#the unfortunate thing about giving critique is that you often have to make assumptions about what the receiver does and does not know

[sofastuffing]

[this is trucksquared's art blog]

As promised, here's my critiques. I also did a really rough paintover to demonstrate easier than text

The shadows are quite uniformly dark. Light tends to scatter even into areas that aren't directly lit, so making the parts furthest away from the light sources (eg. the edge of the ceiling) even darker, and the parts closest to direct light (eg. the edge of san's shadow) a little lighter will add a lot of depth

You seem to have partially done this already, but I think you could go a lot further

An easy way to do this is by adding a clipping mask to your shading layer and using a airbrush

Another thing that would add depth is reflected/ambient lighting. This is especially true for sans, because his simple character design creates relatively large areas of flat colour

In the paintover, I gave sans' jacket two types of indirect lighting: the ambient lighting, which is blue because it's the opposite of the yellow direct lighting (so it's like... the frequencies left over from the direct light, if that makes sense), and the light reflected directly from the floor, which is warmer because the floor itself is orange

One big issue is that the beams of light from the windows are lighting up areas that wouldn't actually be directly lit, like the back of the columns and the walls around Frisk. Light beams are visible because of particles in the air reflecting them at the viewer, so if you're going for realistic(ish) lighting, you should make them somewhat transparent

You may have noticed that fixing this issue makes Frisk blend into the background more. You can get around this by making Frisk/the area around them artificially brighter—as long as you follow the rules of lighting everywhere else, it'll be clear that you're making a stylistic decision for the sake of a good composition

I do really like the colour palette you chose. The saturated shadows and strong lighting really give your piece a dramatic tone

Sans, Frisk and the columns are parallel to/on the horizon line, so the floor shouldn't actually be visible here. If you want to floor to be barely visible, you need to put the horizon line above the floor of the room (I'd say around Sans' ankles or knees)

I think the black bars are cool and cinematic

Here are some more minor nitpicks:

I feel like the whole drawing should be scooted a liiiitle to the right. It's not that big a deal though, and tbh I'm not sure why I feel that way in the first place (maybe it's a rule of thirds thing?)

The subsurface scattering on sans isn't really visible and I think a brighter, more saturated colour would really "pop"

i think adding a little highlight to sans' bald head skull would look cool and show texture

JUDGEMENT

The last corridor is probably a pretty common subject in UT fan art but I decided to attempt it anyway because I wanted to test my lighting and perspective skills~

[gimme-mor]

ACOTAR THINK PIECE: VISIBLE TO INVISIBLE

*DISCLAIMER*

Please take the time to read this post in its entirety and truly reflect on the message I am trying to send before commenting. My goal is to use my background in Gender and Women’s Studies to deconstruct the comments I have seen on social media, bring awareness to the ACOTAR fandom, and encourage critical thinking and self-reflection. I WILL NOT tolerate anyone who tries to twist my words and say I am attacking real life people. In fact, I AM CRITIQUING THE ARGUMENTS THEMSELVES NOT THE PEOPLE USING THE ARGUMENTS.

It’s no secret that SJM struggles with diversity, often opting for ambiguous words like “tan” or “golden skin” to describe her characters. But over the course of her writing career, she has made efforts to write inclusively; and though her representation falls on the side of bad representation at times, she has made it clear in the text if characters are non-white, describing them with varying shades of brown skin or having dark skin in general. As it stands, the ACOTAR world has a limited number of characters of color, so it’s confusing to see them whitewashed in fanart, fancasts, and fan edits. When whitewashing accusations are brought up in the fandom, they are dismissed with statements like:

It doesn’t matter

Don’t like it? Ignore it and move on

This is art and it’s open to interpretation

As a person of color, you don’t see me complaining

This is just how I imagined the character

The text doesn’t say the characters have ethnic facial features

Fans can cast whoever they want to portray fictional characters the way they imagined them

It’s just fancasting, it’s not that deep

Not everything is about race

If you want people of color to be depicted in the books, go read books specifically about characters of color

Fancasting characters of color as white is not erasing anyone’s race because they’re not real

They’re fictional characters regardless of the book’s description, so who cares if people imagine characters of color differently

Western society has grown so accustomed to the media being dominated by white representations that envisioning a character as white becomes the norm, even when faced with evidence to the contrary. Although nearly all of the characters of color in the ACOTAR series have been subjected to whitewashing, only a handful of illustrations accurately depict Vassa as a woman of color. It can be assumed that because Vassa has features society deems as inherently white (i.e. having red hair, blue eyes, and freckled skin), it is acceptable for the fandom to imagine her character as white despite her having golden-brown skin. This mentality is harmful because it suggests that naturally colored hair, light colored eyes, and freckles are exclusively white features and that people of color with these features don’t exist. The act of whitewashing characters of color in the ACOTAR series marginalizes fans of color in a space that is inherently rooted in white-centeredness, and downplays the impact whitewashing has on fans of color. The continued erasure of characters of color in the series not only normalizes the belief that fandom is a space for white people primarily and people of color secondarily, but it perpetuates the notion that whiteness is better and more palatable in visual media.

From employment to education to healthcare to media, race and discussions about race are inescapable because racism affects everything in society. The media has a history of prioritizing whiteness and white narratives often at the expense of people of color. Racebending, which can be understood as changing the race of a character, occurs not only in fanworks such as fanart, fancasts, and fanfiction, but even in visual media. It allows characters that have been traditionally white to be reinterpreted as people of color in an effort to diversify casts and counter whiteness as the default in both visual media and fanworks. Unfortunately, racebending itself gives way for problematic justifications and assumptions. Whitewashing is a form of racebending that erases characters of color from media and replaces them with white actors. The act of whitewashing characters of color is commonly excused with declarations of artistic or personal interpretations of characters despite the text stating they are not white, which ultimately diminishes the impact whitewashing has on people of color. Aside from that, racebending traditionally white characters as people of color has been framed as an issue that is just as offensive and bad as whitewashing characters of color. In the article “8 Things White Fans Can Do to Make Fandom More Inclusive”, it states:

“. . .You could argue that people often reimagine white characters as characters of color (popularly known as ‘racebending’), so why not do the opposite? The short answer is this: When people racebend a character, they create more diversity. If they’re fans of color, they do so to see themselves in the fictional media they love. When people whitewash a character, they decrease diversity. They’re erasing a character of color and, whether consciously or unconsciously, sending the message that they’d relate more to the character if the character was white. . .” (https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/making-fandom-more-inclusive/).

The belief that racebending traditionally white characters as people of color carries the same racist implications as whitewashing characters of color is equivalent to arguments that proclaim the existence of reverse racism. Racism and prejudice have often been used interchangeably in society, causing racism to be simplified as one group not liking another. Racism involves the marginalization and oppression of racial groups based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy and it combines with socialized power to carry out systematic discrimination through institutional policies and practices. White people can be victims of prejudice but never victims of racism because, unlike people of color, prejudice against white people doesn’t lead to structural, systemic, and lasting disadvantages in education, healthcare, career prospects, and other societal structures. When the element of power is removed from discussions about racism, the definition of racism becomes overly simplified and ignores the real and damaging impact it has on the lives of marginalized people. The impulse behind reverse racism proponents and arguments against racebending traditionally white characters as people of color are motivated, consciously or unconsciously, by the desire to center whiteness in the media while marginalizing people of color in the process. Whitewashing characters of color is incomparable to racebending traditionally white characters as people of color because whitewashing contributes to the continued erasure of people of color in the media. Moreover, racebending traditionally white characters as people of color would only have the same societal effect as whitewashing characters of color if white people faced the same systematic and institutionalized mistreatment experienced by people of color. 

It’s important to be aware of the ramifications of whitewashing and to not view it as insignificant because whitewashing characters of color is rooted in racist ideals and is a method of preserving white dominance in the media. Whitewashing characters of color in a society that favors whiteness is extremely problematic because: it implies that characters of color are inferior to white characters and aren’t as relatable as them; reinforces colorist views that deem brown and dark skin as unattractive; and feeds into the notion that eurocentric standards of beauty are superior to ethnic features. SJM isn’t always clear with her character descriptions in relation to skin tone but when she is, the ACOTAR fandom should take notice because when characters are described as not white then they’re not white.

[sketching-shark]

I think we should start a protection squad (although they don’t need it because they can protect themselves) for Sun Wukong and Guanyin

“Begone monkie kid fandom trying to down grade these really interesting characters with interesting personality’s and backstory ( the both of them like seriously Guanyin backstory is so cool) to a villain wile trying to justify your angsty backstory (that are no where near as cool as monkey who fights gods and Person who has 1000 arms and heads to help people in need) for the actual villain”

So who wants to join

Me:*raises my hand*

Ps: sorry if I got Guanyin backstory wrong am not an expert on it.

Haha okay so some critiques on the jttw & associated media western fandom & fandom in general coming up, so please skip this upcoming text wall if you don't want to encounter my undoubtedly ~devastating~ words (i.e. don't like don't read as people love to say, & if I have to be inundated with images of my notp every time I go into the sun wukong tag then I imagine people can be chill with me expressing my opinions & giving people fair warning that I WILL be critiquing common fandom trends, but no need for you to see that if you don’t want to. Cool? Cool.)

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PFFFFFTTT oh man there are many times when I feel like signing up for such a protection squad...when it comes to the current western jttw & Sun Wukong fandom I do feel like I'm often swinging at a rapid pace between "well it's fandom & people are allowed to make the stories they want" & "I am once again begging my fellow monkie kid enthusiasts (& sometimes creators) to do more research into the og classic/show it more respect so you can avoid any potentially offensive/off-the-mark misunderstandings of the status & cultural context of the characters in their country of origin (I promise it's super interesting & I can provide you with links to free pdf copies of the entire Yu translation, i.e. the best one ever created, so feel free to ask!) & maybe also stop constantly stripping away all the nuance of Sun Wukong's character for the sake of either making him an entire asshole so your little meow meow can look completely innocent in comparison and/or making the monkey king's entire life & character revolve around said meow meow."

Like I get that fandom's supposed to be a kind of anything-goes environment, but one thing that honestly seems to be true of a lot of fandoms--and the western one for Sun Wukong & co. is certainly not immune from this--is that there often seems to be a kind of monoculturalization at work in what stories are created & what character interpretations are made popular. Across a multitude of fandoms, you frequently see basically nothing but the exact same tropes being made popular & even being insisted on for the canonical work (especially hasty redemption arcs & enemies to lovers these days), the exact same one-dimensional character types that characters from an original work keep getting shoved into, the exact same story beats, etc. And I get it to an extent, as fandom is generally a space where people just make art and fic for fun & without thinking too hard about it & without any pressure. 

This seems to, however, often unfortunately lead to the mentality that it’s your god-given right to do literally whatever you want with literally any cultural figure without even the slightest bit of thought put into their cultural, historical, and even religious context, even (and sometimes especially) when it comes to figures that are really important in a culture outside your own. For such figures--even if you first encounter them in a children’s cartoon--you should be a little more careful with what you do with them than you would with your usual Saturday morning line-up. It of course has to be acknowledged that there exists a whole pile of absolutely ridiculous & cursed pieces of media that are based on Journey to the West & that were produced in mainland China, but for your own education if nothing else I consider it good practice for those of us (myself certainly included) who aren’t part of the culture that produced JTTW to put more thought into how we might want to portray these characters so that at the very least (to pull some things I’ve seen from the jttw western fandom) we’re not turning a goddess of mercy into an evil figure for the sake of Angst(TM), or relegating other important literary figures into the positions of offensive stereotypes, or making broad claims about the source text & original characterizations of various figures that are blatantly untrue, or mocking heavenly deities because of what’s actually your misunderstanding of how immortality works according to Daoist beliefs. Yet while a lot of this is often due to people not even trying to understand the context these figures are coming from, I do want to acknowledge that the journey (lol reference) to understand even a fraction of the original cultural context can be a daunting one, especially since, as I’ve mentioned before, it can be really hard & even next to impossible to find good, accessible, & legitimate explanations in English of how, for example, the relationship between Sun Wukong and the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China & according to the Buddhist beliefs that define the original work. 

That is to say, I do think it’s an unfortunate, if unavoidable, part of any introduction of an original text into a culture foreign to its own for there to be sometimes a significant amount of misinterpretation, mistranslations, and false assumptions. There is, however, a big difference between learning from your honest mistakes, & doubling down on them while dismissing all criticism of your misinterpretation into that abstract category of “fandom drama.” The latter attitude is kind of shitty at best and horrifically entitled at worst. 

Plus, as I’ve discovered, there is a great deal of interest and joy to be drawn from keeping yourself open to learning aspects of these texts & figures that you weren’t aware of! I can say from my own experience that I’ve always really enjoyed & appreciated it when individuals on this site who come from a Chinese background--and who know much more about the cultural context of JTTW than me--have taken the time to explain its various aspects. It often leaves me feeling like woooooaaaahhhhhHHH!!!! as to how amazingly full of nuanced meaning JTTW is like dang no wonder it’s one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels. 

And I guess that right there is the heart of a lot of my own personal frustration and disappointment with the ways that fandoms often approach a literary work or other piece of media...like don’t get me wrong, a lot of the original works a fandom may grow around are just straight-up goofy & everyone’s aware of it & has fun with it, yet the trend of approaching what are often nuanced and multi-layered works in terms of how well they fit and/or can be shoved into pretty cliche ideas of Redemption Arc or Enemies to Lovers or Hero Actually Bad, Villain Actually Good etc...well, it just seems to cheapen and even erase even the possibility of understanding the wonderful complexity or even endearing simplicity that made these works so beloved in the first place. Again, I feel like I need to make it clear that I’m not saying fandom should be a space where people are constantly trying to one-up each other with their hot takes in literary analysis, but it would be nice and even beneficial to allow room for commentary that strives to approach these works in a multi-faceted way, analysis & interpretations that go against the popular fandom beliefs, & criticism of the work or even of fandom trends (yes it is in fact possible to legitimately love something but still be critical of its aspects) instead of immediately attacking people who try to engage in such as just being haters who don’t want anyone to have fun ever (X_X).   

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Anyway, I know I didn’t cover even half of the stuff you brought up in the first place anon, but I don’t want any interested parties to this post to suffer too long through my text wall lol. I was asked to try my hand at illustrating Guanyin, but as with you I’m nowhere near as informed as I should be about her, so I want to do more research on her history and religious importance before I attempt a portrait. I’ll try my best, and do plan to pair that illustration with my own outsider’s attempt to summarize her character. From what little I do know I am in full agreement that her backstory is so incredibly amazing...just the fact that she literally eschewed the bliss of Nirvana to help all beings reach it, and even split herself into pieces in the attempt to do so (with Buddha granting her eleven heads and a thousand arms as a result)...man, I can see why she’s such a beloved & respected deity. 

----

 As for what western fandom commonly does with everyone’s favorite god-fighting primate...I can talk about this at length if there’s interest, but for this post I’ll just say that I guess one lesson from all of this is that for all the centuries that have passed since Journey to the West was first completed, literally no one drawing inspiration from the original tale in the west (lol) has come even slightly close to being able to equal or even capture half the extent of the nuance, complexity, religious, historical, and cultural aspects, and humor that define Wu Cheng'en's story of an overpowered monkey who defied even Buddha.

So thank the heavens we'll always have the original.

[arosnowflake]

Like I think something a lot of adults fail to realize is that a) they are not the target audience for children’s media, and b) what this means, exactly. 

When engaging in criticism for children’s media, a refrain I often hear from adults is either ‘it’s for kids, of course I’m not going to enjoy it’ or ‘even if it’s for kids, I should still be able to enjoy it!’ and I feel like both of those statements are right and wrong in different ways.

The first is wrong because it’s a statement dismissive of the quality that children’s media can - and, frankly, should - have. It assumes that all children’s media must be dumbed down mindless entertainment that could never have any real value. This is, of course, not true. Children’s media can and does have real value and is perfectly capable of examining complex themes, stories, and characters. 

At the same time, I feel like people often have the wrong expectations for what those stories, themes, and characters should be. Children, like teenagers, like adults, are a target demographic. Stories usually appeal to us if they, in some way, connect to our real lives; in other words, if we can find them relatable. What is relatable to an adult is different than what is relatable to a teenager, which is of course different than what is relatable to a child. In different stages of your life, you have experienced and are experiencing different things. Therefore, you need stories that deal with different things. 

In that way, ‘it’s for kids, of course I’m not going to enjoy it’ is a very valid statement to make. Adults unlikely to enjoy a story about going to kindergarten and leaving your parents behind for the first time, just as children of kindergarten age are unlikely to enjoy a story about leaving an unfulfilling job to chase your passion. Children’s stories often center around themes they can immediately relate to, such as family, elementary school, friendship, and growing up. Adult stories often center around more abstract themes, such as society and feeling unfulfilled in your life, or themes more applicable to adults, such as jobs and romantic relationships. Although there is, of course, some overlap in themes (such as family), those themes are approached very differently depending on whether the target audience is children or adults. As such, adults disliking children’s media is perfectly understandable: it was not made for them, and they are less likely to relate to its themes and messages. 

This is also the reason why ‘even if it’s for kids, I should still be able to enjoy it!’ can be misused. Something I’ve often seen (particularly from young adults in fandom) is the assumption that if a piece of children’s media doesn’t appeal to adults, it is automatically bad. The quote “A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.” (by CS Lewis) often gets applied here. I don’t disagree with that quote, but the way it’s often employed makes my eye twitch. 

A children’s story’s primary function is not to appeal to adults. In fact, it does not have to keep adults in mind at all. It’s not made for adults, and it doesn’t need to incorporate themes or stories that adults will find interesting in order to be good. Just because a children’s story decided to stick to themes most children will be familiar with (such as family and coming of age) rather than expanding on its potential for other, more mature themes (such as imperialism or psychological trauma) does not mean that it is a bad story. If you are watching or reading children’s media and find yourself routinely frustrated by what you perceive as shallow stories, you may want to consider that you have outgrown children’s media, and need to move up to YA or adult.

This does not mean that children’s media cannot tackle more abstract and typically mature themes (such as, again, imperialism or psychological trauma) and as a matter of fact, I love it when it does! I think it’s important to discuss heavier topics with children, and even if they will not immediately understand it’s implications, it may give them a better foundation to understand those themes when they grow up. In addition, in the West specifically, I think we tend to shelter our children a bit too much, and shy away from topics we consider to be ‘too heavy’ for children, when in fact those topics are very applicable to children as well and need to be discussed with them (such as trauma or mental health issues). It also doesn’t mean that I think it should be illegal to analyze children’s media from the perspective of adult topics and how they are handled in the story, even if this was not the story’s priority; once again, I think this can, in fact, often be a useful thing to do, since unfortunate implications in a story about heavier topics (like imperialism) can often be profoundly damaging.

What I mean is that, when analyzing children’s media, you need to keep in mind that you are not the target audience. Criticizing media for not being what you want it to be be is not usually conductive, and this goes double when you are not the target audience. 

Children’s media is not required to discuss topics that adults can relate to in order to be good. Its not required to tell stories that adults will enjoy. Its target audience is children, not adults, and their stories should be enjoyable for children first and adults second. Furthermore, themes that appeal primarily to children are just as capable of being complex and interesting as ‘adult’ themes, and are just as worthy of examination.

TL;DR: when analyzing children’s media please remember that adults are not the target audience. This means that it will likely be tackling different themes than what you, personally, find relatable. This is not an inherent story flaw, and you should not critique it as such. If you are incapable of enjoying the themes typically found in children’s media, and feel the need to demand it be more ‘mature’, perhaps you should consider moving on from children’s media to YA or adult.

[velveetacrackncheese]

I remember you talking about Angel a little bit ago and how you didn't think he was as bad as everybody else was saying. What makes him appeal to you, I can't really get behind him in all honesty.

So I keep getting asks regarding to clarify my stance on Angel, and while I don’t mind this despite getting asks about it even now from HH fans and non-fans alike, receiving charitable and uncharitable asks and takes simultaneously from both, I might as well answer because I’m getting a bit tired of it. Not on here that often and every time there’s a new ask regarding it and I don’t understand why people want my take on this, despite me having already given one, or the clarification. That being said, my mind has changed a bit on the subject, and I kind of wanna give a small analysis on Angel and how I feel about him now, so here we are.

 Firstly, the debate surrounding Angel Dust is off-putting to me because while I seemingly see both sentiments, I also feel as though they’re both simultaneously wrong. The positions are usually “Angel Dust represents a harmful stereotype that contributes to our marginalization and is a literal walking sex joke and nothing else.” and “Angel Dust is a hooker. A sex worker, prostitute. He’s supposed to be in hell. He’s supposed to be bad and awful. Moron” and really, I dislike both of these takes for rather similar reasons. Reason being is that I feel that it’s addressing the wrong thing here, which is the characterization of Angel, and not really what the over-arching narrative and well, show itself has to say about Angel, and I also feel that the issue here isn’t homophobia as much as it involves vilifying sex work potentially.

My issue with the first take is that obviously, we’ve barely scratched the surface with this character. I will say that the way he was introduced in the pilot was left to be desired. Not that he was offensive or meant to be a major middle finger to the gay community, but simply because we typically see big, larger, main traits of a character in a pilot. In Angel, we primarily see him embodying those things that many of the “HH hate crowd” disliked about him. Upon first introduction, he genuinely does come off as a stereotype, something that was written solely for the purpose of being “the gay” and nothing else admittedly. While said analysis is probably inaccurate, I don’t blame anyone for initially feeling that way, and coming to their own conclusions. Recognize that everybody’s opinion on Angel is all pretty much based on first impressions, because we only have so much to say about him at the moment. There isn’t even a show. It’s the pilot. Things even now can still change greatly. However, Angel in the show, being a prostitute, and a sex worker, seem very much rooted in his character primarily because many of his own personal struggles also lie in the fact that he’s someone who’s also victim to sexual assault, exploitation, which obviously has connections to his occupation. We can say that many of his actions are rooted in not only his job, and experiences, but also the mask he wears to hide his pain. I feel like to simply look at that and say “Fuck Angel Dust, he’s harmful.” is simultaneously neglecting a silent minority in the gay community that genuinely deals with the hardships of sex work in real life. You don’t see that type of humanity brought to the forefront in regards to gay sex workers in media. They’re usually there to be mocked at, and while you could say Angel comes off that way initially, additional context in the comics and Addict suggests otherwise. He’s not Alastor. He doesn’t have all these special abilities aside from being able to manifest guns and bombs, and probably shoot webs out of his anus or something. Angel is in pain, and in a situation where he feels stuck. He feels like he’s on a leash and only copes in the way he knows how, that being hedonistic actions and such. As to what the general narrative and world of Hazbin might have to say? We don’t know, and that could vary. We don’t have a conclusion as to what the world of Hazbin has to say about Angel, and whether or not he needs to be “redeemed” which is an issue I take on its own. I will get into that shortly.

I take issue with the second take for similar reasons as previously stated, but it has less to do with the analysis coming from the people who say this sort of thing, and more about what it reveals about the people saying “He’s a prostitute. He’s supposed to be in hell. He’s baaaaad.” Because it shows a type of reactionary sentiment that justifies the villainizing of sex workers, and also goes to show that they probably appreciate Angel’s character for the same reason those who despise Angel, are critical of. They find him funny potentially because in their mind, Angel is something to be mocked. Because he’s a “freak” in the sense that he’s this awful, slutty monster, seemingly missing the intentions behind writing Angel the way he is, as a way of potentially showing a sign of sympathy towards the livelihoods of real life sex workers. Instead these people probably don’t think too highly of people who work in that industry and view them as a circus act, the same way they might view Angel as the funny token gay man, and it shows that people appreciate this character for very different reasons. Not to mention, this take is not a very good defense. Does someone being in hell necessarily necessitate them to be “offensive?” A very non-offensive, non-confrontational, seemingly polite person could be the most awful person when the optics of civility are stripped away... Like a politician.

However, I end up pondering about what the narrative itself has to say about Angel needing to be redeemed. Because of the pilot’s highlight on his hypersexual manner, I end up asking myself what he needs to be redeemed from. His sex work and sexual nature certainly doesn’t make him a bad person. His violence probably does, but there’s so much emphasis on the sexual side of him and not the “gangster” side of him, and suggesting that people who are exploited by the industry they work in need to be “redeemed” almost insinuates like they’re doing something wrong. As if it potentially shares the same reactionary sentiment about sex workers that those who view Angel as a laughing stock do. Now, if “redemption” is a euphemism for “rehabilitation” then I would view this differently. However, in the pilot, the term “rehabilitation” and “redemption” are both used, seemingly interchangeably, despite both of these terms having different meanings. In terms of Hazbin, since we’re in hell, which is based on the Christian mythos (most likely also inspired by other cultural interpretations of a bad afterlife) “redemption” here is probably referring to the absolving of sins and what have you, although we don’t really know what Hazbin’s criteria for being worthy of Hell is, and said criteria is also never questioned. We just know that everybody there in hell is supposed to be bad as the latter say, and that’s that. They’re all “sinful”, all worthy of being considered bad people despite some clearly not being so... awful. Vaggie isn’t so awful. She’s a bit angry, but for a good reason. Why is she in hell with literal murderers, homophobes, gangsters, etc? Of course we don’t know much about her yet, but she seems substantially more innocent than say Alastor, who’s a literal serial killer. But according to fans, she’s in hell. So she’s bad. Bad people go to hell, and hell is where the bad people reside in, and all are in need of rehabilitation or “redemption” in order to achieve/attain heaven. (obligatory jojo reference heehee) Issue being that what’s good and bad is subjective, and despite nobody being morally perfect, they’re just in this place together with no real chance of redemption, while being told by the dominant structure and culture in hell that nobody really even wants to be “redeemed”, despite nobody wanting to be there, and probably housing some regret, only to be chained down by a culture of doubt, and many of these inhabitants probably not even really needing to be “redeemed.” There are people who are there for probably very irrational reasons, like stealing some stuff from a grocery store or something. Hell, even if someone is a murderer, what if they murdered in self-defense? Or trying to protect their family? Are they, a sinner, in need of being absolved, and to confess their sin of wanting to survive? Many “sinners” are probably people who come from unfortunate circumstances, and are forced to adapt to certain conditions that force them to do things that are considered “sinful.”

Of course, this is all very assumptive. For all we know, Hazbin could very well go into detail about this type of thing, and I’d be all for it. I feel like a lot of the former critique I’ve mentioned would be cleared away and people would be able to actually make a formed opinion on characters like Angel instead of the typical surface level takes I usually see. I’d be highly disappointed if the writers of Hazbin didn’t go down this route and question the very nature of this Heaven and Hell dichotomy and the moral code and structure presented. I have to clarify though. I’m not “behind” Angel. I acknowledge his character and how he’s written, and honestly thought the way he was shown initially was sub-par, and still believe that. My irritation revolves around fans and non-fans alike thinking they have a finalized idea of what Angel is, when they don’t, and then you have Youtubers making videos pretending it’s flawless while making statements about how stereotypes are apparently not harmful at all while making the assumption that every harsh criticism is a result of people wanting to ALL destroy Vivienne’s career when that’s just as reductive as saying that Viv is evil for shit she did years ago.

Aside from this, there’s still other things about Hazbin too. Vaggie even now I still can’t really see how she’s in anyway offensive or purposely off-putting. She’s angry because she has to react to a world who wants to take advantage of her, and her girlfriend. I’d be pissed too. She isn’t angry because she’s written to be the angry latina (despite Viv’s dumb tweet about “I’M A FIERY LATINA TOO WEE”). Alastor is a subject of discussion too because of the whole voodoo thing despite him passing as very, very caucasian and white, while also claims of cultural appropriation due to the certain iconography used when Alastor exhibits his power while playing into that “spooky voodoo” stereotype. I don’t have much to say on this because I’m simply not that familiar the religious practice aside from it having origins in Western Africa, and the Caribbean. Some say Alastor is biracial but that isn’t confirmed I don’t think. Some people say Hazbin is bad because of a Jeffery Dahmer joke, and saying that Katie Killjoy is proof of homophobia despite her being pointed out as an actual piece of shit with zero standards.

It’s all crazy. I look forward to what the Hazbin crew do with Hazbin, Helluva Boss, and especially Zoophobia. My mind is still open.

[blog20041994punam]

Skeptics Vs Numerology

What if I walked up to a highly trained and experienced brain surgeon during an operation and informed him that I would be critiquing the procedure? Picture me with a white coat, clipboard and my glasses perched on my nose if you like.

Now mind you, I have no medical knowledge or background in brain surgery whatsoever. I can't even pronounce half the medical terms, have no previous experience working in surgery and am not qualified to have an opinion.

Do you really think my opinion would be worth much?

That is exactly how I feel when some ninny skeptic decides to declare Numerology nothing but superstition masquerading as a science or an art. I ask myself upon what experience and knowledge does the skeptic base his opinion? Has he ever read a book, done a reading or experimented with Numerology? What kind of research and analysis has he done to come up with his conclusion? I would wager to say absolutely none. If that skeptic took a little time and effort to actually test Numerology by learning about it and doing it, he would be ultimately convinced that Numerology is quite accurate.

As a professional Numerologist, I have over 4000 readings and years of research to base my opinion on. Those years of experience has proven to me that Numerology can accurately describe a person's personality traits as well as give clear indication of a person's destiny in life. Even more so, Numerology can accurately identify life altering experiences in a person's life to the very year it occurs. Everything from love affairs, marriages, major moves, bankruptcy, accidents, promotions to changes in careers can be seen in a person's Numerology Chart. Add to that, if you look at dates in history, you can also see patterns with numbers that defy the law of averages.

It is not a matter of Numerology proving anything but rather, it tends to prove itself. Through an understanding of the meaning of the numbers and interpreting them, Numerology validates what is already occurring. By the time a person solicits a Numerologist for a reading, they have half a lifetime to compare the results of a Numerology reading to. They are already living proof of what the Numerologist is sharing with them.

I doubt if Martha Stewart, an 8 Lifepath, ever had a Numerology Reading but I bet she would be fascinated. I am sure the definition of an 8 Lifepath would make perfect sense to her. An 8 Lifepath has a gift with business and knowing how to make money. Martha Stewart built an empire on her business savvy and interestingly enough, she also was at one time a stockbroker. Even her being indicted by the government on nine counts of security fraud and obstruction of justice and serving jail time is in perfect alignment with the understanding of an 8 Lifepath.

Walter Cronkite, a 5 Lifepath, was one of the best known American journalists and the beloved anchorman for CBS News. 5s are gifted communicators and writers. He also narrated many documentaries and recorded voice overs. 5s are also known for their beautiful sounding voices and often are found in television, radio and media.

Dan Aykroyd is best known as an actor but few people realize he is a ufologist and very spiritual which is befitting of his 7 Lifepath. Most 7 Lifepath question the unseen and are interested in all areas of the metaphysical.

A quote from Dan Aykroyd:

"I am a Spiritualist, a proud wearer of the Spiritualist badge. Mediums and psychic research have gone on for many, many years... Loads of people have seen [spirits], heard a voice or felt the cold temperature. I believe that they are between here and there, that they exist between the fourth and fifth dimension, and that they visit us frequently"

Coincidence? I think not. You can't make this stuff up. People's lives validate the accuracy of Numerology and are proof enough.

Yes, I have declared war on skeptics of Numerology. This Numerologist disagrees.

A skeptic is a person who does not accept things on face value. A certain amount of skepticism is good because it prompts you to question things on a deeper level. It asks you to investigate, do research and decide for yourself. Unfortunately many people who call themselves skeptics, and make assumptions and opinions based upon nothing, are not true skeptics. Frankly, they don't deserve the title.

So the next time a skeptic tells you that something is hogwash, ask him about his expertise in that field and upon what he bases his opinion. Feel free to be skeptical of the skeptic. Turn around is fair play. In the meantime, I promise I will not judge the worthiness of someone else s profession unless I have a degree in their field.

Learn more about it.

[anniekoh]

elsewhere on the internet: talking about racism

This set of articles has been languishing at the back of the queue for three years! 

Political Correctness Wanted Dead or Alive: A Rhetorical Witch-Hunt in the US, Russia, and Europe

Anna Szilagyi (2016, Talk Decoded)

Possibly the most common way of attacking political correctness, is to label it “tyrannical”. Covert speech strategies may also support this construction. For instance, anti-PC politicians often utilize adjectives for fear (including “afraid”, “frightened”, “scared”, “terrified”) to describe how PC affects the behavior and feelings of people. The former leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage claimed: “I think actually what’s been happening with this whole politically correct agenda is lots of decent ordinary people are losing their jobs and paying the price for us being terrified of causing offence.” Suggesting that the British are “terrified” because of political correctness, Farage urged his listeners to think of PC in terms of intimidation.

At the same time, the fearsome vocabulary provides a background for anti-PC populists to present themselves as “brave” and “courageous” “saviors” of their “victimized” societies. The next quote by Nigel Farage exemplifies this trend: “I think the people see us as actually standing up and saying what we think, not being constrained or scared by political correctness.” In a similar fashion, Geert Wilders  declared: “I will not allow anyone to shut me up.”

Why White People Freak Out When They’re Called Out About Race

Sam Adler-Bell (2015, Alternet) @SamAdlerBell

Sam Adler-Bell: How did you come to write about "white fragility"?

Robin DiAngelo: To be honest, I wanted to take it on because it’s a frustrating dynamic that I encounter a lot. I don’t have a lot of patience for it. And I wanted to put a mirror to it.

I do atypical work for a white person, which is that I lead primarily white audiences in discussions on race every day, in workshops all over the country. That has allowed me to observe very predictable patterns. And one of those patterns is this inability to tolerate any kind of challenge to our racial reality. We shut down or lash out or in whatever way possible block any reflection from taking place.

Of course, it functions as means of resistance, but I think it’s also useful to think about it as fragility, as inability to handle the stress of conversations about race and racism

Sometimes it’s strategic, a very intentional push back and rebuttal. But a lot of the time, the person simply cannot function. They regress into an emotional state that prevents anybody from moving forward.

...

RD: I think we get tired of certain terms. What I do used to be called "diversity training," then "cultural competency" and now, "anti-racism." These terms are really useful for periods of time, but then they get coopted, and people build all this baggage around them, and you have to come up with new terms or else people won’t engage.

And I think "white privilege" has reached that point. It rocked my world when I first really got it, when I came across Peggy McIntosh. It’s a really powerful start for people. But unfortunately it's been played so much now that it turns people off.

The Language of “Privilege” Doesn’t Work

Stephen Aguilar (2016, Inside Higher Ed) @stephenaguilar

I believe that “privilege” is a sterile word that does not grapple with the core of the problem. If you are white, you do not have “white” privilege. If you are male, you do not have “male” privilege. If you are straight, you do not have “straight” privilege. What you have is advantage. The language of advantage, I propose, is a much cleaner and more precise way to frame discussions about racism (or sexism, or most systems of oppression).

... does giving up a “privilege” seem incoherent? It might, because generally privileges are given and taken by someone else. They are earned, and are seldom bad things to have.

Now try shifting your language to that of advantages. Ask yourself, “What advantages do I have over that person over there?” That question is much easier to answer and yields more nuanced responses.

Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality

Bim Adewunmi (2014, New Statesman) @bimadewunmi

“I wanted to come up with an everyday metaphor that anyone could use”

“Class is not new and race is not new. And we still continue to contest and talk about it, so what’s so unusual about intersectionality not being new and therefore that’s not a reason to talk about it? Intersectionality draws attention to invisibilities that exist in feminism, in anti-racism, in class politics, so obviously it takes a lot of work to consistently challenge ourselves to be attentive to aspects of power that we don’t ourselves experience.”

...

“Sometimes it feels like those in power frame themselves as being tremendously disempowered by critique. A critique of one’s voice isn’t taking it away. If the underlying assumption behind the category ‘women’ or ‘feminist’ is that we are a coalition then there have to be coalitional practices and some form of accountability.”

The Persecution of Amy Schumer: Political Correctness and Comedy

Teo Bugbee (2015, Daily Beast)

We have developed highly advanced ways of recognizing and articulating when we feel offended, but very few ways of making something productive out of our own hurt feelings.

I’ve questioned if my choice to overlook what’s hurtful in Schumer’s comedy for the sake of what’s insightful is a sign that I’m complicit in the faults of white feminism, not valuing the importance of others’ feelings on this matter enough. This argument of apathy gets used often on social media to raise awareness around issues of race, sex, gender, and other topics surrounding justice and a need for change, and it is often useful, but it can also be a blunt instrument. Where I’ve landed for the moment is that not all marginalized people feel the same way about every issue—even on social media, but especially outside it—and asking everyone to respond in the same way to the same joke takes a simplistic view that flattens the complexity of marginalized communities just as much as it does the white, cisgender mainstream.

However, if we’re going to ask audiences to keep in mind the multiplicity of responses that a person might have to a work of art before they attempt to control someone else’s opinion, then it’s only fair that comedians follow the same rule.

What’s Wrong (and Right) in Jonathan Chait’s Anti-P.C. Screed

J. Bryan Lowder (2015, Slate)

One of the main problems with the constellation of leftist ideas he bemoans is that many of the people who use them most loudly do so out of context. Concepts like “microaggressions,” “trigger warnings,” and “mansplaining” originally had specific meanings and limited uses, often within the academy. They described or were meant to address specific situations or phenomena, and more important, they were intended to function as diagnostic tools of analysis, not be used as blunt, conversation-ending instruments. Believe it or not, most of these “PC buzzwords” are actually useful from time to time:  “Straightsplaining” is a real (and very annoying) thing, and it’s often a productive way of thinking about an interaction. But it’s also not always a useful or fair way to characterize a disagreement between a queer person and a straight interlocutor. Precision is what’s needed.

Additionally, though it is impossible to say this without sounding condescending myself, a lot of the abuse of PC rhetoric comes from young college students who have not yet grasped the difference between a measuring tape and a sledgehammer. Of course, given that contemporary mainstream politics offers little for those hopeful souls who want to make truly radical change in the world, you can’t really blame them for gravitating toward a mode of critique that at least feels somewhat empowering. Here, first-year, is a framework by which you can reveal the (screwed-up) hidden structures of the world and use your newly honed textual close-reading skills to mount offenses against those structures—go for it. What works on a novel doesn’t necessary translate to a complicated, changeable human being, though, so it’s no surprise that the deployment of microaggression and cissexism and other social justice lingo can sometimes come off as strident and simplistic. It often is.

But then, so is crying that only Reason can save us from the illiberal wolves waiting in the wings of our great system, which has a “glorious” history on social justice, by the way.

Want To Help End Systemic Racism? First Step: Drop the White Guilt

Sincere Kirabo (2015, thehumanist)

The point of identifying and exposing inconsistencies within the social systems and cultural norms of the United States isn’t to make whites feel guilty, but to garner greater empathy that will inspire change. The main problem with white guilt is that it attempts to diminish the spotlight aimed at issues germane to marginalized groups and redirects the focus to a wasteful plane of apologetics and ineffective assessment.

This is why some don’t like discussing racism, as those more sensitive to these matters sometimes allow guilt to creep into their thought processes, effectively evoking pangs of discomfort. This can lead to avoidance of the primary issues altogether, as well as the manifestation of defense mechanisms, including denial, projection, intellectualization, and rationalization.

Many are acquainted with the concept of Catholic guilt. Catholic doctrine emphasizes the inherent sinfulness of all people. These accentuated notions of fault lead to varied degrees of enhanced self-loathing. I liken white guilt to Catholic guilt: both relate to a sense of inadequacy emanating from misguided notions. Though the latter is anchored in an imagined source, they both speak to feelings of remorse and internal conflict that does the individual having them no good.

Keep in mind that the call to “recognize your privilege” does not translate to “bear the blame.”

[farfromsugafanfic]

glitteringconstellations interview

Before we get started with the interview, do you mind introducing yourself (whatever name you are comfortable with) and telling us a little about yourself?

Hi everyone! I’m glitteringconstellations, Glitter or GC for short. I’ve been writing fanfiction for well over 15 years now, though I only started sharing it around 2005. I minored in Creative Writing in college and I love writing in pretty much any capacity! When I’m not headcanoning one new story or another, though, I’m either adulting (ugh, adulting) or playing video games. These days it’s mostly Skyrim. I’m fluent in Korean and passable in Japanese and Spanish. I drink way too much pop to be healthy and I hate most fruit (though, give me any kind of melon and I’ll be a happy girl). Oh, and I’m a fledgling figure skater! I’m just a hodgepodge of random hobbies haha!

Q1: What kind of fan fiction do you normally write? Have you ever written fan fiction for other fandoms other than your current one?

A1: I tend to gravitate toward angsty fics. It’s long been my outlet of frustration, to put the character I love in harm’s way. The more pain, the better, haha! Though I do love the hurt/comfort aspect of it. Recently (as in, the last year lmao) I’ve been writing for the Voltron fandom almost exclusively (and sometimes YURI!!! On Ice), but before that I was in the k-pop ficdom (Super Junior, for the most part) for a looooong time, nearly 10 years. I won’t be opening that particular can of worms, though--I have Feelings and Opinions lmao. Before that I jumped around from anime to anime.

Q2: I see in addition to fan fiction that you do commissioned fan art! I’m not an artist myself, so I find it really interesting and cool. Do you want to talk a bit about that? And, feel free to plug yourself!

A2: This is actually a common misconception--I can’t draw to save my life!! I took commissions for fan fiction back in late June as a last resort to pay my rent. Typically though I’m horrible on a deadline so I don’t like to do it too often because I feel terrible making my commissioners wait. The art you’re referring to is the comic spread for The Parting Glass, if I’m not mistaken? I actually commissioned another artist by the name of Cota (@ccooooostuff on tumblr, go check her out she’s amazing at what she does and super sweet!) for that comic with the money I got for my birthday this year.

Q3: Do you write anything outside of fan fiction?

A3: I do! I journal a lot, or I try to anyway. This year I’m hoping to tackle an original novel for Nanowrimo, but more than likely, that particular project will start as fanfiction and we’ll see if I turn it into original fiction or not. I spend more time thinking about the things I want to write than… actually… writing them lolsob. My notes will be this gigantic document but when it comes to putting things together in a cohesive manner? Haaaaaa….haha…. The blinking cursor mocks me, I swear.

Q4: I see on your profile that you are 26. I think when most people think of fan fiction writers they think of someone younger, usually a teenager. Do you encounter younger writers a lot? What do you think of this assumption?

A4: I do encounter younger writers a lot! Surprisingly, though, most writers I know are either in their late 20s or late late teens (say, 15~19). Most people tend to think I’m young anyway just because I look a lot younger than 26, but as far as fandom goes, it doesn’t really bother me if people think I’m younger than I am. Usually I’m pretty forward with how old I am on my profile anyway! But yeah, I’ve been around the fanfiction scene a while. The k-pop fandom in particular had a way of reminding me just how long on a pretty frequent basis lol.

Q5: Why did you begin writing fan fiction? If it was for a fandom, why did that particular thing make you begin writing? And, for your current fandoms?

A5: I used to tell myself stories to get to sleep or on long car trips as far back as I can remember, and most of the time they involved characters from my favorite shows of the day. Pokemon and Digimon were two big ones for me before I hit those fun preteen years. As far as what got me started actually putting those stories to paper, it was born of frustration with shows not going the way I wanted them to, so I’d write the ending I wanted to see. For Voltron in particular, it’s just SUCH a fun sandbox to play in, be it by utilizing the incredible world-building or the plethora of interesting characters to play around with. So many possibilities! *3*

Q6: Do you ever want to be published in a professional capacity one day?

A6: Yes and no. I flip flop on this ALL the time. I’d LOVE to see my stories on shelves, but I’m actually very insecure and sometimes the thought of people reading my stories makes me want to die of embarrassment and sink to the center of the earth. That said, if I win Nano this year, I may run it by some publishers, even if only to get feedback. (Although if you want to get TECHNICAL I am officially a published journalist; I was an assistant editor for one of The Big 3 kpop news sites for a while. The one that starts with S. Also another can of worms.)

Q7: Has writing fan fiction taught you anything? About writing? Reading? The fandom? Etc.

A7: Oh absolutely. I definitely would not be the writer I am today without fan fiction. I wouldn’t say I’m super skilled, but the critique I’ve received over the years has helped me more than I have words for, honestly. Not even just in the capacity of writing fiction; my academic and professional writing has improved too. Also, just like reading anything in high volume, reading fanfic has helped me learn to read like a writer, how to pick out things that authors do that I admire and try to emulate that, and conversely what doesn’t work for me so I can avoid those things.

As far as fandom goes, fanfiction can be quite polarizing, as I’m sure you’re well aware. Just in my experience by and large it can be kind of toxic, to be quite honest. The particular issue Voltron faces that I experienced to some extent in other fandoms but not quite to this degree, is fandom policing. I find that certain members of the fandom (which, in my experience, tends to actually be mostly among those younger demographics, though not exclusively so) see certain topics as morally wrong and therefore anyone who writes those topics are 1) romanticizing said topic and 2) automatically a disgusting, horrible person and they have no problems telling you about all about it. The number one thing I try to put out there in my interactions is live and let live, ship and let ship. If it makes you uncomfortable, that’s okay! But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong, and it’s definitely not okay to go around purporting hate in the name of “morality.” Sorry, didn’t mean to go off on a tangent there haha...

Q8: What is a piece you’ve written that you’re most proud of?

A8: Just in the Voltron fandom, I’d say the fic I’m most proud of is The Parting Glass, by far. Funny story about that one; I’d never heard the titular song before I came across a cover of it on Facebook one day around St. Patrick’s Day, and let me tell you something. The reaction I had was almost a spiritual experience, it was so visceral. I was in tears when I heard it, and the story came so hard and so fast that I wrote it in 2 days. It stayed with me until I got it down in writing. It was an interesting challenge for me, exploring the grief part of a character death fic while almost entirely omitting the actual dying part. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had such a vivid vision of exactly how a fic is going to go from start to finish and I’m quite happy with the way it turned out. Which is why, when I had the money to do so, I commissioned Cota to illustrate what had to be the hardest and yet my favorite part to write. She brought the scene to life so beautifully too, I’m really happy with how it turned out. Months later I still go back and stare at it!

Q9: Do you notice any stigma surrounding fan fiction or fan fiction writers?

A9: Without a doubt. People hear “fanfiction” and they think one of two things: the pudgy neckbeard who lives in his parents’ basement, or the rabid tween/teenage fangirl. It’s a rather unfortunate stereotype, because some works of fanfiction are truly works of art, more masterfully crafted than some novels I’ve seen published. Yet they get dismissed simply on the basis of being fanworks and not “original” (which, let’s be real, nothing is truly original anymore). One such example that comes to mind of a beautiful fic is those glittering instruments in the EXO fandom, which was based on the real-life destruction of the Library of Alexandria. If you can find a copy of it floating around the interwebs I HIGHLY recommend giving it a chance no matter what fandom you’re in!

Q10: If so, how do you feel about this stigma?

A10: Like I said, it’s really a shame. The thing, too, is that as young girls we’re often shamed for the things we’re passionate about, like boy bands and, well, fan fiction, while boys don’t get that kind of shame to such an intense degree (at least, not about the usual suspects, like sports and girls and such). Not to say that it doesn’t happen, but there’s something terribly sad about seeing more young people afraid to talk about a hobby that makes them happy because they’re afraid of being perceived as weird or gross or something like that. Hell, even to this day I have very few friends from outside the fandom sphere that know I write fanfiction, because they still talk bad and make mean jokes about fic writers. It’s such a silly thing, because a lot of famous works are derivative fiction and people don’t even realize it! So I hope the day comes soon that we can get over this silly stigma and just enjoy what people share (for free!! Seriously!! FULL NOVEL LENGTH WORKS. For FREE.)

Q11: Is there anything you’ve ever wanted to talk about or be asked that no one has asked you about or given you the opportunity to talk about? (And if so, feel free to answer/talk about it).

A11: I really had to think about this one! I couldn’t really pick one topic that I’ve really wanted to talk about that I haven’t already discussed, but no one has ever asked me if I was okay with having fanart of my work. Which I would answer with a resounding YES. I am more than okay with it QuQ

Oh, I guess I do have something!! It’s unrelated to writing (well, I guess it could be related, depending on how you look at it) but since I have your attention, if you’re an American citizen GO OUT AND VOTE. The midterm elections are one week from today in the USA and it’s important you go vote!! I won’t tell you who to vote for (a third can of worms I’m not opening up. WHY DO I HAVE SO MANY WORMS) but I assure you, your vote matters, now more than ever. I believe in you!! Go vote!!!

Q12: What is your prefered site for writing/posting fan fiction?

A12: These days I prefer to use AO3. It’s a work in progress, but it’s far and away the superior fic platform of the time. Back in ye olden days (circa 2010~2012) Livejournal was my platform of choice, and FF.net before that. A surprising number of people prefer to post their fic on tumblr, to which I say, are you out of your flipping MIND?!?! Tumblr is soooo temperamental, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to restart a post or go into the HTML editor because the rich text editor decided to be stupid. Noooooo thank you. I’ll stick to AO3 thanks ahaha!

Check out Glitter’s Tumblr and AO3.

Interviewer Note: Glitter used her free question to encourage everyone to vote and I would just like to stress the importance of this, especially if live in the US. Young people are the demographic that votes the least, despite being the demographic that will have to live the longest with the outcome of the vote. If you are currently not registered, please register as it is important for all of our futures. And, remember the deadline for the upcoming US election is Nov. 6th, so make sure to get to those polls and/or turn/send in your ballot. If you need information on how to do any of these things, do not hesitate to reach out to my page and I will point you to trustworthy resources. 

[dirtyfilthy]

“Race Traitor”: a podcast review

I’ve been listening to a mini podcast series called “race traitor” (https://www.theheartradio.org/race-traitor-1), and it is possibly the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever listened to in my life.

Maybe it’s because I’m white, but I found myself a reflexively cringing far, far more than I did being forced to confront my assumptions. The premise of the show follows Phoebe, a white Jewish lesbian woman, re-examining her both her ethical stance and her own sense of self-identity, as these relates to race, “whiteness”, and race-relations in the light of her.extremely progressive politics. Having always thought of herself as “one of the good ones”, she constantly confronts herself with ethical questions of her own whiteness as she negotiates her relationships with both her progressive non-white friends and white, conventionally liberal parents.

To properly position my critique in relation to the work, let me state plainly that I am a white man with a “basic bitch” level of progressive politics. I believe white privilege is real and that institutional racism exists. I do not experience any sense of white guilt.

Phoebe however, is someone who most certainly does experience white guilt. At least within the context of the podcast, it appears to be almost her defining  characteristic. The framing of the show is that of an inner monologue interspersed with various conversations with her friends and parents. 

As someone who has done some genuinely shitty things to other people over the broad course of my life , I found the level of her constant self-flagellation to be extremely grating To my ears, the ethical infractions that Phoebe thought of herself as committing, seemed so impossibly minor that they verged on self-indulgent  Save your real guilt for when you’ve done something that has deeply hurt someone else. God knows that will probably happen often enough, there’s no need to exaggerate.

There’s something almost Catholic about it. To me the perspective is entirely alien. White People have a problem, like a kind of original sin, and this problem is “Whiteness”.  Rather than racial issues being largely socio-political, they have moved into the realm of the purely interpersonal. “Whiteness” is hard to explain. It’s not bigotry, it’s a lot more subtle. A complex set of self-centered behaviours, perpetual entitlement and emotional colonisation.

Phoebe’s inner conceptual camera only has this one lens; “Whiteness”. Everything is contextualised through this single paradigm. As an example, a story is told about how she always discards her stuff and gets naked when she visits her Japanese-American girlfriend’s apartment. Rather than this simply being an aspect of their relationship, perhaps about feeling totally comfortable with someone, or else not respecting their space enough or something, this somehow becomes an issue of race-relations.

I could not ever begin to have the type of friendships that Phoebe has. They are full of endless over-analysis. There are so many irritations to be problematised, and unintentional woundings to be discussed  and old scabs to be picked at. For me, a true friendship is a largely unmediated space, a place where you can finally relax and feel safe enough that you can actually be yourself around someone, a person you know will be cool with you, and vice-versa. I would find the kind of constant scrutiny required for a friendship with Phoebe utterly exhausting. Perhaps I have forgotten to unpack my invisible knapsack, but none of my “cross-racial” friendships seem nowhere near this problematized.

Whiteness is a sin, and sin obviously requires atonement. Towards the end of the series, Phoebe tries to convince her parents to give away their home, an expensive house in an upscale neighbourhood, and leave it in some sort of trust for people of colour as a form of reparations. Her parents are understandably less than keen on the idea. While admirable, the act seems kind of extreme. It circles to back to the sort of pseudo-religious aspect of Whiteness. The aspiring saint wants to prove her faith through an act of martyrdom. I makes me wonder about the performative aspect of all of this. The need to show everyone “I’m not racist! I’m not racist!”, but  Whiteness the stain that will not scrub off. Lady MacBeth, unfortunately, I think you’re stuck with it.

As an anthropological glimpse into a way of thinking I was utterly unfamiliar with, the podcast was well worth listening to. I don’t think that promoting the concept of “Whiteness” as a racial paradigm will actually solve any real racial issues, and any of superficial, interpersonal issues it does  solve are not the kind of deeply systemic, institutional problems that are negatively effecting peoples lives in major ways today. 

In conclusion: it seems to me to be the kind of emotional blackhole I don’t ever want to get sucked into. You in a constant state of guilt, trapped by the need to continually and ineffectually apologise, but no matter how much you genuflect and perform interpersonal acts of penance nothing structural is every going to change this way.  It just seems performative and, ultimately, utterly pointless.

But like I said, I am only at a “basic bitch” level of progressive politics.

“Race Traitor” can be found at https://www.theheartradio.org/race-traitor-1

[gotgifsandmusings]

the way you guys handled the racism part of the podcast was just. awful i couldnt even finish the rest of the podcast bc i was so offput. expected better from you :/

I’m so sorry to hear that, seriously.

I don’t want to hide behind excuses; if our tone or words were hurtful, that’s the way of it, and all I can do is apologize for it and learn why. It was not our intent, and as we said at the start of it, we’re more than open to a dialogue.

I’ve received positive and negative feedback for pretty much every portion of the podcast, however (it’s not like “oh yay, person X agrees so we’re fine!” or anything, of course), and I do think there’s some value in digging into that.

Julia and I tend to be more forgiving of Martin, not that we’re asking anyone else to be. And given the virulence with which we go after D&D, I understand how hypocritical this can come across as, and how frustrating this can be too. But the reason we are is basically two-fold:

One is that we believe there’s a value to his books. Now, there’s also a value to the political discussion on Bill Maher’s show, for example, but yet amazingly, decent political commentary shouldn’t come with a side-serving of Islamophobia. I don’t watch his show, so why should I accept and praise books that don’t handle race well? That don’t handle female sexuality that amazingly, particularly in the cause of wlw scenes? That oftentimes do feel like the sexual violence could be easily toned down, or it’s unnecessarily gendered, or it does fall into unfortunate patterns with things like dead mothers?

The answer to that ties into the second reason, which is that his pattern is getting better. FeastDance felt more thoughtful, felt like there was more of an emphasis on female and other marginalized voices, and it felt like there was great intentionality on Martin’s part to do so. I haven’t read all his interviews; I can’t guess at what’s in his head beyond what his body of work shows us. But you can bet that if he was coming across as someone who was unwilling to reflect and engage with his own shortcomings, I wouldn’t be as invested.

I could be wrong about him. I’ve said this a lot before, but I could be really, really wrong. For now, he has my benefit of the doubt. I’m not asking you to bestow yours.

Back to the problems at hand though, and the value of his books. No, they’re not perfect at all. There’s a lot of issues, and these are issues that a more intersectional author likely wouldn’t have. To be perfectly honest, I think we’re starting to have a tendency of expecting perfection in every area from our media now. While I love that we’re finally in a place where our cultural dialogue is pushing for the change we want, and that storytellers are actually listening (look at like, Clexacon’s mere existence, for instance), I think this can easily become a double edged sword, where you’ve got the fandom raising pitchforks about Steven Universe not doing well with butch representation.

ASOIAF is no SU. It’s a book series written by a white dude in his 60s that spans twenty years. Which is why Julia and I put so much stock into the pattern and direction the books seem to be headed, because our social dialogue shifts so much. Well, depressingly not as much as it should, but I think it’s hard to deny that there is far less tolerance for bullshit in our media, and far more expectations of representational media that are not just once again glorifying the white male lens. 

I don’t believe the book series simplistically does that at all. I find there to be feminist takeaways in Martin’s critique of the patriarchy, and in the way Martin holds up a lens to the bullshit assumptions by this society, which is one uncomfortably reflective of our own history (though certainly not highly accurately so). I wouldn’t say my willingness is to forgive the issues in the books, but more like say, “these are here, these are problems, but I still find this text valuable. I still find the close-POV different and worthwhile.”

I can’t speak for Julia, but I can at least say this is what we had hoped to convey in the podcast. I believe we failed spectacularly. I think our tendency not to plan or overly structure our episodes went heavily against us here. Everything we were saying was in a larger context of “and this is a problem,” but wow we really didn’t make that clear.

What we did was basically raise the problems in turn, talk about what we think his intent was and what its function in the story has been, and then conclude on “this could have been better,” which after you know…like ten minutes of what probably sounds like rationalizations was not exactly going to come across as particularly meaningful. Had we structured more, I think we could have been clearer about “and it did not land.”

Showing Dany as completely unable to comprehend the political situation she was in, and being over her head with the complexity, did *not* require a lack of Essosi POVs, even if we suspect that’s partially why Martin made that choice, for instance.

But of course that didn’t come across, especially when there were some downright flippant things said that we also didn’t clarify. Like Julia mentioning she didn’t want a Dothraki POV, probably because it’d be very close to one as distressingly violent and patriarchal as Vic, which is simply unpleasant to read (and I’m also not sure I agree; I would have loved Dany eating the heart from a POV of someone in the Dosh Khaleen, for instance).

We know each other well, and we know the intent and place we’re coming from when we’re saying something, so I think that led to us not explicating stuff that absolutely needed to be explicated. Again, there’s no excuse. I wish we had planned  and presented everything differently, and it seems pretty obvious now how badly we needed to do that. I’ve learned a lot just in the past day, and all I can do is try to be better.

However, I will say…I suspect there’s also going to be content disagreements in the conclusions Julia and I land on. I’ve seen this with the fandom dialogue about the issues of sexism in the books before, and we’ve often received criticism for defending how he writes the patriarchy and women. Or for how women in the past basically are these pure, idealized victims, or they’re forgotten. We believe that’s to a point most of the time, that being one that provides a fuller picture of Westeros’s bullshit patriarchy (unnammed Mama Martell as an exception because there’s no reason for that at all), but we know it’s a point that doesn’t land.

Then there’s stuff like Arianne’s ‘hypersexuality’, which I simply don’t agree with. In my view, and something Gretchen and I were just discussing, Cersei is far more sexualized (she just tends to view sex from a manipulative standpoint always, instead of deriving pleasure from it, Jaime aside which is clearly unhealthy), and the degree to which this is a problem for a Dornish POV to have these traits (which I think is played up in the fandom) is one where I part ways with a lot of people. I can’t answer how I’d feel about it if I weren’t white, so I do my best to acknowledge that lens whenever I can. But in general, from what I can tell, my lens is also just a bit less Doylist than where some land.

And that’s fine, too. We’re all just engaging with the books how we like to do, and taking from it what’s there for us. There’s no objective takeaways, and not to belabor the point, but I could be so wrong about these books.

Why am I all Doylist with D&D? Because Watsonian analysis is useless in GoT, sure, but because they’ve violated my trust and my benefit of the doubt so thoroughly. I’m not there with Martin, and maybe that’s a problem. I suspect I might even be too Watsonian for my own good because of how engaged I find myself with certain aspects. Half of why we recorded that podcast was to kind of slap ourselves in the face with some Doylist realities, but I do now think the tone ended up being too dismissive, and I don’t feel good about it.

Anyway, this is just a super long-winded apology, as well as a meek explanation I suppose. Certainly not an excuse. This episode was requested a lot for us, probably because of how defensive of the books we get, and I feel like in our attempt to talk every angle of the issue, we ended up just coming across as doubling down on that defense. Moving forward you can bet your ass I’m going to be far more cognizant of this.

What’s funny is, feeling defensive actually wasn’t my experience at all recording it. Hell, even just pulling your asks for it, I was like, “wow this all really sucks,” and found myself getting a good deal more nervous for TWOW coming out. Because…god…I think I might be wrong. I’m back in that place I was in during season 5 where I was wondering if Sansa was going to get raped by LF (obviously a different context than the show), or if we’re not supposed to see Tyrion’s misogyny.

I’m not ready to give up on Martin yet, but I’m sure as hell not asking anyone else to forgive him. And if nothing else, I know now that at least a few takeaways we had were certainly not his intent, but the result of our own engagement and projections onto the media. I think I might be wrong (and where’s TWOW).

[severelynerdysheep]

Lets unpack this then:

~ So you don't understand what veganism is (its not just about animal agriculture) and you don't recognise your own invisible belief system of carnism. Very common unfortunately. And I will link to some more info at the end for anyone who wants to learn more about carnism and what veganism actually is. 

 ~ When it comes to allergies and intolerances, Just like with a non-vegans diet (where you would have exactly the same issues with intolerances and allergies to things like wheat, soy, nuts, etc.) eating as a vegan offers a massive variety of choices and doesn’t require you eating anything that you’re allergic and/or intolerance to. Things like nuts, or even wheat or soy-based plant meats are not a necessity, I say this as a vegan who can’t eat them knowing many others in the same position. There are many many vegans who have health conditions and disabilities (myself included) that include as allergies and intolerances to foods like nuts. 

~ And there's the quinoa one...@acti-veg has a great article about quinoa here. What you've given is an example of the tu quoque fallacy. The same applies to avocados and cashews, though I can talk about them both individually if you want? There is absolutely an issue with monocropping and the farming of crops, but this is the case for pretty much any food, and things like purchasing fair-trade can help make sure the products you buy are from as ethical a source as possible. Of course its also worth mentioning that the idea that cashew's, avocados and quinoa are vegan specific foods is absurd, these foods are most popular in the west with wealthy non-vegans, those with the highest incomes. 

~ When it comes to culture, paying someone to farm, exploit and slaughter animals for food, clothing, etc is not necessary today for the vast majority of the world and so it cannot be justified. It’s also worth noting that for many civilizations our ancestors did many things that we’d find morally wrong today in the name of religion and culture. That's not to try and say that culture isn't important, or that eating animal flesh/secretions and other forms of animal exploitation aren’t often issues with strong social and spiritual/religious significance in some cultures. But culture is not a good enough justification for inflicting needless suffering and brutal slaughter of innocent beings. We generally don’t accept that it is justified to harm a human being for cultural reasons, heck, we often don't even accept harm towards certain species like dogs. This same ethical principle should of course logically apply to all sentient beings. To accept this the argument of  “but culture” to justify these actions would be to accept that whatever actions practiced culturally are ethical simply because of that fact. Of course, we have to be sensitive and respect for different cultures, but culture itself cannot and should not be used as a justification for needless harm to other sentient beings and a smokescreen against the critique of exploitation/harm against others.

~ Animals don't “sacrifice” their lives for humans to consume, their lives are brutally taken form them against their will. They are not entering into any sort of spiritual contract, they are not sacrificing their lives, and they are not giving humanity anything. this language of sacrifice is simply disingenuous, self-exonerating rhetoric designed to displace personal guilt. You also seem to be under the assumption that needless slaughter is okay if its quick? @acti-veg​ has a great article on this assumption here but in short, regardless of the method of slaughter, there isn't a justification for needlessly taking a life of another sentient being that doesn't want to die. Never mind that fact that what happens in slaughterhouses are absolutely horrific, its not a coincidence that slaughterhouse workers experience astronomical rates of drug addiction, ptsd and domestic violence. 

~ Animal flesh isn't a food group and there is nothing stopping you from having a diverse diet as a vegan. We know that humans as a species have no biological need to consume animal flesh, milk or eggs. This is backed up by decades of scientific research, with all the major health organizations (such as the American Dietetic Association and the NHS) agreeing that “vegan diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases” and “These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes”. We also know that non-vegans actually have on average more nutrient deficiencies than vegans. Eating a diverse diet that includes all food groups in know way inhibits one from eating a plant based diet. 

~ I’m not sure where you get this idea that you would need to create more land suitable to support plant based agriculture system compared to our current one which includes animal agriculture, but this idea is not based in facts. What's volatile for the environment is animal agriculture, transferring to a plant based agriculture system is one of the main things we could do that would have a massive positive effect on the environment. The reality is that it takes significantly more land and water to cater for a non-vegan diet when compared with a vegan one. This being due both to the vast amounts of land needed to raise farmed animals and the land used to grow farmed animal feed. Currently, a full 1/3 of the planet’s land surface and 2/3 of available agricultural land is used for farming animals and farmed animals consume 70% of all the grain we produce, 98% of all soy, and a fifth of all water consumed globally. 

Farmed animals take in far more calories in crop feed than they will ever give out in animal flesh, so they are actually detracting from the global food supply for people. More vegans = fewer farmed animals and more land/crops available for human consumption. If the world moved away from animal agriculture  we would be able to feed to so many more people with fewer resources and less needless animal suffering and human suffering. We could do things like increase resources for human use, re-wild land deforested for livestock grazing, cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 70%, and add 70% more food to the world’s global food supply. Far from volatile for the environment. 

Some links: 

~ From Dr Melanie Joy

~ what is veganism

~ Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows

~ Land of hope and glory documentary

~ Dominion documentary

~ Viva, a UK charity which has loads of info

~ More info on veganism and all the areas of animal exploitation from the vegan society

~ An article from @acti-veg ​here and another here.

~   Why animal welfarism continues to fail

~ Study on the environmental impacts of food production and consumption

~ Assessment of animal agriculture water usage

~  Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment

~  Water footprint of crop and animal products: a comparison

~  Global Farm Animal Production and Global Warming: Impacting and Mitigating Climate Change

~ 60% of biodiversity loss the result of animal flesh/secretions based diets

~ Livestock’s Long Shadow UN Report

~ Environmental impact of food study

~ Livestock is the world’s largest user of land resources

~ 1/3 of planet’s  land surface and 2/3 of available agricultural land used for grazing farmed animals

~ UN urges move to meat and dairy-free diet

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Collectible Wizard Slash Is Less Fun Than It Sounds

by Shim

Tuesday, 04 January 2011Shim exposes the tangled innards of Wizardology: the board game to the cold light of day

Uh-oh! This is in the Axis of Awful...~

Merlin, the apple of your eye, has retreated to his magical hideaway to study ancient tomes. How can you hope to win his love? You must make a dangerous journey across the land to find him. But only the most gorgeously-attired wizard can hope to catch his eye and win his heart. Along your way, you must seek out the perfect accessories for your outfit - and fend off all the unworthy suitors who are trying to steal Merlin from you.

This is not the tagline for the board game "Wizardology". But it should be.

I came across Wizardology in a local games shop, and was fascinated. I didn't realise at the time that it is based on a series of books. What I noticed was that it was a board game about accessorizing wizards, complete with little toy wizards to accessorize! It was also relatively cheap, so I grabbed it, and prevailed upon Kyra and Dan to help me test it out.

The first thing that strikes you about this game, when you open the box, is the array of little wizard figures. More specifically, the array of little ethnic stereotypes of distinctly dubious nature. You get:

* One "Western" pointy-hatted gown-wearer with pet owl

* One beturbaned, wedge-bearded "Arabian" wizard with pet monkey

* One "Lapp shaman" with pet wolf

* One "Oriental wizard" with conical hat, Fu Manchu facial hair and pet tortoise

* One "Indian fakir" standing in Tree yoga position (i.e. on one leg) wearing a shred of robe, with pet cobra

* One "African" wizard with hockey mask, feathered headdress, feather fan and pet ocelot.

It's a bit cringeworthy (in fairness, I'm not sure how I'd have depicted an array of wizards from different traditions), but we pressed on. The box has all kinds of goodies, including collectible staves, hats, medallions and the aforementioned familiars. For some reason the medallions are full-sized, rather than made for the figures, which means you can't accessorize the wizards with them. I have no idea why they decided on that. There is also an array of cards in various decks, a couple of magnetic rings, and a wand. The board consists entirely of spaces that do things: you either draw cards or roll dice for something on every space, and you always have a choice of which direction to move, including bouncing off walls to go back on yourself. All this should add up to an interesting game.

Somehow, it doesn't. Kyra barely survived the experience; I had slightly more fun, but that was more due to the banter and critiqueing than the actual game. So where did it go wrong?

Complexity /= Interestingness

I think the first problem might actually be the complexity of the board. In theory, a mazelike board where every square does something should be interesting. Actually, it often just served to slow down play and vaguely irritate us. For example, there are several "lose a turn" squares. However, the game mechanics mean you can choose which direction to move, which means you never have to land on one, so they become entirely redundant. The "magic items" you pick up are basically keys to enter four rooms, where you can perform a test to try and acquire an accessory. This got a bit irritating, because you not only have to physically navigate the maze to the room you want, but also pick up the right key. Each time you fail - which is moderately likely - you need a new key to try the test again. As a result, you basically end up grinding for keys so as not to waste the effort of getting to the room if you then fail the challenge. Once finished, you have a stack of useless keys, which increases as you complete more and more challenges.

A separate "Phoenix Feather" space lets you randomly pick up one of three types of fast travel item, which should make moving round the maze much easier. However, one of them is very limited and the other has a 50% chance to fail, which puts you off deliberately landing on those squares. We only used them a handful of times, mostly just to see what they did. It didn't really seem worth using them.

There are also "Prophecy" spaces, which let you draw a prophecy card. This seems like a fun idea - you can get both good and bad results, and some can be saved to use later (although there's very little prophetic about them - they're basically Event cards). Unfortunately, because of the implementation, even the "good" cards are usually irritating. The best are those which let you steal a random card from another player (usually pointless), protect you from such stealing, or allow you to rotate the board. The last seems like a fun mechanism, and could have done with expansion. One type sends you back to the start, which is a board game standard, though there seem to be quite a lot of them. Another type is supposed to be a bonus: it allows you to travel directly to a secret room, though you can't enter without the appropriate key. Unfortunately, the room is indicated on the card, which means most of the time this is no different from going back to the start - you end up somewhere you didn't want to be, quite possibly on the wrong side of the board entirely.

Finally, there are "Spells and potions" spaces. These are far less cool than they sound. Basically, you roll two special dice, and a random spell results. A full 50% of the time, it goes wrong and you are trapped until you can reverse the spell by rolling the same result. The rest of the time, the spell works, in which case you either get a slight benefit or completely screwed. One of the spells is "swap places with another wizard", which means you take over their piece and all its cards and accessories. It's entirely possible for someone about to win to land here and have to swap, which just makes no sense from a thematic point of view and is a pain as a game mechanism. We found ourselves just avoiding these spaces altogether, because a bad result was just far more likely than anything remotely useful.

Randomness /= Challenge

The problem here, as with the rest of the game, is randomness. You have a lot of choice over your movement, allowing you to land on particular spaces or take different paths through the maze, and sod all over anything else. A few random elements in a game can be fun; card pickups are an interesting diversion in Monopoly, but don't control the main flow of the game. On the other extreme, completely random games are usually less frustrating because there isn't the illusion of control. Here, there are a lot of complex elements, but your relationship with them is basically random, and in almost all cases the result is not beneficial. There is virtually no interactivity between the elements of the game, or the players, except completely random ones.

Okay, there is an exception to that. Wizard Duels. If you land on certain spaces, or in the same space as another wizard, you can engage them in combat for a specified number of cards (drawn randomly from their deck). What fun! we think, and then we read the rules. There are two special decks of three cards for this, allowing you to use Potion, Spell or Chant in the duel. Wait, this sounds familiar. In fact, it's a big old game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, except without the psychological and tactical aspects of that game, because you draw one card at random to play. In other words, the Wizard Duel gives you a 33% chance to nick some cards and a 33% chance to lose some, and the outcome is totally random. It looks interactive, but it's no more so than the card draws that let you steal from other players.

Similarly, even the main object of the game - acquiring your accessories - boils down to a set of challenges with random outcomes. You pick a staff from a pile and see if it's yours; you roll a dice to try and match your allocated familiar; you literally flip a coin to acquire your hat. Even the most interesting challenge, making the magic disks levitate with your wand, comes down to a 50% shot at putting a magnet the right way round.

Activity /= Fun

Basically, the designers seem to have worked on the assumption that having a lot to do is the same as having a lot of fun. Anyone who has ever had a job or homework can disprove this assumption. I think there are simply too many competing elements in the game, which are not linked into each other, and very few of them give any agency to the players. Coupled with the very repetitive nature of some elements, it just makes the game unnecessarily slow and a bit tiresome.

Shoddy Merchandise

Finally, there was the question of quality. The board and the cards are rather nice and well-produced. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the key selling-point, i.e. the wizards and their accoutrements. The painting was a bit slapdash, and the models slightly distorted, which meant the accessories don't quite fit or stay in place. There is also the aforementioned issue of them all being glaring stereotypes.

Gay Wizard Accessory Quest

On a different note entirely, one of the few things Wizardology does have going for it is its progressive stance on sexuality. The background story to the game, in which you must rescue Merlin from a magical prison, is a clear parallel to the "Rescue the Princess" quests so common in fantasy, even if they've been mealy-mouthed about articulating it. Not convinced? One of the spells you can cast in the game is a love spell, which makes two other wizards fall in love until they can break the spell. Since all the wizards are blatantly male, this makes the game's stance admirably clear.

Counterfactual Criticism

As I've mentioned, there are elements here that could be fun, and the problem is partly in the combination. For example, moving random distances around the board grinding for random keys in order to get a random chance to win an accessory is just too much randomness. Imagine, instead of the key pickup spaces, that as parallels to the four secret rooms there were four magic workshops where you could create the keys. Now you have a tactical element - working out optimal routes around the board, and deciding how many turns to spend making keys before you head to the secret room. Underestimate and you have to go back; overestimate and you wasted time. The spaces that were for picking up keys could just be blank. Alternatively, make the secret room challenges into actual challenges, rather than random results. The same applies to some extent to the prophecies, especially those that allow you to open locked maze doors and to rotate the board. There was simply too little of that to make it an interesting aspect of the game.

The cards could be more fun if there was some element of choice involved. Simply changing the duelling rules to let you pick a duelling card, instead of drawing at random, might make it feel less pointless. Making the prophecies interact with each other more could create interesting tactical elements.

The spells, especially, really need some work. This is clearly supposed to be a risky decision - take a 50% shot at getting an advantage or losing (potentially) several turns! However, because you can't choose the spell you want, the risk-reward ratio is simply too high. Allowing you to choose the spell might make these squares worthwhile. This might also help with the "swap places" rule, which seems like a cheap shot at the moment. If swapping places and items was a more significant part of the game, it could be a lot of fun. I know it's a minor consideration, but it would also make more sense in the context, which is wizards scheming against each other and carefully planning their actions.

I'm not saying that changing all of those things would necessarily make a better game; it would make a completely different one. However, changing some of them, so that the game focused more on particular elements, would perhaps be an improvement. At the moment, I can't see how it would hurt.

Overall

On the whole, this was a disappointing game. It had a vaguely interesting premise and a variety of mechanisms that looked like they could be fun. However, it turned out to feel very mechanical and soulless, with too many random elements to be tactically interesting, but too much complexity to make a fast-paced, fun random game. Despite the many cards that let you take cards off other players, you can basically ignore the other players, because there's little or no interaction between you; these cards are just another random element among many.

It's quite possible that children would find it more fun, as they tend to have more tolerance for repetitive games. On the other hand, there are so many penalty elements to the game, and so few bonus elements, that I could see myself getting upset and frustrated by it when I was younger.

Final gripes

Two last things.

First, pedantry. The back of the board, and every magical item card, bears the words "As I will, so mote it be" with the implication that this is something Merlin says. Kyra informs me that this is something Wiccans say. My knowledge of Wicca is pretty much nil. On the other hand, I can reliably state that Merlin would never have said "As I will, so mote it be", because for one thing Merlin was not a Wiccan, and for another he was freakin'

Welsh

. Oh, and he almost certainly didn't exist, but I'm willing to let that one slide.

Addendum to pedantry: "wizardological accessories"? I hate you, Sababa Toys Inc. I hate you so much.

There's also a slight undertone of cultural superiority to the game. The game starts well, with a diverse cast of wizardly traditions (despite the dodgy models). However, all of the magic in the game, with the exception of the genie, is very much in the Western European tradition, as are the items and the magical symbols used on the game pieces. Moreover, the premise of the game is that wizards from all over the world are striving to be worthy of Merlin, the white Western wizard, which could be taken as implying that their own magical traditions are inferior. I'm not saying that's what the game was trying to say, any more than I think they were genuinely trying to make a gay wizard romance game, but it's there to find.

I am Merlin, the mighty wizard of the Pendragons. My spirit has been trapped in an oak tree by an evil sorceress. If you are to release me and become my successor, you must first complete the various challenges laid down in this game, thus proving yourself to be a Master Wizard. Move through the maze, collect the magical items, cast spells, and perform tasks to acquire wizardological accessories. But be careful - your opponents will be prepared to use cunning strategy and magic in their attempts to defeat you and win the game. Are you ready to face the challenges of wizardology? If so, your journey begins here. As I will, so mote it be. Merlin

Themes:

Batteries Not Required

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

~

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Wardog

at 11:14 on 2011-01-04I am astonished you had faculities to analyse quite why this game was such a miserable experience.

All I could think was "no ... fun ... must ... have ... fun ..." between drooling onto the board and banging my head on the table.

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Dan H

at 15:38 on 2011-01-04I feel a bit bad about hating Wizardology so much because it's clearly supposed to be a game targeted at a younger audience, but I always think that the reason so many children think board games are awful and boring is that there are so many awful boring board games out there targeted at them.

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Rami

at 23:35 on 2011-01-04

Moreover, the premise of the game is that wizards from all over the world are striving to be worthy of Merlin, the white Western wizard, which could be taken as implying that their own magical traditions are inferior.

Ooh, yes, I ran across that sort of thing in

some books I read

, and I don't suppose it's any less annoying in a gay wizard romance game :-(

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Wardog

at 09:22 on 2011-01-05I think we should MAKE a gay wizard romance game.

I think it would be awesome.

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Arthur B

at 09:34 on 2011-01-05You could base it off

Mage: the Awakening

. Only this time the awakening isn't a mystical one.

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Shim

at 10:50 on 2011-01-21I found my photos of this game. Does anyone actually want to see them or shall I not bother?

Though I don't actually know how to add photos.

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Arthur B

at 14:15 on 2011-01-21

Though I don't actually know how to add photos.

You use the image library function, which isn't actually linked from the admin page but is linked from the article-editing page.

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[smallbusinessing]

A Guide to Strategic Thinking

Strategic decision making is vital for SMEs aiming to grow and develop. In this blog I provide an accessible overview of strategy, and pay particular attention to both logical and creative strategic thinking. These two approaches are seemingly paradoxical, but when combined, can help SME’s strategise in both robust and revolutionary ways.

What is Strategy?

Before I offer up a definition, you should know that the meaning behind the term ‘strategy’ is still a matter of deep long-winded academic discussion. That said, put simply, strategy is the means by which a firm matches its internal capabilities with its environment in order to create a competitive advantage. 

Strategic thinking goes beyond just ‘how to do strategy’. Defining new strategies is about identifying and imagining possible futures for a business. When thinking strategically you are trying to understand potential strategic options in order to position your company effectively in an unknown future reality. 

As such, thinking strategically is more than just strategically planning ahead and involves novelty and non-linear thinking. This is where it becomes tricky as it often sits in tension with a fundamental desire for stability and certainty.

The are many ways to approach the study of strategy, and for this blog we are going to look at strategy at the business level of analysis (rather than at higher corporate or network levels). At the business level we will be focusing on the kinds of strategic insights which are useful for an individual or small team when considering the strategy of a single company.

Strategic Thinking and Cognitive Maps.

First things first, how does one think like a strategist?

One idea is that managers need to be thinking in a systematic, logical and reasoned way in order to define strategic problems and provide solutions for those problems. This involves moving through some version of the following process:

Identifying: recognising problems and making sense of those problems – how do they relate to you?

Diagnosing: figuring out the underlying cause of problems and analysing those causes

Conceiving: formulating and imagining possible solutions

Realising: implementing and acting

Nevertheless, strategists must concede that there are barriers to undertaking these processes – there is nearly always limited information and the full complexity of any situation is often impossible to grasp. As such, strategists also need to rely somewhat on their intuition.

Intuition here is not the same as thinking in an ad hoc and random way. A persons intuition is based on their ‘cognitive map’; an unconscious understanding of how the world works which is influenced by experiences as well as education and personality. These cognitive maps steer the senses of a person and focuses their attention onto particular things – they are essentially ingrained interpretive filters which determine issue salience and provide an existing repertoire of problem solving responses.

The Pros and Cons of Cognitive Maps

On the one hand, cognitive maps allow us to simplify a situation and use our intuition to make informed and holistic choices. Although we can’t get all the information about a situation, we can rely on our cognitive abilities to fill in the gaps and provide us with a means to move forwards.

This is very valuable for a strategist in an SME as cognitive maps facilitate speedy decision making. Put another way, quickly following your gut is not an uninformed practice - you are listening to your well-founded intuition!

Unfortunately, every strategist also needs to be aware of a nasty side effect of these maps – Cognitive Rigidity. Cognitive maps can make it difficult for us to see outside of our own paradigm. Instead, we can ignore things or strategies that don’t fit with our world view and can become very rigid in our thinking around problems and solutions.

As such, strategic thinking is about two things which often sit in contradiction to one another…     > LOGIC &     > CREATIVITY

We need logic to help us analyse and distinguish between feasibility and fantasy. When we analyse something logically we employ our cognitive maps to help us fill in the gaps in our understanding.

On the other hand, we also need creativity to help us see past our own cognitive map and see innovative opportunities. 

When a small business is considering its strategic direction, it therefore needs to think both logically and creatively. 

Logically Thinking about Strategy

I’m going draw a lot here from a scholar called Kenneth Andrews (1987) who has written profusely on corporate strategy. His perspective is very rational and logical, and there is certainly a lot of value in what he suggests.

Firstly, all your strategic decisions should show unity, coherence and an internal consistency. In other words, there should be an underlying logic to the pattern of strategic decisions you make. If there isn’t you could go off in all sorts of odd and unnecessary directions. This requires PLANNING!

In order to plan properly you need to explore the 4 components of strategy:

What is the market opportunity?

What are your competences and resources?

What are your personal values and aspirations as an SME?

What are your obligations to society and so stakeholders?

The strategy process is therefore about taking the answers to the above questions and using them to formulate a pattern of purposes and policies (the strategy) which can then be implemented within the organisation. (for example, these decisions may affect the company’s structure, the company’s processes or the company’s leadership).

It is this kind of strategic thinking which involves tools you’ve probably heard of before such as SWOT, PESTLE, Porter’s 5 Forces, Porter’s Diamond. If you haven’t – look them up on google. They’re easy ways to try and build an objective picture of both your organisation and your environment.

Creatively Thinking about Strategy

I’m going to draw from the work of Kenichi Ohmae here as he provides an opposing view to the one above.

From this perspective successful strategy comes from a particular state of mind where insight and drive lead to creative and intuitive decisions. Being creative is therefore a combination of rational analysis of the situation (to give insight) followed by imagination to develop novel solutions.

What do we mean by creativity?

Creativity is the ability to combine, synthesise and reshuffle previously unrelated phenomena in such a way that you get more out of the emergent whole than you put in.

In order to be a creative SME manager you need to work on three conditions for creativity:

There should be an initial charge which requires vision and inner drive – you must want to change things. This is your creative impetus.

Ideally you should have ‘directional antennae’ which helps you to recognise opportunities and select profitable ideas.

Finally you must have the ability to tolerate static and criticism

Creativity is both constructive and destructive. It requires old ways to be broken, and is often high risk. As such, expect critique and hostility. Be ready to listen, but also to push back. 

Breaking Cognitive Maps

We spoke earlier about cognitive maps – well in order to achieve the above conditions, strategic thinkers need to make sure that they question their and their employees’ assumptions about what can and can’t be. Building this type of questioning into the organisational culture and leadership approach can be helpful to ensure that this is done on a consistent basis, and is reinforced over time.

Strategy is often inseparable from culture – if you can engender a culture which is rational in its market analysis, but creative and intuitive in its problem solving, then you have found an ideal balance between logic and creativity.

For example, Apple is well known for being very tightly controlled by Steve Jobs – a ‘competent tyrant’ as one employee put it. However, the company also fostered a contrarian and revolutionary disposition which is needed to generate creative and disruptive strategies. During the 90s and 00s the company was consistently developing ways to break out of normal industry cognitive maps. Apple’s strategic thinking during this time was based on Job’s instinct for design and push for experimentation.

In Sum: Avoiding Cognitive Rigidity

For small firms, it is important to avoid getting stuck in a particular way of thinking – especially if short term success leads to confirmation bias. If you can maintain a level of intellectual flexibility and be open to critique then you can somewhat protect yourself from rigid strategic thinking.

Additionally, providing space in the organisation for current strategies to be challenged and problematised can be beneficial. These can be in the form of meetings, workgroups, online forums, an away day etc.

Finally, if you want creative strategies you need to have (and facilitate) creative people – my advice for every company whether big or small is to spend time and effort choosing the right people for your organisation, after all, you are nothing if not a bunch of people.

For an interesting article on strategic thinking check out this Harvard Business Review article https://hbr.org/2016/12/4-ways-to-improve-your-strategic-thinking-skills

This Harvard article has some suggestions on how to avoid cognitive biases: https://hbr.org/2015/05/outsmart-your-own-biases

[leftpress]

Responding to Fascist Organizing

Jan. 27 2017 | William Gillis

The great economist and early anti-statist thinker Bastiat famously pointed out the way our attention is often drawn to the most immediate, losing sight of the wider array of consequences and causations. Such myopia is how modern statism flourishes, obscuring the threat of the policeman’s pistol and the swing of his truncheon, so that a proposed tax for instance is sliced away from all context and rendered into a seemingly inert, docile thing.

Through centuries of hard fought progress the public has increasingly grown adverse to violence and explicit acts of domination. It is impossible to understate the accomplishment this represents. And yet our rulers have compensated not by lessening their brutality but by obscuring it. Every sociopath intuitively knows to exploit the limits of human attention through complicated misdirection. What is seen is a politician standing before an adoring crowd, what may go unseen is the brutality their policy depends upon, the threat they implicitly make.

A society might appear peaceful and idyllic, with acts of brutality not only invisible but entirely absent, and yet “that peace” be the result of the threat of incredible violence. If the citizens of a totalitarian regime do not resist, do not incur repression, but simply hang their heads in submission, it would be wrong to say no violence or aggression is present. And yet a particularly bureaucratic soul might look around and dismiss the claims of the oppressed, might demand that they lay their bodies on the line to make visible the implicit threat of the state, and even then dispute that there is not enough data. Might request that their bodies be stacked ever higher to “prove” the systematic nature of the threat. And god forbid the threat be delayed, the promise be made years out of violence to come. When the implicit but very clear threat is, “We will murder you and your entire family. Not today. But soon. Once our power has finished growing. Resist now and die then.”

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Such violent “peace” is not exclusively the product of the state. It sneaks into human affairs on all levels. It shapes and twists our society, our economy. The gangster in the streets whose theft is tolerated, even made invisible, uncommented upon, because the threat is perceived as so overwhelming. The “Move along, n—-r” that contains mutually understood volumes of collective threat, the word resonating and cutting with centuries of lynchings and beatings behind it, but its meaning deniable in an instant. “How do you knoooow I meant that as a threat?” and a flash of white teeth at the interlocutor. Such implicit violence becomes fractional, fungible. Not every use of a racial epithet contains it in full, but they often trade off the watered down possibility of violence. What is 1/200th of a threat of lynching, or a beating? Violence suffuses our world, it flows unseen through complex circuits, accumulates in silent but vast reservoirs, rearranging and curtailing what is possible.

When fascists or white nationalists talk of “voluntary” ethnic cleansing we all know what they mean. The word “voluntary” is a laughable tissue, the confident sneer of a bully who knows how to play within the shortsighted rules, but wants almost all observers to note his audacity, and to — in letting it pass — demonstrate their own weakness. A detailed threat is delivered by mail and deniable reference to it made in person. The game is simple. One oily fascist wears his suits in front of the cameras while a broader ecosystem of fascists delivers the violence. People of color are murdered for sport, anti-racist activists are assassinated, prison nazis sand off people’s skin and dump their bodies in public. Shaggy sings, “it wasn’t me.”

They know it’s a game, their with-a-wink pretenses of distance, “nazism was about a particular historical context”, “I have my critiques of Hitler”, “oh I don’t hang with those specific guys” are never meant to stand firmly, they’re more about poking fun at the self-constraint of formal systems and dissolve under even a moment’s scrutiny.

When neonazis march through a town their action is precisely that: an action. A demonstration of force. A threat. A two part declaration: “We will exterminate you. Here are the tools we will use, the strength we have amassed for the task.” Its character is hardly invisible to those targeted.

And yet, true to form, most liberals are seemingly incapable of recognizing the act for what it is, of looking beyond their noses to any semblance of context. In the liberal’s mind a march of goosestepping nazis carrying weapons through a black neighborhood is just a parade of people with bad opinions.

Similarly when a representative of a neonazi group sets up a table at a metal show or steps before the cameras the oh-so-astute public notices that they’re not murdering anyone at the moment. Just recruiting people to murder in the future. Like the army recruiter that likewise preys on disaffected youth the public largely cannot see such recruitment as inextricable from a larger mechanism of violence. The very point of such individual acts of recruitment is to add up into an unstoppable army when it finally decides to initiate force en masse.

Yet just as the state’s necessarily simplistic legal system discretizes every single action, stripping away vital context, so too have the public’s moral analytic capacities atrophied to only recognize the most immediate, the most apparent. There’s utility to such constraint in certain arenas, we would never want to give the state the capacity to determine what discourse is permissible, or to prosecute nazis for their beliefs (despite conservative hysteria by all accounts the vast majority of antifascist activists are anarchists who have consistently opposed state legislation and the “antifa bolts” famously stand for opposition to Bolshevism as well as fascism). The reality is that every individual is capable of greater perception and intelligence than the state, of directly seeing realities the state is structurally incapable of parsing. When a trusted friend tells you someone raped them you’ll likely cancel your date with him, even if your friend’s testimony alone wouldn’t and shouldn’t be sufficient to convict in a court of law. As autonomous individuals we can and should take actions that based on our more intimate and direct knowledge — knowledge it would be impossible to systematize or make objective in some legal system. It will always be possible to construct threats of violence sufficiently obscured as to be rendered invisible or plausibly deniable to some observers but crystal clear to the recipient(s). This is one of the innate failings of codified justice systems, abstracted to some level of collectivity, and part of the reason ethics enshrines individual agency above legality.

If the first step on the road to fascism is blinding ourselves to its violence, the second step is denying our agency to respond.

Let us be absolutely clear though that formal “fascism” and the broader white nationalist ecosystem around it constitutes but one type of authoritarianism. While its aspirations are grave and its spectre is on the rise, there are many other flavors of authoritarianism alive in our world, currently wielding far more power. These authoritarianisms are presenting killing far far more people than some scrawny white nationalist pricks hanging out in /pol/ and occasionally shooting up protesters, and these other authoritarianisms absolutely must be countered.

But. Nevertheless the history of the last century overwhelmingly shows that fascism constitutes a relatively unique threat that must be diligently resisted, lest certain dynamics particular to it otherwise spiral into runaway growth. The threat it poses to ethics, modernity and to civilization is always present (despite its occasional opportunistic adoption of those mantles), it can be countered, but to do so requires us to get serious. To understand its function and its motivation.

There are broadly two common sources of authoritarianism:

The first is a kind of inane and “edgy” consequentialism that, upon realizing ends can justify means, leaps to grab onto the most stupid and violent of means. If you want to bake a blueberry pie then obviously you should ban independent press and gulag all the kulaks. While these authoritarians sometimes start with relatable aims, their misstep is to view “power” as a universal currency and without externalities. At some point they internalize the assumption that if you want to get ___ done you should obtain power, whereupon you will just be able to do it. They fail to grasp that some ends are impossible to accomplish through social control and coercion, and that such means have tendencies of their own. This authoritarianism is the blind tantrum of a child demanding that their parents make water less wet. Its watchwords are “There should be a law.” Obviously it’s the dominant form of authoritarianism found in liberals and socialists.

The second kind of authoritarianism views power not as a means but as an ends. In practice these are typically people for whom the unfortunate homo sapiens preoccupation with social standing has festered into a blistering wound. In this virulent pathology power is near enough to the sole ends in life and everything else is a delusion that risks rendering you instrumental in someone else’s power. This ideological sociopathy is utterly uninterested in reality. To paraphrase Scott Alexander, there are no philosopher Trumps. Fascism has from the start demonstrated a well documented postmodern mutability, happily contorting its stated beliefs or tenets into all kinds of incoherencies and absurdities. This sort of authoritarian intuitively understands discourse as just another arena of positioning and ideology as just another shell game. Every statement is reduced into terms of affect, allegiance, and the disruption of any process that might be bent by the pressures of objectivity. Karl Rove’s “We make our own reality” hangs among a pantheon of other Orwellian admissions by this sort of authoritarian. This form of authoritarianism is widespread among conservatives, who often admit to seeing liberal democracy or even religion as useful lies when pressed. And individuals with such nihilistic perspectives can be found in literally any social space — certainly inclusive of social justice movements — usually acting as predators and climbing social ladders. But its most consistent and large-scale ideological expression lies in fascism.

There are of course in practice many other niche mutations and subspecies of authoritarianism. One increasingly prominent example are reactionaries who seek to disable and impede technological capacity — ideologically committed to a world of immediatism or a return to some ‘essential human nature’, they seek impose a material state of affairs where possibility is dramatically curtailed. If you bomb everyone back to the stone age then you no longer need active jailers to prevent creativity and connection, the muddy ruined landscape itself provides the constraint. In such case the kernel of authoritarianism lies in the ideological fixation, the hunger for a certain simplicity, that is then achieved through the suppression of others’ options. But like other niche expressions such an authoritarianism is thankfully still quite rare.

What’s important to note is that every species of authoritarianism demands a different response.

The authoritarianism of a liberal or socialist, being instrumental and arising from profound ignorance, lacks a self-awareness and can be effectively challenged in debate. That is not of course necessarily to say that the authoritarian liberal or socialist will themselves retreat from their ridiculous policies upon evidence, but that they lack the conscious duplicity to really prepare for counter-evidence. Bring to light the vicious physical brutality hidden in their cigarette tax or the clear ludicrousness of a transitional dictatorship that will “wither away” to create a free society and the sincere liberal or socialist is left spinning in circles, trying to find places of retreat on the fly, the ineptitude of their proffered means apparent to all direct observers, and defanged of serious recruiting capacity.

Nothing could be less the case with a nazi. An actual fascist is well aware that some proposed policy may not have much of a leg to stand on. They are prepared for objective reality to line up against them. They know at heart that their race statistics are often false, misrepresented, or actually evidence for the reverse of their claims and insinuations. Not only does this not matter to them, they strategize from the beginning with it in mind. A fascist cares only about the landscape of power and how they can shift it to make them “win”. I want to be clear here: the problem isn’t merely that they’re arguing in conscious bad faith, fascists have no monopoly on that — nor even do authoritarians — the problem is what this arises from: a hunger for social power, and how fundamental it is to their position. Fascist recruitment doesn’t function in terms of persuasion, it functions in terms of promises of power.

Authoritarian personalities flock to movements that promise them comfortably easy solutions, but more self-aware authoritarians flock to movements that promise them power.

The primary recruitment tool of the fascist is the appearance of power.

This is why fascists — and those other self-aware authoritarians in their general orbit including Stalinists and Maoists — focus so strongly on aesthetics and rituals that reinforce perceptions of broad popularity, community, strength-by-association and general social standing. Those movements that only whine, offering victimization narratives and promises of power without any tangible content to them, rarely recruit any lasting base of self-aware authoritarians (although a few will surreptitiously set up shop to prey upon the few true believers and deadenders). Appearance of strength and legitimacy is everything, without it fascist movements dry up. No self-aware authoritarian wants to back a loser cause.

This is why refusing fascists the legitimization of a platform and violently countering their rallies has worked so well historically. The authoritarian base that fascists recruit from, don’t share the instincts of proponents of liberty, they aren’t attracted to underdogs with no hope, they aren’t compelled to self-sacrifice in defense of the weak, they’re attracted to supermen on the rise. When a nazi gets up on a stage to call for genocide his arguments don’t matter, it’s the potency of the act, the very fact that he was able to get on that stage and say such things in the first place, that recruits.

Fascists make a mockery of debate intentionally, in the authoritarian mind it’s inherently just positioning and only fools take ideas seriously. From such a perspective the fascist that discards the existing norms, that dances around in a flagrantly bad faith way, demonstrates a kind of strength in honesty. The only honesty, in their mind, being that truth and ideas don’t matter. Power matters, power through deception and manipulation — the capacity to get someone to put you on a stage, in a position of respect, despite your flagrant dishonesty — and power through physical strength — the capacity to march in the open, in great numbers, with weapons, with muscles, trappings of masculinity, displays of wealth, etc. Widespread mockery can hurt fascists by demonstrating their unpopularity, but so long as they have other sorts of power to fall back on the fascist can simply tell himself “this is the real power, this is the only thing that actually matters, what those people have is fake and hollow, that they will be overthrown.”

Regardless of whether or not you agree with it or consider it ethical, people punch fascists because it frequently works.

When you hurt a proponent of liberty we flock to each other’s aid, when you hurt an authoritarian other authoritarians are instinctively disgusted by his weakness and most scuttle further away. Sure, a tiny embittered core remains, some fools without the self-awareness of their own authoritarianism and other authoritarians now too invested to escape, and some misguided defenders of underdogs might come to their aid, but the compounding growth of the movement is derailed: few authoritarian personalities feel much inclined to join a bunch of powerless whiners.

There are, of course, complexities. Many authoritarian communists, for instance — despite similar totalitarian aspirations as explicit fascists — vary in degrees of self-awareness among their base about their hunger for power. Movements like Stalinism and Maoism depend on broad bases of leftist fools who swallow the simplistic doublethink necessary to see Assad or Bob Avakian as noble oppressed underdogs. Still, when anarchists have fought them in the streets, as for example in Athens or Minneapolis, there has appeared to result a shrink in their base, or at least a bluntening of their power. Certain currents in today’s alt-right follow a comparable dynamic, mixing self-aware authoritarians alongside psuedo-libertarian fools who swallow the doublethink necessary to see people organizing for racial genocide as allies and feminist media reviewers as dire enemies.

It will certainly be the case that the tactics and strategies employed with such success against boneheads in the 80s that drove them off the streets and largely dissolved their ranks will transfer in their entirety to the fight against garbage-tier memelords like Richard Spencer, but it also does not appear that antifascist groups are copying them over fullcloth. There have been many eras and contexts of resistance to fascism, with many differences between them. The awkward dance of someone like Spencer as opposed to an outright prison nazi is to try to look like a hardass to cement his base while playing the victim for liberals to milk them of prestige and legitimacy. This is not an easy dance, and is prone to derailment from multiple fronts.

We are in a new landscape, and people oppose fascism from all sorts of angles and perspectives, it is up to us to find effective means of countering them. To flood the market of antifascist resistance, as it were, with diverse innovations and let the best rise on their own. But we should also not neglect the lessons of the past and insights of antifascists in communities throughout time and around the world. When an army is being built, when it is rolling toward you, is not the time to debate it, or to snicker in complacency at its lies and contradictions. When a force openly plans to exterminate you, we cannot afford the naivety of waiting for it with open arms — as Gandhi advised people do of the Third Reich — hoping you will last long enough to dissolve it from the inside. When generals talk of plans to invade and suppress free speech, when politicians propose legislation to bar freedom of movement, you do not waste time worrying if your resistance will in the process undermine the free speech or freedom of movement of those generals and politicians. You resist.

Anarchists and libertarians come in many stripes, consequentialist and not.

Personally — as a consequentialist seeking to maximize the liberty of all — my perspective is straightforward: while there are externalities to some acts to stay mindful of, and we have social norms and detentes of significant value, one cannot afford to take a reactive stance, to merely wait while fascists mobilize — drunk on their own perception of power — and hope for the best. There are dangers, slippery slopes, and corruptive human instincts to watch out for in our resistance, but such demand vigilance not total abstention or a bureaucratic shortsightedness.

On the other hand those who closely heed to pacifism or non-aggression in good faith must still ask themselves when an act or threat of violence despite being obscured or ‘unseen’ is still a pressing one, what proportionality and prioritization looks like, what preparations are called for before the seen “moment” of aggression, and generally what can still be done to counter fascist organizing efforts on all fronts. Even if you oppose punching a nazi leader, there’s still much that can be done. If nazis march through a town in a demonstration of force, show up with your own guns ready to fire back. When nazis organize online, systematically disrupt and expose their efforts. Yes, today’s alt-right is a mealymouthed lot, mixing self-aware authoritarianism with whiny pretenses of libertarianism, and much can be accomplished peeling off the small swamp of useful fools they depend upon, forcing into the light the audacity of their pretense to the accomplishments of liberty while fetishizing nationality and borders — a claim of collective ownership as absurd as any Soviet gosplan proclamation and inherently murderous and totalitarian in implementation. But we must recognize that claims to the legacy and aspirations of liberty are rarely made with any sincerity. The core of these people are not mistaken about means, their authoritarianism is not the idiotic quick-solution authoritarianism of most liberals and socialists; their draw is power itself. The boneheads and trolls slathering at the thought of genocide and apartheid are open enemies of discourse and rationality itself. They believe they can bypass debate, derail it, make a mockery of it, use it to hide the circuits of their violence, the shell game of their aggression. They believe that physical force is the only thing that matters. We cannot afford to ignore that language.

Related Stories on LeftPress:

► ANARCHY WORKS - INTRODUCTION

► THREE CONCERNS REGARDING HAUNTOLOGY

► TRUMP AND EVERYDAY ANTI-FASCISM BEYOND PUNCHING NAZIS

[siliconwebx]

How to Overcome Insecurity

At some point or another, we all hear that little voice in our heads telling us we’re not good enough. Whether it targets your career, abilities, appearance, or relationships, insecurity is unpleasant. If it’s severe, it can even prevent you from taking new opportunities when they present themselves. No matter the cause and effect, insecurity can be debilitating.

In this article, we’ll discus what insecurity looks like and how we come to experience it. Then we’ll provide three tips for overcoming it.

Let’s dive in!

What Insecurity Is and Why We Experience It

At its core, insecurity is a feeling of anxiety or uncertainty about yourself. For example, you could have the sense of being underdressed for an important work event, or the fear of not being capable enough to handle a particular assignment.

Insecurity is often accompanied by a critical inner voice, which manifests your anxiety or uncertainty as self-deprecating words. Based on the above examples, you may berate yourself for not checking the event’s dress code, or tell yourself you’re not smart enough to take on a difficult task.

It may seem that the effects of insecurity are exclusively internal, but there are external impacts as well. Insecurity can hold you back from seeking and taking on new opportunities, stunting your career growth.

The reasons we experience insecurity vary. One is based on our tendency to make comparisons with others, especially those we follow on social media. We take in the limited information available online and make assumptions about how wonderful others’ lives are. When our own lives don’t seem to measure up, we put ourselves down.

Another reason we develop insecurities is due to our tendency toward perfectionism. For some, a simple mistake may feel monumental and can impact how they view their abilities. As such, if they’re not able to accomplish a task in a way they deem perfect, they may feel entirely incapable of the skills the task requires.

Sensitivities to criticism could also lead to insecurity and hold you back from trying new things for fear of being criticized. In fact, criticism is a helpful tool for self-improvement, although if you’ve had bad experiences, this could also help to breed a problem.

How to Overcome Insecurity (3 Key Tips)

Knowing where your insecurity comes from can set you on the path to overcoming it. The tips below will help you tackle the common causes of insecurity we’ve mentioned above. Let’s take a look!

1. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others in Unhealthy Ways

Comparison is a double-edged sword. While it’s helpful for measuring personal progress and areas for improvement, it can also be useful for determining specific elements such as salary negotiations at a new job, or the kind of wardrobe that’s suitable and professional for your new office environment.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to let comparing ourselves to others get out of hand. When you tie your sense of self-worth to how you measure up to others, you’ll quickly find yourself in a downward spiral toward insecurity. In other words, you’ll always be able to argue that someone is smarter or better looking than you are.

Many times our unhealthy comparisons arise when we make judgments about others with limited information. You might assume a coworker has a perfect life because they’re successful at work, but (of course) you know nothing about their failures in other areas.

This is particularly true when it comes to comparing ourselves to others on social media, where we make assumptions based on a few photos or snippets of text. Meticulously curated Instagram profiles can hide multitudes of problems and make you believe others have risen to the top while you’re still struggling.

If you find yourself often having negative thoughts while looking at certain social media profiles, consider unfollowing or hiding their content. As you can probably agree with, there’s nothing productive about comparing your worst moments with other people’s best moments.

In addition, if you compare yourself to others in person, try to consider the bigger picture. You may feel insecure when you find it difficult to complete tasks other coworkers perform with ease. However, it’s important to remember you probably have skills your coworker lacks, not to mention how much effort they out in, regardless of how it seemed on the surface.

2. Give Yourself Permission to Make Mistakes

Perfectionism is on the rise, and with it a whole host of negative side effects, including insecurity. After all, being perfect is an unattainable goal, and under perfectionism’s thumb, simple mistakes are perceived as serious failures.

Breaking the cycle of perfectionism and insecurity isn’t easy. It requires reframing how you think about mistakes, and seeing them as learning opportunities instead of failures.

Start by recognizing signs of perfectionism in yourself. Some common symptoms are avoiding tasks you don’t think you can complete perfectly, or taking excessive amounts of time to check and re-check your work.

Next, create a plan for how you will deal with future mistakes. When you would normally berate or feel badly about yourself, try replacing your self-critical thoughts with more positive ones. Remind yourself that everyone makes mistakes, and making one doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Instead, treat them as learning experiences.

Also try setting more realistic standards for yourself. Assess the requirements you’ve set and ask if they’re actually attainable. If not, lower them, but also remind yourself that not achieving your standards is okay as long as you learn and improve going forward.

However, make sure you don’t accidentally swing too far in the opposite direction and start making excuses for poorly executed work. Giving yourself permission to fail is only helpful if you still strive for the best work you’re capable of completing. Otherwise you’re just letting yourself deliver sub-standard work.

3. Learn How to Process Good Criticism and Ignore Bad Criticism

No one enjoys being critiqued, but some people have a particularly hard time digesting criticism. It’s easy to take corrections to heart and interpret them as judgments instead of helpful information on how to improve your work.

This can be even more difficult if you’ve had a lot of experience with bad criticism. Some people deliver critiques that aren’t specific enough, and don’t offer information on how to improve or fix the problems they’re presenting. This can lead you to feel like you’re being put down instead of advised.

Learn to recognize criticism that isn’t productive and choose to ignore it. Consider the criticism you’ve received, and if you can’t discern any actionable improvements you can make, ask the person giving you the criticism for clarification. If their criticism is still more about putting you down than helping you make improvements, you can safely ignore their critiques.

Of course, criticism is also constructive and essential for developing your career. However, this doesn’t mean it always feels good to receive constructive criticism. Learning to see it as helpful instead of judgmental can be a difficult process. You can start by reminding yourself that criticism isn’t meant to be personal, it’s a tool for professional development.

Finally, when assessing criticism, consider writing down any notes on how to improve. You can then reference them later when completing tasks, and ascertain if this seems to boost the quality of your work. Observing positive results will likely make it easier to see constructive criticism as useful, and benefit you all around.

Conclusion

Insecurity is a feeling most people experience at least occasionally. Learning how to overcome moments when you feel insecure can help you be more productive and seize valuable opportunities.

This post has looked at many aspects of insecurity. When you’re faced with it, take onboard the following advice:

Stop comparing yourself to others in unhealthy ways.

Give yourself permission to make mistakes.

Learn how to process good criticism and ignore bad criticism.

Do you have any questions about overcoming insecurity? Leave them in the comments section below!

Article image thumbnail: MicroOne / shutterstock.com

The post How to Overcome Insecurity appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

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[christophertheodore-org]

MY TEACHER

By Chris Hedges

I drove to Hamilton, N.Y., last December to take part in the funeral service for the Rev. Coleman Brown. Coleman, who had taught at Colgate University, had the most profound impact of all my teachers on my education. I took seven courses as an undergraduate in religion. He taught six of them. But his teaching extended far beyond the classroom. The classroom was where he lit the spark.

He was brilliant and slightly eccentric. Concerned one winter day that the heating system in Lawrence Hall was making us students too comfortable and complacent, he opened the windows, sending blasts of snow into the room as we sat huddled in our jackets. He had a habit of repeatedly circling words on the blackboard with chalk, leaving behind series of massive white rings and faint white streaks on his face (he repeatedly ran his index and middle fingers down his cheek as he spoke). His worn tweed coats seemed to always have a soft coating of chalk dust.

He was loved, often adored, by most of his students, whom he looked upon as an extended family. His office hours were packed. He regularly brought groups of students home for meals and evenings with him and his wife, Irene, and their four children. Three decades later, some of the most vivid memories I have of Colgate are of doggedly following him out of the classroom to continue the conversation he had begun in class, of meeting him weekly in his office, of listening to his sermons on Sunday mornings in the chapel, of dinners at his house and, finally, after my graduation, of bursting into tears in front of my parents as I said goodbye to him.

Education is not only about knowledge. It is about inspiration. It is about passion. It is about the belief that what we do in life matters. It is about moral choice. It is about taking nothing for granted. It is about challenging assumptions and suppositions. It is about truth and justice. It is about learning how to think. It is about, as James Baldwinwrote, the ability to drive “to the heart of every matter and expose the question the answer hides.” And, as Baldwin further noted, it is about making the world “a more human dwelling place.”

I wanted to learn. Coleman wanted to teach. And my education—my real education—is not discernable from my college transcript. Coleman and I met late Friday afternoons each week in his book-lined office. There and in class he introduced me to the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, William Stringfellow and Daniel Berrigan. I devoured the books he gave me, especially Niebuhr’s “Moral Man and Immoral Society,” which I read and reread. He gave me poems by John Donne, W.H. Auden and T.S. Eliot. He taught me the importance of C.S. Lewis and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I read “The Brothers Karamazov” twice in college because of Coleman, although the novel was never taught in any of my classes.

Coleman would read poems and cherished prose passages out loud as I met with him in his office. It was about the musicality of language. His sonorous voice rose and dipped with intonations and emphasis. To this day I still hear his recitation in pieces of writing and poems. He understood, as Philip Pullmanwrites, that “the sound is part of the meaning, and that part only comes alive when you speak it,” that even if you do not at first understand the poem “you’re far closer to the poem than someone who sits in silence looking up meanings and references and making assiduous notes.” Coleman had open disdain for New Criticism, the evisceration of texts into sterile pieces of pedantry that fled from the mysterious, sacred forces that great writers struggle to articulate. You had to love great writing before you attempted to analyze it. You had to be moved and inspired by it. You had to be captured by the human imagination. He once told me he had just reread “King Lear.” I recited a litany of freshly minted undergraduate criticism, talking about subplots, themes of blindness and the nature of power. He listened impassively. “Well,” he said when I had finished. “I don’t know anything about that. I only know it made me a better person and a better father.”

I would spend the week memorizing poems he had read to me—Auden’s “September 1, 1939” and “Epitaph on a Tyrant,” Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi,” passages of Shakespeare—and return the following Friday to recite them to him.

Poetry, he taught me, is alive. It must be felt. It has a hypnotic power that, as Shakespeare understood, is a kind of witchcraft. And poetry, along with all other writing, is just a spent, dead force if you do not surrender to its spell.

“If you graduate knowing how to read and write, you will be educated,” Coleman said.

I was a writer, but the two people who most influenced my life—my father and Coleman—were Presbyterian preachers and social activists. Coleman, before he went to teach at Colgate, had been a minister in an inner-city church in Chicago. As a seminarian at Union Theological Seminary he had worked in East Harlem. He was involved in the Chicago Freedom Movement, which was a tenant action collaboration with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and, like my father, he was a member of Clergy and Concerned Laymen, a group of religious leaders who opposed the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King Jr. preached at Coleman’s church in Chicago (an event for which Coleman could not be present).

A descendant of the abolitionist John Brown, he placed at the center of his critique of American society the poison of white supremacy and the nightmare of racism that had been and remains part of our body politic. Being educated meant understanding how racism and white supremacy were ingrained in the beliefs, institutions, laws and systems of power—especially capitalism—that ruled America. And I felt, largely because of the example of Coleman’s life, that I should become an inner-city minister. I applied to Harvard Divinity School during my senior year at Colgate, an application for which my Shakespeare professor, Margaret Maurer, as she later told me, ruefully wrote a recommendation that informed the admissions committee that I had probably read more books than any other student she had taught but that “unfortunately most of them were never assigned.” This was true in a formal sense. But of course Coleman had informally assigned many of them.

When I was accepted at Harvard, Coleman announced he would teach me how to preach. He was one of the finest preachers I have ever heard. There was and is no course at Colgate University in preaching. But that spring, in the basement of the chapel, there became one, although it would never be noted in the registrar’s office. I wrote a weekly sermon. Coleman sat in a chair in front of me and took notes in felt pen on a yellow legal pad. For all his compassion and gentleness, he was possessed of an intellect that was uncompromising and intimidating. My sermons were torn to shreds under his critique. I would be sent back to do them again. And again. And again. At the end of the semester he seemed satisfied.

“Now you know how to preach,” he told me. ���Don’t let anyone change you.”

This truth did not escape my homiletics professor at Harvard, Krister Stendahl, who pulled me aside after my first sermon to the class and asked, “Where did you learn to preach?” I won the divinity school’s preaching prize.

I lived across the street from the Mission Main and Mission Extension housing project in Roxbury, the inner city in Boston, and ran a small church as a seminarian. It was one of the poorest and most dangerous projects in the city. I commuted to Cambridge for classes and went home to the ghetto. The vast disconnect between Harvard, where students went on about the suffering of people they had never met, and the poor filled me with despair. I went back to Colgate to sit again in Coleman’s office. The slants of pale, yellow light fell with a comforting familiarity on the shelves of books and the tweed jacket of my old teacher.

There was a long silence.

“Are we created to suffer?” I finally asked.

“Is there any love that isn’t?” he answered.

I would leave Harvard, without being ordained, to go off to war as a reporter. I would cover conflicts for 20 years in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. I would see the worst of human evil. I would come back once or twice a year to the United States. And I would almost always find my way to Hamilton to see Coleman Brown.

I have always thought of myself as a preacher. This is not a vocation one proclaims openly if he or she works for The New York Times, as I did. Preachers, like artists, care more about the truth than they do about news. News and truth are not the same thing. The truth can get you into trouble. During the calls to invade Iraq I denounced the looming war, drawing on my seven years in the Middle East and my former position as the Middle East bureau chief for the Times. My outspokenness led to me being issued a formal reprimand and leaving the paper. It was then I began to write books. I sent my drafts to Coleman. He sent chapters back with notes and comments. In one proposed chapter of the manuscript that would become“American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,”he drew large X’s across four full pages and wrote at the bottom of the fourth page, “Frankly, you are over your head.” In a book I was writing on the New Atheists, he sent back the opening page, which I had spent some time putting together. Every sentence with the exception of the first had been meticulously crossed out with his thick black felt pen. “Keep the first sentence and cut the rest,” he wrote. He lifted to his level many passages in my books, especially in “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” which I dedicated to Coleman and my father. My books bear the imprint of his wisdom.

His decline was long and painful. He suffered dementia and neurological damage that left him in a wheelchair. He would, on my periodic visits, rouse himself with herculean effort to connect, to summon from deep inside him the great spirit and intellect that somehow never left him. On my last visit with him before he died at 80, I came with my friend and onetime classmate from Colgate and Harvard, the Rev. Michael Granzen. We sat at the dinner table with Coleman and Irene Brown. “Now which preacher here will say the grace?” I asked of Coleman and Michael. “You will,” Coleman said.

I was ordained last October. The first time I wore a clerical collar was at Coleman’s funeral. My hand, and the hands of some of Coleman’s other students who had gone on to be preachers, rested, at the end of his service, on his coffin. I too am a teacher. I teach in a prison. My students do not, as I did not, learn in order to further a career or to advance their positions in society. Many of them will never leave prison. They learn because they yearn to be educated, because the life of the mind is the only freedom most will ever know. I love my students. I love them the way Coleman loved his students. I visit their families. I have met at the prison gate the very few who have been released. I have had them to my home. I have pushed books into their hands.

Last semester one of my most dedicated students stayed behind after the final class. This is a man who when I mention a book even in passing will find it, take it to his cell and consume it. He was imprisoned at the age of 14 and tried as an adult. He will not be eligible to go before a parole board until he is 70.

“I will die in prison,” he said. “But I work as hard as I do so that one day I can be a teacher like you.”

In the Christian faith this is called resurrection.