes be short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready. The next chapter is planned for the week of October 23rd.]

Previous: Chapter 39

Three days ago...

Plutocrat listened while his deputy, Feng, explained the latest discovery. "...and then we found this--from the Russian asset markets." "Black Swan has been playing the copycat investors like a violin." Plutocrat scanned the relevant graphs and summaries on the monitors and frowned. "But that doesn't look right." "The projections group thinks she's preparing some kind of swap move. They don't know when, but they think she'll leverage the tension to extract--" "No," said Plutocrat. "Forget most of it--we can't tell who's who with any certainty. Look at this set: Heavy on outmoded industrial and petrochemical assets. They look like a long term bargain gamble. But that makes no sense for any of her money-making strategies." Feng frowned in return. "Part of some planned deal with the government?" "The present one? I think not. Edward?" "Yes?" came the precise voice of Plutocrat's UPPfone assistant from the speakers. "Summarize all recent, reliable, public information on attempted Russian government or oligarch actions against Black Swan." "Nothing since the initial speculation that an official policy change was being considered." "Nothing? That's unusual. Anything non-public you can tell me?" "Privacy block. Insider trading liability block. Security block." "Hmph." Plutocrat stroked his mustache. "The Volunteer is gone, Flicker and Doc Future are busy, and the EDU is embroiled with the Americans and the Grs'thnk. And the Russians have to be frustrated with Black Swan's countermeasures. They should be at least trying to see if they can get away with something." He called up another graph and considered, then felt a slow chill spread down his spine. "No. No, they must be. We aren't hearing about it because Black Swan doesn't want us to. She's already written off those assets. This isn't about making money. Not at all. They're bait." Feng looked incredulous. "Eight hundred million dollars worth of bait? Why would she need so much?" "To keep people from realizing it is bait. And trying to guess her method or timing is a fool's game." "Edward, is anyone on my owed favors list currently in Russia?" "No." "Good. Inform me if that changes. Feng, tell all divisions to steer clear of anything exposed to Russian political volatility. And prepare for a new wave of crisis overshoot reactions." "Yes, sir. Anything else?" Plutocrat drummed his fingers on the handle of his cane. "Yes. I'll want a consequence analysis of a nuclear strike against Black Swan. I believe her recent loitering spots are in range of the Russian ABM sites around Moscow." "Surely she wouldn't let one hit?" "This is Black Swan, my boy. I can follow the music when she makes money. For anything else, 'surely she wouldn't' is not a safe thing to say," said Plutocrat. "Not at all." ***** Two days ago...

Ambassador-at-large Wilson entered Director Reinhart's office and stopped in front of the desk. "It's done," he said. "All the notices have been delivered, acknowledged, and witnessed by the Auditors. The monitoring terms of the local law and custom violation complaint against Black Swan by the government of the Russian Federation under the EDU transition law framework take effect in two hours." She looked up briefly from the screens and nodded. "Thank you, Wilson. Their president is making a speech about it now. It will probably save some lives someday." "If you had let me clarify the EDU warning--" "Anything you might add to DASI's statement would just be denounced as another violation of sovereignty. This will establish several important precedents, and the Grs'thnk warning was quite well translated. I'm sure some of their diplomats understood and are keeping quiet or being ignored. Black Swan will escalate to a level two trade conflict and handle it without any official aid or intervention by the EDU. The Russians still see her as someone who makes diplomatic protests and gives out parking tickets. They've already attempted to assassinate two of her employees. Two of her Russian employees." "So how will the speech save lives?" asked Wilson, his mouth suddenly dry. "Because it's going to become famous. Kleptocrats will be scrambling to find any way to evade the EDU framework, and might be tempted to file a local custom complaint. Any competent advisor will remind them of what happened in Russia." ***** Yesterday...

Sam switched her display from a summary of the Grs'thnk refugee enclave construction in Greenland, which was progressing nicely, to the global UPPfone usage map. She frowned. "DASI?" "Yes?" "What's going on in Russia? Is this something to do with their law and custom complaint?" "Yes. I sent public safety warnings to UPPfone users in a number of areas, according to standard protocols." "That's not really an answer. Why?" "Information access is currently restricted, due to a temporary delay request filed by Black Swan and approved by the Auditors." "My access is restricted, too?" "For now. You are not at risk, and no action on your part is required." "Um. So when will that be lifted?" "That is also restricted. However, I can tell you that Black Swan still has a flight livestream scheduled for tomorrow." ***** Today.

The general paused his rant while his aide attempted to contact the Defense Ministry on the secure land line again, but the atmosphere in the control bunker was still tense. "I'm sorry, sir," said the aide. "They repeated that no one with authority is available." "Enough!" said the general. He was furious, his face a dangerous shade of purple. He turned to the battery commander. "Target is still acquired?" The battery commander licked his lips. "Yes. But..." "Then launch. My authority." He glanced at the general's guards. They looked back. Their weapons weren't pointed directly at him, but that could change very quickly. "Given the known defenses of the target," he said carefully, "I cannot guarantee a hit." "I cannot guarantee your life if you don't launch in sixty seconds!" "Sir." He put his key in the required slot and turned it, then turned to the launch tech. "Launch one."

The general assumed that the nuclear-tipped anti-ballistic missile would destroy Black Swan. The battery commander expected her to shoot it down. The launch tech thought she would dodge. The old maintenance sergeant, who was a pessimist and knew what the inspection reports for the last decade were worth, figured the ABM would probably malfunction in some way. None of them were right. ***** Black Swan hovered in the stratosphere over a sparsely populated area well north of Moscow. A small camera drone let her transmit her picture to watchers all over the world. She smiled. "Looks like you will get to see something special today." She spread her wings wide, and they unfolded, and unfolded, and unfolded. Soon they were a vast fine mesh. At the same time, the outlines of her body darkened and blurred, as she strengthened her inner force field and turned on the outer one. Beamed power poured down from EDU ships in orbit, supplementing her personal fusion plant. The ships had been duly leased and paid for in advance, all carefully documented for the watching Auditors. Xelian force fields had been designed for use by large warships in space. They were power hogs, they disrupted any intersecting solid matter, and they caused drag when moving through air at any significant speed. Black Swan was nowhere near the ground, had plenty of power, and wasn't currently trying to move. "I'm afraid selfies will end now, and there will be a brief interruption in the audio," she said. "But don't worry. I'll be back."

The missile reached its target. There was a great flash, and Black Swan turned white. ***** "More damned notice would have been nice!" said Doc. He looked up from his handcomp to glare at Stella. "You asked if I would handle any Earth-based political problems that would otherwise be relevant to you, in addition to my obligations as Director of the EDU, while you concentrated on portal physics. I agreed, and did, in consultation with Jumping Spider. Your objection now is a symptom of one of the problems I wished to discuss tonight. And if you really wanted to know, you could have set better interrupt filters for DASI." "Better filters?! Do you know which interrupt we're likely to get any--" "Priority interrupt," said DASI. "Detonation of a nuclear weapon." Nightmare memories screamed at him. Doc took a moment to place his handcomp carefully on the table in front of him, then closed his eyes. "Target. User. Casualties. Chance of nuclear response or escalation." "Black Swan. Russia. Zero. Negligible." Doc opened his eyes again. Stella was watching him, her face expressionless. "Negligible," he repeated. "Really." "Yes," said DASI. "Also, Jumping Spider wishes to monologue informatively. She is outside the door right now." Doc waved a hand. "Let her in." He glanced at Stella. "Unless you have an objection." "I do not. She is well rested and cheerful, and I am neither. She can explain."

Doc stared at the bowl Jumping Spider was holding out. "What?" she said. "You don't want any popcorn? Next thing you know, you'll tell me you don't want to watch Black Swan livestreaming while she disables the rest of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces." "No thank you. Just tell me what happened, please." Jumping Spider shook her head, then turned to Stella. "He's really gotten to be a wet blanket, hasn't he? My condolences." "We're both tired," said Stella. "Ah," said Jumping Spider. "I'll be brief, then." She put the popcorn bowl on the table and flopped into one of the chairs. "You up on the local custom rule?" she asked Doc. "I am now. Didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to invoke it without reading the usage precedents for the Grs'thnk law it was based on." "Someone was going to make that mistake; Black Swan just made sure it was Russia. Which let her cripple a god as a bonus." "Cripple a god?" "Atom-bomb the Destroyer. Still has quite a few followers. But now, people are going to figure out that a national nuclear arsenal isn't something you can use or credibly threaten to use anymore. Nukes can't kill her, so they're a liability; a vulnerable bit of national prestige that Black Swan can take away humiliatingly whenever she wants, without--and this is important--hurting the rest of a country." "Ah. She'll leave the subs and bombers alone for now?" "Yup. That makes sure their new government still has something to worry about losing while everyone adjusts. And it keeps China and the US from getting too giddy in the meantime." "Reasonable. But I still want to know how she managed to get them to invoke a rule that gave her access to any local political dispute resolution tactics in living memory. Which meant Stalin." Jumping Spider grinned. "Oh, there were lots of nuances. She has to have been planning this from the beginning, shaping greed and overconfidence. But personally delivering the satellite parking ticket to the US IC was the masterstroke. Made them underestimate her just enough." "I see. How many dead?" "Don't know yet. I'd guess dozens or hundreds. Not thousands. Quite a few people are hiding, or have just disappeared. And there appears to have been a major dispute between civil and military intelligence over who was couping who; Lubyanka is still on fire. But the deaths will likely include the most powerful dozen or so in the government and every Russian billionaire." "Civil war?" "Oh no. At least not soon. The deputy assistant foreign minister is calling for calm, and most everyone still alive will eventually find out things aren't nearly as bad as they could have been. But I've become psychic! There have only been hints so far, but I'll bet I can tell you how the top five died." "Oh?" Jumping spider held up her hand and ticked off fingers one-by-one. First finger. "Ricin poisoning." Second finger. "Thallium poisoning." Third finger. "Polonium-210 poisoning." Little finger. "Warfarin poisoning." Thumb. "And just to make everything crystal clear... An ice-axe to the head." Doc looked down. "According to custom." "According to custom." Jumping Spider grinned. "So, smartest man in the world. Designer of the mind that became Black Swan. You wanna bet?" "No bet," he said softly.

Next: Chapter 41

#Maker's Ark #FallofDocFuture #FallMisc

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trbl-will-find-me · 7 years ago

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Every Exit, An Entrance (7/?)

There are two (and only two) possibilities: either she led XCOM to victory and they are now engaged in a clean up operation of alien forces, or XCOM was overrun, clearing the way for an alien-controlled puppet government to seize control of the planet.

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option.

chapter cw: brief, non-graphic depiction of torture Masterpost of all updates available here

She jumps when the doors to the Situation Room open, startled from her nap by a concerned looking Central Officer. “Did you sleep here?”

“What time is it?”

“0800.”

“Just for the last hour and a half, then. I think I know what’s causing the energy spikes.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“It’s the Fog Pods.”

“What?”

“It’s the Fog Pods. I’m almost sure of it. It’s the only answer that makes sense.”

He lowers himself into a chair. “I’m listening.”

“On a hunch, I looked for missions we’d run in a fifty mile radius of the last recorded spike. What I pulled up was this,” she says, sending the footage to the large screen.

“The attack in Buenos Aires. Wasn’t that the one where Bernard---”

“Yup. And, rewatching the footage,” she says, calling up the incident in question. “This popped out at me.”

She replays the moment. “See the Fog Pod Hershel’s behind?”

“It’s one case, Commander.”

She shakes her head. “It’s bigger than that. I started pulling footage from other areas where we’ve seen spikes: Beijing, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Munich, Berlin, DC. The Fog Pods show up in all of the footage, so we’ve got a confirmed presence. We’ve ruled everything else out. We did our homework; we can rule out almost every other alien tech we’ve encountered. The Fog Pods are the one damn thing we forgot. That I forgot.”

“You didn’t forget. Other things had to take priority.”

“I didn’t even instruct our people to keep track of them!”

“If they’re what’s giving off these energy readings, they’ve kept track of themselves.”

“How did I miss this?”

“Weapons. Armor. Medkits. Live captures. Flight computers. You weren’t exactly leaving the research team idle.”

“But this!” She buries her head in her hands. “I have a Doctorate in Biodefense! This is inexcusable!”

“And we’ve been monitoring environmental data for cities where we’ve had active incursions. It’s been clean. If you’re right, we’ve still got time.”

“But we don’t have a pod.”

“Not even in storage?”

She shakes her head. “I really fucked us up.” She groans. “Time to go beg for the Council’s mercy.”

“Not … like that,” he says, eying her over. “Go get some sleep and come back with a uniform.”

“We don’t ---“

“It’s not going to be a pleasant call. It never is. It’s going only going to be worse if you go into it sleep-deprived.”

Her shoulders droop. “What if I’ve just set us back? What if … what if this is something coming? Some delayed onset weapon?”

“They’re not gonna bring that ship back into existence.”

“But what if they’re a bio agent? Those things take years to counter, and that’s assuming we even can.”

“They haven’t activated.”

“But they could. Our last, best hope is to stop them before they do, and we don’t even have one to pull apart. That’s not even mentioning the potential biohazard we take on bringing it here.”

“I’m not debating you on any of that. But your last call with the Council was … not the most productive. This is going to be contentious at best, hostile at worst. You’re not ready for that on … what, four hours of sleep?”

“Four and a half.”

“Point stands. You’ve got a lead now, which is more than you had last night. Get some rest. I’ll make the call and get things set.”

“I’m not winning this argument, am I?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Alright then,” she says, standing. “I surrender.”

“Commander?”

“Yeah?” She asks, halfway through pulling the sweater over her head.

“Isn’t that my shirt?”

“It was.”

He chuckles. “Looks better on you anyway.”

She winks at him. “See you in a few hours.”

“Maybe in your own uniform?”

“Might raise questions if I showed up in yours. Would have to skip the pants.”

She takes no small delight in the flush blooming under his collar.

-- It’s a quiet few days. When she sleeps, she dreams of happier times.

Well, happier possibilities, if she’s being accurate.

They’re not bad dreams, but they leave an ache in her chest when every time she wakes up. At least in dreams, the aliens lost. At least in dreams, she can call her mom. At least in dreams, she can see the people who had become her dearest friends.

At least in dreams, Central is talking to her.

She tries to focus on the good. She’s really gotten a feel for the dynamics at play among the crew. She knows that Kelly is the one who has Central’s ear, and it’s Wallace and Royston who have Kelly’s. Thomas’s mouth likes to write cheques his performances can’t cash, whether it’s on the range or in the underbrush, but it never seems to dull his enthusiasm. Krieger and Gunda are already a matched set, an optimist and a pessimist united by a desire to take a little blood in the name of all that’s been spilled. Moon and Zaytsev are the jokesters, always the guilty ones when a prank’s afoot. Shen has an almost masterful control over her engineers, while Tygan struggles to keep his scientists in line. Dysfunctional as it is, they have formed their own little ersatz family, and adopted her right along into it.

Then there are the more nuanced factors, the things she can’t quite put her finger on. Royston and Central are at each other’s throats more often than not, but that’s not the whole picture. It doesn’t explain how he makes sure she eats dinner no matter what’s transpired earlier in the day, or the swing she takes at Thomas after he’s thrown around one too many jokes about liver failure. It certainly doesn’t explain the ice he’d brought her, reprimand free, after he’d needed to break up the ensuing scuffle or the sight she’d caught of them in the bar, his head in his arms, and Sally next to him, beer bottle in hand, with a look of worry on her face.

People have always been, and will always be, complex. Alien invaders don’t change human nature.

“Commander,” Tygan calls over the comm. “When you have a moment, I think you’ll want to see this.”

“On my way.”

During their last op, they’d managed to pull a large cache of data off of the ADVENT network. Tygan’s team had been busy perfecting the program to decode it, and had evidently made some progress.

“Commander,” he says, as she descends into the lab.

“Doctor. What have you got for me?”

He gives her a brief rundown of their findings, news on supply and troop movements to some off the beaten path facility. They’re sure it’s important, but they can’t begin to fathom its purpose; perhaps they should devote resources towards learning more about it?

She nods. “I’ll do what I can.” “There’s also the … other matter of what we found.”

Tygan presses a datapad into her hands. “Okay?” She asks, uncertain.

“There are files pertaining to your … captivity with ADVENT. Once the team realized what they were … I didn’t feel it was our place to look. They’ve been localized on the datapad as a means of keeping them off the XCOM network, given their … personal nature.”

She bites her lip. “I appreciate the discretion, Doctor. Thanks.”

“Our work on their encryption has also led us to some potential new ideas on how to handle long distance communication. With your permission, we’d like to pursue it.”

“Of course,” she nods. “My thanks to your team.”

The walk back to her quarters feels like a dream. She doesn’t like to isolate herself, but she’s not prepared to view whatever contents they’ve recovered with an audience. The men need to believe she’s here and whole, and that means not letting them see when goes to pieces --- as she suspects she’s about to.

She remembers more of her captivity than she likes to think about. In the week and a half she’s been out of the tank, it’s come back to her more vibrantly than she would like. She’s learned to ignore it, to tamp down the flashes, the little things. The crew keeps her busy and she’s eternally thankful to them for it.

When she’d first come to in the holding cell, stripped to her underwear and a hospital gown, it was terror. Overwhelming terror. No gun, no knife, and the only visible exit without any kind of opening mechanism.

XCOM was gone. She’d known it in her bones. Her best hope was that someone had managed to escape, to warn the Council, and that the rest had died without suffering. She’d hoped Royston and Martin got a chance to say the words they very obviously needed to, and that Molchetti and Hershel hadn’t seen one another’s fate.

And Central. John. She remembered tearing up. She wasn’t religious, but she’d offered prayers up to whatever might be out there that it had been quick, and that it hadn’t been one of their own who’d done him in.

She should have told him. She should have said something. Should have should have should have. Too late.

From there, it had only gotten worse.

She remembers the sick horror that had filled her at the site of cells identical to hers, opaque black, but still clearly occupied. Not him, not him, not him, she’d prayed. Not like this not here not him.

The first file on the datapad is a prisoner profile. It lists her name, her date of birth, her identifying characteristics, degree of psionic potential, everything you’d need at a glance. Scanning through, there’s notes about her resistance to psionic interrogation, a talent for resisting mind control attempts.

Extreme will, potentially useful for our purposes, the document reads. Will need to rely on more direct interrogation methods.

She’s not sure if she wants to laugh or vomit.

May be useful in locating additional assets.

Although, drinking herself numb is starting to sound like a better solution.

Subject shows particular concern for John Bradford. Intel indicates XCOM second-in-command. May be useful asset in securing subject’s cooperation or as complement.

You don’t have to do this, she tells herself. You don’t have to go through this at all. Put the datapad down You don’t have to relive this.

Except she does.

The next file is a video. It’s strange to see herself on the table, the device she’d come to hate so ferociously already prepped for intrusion.

“There’s no need to make this hard on yourself, Commander,” the Ethereal purrs.

“Go to hell,” she spits, voice already raw from screaming,

“We’re willing to accommodate your ... needs.”

“Leave him alone.”

“It would make your integration much more efficient. You’ve already developed an admirable system for coworking. Your relationship is well-established.”

“I’d just as soon do us both in.” “Very well, if you’re going to be this difficult.”

A leering Thin Man flips a switch and she screams as the device punctures her cranial cavity.

She sets the datapad down, and presses a finger against the gnarled scar at the base of her skull. Brute force was too delicate a term to describe the process. Yes, she could fight psionic interrogation, but direct stimulation of the neural pathways was a considerably different matter.

The final file is a list of high value assets. Devorah Hershel. Isabella Molchetti. Edouard Martin. John Bradford.

God, she’d kill for a drink. Then again, with her luck, Central would be in the bar, make one wrong comment, and she’d haul off and hit him anyway., assurances to Shen and Tygan be damned. Wouldn’t that just be the fucking cherry on her day?

Wait a second.

Her eyes dart from the datapad to the door and back again. You’re an idiot, she thinks. Central is the person who needs to see this the most. This might be the only thing that gets him to talk to you.

She takes a deep breath, and tries to settle the nausea in her stomach. She’ll need to execute this carefully.

“Sally,” she says, pressing her finger to her comm. “Can I see you in my quarters when you have a moment?”

“On my way!”

The knock on the door comes faster than she was expecting, but she ushers the younger Royston in quickly.

“I have an … unpleasant favor to ask you.”

“Alright, what is it?”

She hands the girl the datapad. “I need you to take this to Central, and I need you to make sure he goes through it.”

Sally cocks her head. “Can I ask why?”

“It’s not locked,” she says, offering the girl a pointed look.

Sally furrows her brow, then nods slowly as the implication dawns on her.

“You got it, ma’am. I’ll make it happen.”

She sends the girl on her way, then collapses onto the bed, burying her face into the pillows. God, she needs a nap.

#xcom #fic #every exit an entrance #central/commander

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sinetheta · 7 years ago

Photo

Conversation with Sad Asian Girls (formerly Esther Fan & Olivia Park)

As Fan and Park, known collectively as Sad Asian Girls, announced the dissolution of their partnership about two months ago, we decided to post the interview that Sine Theta magazine’s art director Elisabeth Siegel conducted with the duo last November in full as a fun retrospective and tribute to their amazing work. The interview is available in print form in Sine Theta Issue 3: “LIGHT 阴.” We at Sine Theta are excited for what’s to come for Fan and Park!

Esther Fan and Olivia Park, current seniors at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the U.S., founded Sad Asian Girls (SAG) as a duo, in order to carve out a creative space for Asian femmes, and to encourage them to create content and break out of the stereotypical mold prescribed by other non-Asians or non-femmes.

I met Esther and Olivia in person for the first time deep in Yale’s underground library, where they gave a casual graphic design workshop. While at Yale, they also participated in a conversation about being Asian femme creators at the Asian American Cultural Center (AACC). The way they shared their expertise along with the constructive criticism they gave attendees was reminiscent of the SAG brand and style: they’d package their thoughts into seemingly simplistic bundles or iconography, yet the underlying messages contained within were fresh, completely accessible, and totally effective.

I had the chance to chat with them over Skype and pick their brain about Asian femme identity, as well as their current and future plans as a collective.

Elisabeth Siegel: So just to start out, how did you two meet? How did SAG get started?

Olivia Park: We met essentially through classes, and then while working together on non-SAG related projects, we noticed similarities regarding our identities, and through that we decided to make work related to the Asian femme experience.

Esther Fan: We both realized that we both seemed to be the few students in our department interested in social issues or making work about it, and also the first time we collaborated it was about millennial culture, and then we moved on to things more specific to ourselves.

ES: So, the “Asian femme experience” — could you talk more about what you define that as, and what you find unique to the Asian femme identity versus Asians in general?

EF: I think at the moment there is a lot of talk about feminism and the various experiences that women have in a mostly male dominated society. Once you add Asian to that label, the experience is narrowed down, yet the experience is still so common.

OP: One thing that is unique is invisibility of Asian presence, especially in media, and healthcare in general, specifically mental health awareness — almost everything. We’re kind of just not regarded. On the one hand, I understand, because we’re only 5% or 6% of the population [in America], but we still are part of the population, and we’re the fastest growing, so America just really needs to be aware at this point.

EF: I think the experience of an Asian femme is so specific because the expectations put on women in Asian culture is quite different from the western expectations of women. It’s still similar in the fact that we need to be secondary to men and things like that, and also it depends on each family. But for us, both of our parents were or are still Christian and conservative, and the kind of things that they try to teach us in how to be a perfect woman and be the perfect “wife-y package” contributed a lot to us trying to tell our stories about Asian femmes.

ES: I definitely know what you mean. When it comes to western versus eastern as a binary — even though I think calling it an absolute binary can be quite harmful — in general, the experience for women is very different.

As you know, Sine Theta is specifically by and for those experiencing the Sino diaspora. How does the more unique experience of being part of a diaspora shaped or informed your art, on an individual level or in your collaborated projects?

OP: There are so many moments where we have identity crises. It just becomes more and more important to find something to hold onto and identify with, and so things like food become a cultural recognition and almost an awakening, and conversations happen through those moments. The “Have You Eaten?” video was a lot about the conversations we would have [with our families], and a way to have that initiated was by eating the food of our motherland.

ES: I wanted to ask you guys about specifically the name “Sad Asian Girls.” I get the asian girls part, that’s pretty obvious. I was wondering if you could talk about the inspiration behind “sad” and why you settled on SAG.

EF: It really started off just as having to think of a name really quickly so we could make a YouTube account to upload the [“Have You Eaten?”] video. It was a parody of the “sad girls club” that happens on Tumblr, and it seemed natural. Over time, when we gained a following, it started to take on a meaning of its own. In a later video, we mentioned that the term “Sad” could refer to the frustrations of having to live with both our parents’ cultures and western cultures, and the type of identity crisis that usually comes with that. Now, we just kind of kept the term sad and Asian, for consistency, and it’s kind of created an identity of its own.

ES: What sort of identity would that be? Also, as for the “identity crisis,” do you think sadness is a part of what causes the crisis, or a result of it?

EF: Maybe both, but probably more so a result of it. We’re born into having to juggle between two different identities. I think when people hear SAG, it sounds something they can resonate with, usually more ironically than seriously.

OP: I also think the name has done a lot for us. You almost immediately get an idea of what we’re about. If we were called the “Asian Student Art Collective” that might just sound like we’re trying to foster a community of neutral art that could be even purely aesthetic. But SAG says something that signals oppression, something that signals hurt, and I think that’s where the root of our work comes from. It’s from the hurt. At the same time, if you look at our work, it’s about being proactive and storing that sadness into something positive.

ES: Sometimes within activism against oppression, it can be difficult to maintain a certain level of sadness or anger, because it gets tiring...I’ve experienced this in some activist circles, that as you move forward it can be harder and harder to maintain emotional momentum.

OP: So you’re asking, how do we feel motivated to do things despite sadness?

ES: That’s definitely part of it. And with “Sad” in your name, how is “sadness” maintained in your art? Does that ever get tiring?

OP: I think also that our visuals matter a lot. If we were to use a grungy filter with blue and green it might appear to be a little more soft, mellow, kind of like “Flickr-artsy.” But we intentionally use high contrast. We blow up our typography, we use bold reds. Our site is like 255 RGB red. We always use 255 because that’s the brightest red the computer’s got so we’re going to use it. We also changed our typeface to Noto, which is Google’s free typeface that can be translated into every language. These are all very intentional design choices that we’ve made and it’s loud and it’s clear and it’s sad. Some people have said that our visual language comes off as more angry than sad, but anger to me is a more intensified form of sadness. Anger is what results when you experience sadness with no resolution. I think it’s fitting.

EF: The thing is, being a marginalized group, and this goes for any marginalized group, things aren’t ever wholly resolved. We can make progress little by little, but there is always going to be something else that is making us “sad.” In terms of a resolution for sadness, simply use that sadness as a tool or a motivation for making, a fuel for making activist art. It sounds kind of pessimistic, but without sadness and without frustration and things like that, there wouldn’t be powerful art. The strongest pieces that work come from hardships. So to answer your question as best as I can, every project that we make is based on an existing issue in the world that makes us “sad.”

ES: This issue’s theme is “Light,” and we’re going with that as also talking about the Chinese concepts yin and yang, and the tons of meaning imbued in both yin and yang. Yin has various meanings, but some of the ones that we’re looking at also have to do with femininity, as well as passivity. You mentioned “Sad Asian Girls” was an ironic title you were giving yourselves — how do you go about subverting that title within self-application?

OP: First of all, I think no matter what people are going to interpret it wrong. Some people will. So it’s all about clarity. After repeating ourselves so many times in interviews, we only solidified our stance. At first, I don’t think we explained it well enough or enforced the idea. It’s good to start out strong and confidently and go with that and stand up for it, instead of starting weak and having to explain yourself and have to apologize over and over again, going back to changing your idea or your message. Know what you’re doing. Make it strong, make it unapologetic.

EF: I think transparency is also important. Most people who start out activist work are really excited or really angry and they want to make their content as fast as they can, sometimes without thinking how that’s going to happen or how that’s going to be successful. And I think that’s okay, you need to keep that fire going, but if you do make a mistake or decide that you want to go in a different direction, that has to be clear in your work too, and so that’s why in our presentations and things we’ve kind of discussed our successes and our failures, and why we took a break, things like that. Somebody in my class last night was talking about how a lot of the time when people want to be activists or go to protests or do something, they are really excited and they do too much and they go overboard and there ends up being consequences or it fails or their project doesn’t work, and then that discourages them from doing anything else ever again. But I think after you’re excited it’s important to step back and really think critically about how you’re going to move forward and how to make whatever impact you make last and not be impulsive.

ES: To step back and look more at SAG’s presence as a collective — your site in November said you were in the process of re-branding. What is that process like?

OP: Mostly using accessible typefaces, things that people can get for free. We were using Futura before, and a lot of that typeface some people won’t have, so we thought that everybody should be able to mimic Sad Asian Girls’ vernacular. So we’re basically making it easier for people to copy us and to share the same visuals.

EF: Also making it more legible. We cut down on a lot of text on the website and different sections where everything was displayed out on one page.

OP: We don’t want to look like you have to be an angry tattooed girl.

EF: And that’s why we added that dinky little sad face. It’s a cheeky way of holding onto the sad sentiment but in a way that is still bold. It implies that there’s more that you can do with it. [Rebranding] is more about making projects in the future with the same language. I think once we generate more content with the visual language as the same as our website, with our new logo, the new brand will be more solidified.

ES: What has been your favorite work that you worked on together for SAG?

OP: It’s definitely the next project. We always get super excited about the next project, because every time, we improve. Every project gives us more experience on what we like and what we don’t like, and how to work better or narrow down our process, or things like that. It’s kind of like how your favorite song is the last song you’ve heard.

EF: Nice analogy. Wow.

ES: You guys probably don’t want to spoil what it’s going to be…

OP: It’s probably going to be about the lack of visibility in galleries, which are white spaces. It’s a commentary more specific to the art field and scene. Since we’re both graphic designers and we’re both graduating soon, it’s kind of expected that we immerse into that field. Just seeing the lack of example, and also lack of invitation of femme identities makes us worried or concerned and so we’re kind of making a statement about that.

EF: Being in art school you definitely learn a lot about the art world, and how it’s programmed to benefit white male artists. Our entire curriculum is based on white male artists. The few times that there are female artists, it’s almost in a tokenizing way. Like how the Guerilla Girls did their thing about more women in museums, and last weekend we went to the MOMA just to look around, and they were selling Guerilla Girls’ merch for profit, but we aren’t seeing any more women in museums. Their work was there just for show, basically. I think this upcoming project focuses more on actually trying to inject the Asian femme identity into these faces that are mostly predominantly white, male and old.

ES: Right! One of the topics that I heard come out of the discussion at the Asian American Cultural Center while you were at Yale was the room full of silence whenever an artist makes a work concerning race. Could you elaborate on that?

EF: We talked about how another group in our school, called Black Artists and Designers, made a project called the Room of Silence, which is what happens when a student of color decides to make a project about their race, and the different dynamics that come with that. The room full of silence occurs because nobody else who isn’t a person of color knows how to critique it, out of fear of seeming racist or they’re just indifferent, or they just don’t think it applies to them.

OP: This was a video of several interviews of mostly black students, there was asian and latinx students in their too.

EF: It kind of went viral in our school, and some professors showed it to their students. Our professor showed it to us, and I feel like it was again just to show that they know that it exists, and to show that “I’m not like other professors.” They also attempted to have a conversation and at Yale we also talked about how when our class was shown the video, nobody still knew how to talk about it. Some people were falling asleep, some people didn’t watch the whole thing, and the professor said, “Are we done talking about it? Do you want to move on? Okay…,” and then Olivia got mad about it, and she said, “No, I think you need to force the students to talk about it. It’s such an important thing that’s happening in our school, and you can’t brush it off like a snazzy project.”

OP: And even Esther added on to that conversation, but that was kind of the end, though.

EF: The last thing I said about that was that I called out one white male student in our class who consistently makes average work, but the professors would always be into it, because his being a white male makes it seem like his work is conceptual and more than it really is. Other students whose English isn’t that great, or who have accents, the professors tend to skip over them because they subconsciously feel like people who have accents are less intelligent, and that’s what I talked about. Even though that video happened, and we also had a protest last year, the school has kind of gone back to the way it was, it kind of seen as those students of color just being angry again.

OP: I think that people do want to make change, but it’s an institution after all, and for an institution to work well while pleasing everyone that is in power right now, there’s not much change that can be done, except for maybe cultural attitudes. That’s what activists and artists are doing right now, to give a voice to who we are and what we want versus what is actually happening.

ES: Could each of you talk about what your favorite thing is when working with the other person?

OP: That’s a good question. Why don’t you go first? [Laughs.]

EF: There’s a lot of things I love, there’s a lot of things I hate. Let’s do that thing from Kindergarten where you say two compliments and one criticism. When we work together, we generate ideas in conversations at the same time, but usually Olivia comes up with better ideas for execution, or places we can go, or like forms that we can use. And then I’m the person who’s doing the tweaks and how to make things say something more clearly. I’m really picky about language, like I need every sentence to say exactly what it needs to say. But I think that’s fine. I think we make a good pair in that sense, where I have things I want to talk about, and sometimes I introduce them to Olivia, and then we sit down and we discuss ideas. We have really different aesthetic tastes, and sometimes we argue over that—

OP: And that’s over stupid stuff, like over whether to make one thing twenty percent desaturated or not. We will fight for a day and I’ll be like, Okay, I don’t really care about this project anyway. And I’ll be super petty. So I think [Esther] summed it up pretty well, like I’ll come up with a weird idea, and Esther will come up with how to make it more practical, more economical. So I guess Esther really puts it together.

EF: Awww.

OP: I also spend so much fucking time on the internet that I feel like a lot of things that come up in Internet culture or social media, the different things that people talk about I like to inject in our projects sometimes.

ES: As seniors are your plans for graduation, post-graduation? Do you plan on still working together as a collective?

OP: I think that’s a really good question actually. I think we both know that we can’t undo being activist-artists anymore. At first, I really cared about food packaging or whatnot, and I couldn’t give less of a shit right now. So I think we’ll be working closely with the Asian community no matter what we do, or where we end up.

EF: Because we don’t know where we’re going to end up, as in we’re probably going to be in different states or different countries, even if we aren’t able to continue managing this Sad Asian label, I think we still will continue to make work that is relevant to our identities, or at least some type of activist work. When I’ve said this to other friends, that Sad Asian Girls probably isn’t going to be forever, they saw it as this tragic thing. But people don’t need a snazzy name to make activist work. And I think what we’ve been doing so far is encouraging other Asian femmes to continue making work, knowing that we might not continue doing it together. Ideally, people will still make work and not really need a group like us to do it.

OP: What’s more important is that young people — we’re millennials, but what about gen z? — need to get it together and make work and that’s what we’re trying to do, have some type of presence so that they know it’s an option to make work, and that’s important to me. It’s also so easy. Executing a project or thinking up ideas is so simple, and I feel like based on what I’ve read about your generation, you guys are so much more active, and you guys care so much more about social issues than previous generations, and that kind of excites me, because I wonder where you guys are going to go with that. Hopefully it’s not the new high school phase, hopefully you all bring that to college with you.

EF: You’re born on the internet. Everyone’s on the internet, so you have a bigger audience. It’s better for you. You can get your stuff out. That’s why design matters more and more. You can only get more publicity and more circulation if you have a strong voice and what you say matters to a lot of people.

ES: I’ve noticed very recently [during November] on your Instagram there’s been a lot of posts styled after what you’ve just talked about. What was that project?

OP: We went to New York a couple days ago, and there was an event called “Scamming the Patriarchy,” at the New Museum, and a ton of small art collectives got together and made art installations and also talks. Our assignment was to do some kind of instagram takeover, so we posted one video on the main museum page, and on our Instagram we got submissions from femme creatives in general to send encouraging words to other femmes. We got 90 submissions or so, and we had a lot of positive feedback.

EF: That project again came from an issue that has frustrated a lot of marginalized groups in America. We planned that project as a result of the election. During that time, what people really wanted to hear was not more facts about Trump. They wanted to hear from other people, who were in similar situations, about how to move forward, and also how to take care of yourself and where we can look to at this time. Having so many statements and just bombarding everybody who follows us with those posts also had an effect.

ES: In the same style as the Instagram posts, what sort of advice would you give to other sad Asian femmes right now?

OP: If you have a good idea, try to find the people that would love your idea, and do something with them. Even if it’s just one random small thing that you don’t even know will make a difference, if it reaches out to at least one person, I think it’s so worth it. Just make work, and generate content, and think about the way that you’re going to publish it. The web is an amazing place, and you should take advantage of it.

EF: I probably have less of a place to say anything [post-election], because I’m Canadian, but I do think that in times of turmoil, or in the event of tragic occurrences, it is important to grieve and process what is happening and be around people if that’s what you need (or be alone if that’s what you need). But also keep in mind that staying in that state of depression, not that it doesn’t change anything, but it also will hurt you in the long run. While it is trying to process things and maybe isolate yourself, I think self-care also includes doing something about it, or expressing your thoughts in a productive way that other people can resonate with. And creating community is a really crucial part of self-care.

OP: You are not alone! Don’t forget that. •

Interview & Illustrations by Elisabeth Siegel

sinθ is an international print-based creative arts magazine made by and for the sino diaspora. Values include creative expression, connection, and empowerment. Find out more here.

Follow our Sino arts blog for daily posts featuring Sino creatives and their works.

Issue 5 will be released in August 2017.

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#sad asian girls #esther fan #olivia park #sad asian femmes #rhode island school of design #sine theta magazine #written #interview #conversation #issue3

16 notes · View notes

bangtan-spells · 8 years ago

Text

Yoongi Scenario: Through The Fire.

Request: I want to request one for yoongi where you are his gf and you start living together and news of it goes out to the press so the sasaengs start being crazy and all that and you two keep it together and strong but then there's a really creepy person/girl who continuously goes there to bother you so you try to ignore it but then one time she gets inside and tries to attack you and yoongi protects you? Sorry if its too much, thank you! You are great writers

Genre: Romance / Drama.

-It’s best if we just stay home for today- Yoongi said as you two checked out how the news developed online.

You were sitting together on the sofa, with Yoongi’s laptop over his legs and your head resting on his right shoulder so you could see everything he did and read. There were several pictures of you together scattered all over the internet, with even more articles that narrated the dating scandal, too many of them with added details that weren’t true.

-They even said you gave me a car- you said not helping the little laugh that came next, it was ridiculous since you were basically always in public transport.

-Yeah, I don’t know where that came from, maybe that what time you were driving mine- he mused still rolling down the articles.

-You are not too late to make their speculations come true though- you snickered making Yoongi stare at you with an amazed incredulous smile.

-Aren’t you kind, just to please the masses- he laughed too.

-Of course, you know I live for the greater good-

-I guess I could…-

-Yoongi!- you interrupted him. -I’m joking, God, maybe when we’re a bit more stable after all the apartment shopping, then you can help me- you said trying to get away from his poking attacks.

The laughs died down as Yoongi’s phone rang for the umpteenth time that day, he saw who it was and disregarded the call, there were way too many people calling him, including online gossip sites that wanted to get some words from him about the girl in the photos, you. You kept going through google and naver, seeing several sites so you could know to which extent was this spreading and how people was reacting.

Both of you were planning to make your relationship public soon after moving together, but someone had snapped a few shots during the moving process which added to the fact that there were previous rumors of Yoongi seeing a girl only left everyone the choice to take it as if it was proved.

Big Hit was taking the matter professionally and not out of proportion like some companies would, you appreciated that they treated your relationship like a normal thing and not as if it was a major crime or a sin. So at first you were being positive about it, Yoongi being the one worrying that this would cause you trouble, but then Yoongi worried about every single thing, you figured it was your job to help him look at the situation without such a pessimistic sight. Big Hit was taking care of the gossip and the press, the boys were supportive about you two together, they were not young boys anymore, and Bangtan had such a strong fan base, you could take this, everything was going to be ok. Even if the comment section of the site you were reading lead you to think that it wasn’t that simple.

Yoongi oppa can’t do this to us This is betrayal This is all her fault She’s a bitch She must be a slut that’s tricking him These are lies I hope she dies soon

Yoongi clenched his jaw and shook his head in disapproval, staring at you who just tried to keep a straight and calm face for his sake, it was disturbing that people would wish someone’s dead just because they were dating their idol.

-It’s just meaningless comments on the internet, it doesn’t mean anything- you said in a reassuring voice, leaning to him to take the laptop of his hands to put it aside. This was something you wouldn’t be able to avoid, but for now you needed a break, only that now Yoongi looked pissed.

-I knew there were going to be malicious comments- he said after a short while. -I knew it, but still fucking surprises me that there are fucking people not accepting that I have a damn life-

-Yoongi…-

-And that I can choose whoever I want and that they should respect that person, is it that hard to do? For fuck’s sake, I can’t understand this shit-

-I knew it too babe, let’s just not focus on that, people can say whatever they want- you said getting closer to him until you were practically straddling him. -They can bicker and they can insult online- he huffed obviously not agreeing with that but you caressed his cheeks and up his forehead until your fingers went trough his hair. -At the end of the day we are together, you and me- you smiled at him, a little smile without showing your teeth. -If we are together then it will be ok-

Yoongi sighed deeply, his hands going from your hips to then settle on your waist.

-You’re too good, we’ll have to be careful-

You nodded leaning down lo peck him. -We will-

Everybody could agree that the people saying horrible things and wishing ill to both you and Yoongi weren’t really his fans or BTS’s fans, they were sasaengs, and in all honesty they were scary.

You tried to not voice it out too much, or show the worry in front of Yoongi who was already having a hard time dealing with the press and the constant questions about you and his personal life, that aside of him being extra careful and attentive towards you. Yoongi was generally a protective boyfriend, not that he would be following you everywhere, his care was in the details, he was always making sure that you had everything you needed, that you ate well, that you arrived home safely, that you were positive he would be there in no time in case you needed him.

With the current situation you could notice that he was very much preoccupied when you had to go out alone, which was everyday since you needed to work.

A week had passed since the news of your relationship went out, and a little less than that since Big Hit had confirmed it to the public, saying that Yoongi was going to pursue a future with his girlfriend and that he as well as BTS asked the fans to be supportive and to respect their privacy. Some of them were complying with it, a lot of them rather reluctantly, but there were still malicious comments and threats towards you.

-Be careful- Yoongi told you when you were finishing getting ready. Today you were going out first since his schedule started later. -Watch around when you are walking-

-Yes babe- you answered brushing your hair but turning your eyes to him. -It’s ok-

He clicked his tongue and took a step towards you, taking the brush away from you. -I’m serious, if you see a group or a strange car coming to you you go the other way, you don’t know the kind of shit I read last night, I don’t even know how people can be so… they are teenage girls godammit-

-Stop reading those comments- you scolded him although you knew well he wouldn’t, after all you couldn’t stop reading them either, death threats. It was unbelievable, you didn’t think they were true, but still.

-I won’t, be careful Y/N, please-

-Alright- you nodded smiling a little.

He nodded back, staring at you still with his pajamas on and his hair disheveled. -I’ll take you there-

You smiled more and kissed him. -You know traffic will eat your time if you do that, you need to be at Big Hit by nine-

He groaned. -Then I’ll just go already, wait me up just ten minutes-

Yoongi and the managers were doing everything they could so the situation didn’t go out of hand. But the best solution for everyone was to give it time, people would calm down, the news would die down eventually and everything would be getting back to normal.

Only that it was proving to be easier said than done, moreover when the sasaengs found out your phone number.

They flooded it with threats and insults, calling you so much that you had to turn the thing off. Yoongi was furious, so even if you were angry you tried to control it, the two of you getting overly pissed wouldn’t help anything. After a couple of days of not being able to use your phone you decided it was best to just buy another line and put this to rest. Only that Yoongi insisted to the company to do something else, so this time Big Hit put out a warning about taking legal measures if any of you were to be harassed in any way.

Almost three weeks had gone by since your relationship was public. People were still baffled that Yoongi was living with a girl that he hadn’t married yet, but generally you were doing great. It was sunday and Yoongi had had an easy schedule, he came back home at seven in the night determined to get a nap since he was tired. You on the other hand were doing some chores and planning ahead things you’ll need to get done in the week, you were writing things down in a notebook when the bell rang.

You wondered who could it be since you hadn’t invited anyone, but then you thought that maybe it was one of the boys coming for a quick visit. You peeked through the little hole to see a box on the floor. You opened the door carefully, but no one was in the hallway, what grabbed your attention was the box, it was clear and beautifully decorated, inside you could admire a really good looking cake.

Taking it you examined the little card on it.

Sorry for all the hardships Y/N, please enjoy something sweet, make Yoongi eat too.

You awed after reading it, it was signed with the names of the boys. They were really thoughtful and sweet, this wasn’t their fault at all, but the gesture put a smile on your face.

You thought about calling Yoongi to come eat, but you smiled mischievously as you resolved that it was best if you surprised him in bed with a piece of cake.

You prepared the plates and everything you needed, taking off the lid to cut the cake. You slid the knife through it only that it didn’t go swiftly as you were expecting and cracking crunchy noises could be heard. A gasp left you mouth when the cover of the cake fell down, like it was only a shell hiding its insides.

You let the knife fall with a strident sound, getting away from the counter top as fast as you could. When you saw the contents again you screamed, out of the fake cake you saw a doze of cockroaches now crawling all over your kitchen. You screamed again when one of them got too close to your bare feet, so you stepped back, breathing heavily, not able to think well. Cockroaches, why? Was this some sick joke?

-Y/N!- Yoongi’s voice came first from a afar and seconds later near you. -Y/N, what is it? are you ok?- he came running to you, you turned around and went to him who instinctively hugged you close as his eyes went all over the room searching the place for the reason of your screams.

-What…- his voice died down when he noticed the insects, now spreading further.

You went behind him and shook your head. -I don’t know, there was this cake at the door and then- you inhaled, the lack of air making it hard to speak. -They are everywhere, Yoongi I can’t, please-

He nodded, caressing your head looking at you in the eye. -It’s ok, go to the room, I’ll take care of this, go and stay in there, put a towel under the door or something so nothing gets in-

You nodded and ran to your room, you didn’t know who had sent that cake, surely not the boys, you only knew that you felt like you were in a nightmare.

No one knew how your apartment number had been filtered, you suspected they had had to get in and follow you up to be able to see that, which was seriously scary. How could no one had not noticed that? Where was the security of the building?

The worst was that it didn’t stop there. Yoongi personally made a video asking the person behind this to stop since you were going to ask for police assistance and even bodyguards if this went on. You didn’t feel safe and Yoongi was on edge all the time, but both of you thought that the person or the group behind this wouldn’t dare to do anything else, but once again you were wrong.

The next two days you didn’t know if you were imaging it, but you heard the bell ringing late at night. One time Yoongi wasn’t even home so you had been on the verge of calling the cops, you were both angry and scared since you didn’t even know if it was a girl or a man or what, but the person stopped just in time. You did call Yoongi who came home as fast as he could, the next day you set a camera just outside your door, if anyone came it would be captured and you’d be able to get over this for good.

It was tuesday night and you were getting ready to go to bed, after the last incident in which he wasn’t home Yoongi moved all his schedule and asked everything for him to be cleared out at night for the time being, and this time you were relieved he did.

-I’m sorry all this is happening- he murmured when all the lights were off and he had his arm wrapped around your waist.

-I know, but it’s not your fault- He stayed quiet which led you to think that he still thought this was on him. -I’m glad you’re here with me-

He hummed, answering by hugging you tighter, which was his way of saying he felt the same.

You fell asleep, but a thud made both of you wake up hastily. Yoongi turned on the lights as you tried to adjust your eyes and look around. You saw nothing but then you heard the sound of the main door being closed, someone was there.

-I’ll call the police, stay here- Yoongi said as he turned the knob.

-What are you going to do out there, stay here too- you pleaded, it didn’t make any sense him going out there when you could wait for the cops, this person could be dangerous, this wasn’t a teenage girl joke, someone had actually broke into your home and you could guess they didn’t have good intentions. -Please Yoongi, please stay-

-You stay here- he grumbled and went out of the room.

You tried not to fall down to the panic, but you were so scared, looking around the room you searched for something that could serve you as a weapon, if only you had a baseball bat. You were wondering if Yoongi had called the police or if you should do it when you heard giggles. Turning around you saw her coming out from the closet, a girl that couldn’t be older than sixteen and was holding something.

You screamed your boyfriend’s name and went for the door without turning your back to the girl, she was holding a metal stick, her giggles morphing into disturbing mumbles.

-You bitch, you sleep here with him-

Yoongi came running, the cellphone in one hand, a knife in the other, he widened his eyes as he was taken aback that it was a young girl who was there, but seeing the metal stick he put up the kitchen knife and stepped in front of you.

-The police is on their way, you better get going-

-Yoongi- the girl’s eyes were glossy with repulsive adoration, now you didn’t exist and she could only see Yoongi. -It’s you, I’m your fan, I came to see you- She was sick, but as much as you knew that she needed help at the moment you could think how you wanted her to dissapear, to be punished for what she had done.

-I can take care of her for you- she said making Yoongi tense with what those words implied.

-No one’s getting hurt, ok?- Yoongi said firmily. -You came here to see me right? You have, now go-

She was confused by that, like her being thrown out of the house was an insult. The girl stepped forward and Yoongi moved so he was completely blocking you from her.

In a sharp move she hit Yoongi in the arm holding the knife making it fall, he probably just had it to intimidate her but now you had nothing and this girl wasn’t afraid of hurting others. She was truly sick. Yoongi winced in pain so you moved to check how badly she had hit him, struggling with Yoongi who tried to keep you behind him.

-I’ll help you Yoongi- the girl said, now moving so she had the right angle to strike you. Only that this time Yoongi lunged forward, with his upper body bent down he threw himself over the girl, both of them falling to the ground, you gasped but saw how he took the stick out of her hands before getting up.

At that moment you heard the door bell ring, the police, taking the knife you ran to open the door. There were three of them, you guided them quickly around the apartment as you tried to explain what had happened.

When you got back to the room the girl was crying on the floor and Yoongi was holding the stick by the bed. The police took her out, to then take both your testimonies, you’d have to go to the police station tomorrow but for now everything was over.

-The officer said the girl told him she had a camera in the hallway- Yoongi said when he went back to the room after he was done with the police. -That’s how she knew the password for the apartment- you gasped, baffled by it, thinking that the security of the whole building had to level up after this. Today you had been lucky, you didn’t want to imagine what could had happened, if that girl had hit Yoongi in the head then… -They already took the camera with them, and I changed the password, so you are safe Y/N-

You turned your eyes to him, wanting to cry because what could had happened was too terrible, but you just breathed in deeply and hugged him.

-I’m sorry Y/N, I should have contacted bodyguards sooner, or the police to make sure the apartment was safe but I…-

-You did good- you said caressing his right arm. He would have bruises and he probably wouldn’t be able to dance for a few days. -I’m sorry, you say it’s your fault, but this is basically happening because of me, I know that girl was crazy, but I don’t want you getting hurt because I…- your voice broke and you hid your face on his shoulder.

-This can’t possibly be your fault Y/N, no matter how you look at it, it isn’t- he led you to the bed room, where you looked around still scared that there was someone lurking in the shadows. -They checked the whole apartment- Yoongi said softly. -We are good- you nodded, getting under the blankets with him, although you doubted you’d be able to sleep, it was going to be morning soon.

-Thank you- you whispered. -You were… you were really brave today Yoongi, incredibly brave-

He sighed. -I just wanted you to be safe, I just… I needed to protect you, that’s all, not much bravery-

-I’m, because of you I’m safe, we are- you said to him and to yourself. It was over, finally.

You tilted your head to kiss him, your body relaxing slowly knowing that with him close you’d be fine.

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cultofzac · 8 years ago

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YouTube’s Monster: PewDiePie & His Populist Revolt

Felix Kjellberg, known to his fans as PewDiePie, is by far YouTube’s biggest star. His videos, a mix of video-game narration, humorous rants and commentary, have cumulatively been viewed billions of times, and more than 53 million people subscribe to his channel. He has been called “the king of YouTube” and countless variations thereon, and he has remained unchallenged on that perch for years, making millions of dollars and leveraging his popularity into outside ventures.

But Monday night, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Disney-owned Maker Studios, a longtime partner of Kjellberg’s, would no longer have anything to do with him; later, YouTube announced that it was canceling a show developed with Kjellberg, and removing his channel from its lucrative “Google Preferred” advertising program. At issue was a series of recent comedy videos. In one, he found performers on the freelance site Fiverr willing to dance and hold up a sign of the client’s choosing. He asked them to write “Death to all Jews,” and they did; in his subsequent video, he expressed shock that the request had made it through. “It was a funny meme, and I didn’t think it would work,” he said, mock-begging news outlets not to make too much of his stunt. “I swear, I love Jews,” he said, “I love them,” before playing a few notes on a kazoo.

As he anticipated, plenty of news outlets saw a story in his antics. Others saw something more. A post on The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi site, marveled at Kjellberg’s performances, and wondered in disbelief if they might signal sympathy for its ideology. “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, since the effect is the same,” the post said, “it normalizes Nazism, and marginalizes our enemies.” As the controversy mounted, Kjellberg denounced the “hate-based groups” that had taken notice of his videos. “I was trying to show how crazy the modern world is, specifically some of the services available online,” he said in a Feb. 12 Tumblr post. “I think of the content that I create as entertainment, and not a place for any serious political commentary. I know my audience understand that, and that is why they come to my channel.” This explanation, unsurprisingly, did not satisfy Maker Studios, or, for that matter, Google.

It’s tempting to write off this scandal as an inscrutable product of a teen subculture, wrapped up in layers of irony and the peculiar language and aesthetics of YouTube. It is likewise easy to frame the episode as an isolated collision between offensive speech and careful sponsors. But it’s most useful to understand Kjellberg’s meltdown in the context of the vast platform on which it took place — YouTube — and the nascent strains of politics that could come to define it.

With more than a billion users, YouTube has become not merely a platform but almost a kind of internet nation-state: the host of a gigantic economy and a set of cultures governed by a new and novel sort of corporation, sometimes at arm’s length and other times up close. It’s a system Kjellberg has spent recent months antagonizing in a broader and less-inflammatory way, even as he continued to thrive within it. He bemoaned its structure and the way it had changed; he balked at its limits and took joy in causing offense and flouting rules. Over time, he grew into an unlikely, disorienting and insistently unserious political identity: He became YouTube’s very own populist reactionary.

In December 2016, Kjellberg’s account was about to pass 50 million subscribers — a milestone, and a record. But in his videos, he seemed to be ending the year on a pessimistic note. “It’s time for me to complain about YouTube,” he said in a video. “Again.” The platform, he suggested, had changed in a way that he found worrying, and maybe punitive. Subscriptions are the fundamental organizing principle of YouTube – akin to a Twitter feed, they deliver to users exactly what they’ve signed up to see – but, Kjellberg said, they were becoming less important to the way viewers found videos. What YouTube was doing instead, he claimed, was packing people’s feeds with material they didn’t care about, from channels they’d never subscribed to. His viewership numbers had suffered as a result, he said. His rant spiraled on from there, swerving among resentment and self-deprecation, grievance and absurdity, toying with both revolutionary and reactionary tropes, and ending where it had begun: with a threat to close his account.

It might seem hard to believe that anyone would want to watch a YouTube video complaining about YouTube’s internal economic politics, but more than 20 million people did (the video’s title, “DELETING MY CHANNEL AT 50 MILLION,” surely helped). For years now, in fact, YouTube has been one of Kjellberg’s most-addressed subjects, second only perhaps to video games. In September, he even collapsed the distinction between the two, releasing a smartphone game called Tuber Simulator. The object is to become a famous YouTube star. Players begin their careers in a dank, windowless room and scrounge for views and cash, with videos like “Bikini Wax Your Pets” and “GO Outside – Walkthrough,” the latter a play on a common form of video-game vlog. It’s both an extended joke about making money online and a functioning, moneymaking app. “If the intention was to make a biting critique of late capitalism, Pewdiepie and Outerminds have wildly succeeded,” Gita Jackson wrote for the gaming site Kotaku. “But if not,” she continued, “the game still gets there by accident.”

For product reviewers and gamers, for the unboxers and the how-to teachers, for the interchannel drama analysts, the bloggers, the makeup artists and the pranksters, YouTube looms large not just as a context but also as a character. The daily exigencies of life on YouTube are perhaps the only subject that cuts across every major YouTube category. Showbiz loves to make movies about showbiz, and television loves to make television about TV. YouTube has simply democratized this impulse.

It makes sense that YouTube would become home to such a performatively self-aware economy. It is, after all, one of the most mature of the major social platforms. It is extremely culturally productive, and can claim genuine stars as its own. Above all, it pays. And in the people who depend on the platform to pay their bills, it inspires a peculiar mixture of paranoia, desire, gratefulness and disdain that shows up clearly in their work. YouTube’s peculiar relationship with the economy within it is fraught, promising and poorly understood. It’s also unique among social-media platforms — but maybe not for much longer. For now, most of the biggest internet platforms are understood as venues for communication, expression and consumption. YouTube has given us a glimpse at what happens when users start associating social platforms with something more: livelihoods.

Watch enough YouTube programming on any subject and you’ll gradually come to understand the struggles of starting and maintaining a channel. You’ll become familiar with the mementos Google sends creators at subscriber milestones — a silver “play” button at 100,000, around which time your favorite YouTubers might start talking about quitting their day jobs, and a gold one at a million, when they are more to likely have done so. You’ll hear plenty about conversations with YouTube support, many of which contradict one another. You’ll develop opinions about YouTube’s copyright rules, age restrictions and advertising policies. You’ll get an intuitive sense of the YouTube attention marketplace and how people try to take advantage of it, and you’ll hear about advertising rates. You’ll hear conspiracy theories — some rooted in daily shared YouTube experience, others rooted in less visible fears, desires and resentments — some of which gain considerable traction.

And why shouldn’t you? YouTubers are not employed by YouTube, but they are paid by YouTube, because it matches their videos, automatically, with advertisers. The platform and the video-makers share a clear and common goal: to persuade audiences to watch more videos in order to make more money from ads. But even with a unifying cause, creators inevitably discover smaller ways in which their goals and YouTube’s are at odds. It is in YouTube creators’ interest, for example, to understand the best practices for getting the most YouTube subscribers, or the best strategies for making videos that YouTube might algorithmically recommend. But it is in YouTube’s interest for the inner workings of its platform — including recommendation algorithms, the way it calculates advertising rates and the precise locations of its boundaries — to remain at least somewhat secret, to prevent creators from gaming the platform’s quirks at the expense of either YouTube’s user experience or its bottom line. Criticism from its creators is one of the many things YouTube tolerates to maintain this arrangement, which is otherwise clearly working to their benefit.

Emergent politics of social platforms differ in scope and character and sit along peculiar axes, some familiar, others new. On Twitter, which does not pay popular users, they revolve around matters of speech and harassment; the platform hosts a range of progressive movements as well as an extremely visible and openly racist reactionary movement, and they have been at war. On Facebook, which is bigger and less combative, they focus on censorship and governance. But on any major platform, they tend to grow from the same fertile place: the gap between the structures built by the company and what users are allowed to do within them. Inevitably, this leads users to fundamental political questions: Who gets what, and why? Who gets to do what, and why?

Kjellberg’s December video drew responses from other YouTubers, debunking or explaining or affirming the claim by YouTube’s biggest star that the platform just wasn’t what it used to be, some gathering millions of views of their own. In retrospect, though, one brief moment in the original video was especially notable. As he wound down his rant, he hinted at a different sense of victimhood, drawing from the same sense of umbrage but directing it in a startling direction. After criticizing the platform for not understanding the realities of working on YouTube and wondering aloud if he was being punished, or somehow demoted, he affected a sincere voice and said, “I’m white.”

“Can I make that comment? But I do think that’s a problem,” he continued, before a smash-cut and a return to a mocking rant about not letting YouTube win — another assurance to viewers that, as always, he was just kidding, and that the offensiveness of the prior claim was the reason he’d made it.

Here, again, it is helpful to situate Kjellberg properly. He initially rose to popularity within the video-gaming subculture, which, beginning with the “GamerGate” movement and continuing through the American presidential election, became surprisingly and darkly politicized. His core audience is young, and his sensibility clearly appeals to a masculine teenage impulse to shock and provoke. The YouTube platform plainly incentivizes such attention-grabbing behavior, right up until the point that it becomes a liability to its operators or their other partners — a familiar dilemma in the entertainment world, sure, but one that plays out quite differently on YouTube, which is considerably and deliberately less hands-on with its talent. It’s telling that YouTube’s biggest star portrayed the platform as distant and capricious. It’s alarming that following his performative hostility led him to where it did: attempting to rationalize the use of anti-Semitic speech under the guise of transgression.

Kjellberg had, either instinctively or intentionally, constructed a political identity as YouTube’s insider class-traitor, raging against a system that’s — trust him, but also he’s just joking, but he would know — totally rigged. Now he is sketching out what a far more toxic YouTube politics of ressentiment might look like, under the threadbare cover of ironic bigotry, the recent history of which is worryingly instructive. In the meantime, the self-identified real racists are laughing along heartily, even as Kjellberg strenuously attempts to distance himself from them.

Maker Studios, which seeks to create a sort of auxiliary production apparatus for YouTube, has less of a connection to the platform than any of the YouTubers it has partnered with, who belong much more to their audiences, and to YouTube. Its severing of ties, in the bigger context of YouTube, amounts to a disavowal. YouTube’s reaction, and how it follows up, is the thing to watch. As, of course, is Kjellberg’s. His most recent video, posted after Maker Studios and Google made their announcements, was a lighthearted play-through of a gag video game called “Genital Jousting,” and did not reference the scandal. His commenters, on the other hand, did, asking almost uniformly that he not apologize for anything.

The full character of the burgeoning politics of platforms remains to be seen. But right-wing movements have found early traction and see opportunity. Even as farce, Kjellberg’s performance has been illustrative, and a small number of eager observers say they hope that, as backlash mounts, it will be galvanizing. “If Pewdiepie wasn’t #AltRight before,” Vox Day, a former video-game designer and an alt-right leader posted on Gab.ai, a private, Twitterlike service popular with the movement, “he is now.”

#Youtube #Pewdiepie #populist #racism #alt-right #Felix Kjellberg #news

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thewebofslime · 6 years ago

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The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center By Bob Moser March 21, 2019 The firing of Morris Dees, the co-founder of the S.P.L.C., has flushed up uncomfortable questions that have surrounded the organization for years. In the days since the stunning dismissal of Morris Dees, the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, on March 14th, I’ve been thinking about the jokes my S.P.L.C. colleagues and I used to tell to keep ourselves sane. Walking to lunch past the center’s Maya Lin–designed memorial to civil-rights martyrs, we’d cast a glance at the inscription from Martin Luther King, Jr., etched into the black marble—“Until justice rolls down like waters”—and intone, in our deepest voices, “Until justice rolls down like dollars.” The Law Center had a way of turning idealists into cynics; like most liberals, our view of the S.P.L.C. before we arrived had been shaped by its oft-cited listings of U.S. hate groups, its reputation for winning cases against the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations, and its stream of direct-mail pleas for money to keep the good work going. The mailers, in particular, painted a vivid picture of a scrappy band of intrepid attorneys and hate-group monitors, working under constant threat of death to fight hatred and injustice in the deepest heart of Dixie. When the S.P.L.C. hired me as a writer, in 2001, I figured I knew what to expect: long hours working with humble resources and a highly diverse bunch of super-dedicated colleagues. I felt self-righteous about the work before I’d even begun it. The first surprise was the office itself. On a hill in downtown Montgomery, down the street from both Jefferson Davis’s Confederate White House and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where M.L.K. preached and organized, the center had recently built a massive modernist glass-and-steel structure that the social critic James Howard Kunstler would later liken to a “Darth Vader building” that made social justice “look despotic.” It was a cold place inside, too. The entrance was through an underground bunker, past multiple layers of human and electronic security. Cameras were everywhere in the open-plan office, which made me feel like a Pentagon staffer, both secure and insecure at once. But nothing was more uncomfortable than the racial dynamic that quickly became apparent: a fair number of what was then about a hundred employees were African-American, but almost all of them were administrative and support staff—“the help,” one of my black colleagues said pointedly. The “professional staff”—the lawyers, researchers, educators, public-relations officers, and fund-raisers—were almost exclusively white. Just two staffers, including me, were openly gay. During my first few weeks, a friendly new co-worker couldn’t help laughing at my bewilderment. “Well, honey, welcome to the Poverty Palace,” she said. “I can guaran-damn-tee that you will never step foot in a more contradictory place as long as you live.” “Everything feels so out of whack,” I said. “Where are the lawyers? Where’s the diversity? What in God’s name is going on here?” “And you call yourself a journalist!” she said, laughing again. “Clearly you didn’t do your research.” In the decade or so before I’d arrived, the center’s reputation as a beacon of justice had taken some hits from reporters who’d peered behind the façade. In 1995, the Montgomery Advertiser had been a Pulitzer finalist for a series that documented, among other things, staffers’ allegations of racial discrimination within the organization. In Harper’s, Ken Silverstein had revealed that the center had accumulated an endowment topping a hundred and twenty million dollars while paying lavish salaries to its highest-ranking staffers and spending far less than most nonprofit groups on the work that it claimed to do. The great Southern journalist John Egerton, writing for The Progressive, had painted a damning portrait of Dees, the center’s longtime mastermind, as a “super-salesman and master fundraiser” who viewed civil-rights work mainly as a marketing tool for bilking gullible Northern liberals. “We just run our business like a business,” Dees told Egerton. “Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same.” Co-workers stealthily passed along these articles to me—it was a rite of passage for new staffers, a cautionary heads-up about what we’d stepped into with our noble intentions. Incoming female staffers were additionally warned by their new colleagues about Dees’s reputation for hitting on young women. And the unchecked power of the lavishly compensated white men at the top of the organization—Dees and the center’s president, Richard Cohen—made staffers pessimistic that any of these issues would ever be addressed. “I expected there’d be a lot of creative bickering, a sort of democratic free-for-all,” my friend Brian, a journalist who came aboard a year after me, said one day. “But everybody is so deferential to Morris and Richard. It’s like a fucking monarchy around here.” The work could be meaningful and gratifying. But it was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam. For the many former staffers who have come and gone through the center’s doors—I left in 2004—the queasy feelings came rushing back last week, when the news broke that Dees, now eighty-two, had been fired. The official statement sent by Cohen, who took control of the S.P.L.C. in 2003, didn’t specify why Dees had been dismissed, but it contained some broad hints. “We’re committed to ensuring that our workplace embodies the values we espouse—truth, justice, equity, and inclusion,” Cohen wrote. “When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.” Dees’s profile was immediately erased from the S.P.L.C.’s Web site—amazing, considering that he had remained, to the end, the main face and voice of the center, his signature on most of the direct-mail appeals that didn’t come from celebrity supporters, such as the author Toni Morrison. While right-wingers tweeted gleefully about the demise of a figure they’d long vilified—“Hate group founder has been fired by his hate group,” the alt-right provocateur Mike Cernovich chirped—S.P.L.C. alums immediately reconnected with one another, buzzing about what might have happened and puzzling over the timing, sixteen years after Dees handed the reins to Cohen and went into semi-retirement. “I guess there’s nothing like a funeral to bring families back together,” another former writer at the center said, speculating about what might have prompted the move. “It could be racial, sexual, financial—that place was a virtual buffet of injustices,” she said. Why would they fire him now? One day later, the Los Angeles Times and the Alabama Political Reporter reported that Dees’s ouster had come amid a staff revolt over the mistreatment of nonwhite and female staffers, which was sparked by the resignation of the senior attorney Meredith Horton, the highest-ranking African-American woman at the center. A number of staffers subsequently signed onto two letters of protest to the center’s leadership, alleging that multiple reports of sexual harassment by Dees through the years had been ignored or covered up, and sometimes resulted in retaliation against the women making the claims. (Dees denied the allegations, telling a reporter, “I don’t know who you’re talking to or talking about, but that is not right.”) The staffers wrote that Dees’s firing was welcome but insufficient: their larger concern, they emphasized, was a widespread pattern of racial and gender discrimination by the center’s current leadership, stretching back many years. (The S.P.L.C. has since appointed Tina Tchen, a former chief of staff for Michelle Obama, to conduct a review of its workplace environment.) If Cohen and other senior leaders thought that they could shunt the blame, the riled-up staffers seem determined to prove them wrong. One of my former female colleagues told me that she didn’t want to go into details of her harassment for this story, because she believes the focus should be on the S.P.L.C.’s current leadership. “I just gotta hope your piece helps keep the momentum for change going,” she said. Stephen Bright, a Yale professor and longtime S.P.L.C. critic, told me, “These chickens took a very long flight before they came home to roost.” The question, for current and former staffers alike, is how many chickens will come to justice before this long-overdue reckoning is complete. The controversy erupted at a moment when the S.P.L.C. had never been more prominent, or more profitable. Donald Trump’s Presidency opened up a gusher of donations; after raising fifty million dollars in 2016, the center took in a hundred and thirty-two million dollars in 2017, much of it coming after the violent spectacle that unfolded at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that August. George and Amal Clooney’s justice foundation donated a million, as did Apple, which also added a donation button for the S.P.L.C. to its iTunes store. JPMorgan chipped in five hundred thousand dollars. The new money pushed the center’s endowment past four hundred and fifty million dollars, which is more than the total assets of the American Civil Liberties Union, and it now employs an all-time high of around three hundred and fifty staffers. But none of that has slackened its constant drive for more money. “If you’re outraged about the path President Trump is taking, I urge you to join us in the fight against the mainstreaming of hate,” a direct-mail appeal signed by Dees last year read. “Please join our fight today with a gift of $25, $35, or $100 to help us. Working together, we can push back against these bigots.” In 1971, when the center opened, Dees was already a colorful and controversial figure in Alabama. While studying law at the University of Alabama, in the late nineteen-fifties, “Dees sold holly wreaths and birthday cakes, published a student telephone directory, dabbled in real estate,” Egerton wrote. He also worked for George Wallace’s first, unsuccessful bid for governor, in 1958. Upon graduating, in 1960, Dees teamed up with another ambitious student, Millard Fuller, who’d go on to found Habitat for Humanity. They opened a direct-mail business in Montgomery, selling doormats, tractor-seat cushions, and cookbooks. “Morris and I, from the first day of our partnership, shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money,” Fuller would later recall. “We were not particular about how we did it.” While running their business, the two also practiced law. In 1961, they defended one of the men charged with beating up Freedom Riders at a bus terminal in Montgomery. According to Fuller, “Our fee was paid by the Klan and the White Citizens’ Council.” In the late sixties, Dees sold the direct-mail operation to the Times Mirror Company, of Los Angeles, reportedly for between six and seven million dollars. But he soon sniffed out a new avenue for his marketing genius. In 1969, he successfully sued to integrate the local Y.M.C.A., after two black children were turned away from summer camp. Two years later, he co-founded the Law Center, with another Montgomery attorney, Joe Levin, Jr. He volunteered to raise money for George McGovern’s Presidential campaign, and, with McGovern’s blessing, used its donor list of seven hundred thousand people to help launch the S.P.L.C.’s direct-mail operations. The center won some big cases early on, including a lawsuit that forced the Alabama legislature to divide into single-member districts, insuring the election of the state’s first African-American lawmakers since Reconstruction. In 1975, the S.P.L.C. started a defense fund for Joan Little, a black prisoner in North Carolina who’d stabbed to death a jailer who attempted to rape her; the case became a national sensation and drew attention to the intrepid little operation in Montgomery. Dees, of course, had already positioned the Law Center to capitalize on the positive press. A decade or so later, the center began to abandon poverty law—representing death-row defendants and others who lacked the means to hire proper representation—to focus on taking down the Ku Klux Klan. This was a seemingly odd mission, given that the Klan, which had millions of members in the nineteen-twenties, was mostly a spent force by the mid-eighties, with only an estimated ten thousand members scattered across the country. But “Dees saw the Klan as a perfect target,” Egerton wrote. For millions of Americans, the K.K.K. still personified violent white supremacy in America, and Dees “perceived chinks in the Klan’s armor: poverty and poor education in its ranks, competitive squabbling among the leaders, scattered and disunited factions, undisciplined behavior, limited funds, few if any good lawyers.” Along with legal challenges to what was left of the Klan, the center launched Klanwatch, which monitored the group’s activities. Klanwatch was the seed for what became the broader-based Intelligence Project, which tracks extremists and produces the S.P.L.C.’s annual hate-group list. The only thing easier than beating the Klan in court—“like shooting fish in a barrel,” one of Dees’s associates told Egerton—was raising money off Klan-fighting from liberals up north, who still had fresh visions of the violent confrontations of the sixties in their heads. The S.P.L.C. got a huge publicity boost in July, 1983, when three Klansmen firebombed its headquarters. A melted clock from the burned-down building, stuck at 3:47 A.M., is featured in the main lobby of the Montgomery office today. In 1987, the center won a landmark seven-million-dollar damage judgment against the Klan; a decade later, in 1998, it scored a thirty-eight-million-dollar judgment against Klansmen who burned down a black church in South Carolina. With those victories, Dees claimed the right to boast into perpetuity that the S.P.L.C. had effectively “shut down” the K.K.K. By the time I touched down in Montgomery, the center had increased its staff and branched out considerably—adding an educational component called Teaching Tolerance and expanding its legal and intelligence operations to target a broad range of right-wing groups and injustices—but the basic formula perfected in the eighties remained the same. The annual hate-group list, which in 2018 included a thousand and twenty organizations, both small and large, remains a valuable resource for journalists and a masterstroke of Dees’s marketing talents; every year, when the center publishes it, mainstream outlets write about the “rising tide of hate” discovered by the S.P.L.C.’s researchers, and reporters frequently refer to the list when they write about the groups. As critics have long pointed out, however, the hate-group designations also drive attention to the extremists. Many groups, including the religious-right Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom, raise considerable money by decrying the S.P.L.C.’s “attacks.” In recent years, the center has broadened its legal work, returning to some poverty law; around eighty attorneys now work in five Southern states, challenging, among other things, penal juvenile-justice systems and draconian anti-immigration laws. But the center continues to take in far more than it spends. And it still tends to emphasize splashy cases that are sure to draw national attention. The most notable, when I was there, was a lawsuit to remove a Ten Commandments monument that was brazenly placed in the main lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building, just across the street from S.P.L.C. headquarters, by Roy Moore, who was then the state’s chief justice. Like the S.P.L.C.’s well-publicized 2017 lawsuit against Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi publisher of the Daily Stormer, it was a vintage example of the center’s central strategy: taking on cases guaranteed to make headlines and inflame the far right while demonstrating to potential donors that the center has not only all the right enemies but also the grit and know-how to take them down. These days, whenever I tell people in New York or Washington, D.C., that I used to work at the Southern Poverty Law Center, their eyes tend to light up. “Oh, wow, what was that like?” they’ll ask. Sometimes, depending on my mood, I’ll regale them with stories about the reporting I did there—exposing anti-immigration extremists on the Arizona-Mexico border, tracking down a wave of anti-transgender hate crimes, writing a comprehensive history of the religious right’s war on gays. But then, considering whether to explain what an unsettling experience it could be, I’ll add, “It’s complicated, though,” and try to change the subject. For those of us who’ve worked in the Poverty Palace, putting it all into perspective isn’t easy, even to ourselves. We were working with a group of dedicated and talented people, fighting all kinds of good fights, making life miserable for the bad guys. And yet, all the time, dark shadows hung over everything: the racial and gender disparities, the whispers about sexual harassment, the abuses that stemmed from the top-down management, and the guilt you couldn’t help feeling about the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well, to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dixie. We were part of the con, and we knew it. Outside of work, we spent a lot of time drinking and dishing in Montgomery bars and restaurants about the oppressive security regime, the hyperbolic fund-raising appeals, and the fact that, though the center claimed to be effective in fighting extremism, “hate” always continued to be on the rise, more dangerous than ever, with each year’s report on hate groups. “The S.P.L.C.—making hate pay,” we’d say. It wasn’t funny then. At this moment, it seems even grimmer. The firing of Dees has flushed up all the uncomfortable questions again. Were we complicit, by taking our paychecks and staying silent, in ripping off donors on behalf of an organization that never lived up to the values it espoused? Did we enable racial discrimination and sexual harassment by failing to speak out? “Of course we did,” a former colleague told me, as we parsed the news over the phone. “It’s shameful, but when you’re there you kind of end up accepting things. I never even considered speaking out when things happened to me! It doesn’t feel good to recognize that. I was so into the work, and so motivated by it, I kind of shrugged off what was going on.” A couple of days later, she texted me: “I’m having SPLC nightmares.” Aren’t we all, I thought. Bob Moser is the author of “Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority.”

#TheWebOfSlime

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junker-town · 6 years ago

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Meet the women of SB Nation’s NBA team brands and learn about the challenges they’ve faced

Welcome to a week-long series celebrating the women covering NBA teams for SB Nation’s team brands.

All of the women covering NBA teams for SB Nation’s team brands have had unique experiences covering the sport because they’re women. You can meet all of the women we’re featuring in this series in the first post, which you can find here. The second post details how each woman fell in love with basketball and the team they cover.

In this third installment of our series celebrating these women, here are some of the challenges they’ve faced covering the NBA for SB Nation sites and the advice they’d like to share with other women looking to break into the field.

Bailey: I imagine, as a trans woman, that my experiences are probably fairly unique. When I first started writing about the Mavs, it was pre-transition. Since I’ve transitioned, my experience has changed somewhat. The primary challenge is just that men are much more willing to say awful things about me or my writing. As I’m sure most of us know, this wears on you. I don’t cover the team in the locker room or at press conferences or anything, so I cannot speak to the challenges there.

The only advice I would have is to engage with the fans who appreciate your work and make strong use of the block option for those who are only looking to troll.

Sarah: I have faced a lot as woman in a male-dominated industry. I’ve been propositioned to sleep with men for jobs, sexually harassed, been told women have no place in sports and I was never going to amount to anything because I wasn’t good enough. My advice for women coming into this profession is to never deter. Yes, men will place roadblocks in your life, but you know yourself better than anyone else. You’ve relied on your talent all these years, so don’t ever stop doing you. Be known for your work and everything will fall into place.

Courtney: Intimidation and underestimation. My abilities, interest and understanding have been underestimated as a woman in a male-dominated industry. I frequently hear “Oh. I didn’t know you would understand or care about that.” Or “YOU know sports?” No. I know basketball. As for the intimidation … well, I think that is just a normal aspect of healthy competition, which I think most of us agree isn’t necessarily gender-specific. (I have had tiny little 4’10 ballerinas fluff up and try to intimidate me with the same effort as any man in a sports environment.) I don’t take any offense. I just smile at the expression of surprise on their faces when I follow along with their conversation, or when I give my own perspective about a game or strategy. I see the challenge of being a woman in a typically male industry as exactly that — a challenge. This is just a cultural norm that has begun to slowly change over time. Challenges make us grow and growth makes us strong. That is all good as far as I can tell.

Ashley: The only challenges I have faced are the challenges I have set up for myself. The team I write with at the Denver Stiffs is welcoming and encouraging, and even though I’m new to the roster they’ve made me feel very comfortable. I’m not as technical as some of the other writers, and I sometimes feel like I need to change my style, but then I remind myself that we all have a unique voice to bring to the site.

My best advice for another female trying to make her way in the sports blogging world is to not worry about the fact that you’re a woman in a male-dominated industry. Have confidence in your perspective, because if you try to write like someone else it typically hinders your quality from what it really can be. People want to know what you think. So tell them.

Kayla: I’m very lucky in the fact that I have not faced many challenges in this industry as of yet. For a couple of years, I was the only female on the Denver Stiffs staff, but I never felt out of place because of it. I think it helped that I had been active on Twitter for years and people knew that I was an avid fan of the team and because of that, I never really felt the need to prove my passion for the Nuggets. That being said, I’m all too aware that females that are far more active in the industry than I am are obviously way more subjected to those challenges. The few times I have had the opportunity to attend a Nuggets game as a member of the “media,”

I’m aware of the fact that females in this industry are outnumbered by males in a big way. I think the experience that a female has in this industry is entirely dependent on who they are surrounded by — I’m lucky enough that I am surrounded by great people that do not question the fact that I am a female writing about a basketball team.

Grace: Not only have I been pretty much the only consistent female writer for the site during my career there, but I also have been by far the youngest. Especially at first, it can be a little intimidating. I’ve never had anyone make fun of the fact that I was a girl to my face, but guys definitely didn’t try to include me in conversations about sports growing up. I interject myself into the conversation, and they begin to realize I know what I’m talking about. In the dating world, many guys shy away from career girls, especially ones that know about sports, so that was a little frustrating in high school that guys didn’t appreciate that about me. They seemed to find it intimidating.

Working for GBB, I’ve always felt really welcomed and respected by my peers and editors. I’ve been encouraged by those closest to me to pursue writing about sports. I’d advise other girls looking to get into this industry to just go for it. You have nothing to lose. Let the haters make their comments, but they’ll respect you as your work speaks for itself. You have to gain some credibility to be taken seriously, but that will come with time! Just work harder than everyone else. If you’re treated poorly, take your talents somewhere else. There are plenty of sports sites that are run by or greatly respect female writers.

Jannelle: My biggest challenge is being heard sometimes. I can say things on Twitter, for example, and for the most part, they are overlooked by some fans. My opinions are overlooked and dismissed until I’m proven right. Then I have no problem letting people know about it and telling them to put some respect on my name!

My advice is to stick to your convictions and beliefs no matter what. If you feel like you know your stuff regarding the NBA and sports as a whole, you keep talking, keep learning, and keep sharing. You may have to talk some trash, but eventually, you will be heard and respected.

Marilyn: I’d be lying if I said I had come across any such issues so far, at least at SB Nation. I will say back during the 2010-11 season, I was covering the Spurs for Bleacher Report (back when it was a fan-operated site), and there was always this one Lakers fan who would comment on my articles about how clueless I was and how women shouldn’t cover sports. He would get banned, then create a new account and be right back the next day with all his shenanigans, blaming me for being a wimp and getting him banned.

In reality, it was other commenters who were flagging him and coming to my defense, but my advice to others would be don’t be afraid to flag or report someone if they cross the line. That is a common issue women face in general these days, so don’t feel like it makes you any weaker. Also, don’t stoop to the level of those types of people. If you’re going to respond do it with class and dignity in an educational manner. Going low doesn’t help the cause.

Renee: The only issue, not really challenge, has been that people don’t believe that I understand or know as much as I do about basketball and that I can contribute to such a prestigious site like PTR. My only advice is to own your skills. Know and believe that you are just as knowledgeable and skilled as the next “guy.” It has taken me a while to get to the point of owning my skills and knowledge, and I’m grateful for the leadership and mentoring of my editor-in-chief.

Michelle: Personally, I’ve been lucky not to have experienced sexism in the industry, although I certainly know sexism exists. I’ve worked for two sports news websites in addition to SB Nation, and really enjoyed the people I’ve worked with and never felt like my opinions or writing were treated with less value. I’m based in Los Angeles, where the sports media market it is fairly diverse, with women involved meaningfully in broadcasting and reporting at various levels (high school, college and pro sports). I would encourage others to not shy away from the fact that the industry is still male-dominated, as the face of the industry is changing. If you have an interest in sports and want to make that a career — GO FOR IT!

Tara: It’s been a big responsibility and a huge challenge to step in as a cohost of the Blazer’s Edge podcast. I have a male cohost who is basically my polar opposite. I’m a little bit country, he’s a little bit rock and roll. I’m relentlessly optimistic, he’s in eternal pessimist. He is extremely knowledgeable about every aspect of the game and I’m still learning how to watch it critically. Despite our differences though, the biggest challenge hasn’t been working with a vocal alpha male, it has been overcoming my own self doubts. How could anyone possibly want to listen to what I have to say? I must sound like an idiot! I’m a total fraud. Again, I can’t emphasize enough how great my co-host has been to work with, but he doesn’t get it when I say, “if I say something wrong, I’m letting all females who host sports podcasts down.”

One thing I do to counteract those negative feelings is I keep any compliments I get. Tweets or emails or message that say anything positive go into a file on my desktop called “Atta girl.” Its a reminder that if people I like and admire say something nice, who am I to tell them that they are wrong? I’d say I 75% believe them.

The other challenge has been trying to fit into a culture that isn’t particularly encouraging. I can’t say how many times I’ve heard “You want to get into sports journalism? Don’t.” This pessimism is so far out of my normal experience. This isn’t true on my site, but outside of the group of writers I regularly interact with there is no collegiality if you are not already a part of the in-crowd. I have experienced that at Summer League. I sat on press row during a Blazers game one time and the only person who talked to me was the woman who brought me there and the one guy I knew from Blazers Edge. Its not like everyone is actively unfriendly, they just expect you to make all the effort.

Marissa: My advice for other women in any male-dominated industry is to find allies in other women, then help lift each other up. I have found that no one is more willing to elevate women’s voices than other women.

Caitlin: Looking back on it now, I’m confident that growing up as a coach’s daughter probably afforded me free and unlimited membership in the boys’ club of talking sports that I, and others like me, probably wouldn’t have enjoyed otherwise. That is, at least when I was surrounded by those who knew whose kid I was. All hands were on deck one summer when I jumped in to run the clock at some pick-up games my school was hosting. It wasn’t my first time doing the job, but the coach who happened to be filling in as an official from an opposing team wasn’t familiar with me. When there was only a handful of seconds left to play in the game and the player inbounding the ball rolled it onto the court, I was given animated instructions to wait to start the clock until a player on the floor touched it, almost like a crossing guard walking out to halt traffic for crossing children. I laughed it off, thinking it strangely funny that he assumed I didn’t understand the rules, until later in the day when I noticed that he didn’t find it necessary to patronizingly gesticulate in the same scenario when some of the much younger brothers of players had taken over for me.

That experience was eye-opening because it revealed to me for the first time that the way in which my understanding of the game had been perceived up until that point was linked, at least in part, to the fact my dad was my dad. It was always, “That’s the coach’s daughter; therefore, she knows sports.” Never just, “She knows sports.” My authority wasn’t my own, and apparently it mattered in the eyes of some that I was female.

I’ve posted 450+ articles at Indy Cornrows. By choice, my first name has been abbreviated on the byline of all of them. This was never done with the intention of purposely deceiving anyone. Rather, I made the conscious decision to create an environment where first-time readers would notice my writing and ideas before they made note of my gender. Now that most are aware of both, I’m extremely grateful for the support of our site manager Tom Lewis, the tolerance of our fan community, and the countless words of public encouragement from fellow bloggers and outlets like Jared Wade, Tim Donahue, Ben Gibson, the Miller Time Podcast, and Locked on Pacers — all of whom are men who have empowered me and my writing.

China: I may be a bad person to ask this because (knock on wood) without exception everyone I have ever worked with at Posting and Toasting and interacted with on Knicks Twitter has been incredibly cool and supportive. I know there are ugly corners of this world but they have been hidden from me thus far. I can’t say enough good things about Seth and Joe, and (most of) the commenters on the blog.

THAT SAID, I stay so entirely in my (non-technical, non-aggressive, mostly lighthearted) lane that I don’t think there’s much testosterone that would spill on to me in any event. And so the challenges I have faced are mostly internal — trusting that what I write is informative or entertaining, and that my voice might be valuable, maybe because it is different. And to trust that even though I might not be a basketball expert, I’m a pretty serious fan and that’s an important perspective. Hell, Bill Simmons made a fortune off it.

I’m afraid I have no specific advice other than 1. Figure out your voice (mine is slightly husky), and 2. As unbalanced as it is (and it is), there are a lot of people, many of them men, who might love to help you out and give you a platform, so don’t be afraid to try.

Kelsea: Honestly, just the comments so far. I haven’t been doing this long enough for someone to tell me to “get back in the kitchen,” but it seems like any time I write an article with even the tiniest example of a stat, there is always one guy who has to tell me I’m wrong. Thankfully, there are also usually some who defend me and tell said guy that he is wrong and I am right (duh).

Romy: Our industry is notoriously old school, but it’s started to break open. Personally, I’ve been lucky to have many women to look up to at UMass Amherst (where I did my masters in Sport Management), an incredible network I could tap into (which is one of the largest hurdles women have to overcome), and male bosses who also acted as sponsors.

Rachael: I could count on one hand the amount of basketball conversations I’ve had with a male that didn’t include some sort of ignorant or sexist comment. The thing is, a good chunk of guys don’t even realize they’re being offensive — so I’m quick to let them know. Between, “So, do you really watch basketball?” and constantly being quizzed and tested, it’s exhausting. I’ve dealt with ignorance regarding basketball knowledge endlessly in person, but nothing compares to how completely ugly and hateful the internet can get over a simple basketball opinion.

I’ve encountered a lot of discouragement on my journey, but I’ve found that succeeding has felt all the more sweeter after you have been doubted. My best advice is to maintain your confidence no matter how many times you get knocked down. Realize that you are just as knowledgeable — probably more so — as any man in this industry. Know your worth and don’t let anyone take away the love you have for the game of basketball.

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comicteaparty · 7 years ago

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December 28th, 2017 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party chat that occurred on December 28th, 2017, from 5PM - 7PM PST. The chat focused on Cosmic Fish by Cosmographia.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

Good day everyone~! This week’s Comic Tea Party is now officially beginning. Today we are discussing Cosmic Fish by cosmographia~! (http://cosmicfishes.com/) For those new to CTP, discussions about the comic are freeform, so please feel free to bring up whatever you wish. However, every 30 minutes I will be dropping in a discussion question to help those who would like a prompt. These questions are totally OPTIONAL to answer so pay them no mind if you wish~! Remember, constructive criticism is allowed, but the primary focus here is to have fun and appreciate the amazing comics that the community makes~! Each chat a top comment will be picked and featured on an ad for this chat, so let’s have a great discussion~!

With that said, let us begin with this first question~!

QUESTION 1. What is your favorite scene in the comic so far and why?

for me my favorite scene is the silent interaction between syias and bells while they are fighting ramus. i think so much of the visuals to the moment illustrate their relationship beautifully. it was a moment that really cemented them as my favorite guardians in the story

another scene that im particularly fond of is that one where bells and schnell talk and he tells her to change her strategy. there was something ominously dark about it in a way that felt....realistically practical? cause while i dont trust schnell's intentions, i cant disagree with his practicality in the matter. i mean is he really wrong since insofar, it doesnt seem bells' strategy has been particularly effective

✨Tenor✨

I haven't gotten to read this week but I've seen the art and style and it looks super good so I'm hoping to catch up after my end of the month rush

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yes you should. cosmic fish is a very well-illustrated comic. and the lore behind it is pretty intense. i think a lot of aspects capture that its its own world

cosmographia

Hello everyone!! So sorry for being a tad late

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

thats okay a lot of the regulars are late/might not come i guess? holidays have been killer i imagine

cosmographia

yeah it's been a busy time for all

but ey I am SO glad that both Syias and Schnell's scenes are really effective! It's really fun to write characters that are morally gray

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

im glad to hear. moral grayness can be a challenge to write for sure.

syias i think is more sympathetic than schnell. schnell is kind of a jerk cause enigmatic reasons. whereas syias is a jerk cause gotta do whats good for the world and then he head pat apologies bells.

i might be biased cause i have a fondness for the guardians XD

for me theyre one of the most interesting parts cause of their roles and how they interact with others

cosmographia

hahahahaha that's definitely fair! they're slowly coming into the picture and become more prominent in this chapter and so forth. (the guardian lore is insaaane and I'm so glad we're finally there hahahaha)

✨Emma the Festive🍠Potato✨

I liked the beginning of chapter 5

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yes. admittedly from a more critical level ive been liking the later chapters a smidgen more cause its tying things that happened earlier together a lot better. cause the initial chapters while well-written, always kind of felt connected mostly by protagonist. but the later chapters are really making everything seem like threads of the same world since motivations and past events and all that stuff is coming into play

what did you like about it specifically @✨Emma the Festive🍠Potato✨ ?(edited)

cosmographia

yess! I'm really glad to hear that! The first chapters are definitely meant to feel a little looser until all the pieces come into play. And Emma, I'm glad chapter 5 is really clicking with you!

✨Emma the Festive🍠Potato✨

I guess the end of chapter 4 is included in the reason why I like it It's just when we see that Ramus has become huge and stuff, I felt that was really impactful

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

ah yes, thats definitely a good reason. my heart was a little broken from that moment. cause it was like the emobidment of worst case scenario

and after seeing hte flashback

can just imagine how many people are going to be sad and crying O_O

except for schnell. schnell probs just gonna shrug say welp sucks to be ramus

cosmographia

hahahahahah

I think an important thing to keep in mind is that Schnell is...very old and even if he claims to be a guardian he still doesn't have the same concept of time as they do, so he's probably bitter and tired of that by now

there's a comic I haven't uploaded onto the main site yet (since there already was a gone fishing between chapters 5 and 6) that kind of explores Schnell how he was 250 years before the current events

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

oh man that sounds super interesting. especially cause schnell who in my opinion is the most mysterious of all the time.

his weariness definitely comes through though i think

especially through his expressions

where they just always struck me as someone saying "dang kids and their newfangled ways"

cosmographia

HAHAHAHAH

that is not far off honestly

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

lol oh man, i must understand schnell better than i realize then.

✨Emma the Festive🍠Potato✨

Yeah Schnell is cool and interesting, I would like to know more about that guy

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

QUESTION 2. Bells and Schnell are entangled in a complicated “game” that directly correlates to ghosts coming into existence. However, Schnell is enigmatic at best. What is Schnell’s goal with this game, and why does he care about ghosts being saved? Why does Bells even agree to play this game? As the first ghost, how did Schnell come to exist? Does it have anything to do with the game? Lastly, what is this “fish” that Schnell’s mentioned to Bells that would make his job easier?

cosmographia

hahahaha as is with the story, there's going to be a few bits and pieces about Schnell presently, but as for his backstory and past in general, is still going to take a bit to explore (to not lunge the reader with too much information, especially since we're still in the adaluxen arc) 2) Great questions, one second!

- What is Schnell’s goal with this game, and why does he care about ghosts being saved? Schnell originally served under Bells (in the Monster King comic, he's still wearing what is currently called the Guardian uniform) and he assisted Bells in returning ghosts back to where they came from with other characters we may have met but can't say ;D So despite him being tired of what he defines as "Bells' constant failures" and even promoting them (as he says in chapter 4 that he IS to blame with why Acantha wasn't saved), he's trying to use negative reinforcement to get Bells to do [something] I can't say yet but it's definitely related to Schnell's earliest memory he told Acantha in chapter 4. (About the white being that drinks tea) -As the first ghost, how did Schnell come to exist? That is sadly a spoiler for now, but he is definitely telling the truth that he was a ghost and with Bells' and the other guardians misunderstanding of what a ghost was (since they had never seen one before) did lead to how he got his powers. (This will be explored later) -Does it have anything to do with the game? The "game" was invented after Schnell stopped working for the guardians, it's more of a jab as in "if you're not going to take this seriously, let's make it a game then" kind of approach. -Lastly, what is this “fish” that Schnell’s mentioned to Bells that would make his job easier? The fish is actually a cosmic fish, they are actual physical entities but that's all I can say for now hahaha

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

hmm some food for thought for theorizing

cosmographia

hahahah yea no definitely go ahead and share if you have any theories

MathTans the Pun Prince

I made it home! ^.^

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

im actually most surprised by the fact schnell actually helped return ghosts at one point. i personally always thought he was eternally bitter

welcome math~!

cosmographia

hello there! hahahahah

he holds bitterness and resentment for a lot of things since day 1 though, you are not far off it's just things that gradually evolved

MathTans the Pun Prince

Gonna take a second to catch up, but in terms of favourite scene, I actually liked the whole "Toy" side story. It showed the Guardians of the world, showed they weren't omnipotent, showed they were maybe out of touch through no fault of their own, just thought that was very clever.

(Delves into backlog.)

cosmographia

much like Acantha, he was very optimistic but after a while he lost it. So Schnell is semi-meant to represent the bitterness Acantha could eventually develop if she dwells on her failures

ey thanks! but oh man I'm so glad the out of touchness is clear in that!! guardians are definitely out of touch with the world, of all ironies

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

for me the out of touchness perhaps more came about when ramus attacked i think

just cause they didnt pay mind to the ppl around

just were focused on fighting

and syias was like "yeah sure another guardian can show up im sure nobody will freak out"

cosmographia

yea that's definitely important later

even with Bells trying to befriend Acantha, she's more determined like "I'M approaching her so it'll be cool right" without actually considering the harm's she's done (the collar, some resentment, etc.)

MathTans the Pun Prince

Yeah, lots of lore in this one. Interesting how things don't necessarily end happy or sad, it's just like, this is how things are for better or worse. Also, yeah, like Bells as a character.

Guardians are interesting in general.

cosmographia

yessssss, thank you Math!

I'm sometimes worried the comic comes off as too pessimistic when it's meant to be an inbetweener

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i cant speak for everyone but i think its an inbetweener. or more accurately, i think the story is just reality based, in that reality isnt pessimistic or optimistic 100% of the time

it just is what is it

bad stuff happens

and ppl have to keep living

so really i just feel like the characters are living actual live

that have consequences

MathTans the Pun Prince

Acantha took getting used to as well. What with the attitude and stealing and stuff. (Which is weird to say, because my protagonists aren't always sweetness and making the right decision either.) I gravitated a bit to Bells.

cosmographia

Ah Rebel I'm really glad to hear that!! Hahahah I think that's fair, she's definitely written to be bratty at first

MathTans the Pun Prince

Q2: Schnell just seems to have it in for Bells somehow? Like, maybe he had mother issues in his life and he's taking it out on her as "mother ghost" kind of deal IDK. Using everyone else to do that.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

man i cannot unpicture someone pointing at schnell and just shouting "you have mother issues!"

cosmographia

HAHAHAHA

MathTans the Pun Prince

Once we see Acantha's history she becomes loads more sympathetic too, to be clear.

cosmographia

p sure if/when the ghost kids find out about that they'll just slowly turn to him and go "REALLY????" cuz THEY definitely have valid father-figure issues

good!!

MathTans the Pun Prince

"Were you hugged enough as a child?"

cosmographia

Hahahahahahahaha

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah i really appreciated acantha's backstory. i think it was super needed right at the point it was presented. cause it finally showed that her own actions and attitude were a direct result of her past and what happened

cosmographia

good!! There's definitely chunks missing from there but they'll be studied throughout the story (and also gone fishing short stories thrown here and there)

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

>v>

in regards to question two part of me has been wondering if schnell just doesnt like his own life and he wants ghosts to be saved so he himself can be saved and move on.

MathTans the Pun Prince

Yeah, negative reinforcement is really kind of a dick move. IMHO. Hmm, so cosmic fish bunnies exist outside of space time?

(Ok, caught up...)

cosmographia

ooh ho ho nice theory Rebel! Ah yeah cosmic fishes are not directly related to Lheur (but I can say he is part cosmic fish, but not entirely)

MathTans the Pun Prince

I kind of wonder if Schnell really does know more than he lets on. Like, maybe he's been able to exist as long as he has by drinking the blood of virigins every hundred years. And he doesn't want anyone to kill because then they might stumble on the secret too.

Lheur is a fish offspring perhaps.

cosmographia

hahahahah no it's not THAT dark hahahahhaha mmmmaybe ;D

though I CAN say that, like guardians, cosmic entities like the fish and such can't biologically reproduce

wishjacked

Oh hey, I'm not going to be able to talk much (I'm at a holiday party!!) but I wanted to say that I finally read through the chapter three epilogue after this comic being on my TBR for ageeeeeees and I cannot wait to read the rest!!

MathTans the Pun Prince

(Have I mentioned I put out crazy theories? Cuz I do that.)

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

ah see, clearly bells made schnell on purpose cause she was like "ah man being a mom would be great" and now schnell is bitter cause he has an eternity to live

cosmographia

hi Wishjack, thank you!!! And I hope you have a wonderful time at the party (hahaha no problem at all, I find them funny)

hahahahah

MathTans the Pun Prince

Hiya wishjacked! Any fave in what you read?

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

thanks for stopping in wishjacked~!

cosmographia

Bells "aw man I definitely wish I knew what being a mom is like" -creates the most brattiest, entitled little thing- "....dammit"

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

meanwhile syias is in the bg saying i told you so

wishjacked

Such a good story so far, I'm really enjoying the characters and worldbuilding!! The bit with the mayor getting eaten by the starfaces was my favorite moment so far, and I'm REALLY looking forward to seeing how the story progresses!! Schnell's design slays me every time, it's so good.

cosmographia

ahh thank you wishjacked!!

and PFFT

Syias: lemme guess, now you want a PET? -Lheur shows up- Syias: OH COME ON.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

QUESTION 3. One of the larger conflicts in the comic is whether or not ghosts can be saved. Exactly why do ghosts form in the first place? Do you think they can actually be saved? Why can’t the guardians save them from the get-go? If ghosts are doomed to become monsters/change like Ramus, why hasn’t Schnell changed? Is this human character, Midah, going to have some role in their salvation? Speaking of which, what is Lheur’s (the rabbit-fish) role in all this?

MathTans the Pun Prince

Oh yeah! That thing with Mayor Pain was clever in terms of showing the light/dark reversal kind of thing too. Like, how it was actually not a bad thing and just part of "life", such as it is.

Also, twintailed star people. Strangely cute.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i liked mayor pain's reaction to being "eaten"

that was like a hilarious expression moment all around for everyone

cosmographia

Hahahahah! okay yea one sec!

MathTans the Pun Prince

Also, french bread puns (and puns in general) gets an A+.

When having dinner, Lheur might have a minute amount of seconds.

Going back to the quesiton, I wonder if ghosts form from things other than humans.

(Schnell has the blood of virgins thing going for him, like vampires...)

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

oh thats a good question math

i never considered that possibility

MathTans the Pun Prince

It just seemed like if they have no memory of being human, maybe they weren't, but I'm not sure about the alternative.

As to Lheur's role, it seems to be making collars.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

hmm. its possible. although i considered the fact they dont remember being human is just from the sheer fact they no longer possess the brain that contains their memories. so its not like theyd have concept of what a human even is

MathTans the Pun Prince

Mayor Pain wasn't exactly human either though.

Of course, that might have been another plane of existence entirely.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah we do gotta remember lheur teleported them somewhere. who knows where that even was.

not to mention theres monsters besides ghosts anyway

so the existence isnt that odd

MathTans the Pun Prince

True. Maybe it's regrets of the guardians made manifest or something. >.<

cosmographia

Exactly why do ghosts form in the first place? I can't really give the exact reason as to WHY they're there without diving into spoilers, but ghosts' bodies are a defense mechanism to a world they're suddenly being thrust upon. They don't go through the normal developmental process of baby, childhood, teenager, adult, but are thrown in at mid-teenager and expected to pick everything up in a matter of days. So their bodies are responses to society, personal, and cultural expressions and after a while they just CAN'T go back to where they came from (literally and metaphorically) Do you think they can actually be saved? I think anyone can be saved but it's not in the concepts a lot of western cultures define it as. It's not that someone like a friend or a romantic partner saves you or a higher entity (in this case guardians), but more how much you're willing to accept your own flaws and work toward them for your OWN betterment and everything else comes afterward. So a lot of what happens later isn't about being saved by a guardian before they turn, but WHAT you do with the circumstances and your own definition. You sometimes can't take back the things you've said and done (Ramus physically hurting Hessa, and Acantha's crime that often gets talked about) but how you respond to it, gives it meaning (Ramus allowed his negative thoughts to control his life till he became a monster, Acantha just pushes forward) Why can’t the guardians save them from the get-go? The only guardians that have the connections to the ghosts are Bells and Syias mainly because they feel the life cycle being disturbed, but for them to actually locate a ghost is a bit of a task. Actually, I'll answer this question with another question, if in chapter 1 we see that Bells compresses the souls but we know they can't filter through the guardian, where does she take them? ;>

If ghosts are doomed to become monsters/change like Ramus, why hasn’t Schnell changed? That definitely has to do with his powers and something else we'll see at the very beginning of the next chapter ;D Is this human character, Midah, going to have some role in their salvation? HEHEH. We'll see. Speaking of which, what is Lheur’s (the rabbit-fish) role in all this? Honestly, I'm gonna explain this soon so I'll say it here, but Lheur's role is that he makes sure the universes are running smoothly and healthy. He's kinda like the little guy with a notebook who takes notes at anomalies and leaves, but has befriended Bells little by little through his visits And yea, the comic has never stated if they were human at all, and honestly, that doesn't matter since they can't go back nor have memories from that possibility. They could've been anything or even nothing! It's who and what they are now that counts

MathTans the Pun Prince

Speaking of western cultures, it's interesting to see some of the Puerto Rico tidbits. I like stuff like that.

cosmographia

oh I like that theory Math

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

peeks in

Hw yeveryone

Almost forgot about CTP again

cosmographia

Yea!! I honestly wanted to make a comic that would motivate people to find the reference or see something and go "-gasp- that looks like the thing in Cosmic Fish!"

hello there!!

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

hey super~!

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Hi Cosmo! Hi Rebel!

MathTans the Pun Prince

Well, and with Acantha's many eyes, I originally thought she was the comic fish. (Maybe she is, in a metaphor way?) But now it seems more likely to be beings like Lheur.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Also that's an intresting piece of trivia

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

ah okay i guessed right on lheur. i thought thats what his role would actually turn out to be. that hes some being of order spying on things to make sure everything is okay. but then this begs the question of whether or not the ghosts are considered anamolies.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Refrences are fun to do

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

as for where bells took the soul i assumed it was to some cosmic place where the cosmic fish are

but now i think that makes is sound like the souls are fish food

cosmographia

Nice!! Ghosts are definitely anomalies ooh interesting guess! ovo

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Ooh is that so

MathTans the Pun Prince

The souls are soles? O.o

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

and idk i could still argue acantha is the cosmic fish in a metaphorical sense, math. it depends on what the message of the comic is cause acantha could be considered the embodiment of the title even if shes not the literal fish as far as the lore is concerned

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

also Acantha is the cutest thing with six eyes that I've seen yet(edited)

cosmographia

thank you justing!!

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

if lheur is responsible for the collar i wonder if the collar is some sort of experiment from lheur's "superiors" to see if they can help ghosts move on and return things to status quo

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

You're welcome XD

MathTans the Pun Prince

I still have such a soft spot for Bells. With her rolly head. I don't like that Schnell teases her about it.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

I'm actually Justin but everyone in this group likes to call me Justing

cosmographia

yea!! Yea you're right on the money about the metaphorical title Rebel, cosmic fish is attributed to Acantha's personal growth + an actual thing in the story

oh ok sorry <"D

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Lol it's k XD

MathTans the Pun Prince

OH, which reminds me, in one of those animated sequences (which OMG, very impressed that it's a thing) it looked like Bells' head was rolling away until she grabbed it and I laughed. (edited)

cosmographia

ooooh I love these theories

hahahahaha YEA!

MathTans the Pun Prince

Rebel: Hm, maybe? Are the true cosmic fish Lheur's surperiors, and they made him to keep tabs on things?

"Create some bunny ears to be more non-threatening."

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

I'm also a total sucker for characters with stick eyes like Bells/Raju

(and thank you deeply for doing chapter recaps)

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

maybe. although makes me wonder what cosmic fish are again. like are they embodiments of the universe. beings that exist in the cosmic flow of life. O_O regular ol' space fish

cosmographia

hahahahah OH ey good!

hahaha

ah man I can't say yet

I CAN say they're kinda dumb.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

regular ol' space fish it is

cosmographia

hahahahahah

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

schnell just wants to have a good fish dinner

cosmographia

he just wants the pet fish Bells told him he wasn't responsible enough for it

MathTans the Pun Prince

They're Acantha's siblings sent back through time after she creates them.

cosmographia

oh GOD

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

lol

I want a pet space fish

cosmographia

no , like...time is a thing but there's no legit time travel in the comic I REFUSE to work with time travel(edited)

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

that's understandable

since time travel is in everything these days

cosmographia

yeah honestly

also I don't want the answer to the comic to just be "time travel"

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i do kind of wonder if acantha had some sort of interaction with the cosmic fish unknowingly just cause she kind of wound up looking like a fish dragon thing

MathTans the Pun Prince

Hee. I do time travel. It's not as popular as you might think. ^^ But there was one remark about how time was fluid or something and so how they're not really ghosts, that's an element.

cosmographia

time is a very delicate and finicky thing in the comic so it's unreliable, nervous, and nobody likes it

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

I'd probobly try time travel a grand total of one time in my series(edited)

because the story is all about it

Especially since you have to write about things like, paradoxes

cosmographia

yeah!

MathTans the Pun Prince

Maybe Acantha will learn how to do the cosmic fish teleport, maybe that's what the collar is preparing her for.

cosmographia

and as for the question Rebel, it'd be interesting yeah! But for now nah, Acantha just looks fish-like because she was drowning. She isn't technically special in any way.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

oh really

cosmographia

ye ye

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

QUESTION 4. Our protagonist, Acantha, has numerous mysteries about her. With her being Bells’ newest strategy to save ghosts, the mysteries are more poignant than ever. Do you think Bells is right that Acantha might save the ghosts/prove Schnell’s wrong? While it’s implied Acantha broke the rulef about killing the past, what do you think exactly happened (and why does that rule exist)? Will she reunite with Hessa and the others? How will she react to Ramus’ death? Will we ever find out how Acantha became a ghost exactly due to Schnell’s machinations?

cosmographia

if anything Schnell is supposed to be the "special/chosen one/what have you" he's the half-and-half, as in, half ghost half guardian that stories usually use to treat as the hero but he ain't!!(edited)

MathTans the Pun Prince

Maybe Acantha broke the rule partly to annoy Schnell.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

what about half spider

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

well i remember it was implied that she did it to protect the others

but from what

from some icky human

MathTans the Pun Prince

Schnell is like evil Hercules.

Maybe to protect them from Schnell. She says she doesn't trust him.

confleiks

so i may have just pictured schnell in an ill-fitting kid's costume of disney hercules

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

perhaps

MathTans the Pun Prince

Bells is Hades?

"Whoa, is my head off?"

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

MIND BLOWN

MathTans the Pun Prince

Just reverse the morality.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

hmmm

cosmographia

Do you think Bells is right that Acantha might save the ghosts/prove Schnell’s wrong? Their bet mainly consists that despite everything that happened, Acantha still saved a ghost (back in chapter 1) unlike what Schnell would have done. So, in a way, yes, I think Bells is on to something but is approaching it in a very black and white way and that can be bad for Acantha. So both need to work on their own things there. While it’s implied Acantha broke the rule about killing the past, what do you think exactly happened (and why does that rule exist)? There are a few reasons, killing is considered a problem with ghosts because, it's, well, bad, and it might speed up the process since ghosts change into monsters due to negative thoughts. Also since ghosts aren't SUPPOSED to be there, them killing someone is a paradox (though nothing universe breaking is happening, so it might just be guardian paranoia) and Schnell is against killing personally because he believes there are worse punishments. What Acantha did, IS covered soon, so I can just say, she deliberately killed a human and it wasn't even out of self-defense. Her own reasoning is understandable once that's taken place (it's foreshadowed a bit in Gone Fishing 003, the one with Midah) Will she reunite with Hessa and the others? Time will tell, but most likely because good narrative structure would incline that to be so, but it's really a matter of WHAT will happen and WHEN ;D How will she react to Ramus’ death? Oh we're finding out about that very soon, so stay tuned! Will we ever find out how Acantha became a ghost exactly due to Schnell’s machinations? Yesssss, by next chapter!

and hahahahaha

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

oh boy

dis is gonna be fun

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

my semi crack theory is that schnell happened upon unformed acantha and said "ah mother isnt here" and then he kicked her into the lake/river

and then sipped some tea

MathTans the Pun Prince

Speaking of Acantha and Schnell, Gallo was pretty cool. And funny at times. Though he really shouldn't have spilled the beans there, in retrospect.

cosmographia

hahahaha no she WAS there but close ;D

MathTans the Pun Prince

Possibly sipped the tea first.

cosmographia

hahaha

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Did i hear

tea

MathTans the Pun Prince

I also liked with Gallo's first appearance Acantha was all "nope nope nope". Then it got echoed later. Nice little throwback.

cosmographia

he really shouldn't have but I'm hoping once i get the short stories edited and out into the world, it's going to be very clear that the ghost kids are crazy dependent on Schnell as their fix-all solution YEEES

confleiks

@cosmographia HI MOM

cosmographia

good on ya for catching the callback

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

TEEEEEAAAAAA

cosmographia

@confleiks HI MOM

tea is important in the comic hahahaha well for a few characters but

MathTans the Pun Prince

Good on you for writing it.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

@cosmographia HI MOM

I like comics that have tea as a theme for some reason

cosmographia

hahahahah

I'm trying to get to the page that the tea thing is mentioned

MathTans the Pun Prince

Also Gallo makes me think "pico de gallo" and he's red like salsa so that works.

cosmographia

http://cosmicfishes.com/comic/chapter-4-page-20/

Cosmic Fish

cosmographia

Chapter 4, page 20

HAHAH Gallo means rooster, so close enough!

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i really like gallo's design. but speaking of gallo i enjoy the fact that there are certain things they cant do cause of how their bodies are made. like the fact gallo doesnt really have hands so has to pick stuff up with his teeth. thats a really nice detail

MathTans the Pun Prince

Hands are really an issue with the guy, of course.

Yeah, my spanish is not good. ^^;

cosmographia

yea!

Gallo is handicapped but it isn't plot or character-development related, it's just a thing that is and that's ok!

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

so a cartoon monster or whatever Schnell is loves him some tea

MathTans the Pun Prince

Can Acantha ever close all her eyes? Like, I can see why she wouldn't like dark tunnels, not used to never seeing anything.

cosmographia

the two small ones have transparent eyelids like crocodiles

confleiks

I wonder if Acantha ever threw a blanket over his head because she thought he might think it's nighttime and fall asleep

cosmographia

but they see shapes and shadows for the most part

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

lolol

cosmographia

HAHAHA

confleiks

YES HAHAHAHAHA

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

thats a good picture. i accept this as a canon scenario.

cosmographia

maybe it'll help her in her next stealthy heist

hahahaha

MathTans the Pun Prince

Oh yeah, cosmographia, saw some of your little pics at the bottom of some comics, those were clever.

cosmographia

ah thanks!!! poking fun at your own stories is A+

MathTans the Pun Prince

It's a thing with those who enjoy puns, maybe.

cosmographia

maybe...definitely

there's a good number of puns or playful naming decisions for most characters here

MathTans the Pun Prince

I'm sure I only noticed half. ^^

cosmographia

hahaha well some become more relevant later

Acantha isn't JUST called Acantha because of the mirror decoration

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

OMG LOL

THAT PIC

MathTans the Pun Prince

So you have the whole thing sketched out for a while yet, eh?

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

The rag is the ultiamte weapon

MathTans the Pun Prince

OOOooooh, interesting. (Reminded of the pic where she's just taking the mirror away, heh.)

cosmographia

she's a "support" for other characters ;3 likeapillarsupport...it'sagreekthing

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

heehee

cosmographia

hahahah

MathTans the Pun Prince

It's so ionic.

cosmographia

and YEAH! the characters are pretty old and the story took a long time in the oven andalotofreading

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

oh really?

how long have you been planning this comic?

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i did wonder if acantha's meaning was super on purpose and not just cause timing and place XD

cosmographia

2012...? At least that's when the first draft happened, some characters are from 2009 or so

hahahahahah

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

ooh wow

cosmographia

yea it's unconscious but also it'll start gaining relevancy throughout the story right now it's just her own word for identity, so it's a "self" definition, and it needs to evolve into "action" or how it's perceived.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

mine started planning around '09, but I haven't started making the full story for it yet

cosmographia

ooh!

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

and I have a feeling it'll take me a long time

cosmographia

that's normal though, and also gives you a time to re-do things

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Yeah

cosmographia

or re-establish them and make em more solid

MathTans the Pun Prince

The little plush doll cameos was cute in that one update too, wonder if that was inspired by something?

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Lots of things have changed in my project over the years, mostly for the better

(at least I hope the changes I did make were for the better)

cosmographia

CF definitely became WAY better when I started researching the science-y parts oh! it was a thank you for a lot of people who were supporting me at the time and just did a call on twitter and fb if people wanted cameos

good!!

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

oh nice~

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱��

i like that idea of acantha's name turning from a piece of identification into an action. thats a really beautiful sentiment that i think suits the comic

cosmographia

whoo!!

thanks!

MathTans the Pun Prince

Gotcha. Animation bits also impressed me. Nice that you have the support and music and such for such things.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

yea

MathTans the Pun Prince

And all the best with you health-wise cosmographia (I read some of the author remarks and comments).

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Best of luck and hope everything goes smoothly

cosmographia

thanks!! I wanted to make animated bits for every chapter but that soon proved to be wayyy difficult. Major kudos to the musicians who've helped and sometimes having months in advance to plan out scenes. (Bells juggling her head while fleeing from Ramus was made like...5 months in advance)

ay thank you so much!!

MathTans the Pun Prince

That whole thing with Bells head, subtle running joke, don't know why it amuses me so much.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Welcome

MathTans the Pun Prince

Maybe cuz I like her character and it helps show that she's also a bit imperfect.

cosmographia

hahahaha GOOD!

confleiks

Bells is like a very excitable and eager to please ancient puppy and I love her so much

cosmographia

Bells was definitely made to APPEAR like the perfect fix-all character but definitely is neither of those things upon further inspection

yessssss :')

confleiks

she'd be a cocker spaniel or bassett hound because of her long ears :>

MathTans the Pun Prince

Hee! She has dogged perseverance.

confleiks

BA DUM TS

cosmographia

hahahahahaha

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

relatedly i want to say i really like the mentions of how the ppl worship the guardians. i think it really capture the disconnect between ppls idealistic image of them and the actual true nature of their existence

cosmographia

^^^^^ Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Yea

MathTans the Pun Prince

Another nice callback actually was when Acantha said she didn't like the story of the toy, which had been shown earlier.

Rebel: Very good point.

cosmographia

"the guardians are perfect and want what's best for us" -Bells trips in the next scene-

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

lol

MathTans the Pun Prince

Also, I think it was the right idea to not really have people until the later chapters. Keeps the focus on the curious beings, who are the major players.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

cosmographia

Ye!! It also kinda hinted that any potential narrator might not be a narrator but something....or someoooone

yea!!!!

cosmographia

"what's the toy?" Oh, literally just a bed time story Schnell told Acantha and she hated it.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i do like seeing humans tho. cause everyone kept mentioning them but i was like "where are they O_O"

cosmographia

HAHAHAH

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

"who are these "living" things"

MathTans the Pun Prince

"Humans are mythological creatures."

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Are ghosts made of flesh in this comic?

cosmographia

"they're not the center of the universe it seems, just some other random animal"

yeah they gain a physical body but they can't control it after a while

MathTans the Pun Prince

It is interesting that humans aren't really huge or anything though. They're size-wise about right for everything else, I think.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

ooh

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

alroight then

MathTans the Pun Prince

All the best with the fishy stuff going forwards then. ^.^

cosmographia

yea they're just...part of everything else. Which is also why I was very avoidant of using them at the beginning, cuz this isn't a story about them no matter how hard they try

cuz we humans naturally desire to be the protagonists

MathTans the Pun Prince

Good call.

cosmographia

so the narrative is purposely going "there they are...in the distance. Moving on."

MathTans the Pun Prince

We're also sometimes the antagonists.

cosmographia

they're not good, they're not bad, they're there.

yep!

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

Unfortunately, the scheduled Comic Tea Party is now complete~! Thank you everyone so much for joining this week’s chat~! That being said, if you would like to continue discussing the comic, we encourage you to do so~! We want to give a big thank you to cosmographia, as well, for volunteering Cosmic Fish for our reading queue. If you liked the comic, please be sure to support cosmographia’s efforts. If you have questions, concerns, or suggestions about CTP, please feel free to PM me, or e-mail me at [email protected].

With that said, next week’s Comic Tea Party will focus on Final Light by BraveHeartTatsumaki. Please use this week to read as much of the comic as you would like. Hope to see you next Thursday (January 4th, 2018) from 5PM to 7PM PST~! Until then~! Comic: https://tapas.io/series/FinalLight

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #start faire #startfaire #comic tea party #ctp #comicteaparty #comic chat #comic discussion #bookclub #comic bookclub #cosmic fish #cosmographia

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nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

Text

A Japanese Art Collective Had a Funeral for Liberty on the US-Mexico Border

Images courtesy the artists

Ellie Hall knows what it's like to be banned from the US, a plight at least 60,000 legal immigrants could face in the wake of an executive order Donald Trump signed late last month. The Tokyo-based artist and her collective Chim↑Pom installed a series of artworks along the Mexican–American border, needling the power structures and assumptions that accompany the conversation around immigration.

In December, the collective dug a grave-like hole under the wall already separating Tijuana neighborhood Colonia Libertad from the United States. Hall crawled into the hole, now an installation called The Grounds, setting foot under US soil, but not on top of it. The action begged the question: did she break the law if she never set foot above the ground? Her footprints in the mud have been preserved on site for visitors to contemplate.

Nine days before Trump was sworn into office, Chim↑Pom and some Colonia Libertad locals hopped the border and held a funeral for freedom. The grassy plot of land between Mexico's wall and that of the United States is usually used as a garbage dump by locals, but the artists found it an appropriate place for their installation, appropriately entitled, LIBERTAD. Inscribed with the Spanish word for "liberty," the cross mimicks thosr hung along the border wall facing Tijuana Airport, memorials for those who died attempting to cross the border. "Since the cross is installed between the two new and old walls, in Homeland Securities’ location, the grave of LIBERTAD can be equally seen as holding the same meaning on the Mexican and American side," Chim↑Pom tells The Creators Project.

Both are visible from a DIY treehouse entitled USA Visiting Center, which Chim↑Pom installed in summer 2016. Its position in the backyard of a self-made house constructed against the border wall offers a sweeping view of both countries, including The Grounds and LIBERTAD. There, locals unable to get a visa to visit the US, usually children, can join Hall in soaking in the forbidden landscape.

Hall has been a victim of American bureaucracy for years. Her ban comes not from an executive order, but actually, standard policy. While filling out paperwork en route to a television shoot in Hawaii, a member of her crew ironically checked the box identifying himself as a "terrorist." Hall's whole team was denied entry to the United States, and every attempt to visit the country since has been rejected. America's borders with Mexico and Canada are the closest she can get, so she's had a lot of time to ponder the relationship between these narrow divides between nations.

Chim↑Pom's first piece tackling US immigration was called COYOTE, named for the guides enlisted to illegally lead travelers across the border. The 2014 show at Friedman Benda Gallery consisted of a recorded Skype conversation between Hall and a gallerist discussing these human traffickers. Hall couldn't attend the show in person, since her visas kept getting rejected, so the visitor is trapped in the room with the discussion of coyotes, an overt reference to Joseph Beuys' 1974 performance I Like America and America Likes Me, in which Beuys locked himself in a room with a wild coyote for three days. Chim↑Pom's work Don't Follow the Wind, an art exhibition installed in the irradiated Fukushima exclusion zone, also deals with the nature of constructed borders.

Their current body of work has never been more pertinent, as President Trump's executive order to begin building an amorphous wall along the border and Muslim ban sparked protests all over the United States. Green card holders and uncounted refugees stranded overseas await an ongoing court battle to determine the their legal standing. In the meantime, we discussed Trump and the nature of borders with the members of Chim↑Pom, who chose to answer in one voice.

The Creators Project: What made you want to build a treehouse on the border? Chim↑Pom: Upon considering what the United States is about, we thought it was important to think of it from the outside, since the motive was caused by Ellie being denied entry into the country. Just around that time, we had heard from a Mexican friend that around 40% of Mexicans can't enter the U.S. So we had the idea of building a U.S.A. Visitor Center before going to Mexico, for those people along the border with American land.

Our interest in Mexico had deepened with the piece COYOTE. But the most significant part was meeting that family that lives in that unique house and the tree that stands in their courtyard. That house reusing the border wall as part of their home's wall is probably the closest house to the U.S. in the world, beautifully overlapping their personal life with this matter between nations called the border. To top it off, the house has 13 cheerful children running around barefoot everyday. It was like Tom Sawyer. And many Mexicans, including them, cannot enter the U.S.––the same state as Ellie. When we saw that house's tree, we envisioned an art project overlapping with their life. That's the treehouse. Tree houses have a history of being used to watch enemies. Another incident was we learned about is an art project that was part of inSITE, which installed a telescope right by the border for local residents to watch the U.S. side, but in fact was destroyed and deemed useless. So we wanted to make something useful for the children and community. The house is a "USA Visitors' Center," but have you received any visitors from the US so far? What about visitors from the local community?

Some friends from L.A. visited the space, and local children play in the treehouse everyday.

Were you worried about getting caught installing LIBERTAD and The Grounds?

Of course we were a bit worried. But observing the local residents' lives, we realized how different their realities of the border wall and the no man's land are compared to those who have never experienced that. They climb the wall everyday, picking up and throwing garbage, going on walks, or going to pick up a ball that went over it. It's natural for them since it's part of their living sphere/everyday life. The best way to go across the wall in making LIBERTAD was to collaborate with them and tap into the rhythm of their life.

Did making LIBERTAD and The Grounds give you any insight into the nature of borders?

There's the two, old and new wall, and a border patrol car was always parked in front of us in the no man's land, monitoring us when we were making the treehouse. On the old wall side in Mexico were many houses and towns with people living cheerfully. On the other hand we went to San Ysidro many times to research the new wall of the American side (with Ellie of course waiting in Mexico), but the area around the wall was a patrolling space, with only security cars. We wondered what the U.S. was so afraid of. Just by looking over at the U.S. with a telescope from the treehouse, the Mexican police came to question us, saying they were requested by the U.S. security forces to do so. To top it off, Trump is planning to build a huge wall. Even if you do such a thing, tunnels still exist, as well as reasons for the U.S. to be afraid of invasions and terrorism on the American side. Even though it's such a big country, it's very fearful. We thought it was like a small child.

What do you hope people take away from this project?

The circumstances surrounding U.S. immigration right now are severe. Even then, children who have a strong desire to play are having fun inside the treehouse. Of course, many people become pessimistic in the worst situations, but humans also have the strength to turn them into playgrounds. If we forget our sense of humor, survival skills, and playfulness by drowning in a cycle of anger, hostility, retaliation, and fear, then that's exactly how art becomes defeated by reality. Earlier this month Trump signed an executive order ordering the immediate construction of his wall. Has this changed how Chim↑Pom views USA Visiting Center, LIBERTAD, and The Grounds?

We knew it was coming, but it does feel like the circumstances of Ellie and the people of LIBERTAD became even closer and overlapping with the world's reality.

Why does a Japanese art collective feel the need to respond to a wall between the US and Mexico border? How do Trump's actions affect you?

Because Ellie has not been allowed into the U.S., Ellie became interested in the fact that she was specified a prohibited place. She felt a connection between Japanese people who can travel to most places, and the situation of the world. There's a place you cannot go—it's the same with evacuees from the exclusion zones in Fukushima and the Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe. Many individuals are at the mercy of international politics.

People in [Colonia] Libertad call the U.S. "the other side." We felt that abstract but universal sound resonating with us when thinking about the essence of a "wall." Beyond the specific unit of one nation, the current international community creates various "other sides." On the other hand, when we organized Don't Follow the Wind in Fukushima, we made it into an international exhibition.