#there's also a lot of anti-capitalism which i didn't mention because

[madegeeky]

Been watching the Fallout television series and it's fascinating. I'm getting stuff that I assumed would be there but then they're throwing in some themes and ideas that I was really not expecting. Now, it might shit the bed on some of these ideas, as I still have an ep to go, but so far I've been loving it.

Some of my fave themes and thoughts:

The world is cruel and wants you to be cruel. How hard do you fight to stay kind? (Because it will be a fight and it will be hard.)

At what point do you stop becoming a spectator to horrible things and instead become culpable?

Where does being happy with the way things are end and cowardice begin?

When something is wrong, at what point are you obligated to fix it?

Is willful ignorance ever the correct choice?

Not all bravery is stepping into danger. A person can be brave by choosing kindness over cruelty. An person can be brave by accepting kindness when all they've known is hurt.

You are not your past, for better or worse. You are only who you are in the present. Who will you choose to be?

[citizensun]

Queerness and the House of Usher (spoilers!)

See I just added these Thoughts to the tags in @quecksilvereyes 's post but now I have Feelings too

TFotHoU (or HoU, as I will refer to it here), as expected from a Mike Flannagan show, has a bunch of Queer Rep™ to talk about. HoU is, also, about remarkably evil people - amoral capitalists who'll step over anyone if it means they'll get something from it. And look! Some of them are queer! Kinky too!

That's bad queer representation... right?

The show isn't that clear when stablishing sexualities, but we see that at least three of the Usher kids - Napoleon, Camille and Victorine - have same sex SOs/assistants with curious job descriptions. Prospero's taste for orgies probably implies queerness too, but honestly I don't remember if he gets it going with any guys in the story. I honestly have no idea about Tamerlane's voyerism thingie and Frederick is the only one with a "traditional family" going on.

Unrelated, but: Leo is definitely cheating on his bf Julius. Completely dismissing about his worries for him too. And for his cat. That's objectively evil, clearly. Vic literally killed her fiancée Alessandra, though she didn't stuff her under the floorboard, which is an L when compared to Poe's original. Cam doesn't believe in true love. Perry blackmailed his sister in law. Mean. He's also got a surprisingly high kill count for the family's disappointment, but since unlike Roderick he only killed rich people, we stan. I don't belong in Kinky spaces so I haven't got a big take on Tammie, only that - well, she's completely dismissing of her husband and sees him as a prop, just like the sex worker she hires.

Huh.

See, the nature of a story called "the fall of X family" is that X family is going to be the main character. The title kinda implies that they're falling for a reason, ergo, they're despicable fucking people. And they're queer! They're very queer. Many flavors of gay. They're the main characters, and they're monsters, and they're gay.

No, that's not bad rep.

Queerness as a movement, a community and a theory is very focused on scaping a cisheteronormative society's binaries (ie man/woman, husband/wife, public/private) and creating living conditions to those who fall outside of these categories - mlms and wlws, the trans, the nbs, the aros and aces... we are all queer, strange and estranged from this weird and limited worldview. And so we create a community for ourselves. It's very focused on care and anti-stablishment. Since a cisheteronormative society tends to be very white, rich and western, it's also focuses on anti-racism, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism. Y'all know that, this is Tumblr and we love leftist Discourse.

I also know many, many gay people irl who are not like that at all. Libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, terfs, completely apolitical people and the like. Sexuality at it's core is personal, not political, so there are gay people out there who are perfectly comfortable with their sexuality on an individual level but do not see the point of getting involved in the broader context. They're queer, but are they...?

Well—

Not to mention there's lots of asshole gays out there! Don't you have a shitty ex? Have you never been almost run over by a drunken butch who blew cigar smoke into your face? I have! Life experiences are just like that. Maybe you should touch more grass. You'll probably find a lucky gift from your neighbour's dog, who is an astrology-obsessed bisexual and also really hot but stopped making out with you at a party once she found out you're a pisces (the neighbour, not the dog).

(Granted, none of this is as bad as implanting an experimental heart contraption into the fiancée you just killed because she dared to have ethical principles and then being so consumed with grief you stab yourself in front you'd your dad but you know how it goes. We're not the 1%.)

My point is, queer people are people. We are complex. We fuck up, and sometimes there's still times to fix things and sometimes... there isn't. We're consumed by jealousy and regret and sometimes we're so locked into our own head we stop believing the rest of the world is real too. Just like any other people, because unfortunately, queerness isn't a sign of morality.

And even if queerness does mean community, kindness and acceptance, tell me... Where the hell would the Usher kids get those from? The people around them are not really peers – they're ass-istants, blowjob-giving apartments, orgy mates, heart surgery providers, hired fitness moneybags, perfect housewives. Even if the partners are all shown to care for the Ushers, there's still a distance, a power gap, that makes the relationships fundamentally wrong.

And the partners? Arguably they're the good queer rep in the show, but look – even when Julius and Alessandra are shown to be good people (or at least people with an ethical boundary), they're not the good gays, they're simply the good SO's to a family of psychos. Exactly like Bill and Morrie, who afawk are straight people.

Which leads us to HoU's parameter of morality - Auguste Dupin. He refuses to drink the Amontillado, symbol of all the Usher opulence over the years. He got screwed over by the Usher twins and by the Raven herself, but he refused to cave in (except for the informant part, admittedly). He's not a good gay guy; he is gay and he is a good man.

The fundamental difference between our show's main tragic yaoi couple isn't that Auggie is a happily out gay man (and therefore is good) while Roderick is a sad divorced hetero (and therefore is bad). Auggie is the richer man because he is a good man; he has a spouse and children and grandchildren he loves with all his heart. He has a family and a community and he has found a sort of happiness no money can buy. Roderick owns the world – but what does he really have? What do his children even have? How could they ever build communities for themselves if they were never in one? Their father made them compete for his love. He never nurtured their bonds, he just showered them with money and excess until it was too much for them to handle. Juno herself pointed out - they were never a family. The House of Usher was only that. A house. It is empty and soulless.

What is queerness without a community? How could the people who represent the relentless corporate normativity and cutthroat capitalism ever be good queer rep? How can they even be queer?

Hear me out: on the most individual, simple level, being queer is still about not fitting in. These kids are bastards. They are are PoC and women in a predominantly male and white dominated space. They're on top of the world, but they're still outsiders to their own House. How could they not be queer?

And yes, I know this discussion takes a different turn when it comes to representation in media, but it's not like Flannagan fell into a Hays Code-era flamboyant villain trope. Queerness is just there. Just like Victorine and August are both black people in (arguably) the opposite ends of the morality spectrum, there are queer characters of many kinds here. The story just happens to be about the fucked up ones.

HoU is a poignant critique of capitalism and a surprisingly funny adaptation of Poe. We'll judge it by that. It happens to be queer – more things should be.

[jojotichakorn]

Helloo! As someone who loves nlmg, do you think it dealt well with the concept of family? Especially with palm's parents or his dad? I'm currently watching it and his dad is making me fume, i just wish palm would punch him but alas he doesn't seem like the type. Also, do you agree with the statement that neung doesn't love palm as much as he loves him? Cause i don't (i have so many thoughts about this but i can't put it into words) but I've seen it mentioned quite a lot that I'm starting to doubt myself

hiii! i love nothing more than asks about my favourite series, so thank you so much for sending this one 🫶

so! do i think nlmg dealt with the concept of family well? yes. in big capital letters, actually. so, YES.

now, shout out to nueng and his mom, but there's a reason why you asked especially about palm's parents. nueng and his mom make sense in a very uncomplicated way. she's a good mom to him, they love each other, it's just a nice little comfortable family, so their relationship easily makes sense.

as for palm's mom, i think the little time they spent together and the way it went makes sense as well. she wanted her freedom (and with such a husband, it's unsurprising that she did), so she seemed a little distant and aloof at first, but she eventually peels some layers off, and there is still a caring and loving mother hidden in there. i don't even know if she expected to find her there, palm certainly didn't, but they found her together, and they would have gotten to the point of having a relationship not unlike the one nueng has with his mom, if they got more time together.

as for palm's father, nlmg is a wonderful exception in a whole parade of series i don't like specifically because of the way they approach their bad parents. the two main issues i typically trip against in those series are 1) the sudden default subscription to traditionalism and 2) the way the relationship is presented in and of itself.

now, as for the first problem, as someone, who lives in a deeply traditionalist society (which is frankly trying to run even more backwards than it already is), but who is also queer and trans and disabled and does indeed have an abusive family he is mostly not in contact with, the idea that traditionalism is something that any character agrees with until proven otherwise, especially when that character is queer, does not make sense to me. i can't be seeing a character, who is very much not conforming to society every step of the way, but then suddenly and without explanation treats their horrific parents like they are a godsend simply because "that's what you are supposed to do". it seems sudden and nonsensical.

with palm, however, we have established his traditionalism in many a way from the very beginning. the way he unquestionably agrees to his father's request in the first place, the way he treats the class difference between himself and nueng, the way he feels inferior and like he needs to prove himself because of it, etc. etc. like you said, as much as we'd like to punch his dad, he just doesn't seem the type. the question of his relationship with his father is not an isolated incident of traditionalism, but rather a pattern of it popping up in many areas of his life. so it makes sense that he does not call him out entirely directly, feels a level of obligation to him, and doesn't fully cut ties with him in the end.

at the same time, concerning the second issue, this is very much palm's pov. the series itself does not treat his father with much reverence. palm's mother is very much an anti-traditionalist figure, and her push against what she was "supposed" to do is specifically represented through palm's father and how awful he was as a husband. there is a reason why the last time we see him is when palm and nueng "fulfil their duty" towards him by letting him out of prison. he is not there for palm at the end, he is not involved in the aftermath of his ex-wife's death, and, while jojo found it necessary to explain away nueng's mother not being present in the ourskyy2 episodes, there was no such explanation for palm's father, as it is not needed. there is a coldness and a distance to the relationship that still exists and it makes sense. palm does what he must, because traditionally one is supposed to respect their parent, but he does not go even a step farther than that. he does not seek his father out, he does not go out of his way to build any sort of relationship with him, he is just kind of there, receiving an obligatory birthday present once a year.

as for the back half of your ask, i absolutely do NOT agree with the idea that palm loves nueng more than nueng loves palm.

honestly, if i did agree with it, it would not have been one of my favourite series, especially because palm is my favourite character - not nueng. this also proves that if i do have any bias here, it is towards palm, and if he was slighted by nueng in any way (by the end of the series), i would not push it under the rug.

i think this misconception comes from a very simplistic and almost mathematical approach to relationships in general. it's like some people are at a market weighing apples against oranges. palm is simply an incredibly romantic and frankly a little insane (/pos) person when it comes to romance. it is in the bounds of his personality to have gotten a crush on nueng almost immediately after they met and get a tattoo of nueng's name three seconds into their relationship. that does not mean that the many ways nueng shows his love towards palm and simply the way he loves him are any less than that.

though, i would also argue that laying next to the love of your life, the one person you want to part with the least, while imagining what a great life he would have without you, and then leaving him so he would be happy without you, even though it would make you miserable, is also a pretty insane fucking thing to do. if that is not peak of selfless and big love, i do not know what is.

[librarycards]

what sorts of things do you think can help people deal with their mental illness besides therapy/meds? i’m not saying i disagree with anti-psychiatry, and i have had bad experiences with psychiatrists/therapists for multiple reasons, but what kinds of things actually help? i’m on wait lists for free therapy and multiple of them have long way lists and hotlines don’t help me, i feel at a loss. and i kind of feel like being being this mentally ill would be a burden upon any friend/partner i could potentially have. i honestly don’t know what to do bc i haven’t improved in years

first, a clarification: i'm not anti-med, i am only anti-forced treatment. i think you'll find many, though not all, anti-psych (and adjacent) ppl with this view, which is often shoehorned in with broad anti-med shit both because of the dubious history of some antipsych figures and because of strawmanning by pro psych forces. but i digress.

there is no simple solution for crisis/ongoing suffering, especially because the actual biggest help to all of us would be the abolition of white supremacy / ableism / carceral neoliberal capitalism / settler colonialism / cisheteropatriarchy. absent this, we're left trying to fill in the gaps, collectively, as best we can, while always acknowledging that we are putting interpersonal band-aids on systemic harms.

with all that being said, i think the best place to start would be to take stock of what and who you have as resources: are there any friends you feel comfortable sitting beside or watching a movie with, even if you don't feel ready or comfortable sharing "deeper" stuff with them? do you have internet people, or a place where you can shout into the void (like tumblr)? is there a public space you can go to, like a park, where you can at least get out of the house for a little while and be alone among others?

i personally take medication, though i'm tapering one of the last ones i'm on, and chose to discontinue the myriad pills i was prescribed as an involuntary psych inpatient. this isn't because meds are inherently evil, but only because i didn't like who i was when i was on them, nor could i tolerate the conditions under which they were forced on me. absent these meds, i have found other ways to move through my own brainstuff: occasionally weed (e.g. right now), more often forcing myself to sit next to other people who i know will make sure i don't do anything shitty to myself (even if we're not in active conversation). i have a bunch of youtube videos, books, audiobooks, podcasts, etc. on deck.

i have throughout the last few years cultivated an online and in-person community in which i'm not "burdening" / "dumping" my shit onto one or even a couple individuals all the time. you're right that the full extent of what we experience is definitely too much for one other interlocutor to take - we're designed to live in community, not in isolated couples. it's also true that, while occasionally and contingently helpful, a professional counselor or therapist can be inaccessible, abusive/violent, etc. etc.

while you're waiting to experiment with the free therapy you mentioned, it might be a good idea to reach out to people you do trust to have a frank, meta-conversation about your respective relational needs. this can feel weird at first, but i autistically love it, and it's also common in a lot of kink/bdsm communities (of which there's plenty of ND overlap haha). rules can be freeing. you don't have to worry about violating unspoken boundaries when you've spoken them, and established nonjudgemental ways of enforcing them and holding each other accountable when you haven't. in the past, i've established these both verbally and in google docs, etc. i've also established it - and found it especially helpful - in situations where myself and the other person(s) experience different axes of privilege and marginalization. but regardless, it's a great way of self-designing the boundaries that in many cases we expect therapy to do for us - except, without the carceral impulse endemic to the psych practice.

i also think it's okay to acknowledge that you might be a burden sometimes, and that the people who love you will carry you. they know you'll do the same for them. part of being in relation to others is sometimes receiving more than we give - it's part of being alive, being vulnerable. let yourself be cared for, let yourself be heavy. think about how good it feels to fall into bed at the end of the day. rest is the first step to feeling a little better.

[rwbyazre]

How do the different criminal underworld's of each kingdom function in your au?

The criminal underworlds aren't really something I super built on outside of a few factions that're important to AZRE's personal stories.

Vale

Vale has a few criminal organisations, all of which are fighting each other for the more lucrative territory, but the two biggest names there are the Wicker Men and the Xiong Family.

The Wicker Men is the name for Roman Torchwick's gang, who're based on the lost boys from Peter Pan with Roman being Peter Pan and Neo being Tinkerbell. They first started when Roman and Neo were aged out of the care system and gathered others similar to them, with the sole purpose of doing what they want since no one gave them what they needed.

They mostly run on robberies for many expensive things like cars, Dust, jewellery, dealings, shakedowns on businesses, but they can't go near businesses that're ran by the Xiong family.

The Xiong family is an older organisation that're based around the Xiong and their relatives. You can come into the group if you're not related, but you tend not to get very far since the highest positions are reserved for the family.

It first popped up in 5 PTP by Junior's grandfather Xiong Taifu, as during the Colour War, the police force and government were too preoccupied with fighting off Mistral and Atlas to keep crime down, along with growing anti Mistral sentiments in the kingdom.

Originally only based in a small backstreet club that Taifu owned, the organisation grew with the Xiong family specialising in information brokering, blackmail, club racketeering and gambling. By the time that Junior is in charge, he expanded to own over half of the clubs and betting shops in the capital, and his marriage to Muffet Malachite allowed the Xiong family connections to the biggest crime syndacite in Mistral.

There's other groups and such running around, but these two are the big dogs in the Vale underground.

Mistral

As mentioned before, Mistral has a similar running to Vale but whereas Vale is constantly fighitng with each other, Mistral has a strict hierachy that can be moved about with the rise and fall of gangs, but has a lot more taboos and ettiquettes.

Typically lower ranking gangs don't go near the territories of higher ranking gangs, or try to go into their businesses, and acts of disrespect are often ended first with the heads discussing, and then violence if it doesn't resolve the issue. This is why a lot of gangs don't tend to murder each other like in Vale, because the higher ups would rather avoid unnecessary bloodshed that would cause power vaccums and bring the law down on them quicker.

There's a few families that hold the highest ranks in the underground, with one being the Spiders run by Atlas-born Muffet Malachite. They're very recognisable with their purple uniforms and spider themed tattoos reminiscent of the tattoos that other gangs have.

Her smart business sense and pragmatism helped her build her influence outside of the middle rings, as she runs a lot of the inns and social clubs that most people visit, but also established connections with the Xiong family in Vale when she married Junior.

There's also a severe human trafficking gang in Mistral that runs the underground fighting rings that Zanthus found himself in. They typically take Faunus, using them for entertainment and betting like old gladiator games, and while certain Faunus can win enough admiration to be bought out of the rings, many just fight until they die.

If Zanthus didn't escape, his fight with another that unlocked his Semblance would've ended with him being bought by a few interested betters.

Atlas

Atlas has some of the worst crime in the kingdoms, especially in Mantle, because of the intense criminalisation around like 90% of every single thing in this stupid kingdom. It's even worse in Mantle due to the poverty inflicted by Atlas.

A lot would say that the Macaques are one of the biggest crime groups, but that is because they technically are in Atlas' law book, despite the fact that they are actually not and in every other kingdom lawbook, what they are doing is within the law to do so.

But there's differences between Atlesian criminals and Mantlese criminals. Atlesian criminals have more of a wealthy air about them, and try to present themselves as honest businessmen and citizens while also dealing in a lot of white collar crimes like embezzelment and conmen.

Whereas Mantlese criminals are more blue collar criminals with a very high drug crimes and such with many gangs running the streets. The safest places to be in Mantle is the Macaque-sanctioned areas, because no gang would go near anything that is run by Lou.

Vacuo

For Vacuo, the biggest crime issue in this kingdom is the human trafficking abuse. Before they were hired by Merlot, Carmine and her gang, the Crown, ran around all of Vacuo and trafficked people for numerous things, and is able to get away with it for so long because Vacuo is so fractured and struggles with the different provinces refusing to unite.

It's very easy to get lost in Vacuo as well, so people disappearing so much wouldn't immediately be chalked to the trafficking rings. There are other organisations that try and get a piece of this very lucrative trade, but the Crown is the big dog of this game and that infamy is why Salem and Merlot recruited them in the first place.

It's also the hotspot for piracy with Isla de Toroso at the bottom of the continent, right in the Goldrush Sea. Pirates had been there for centuries, and have only gotten more and more better equiped after the Atlesian and Mistrali occupations of Vacuo, where they could steal not only better ships and weaponry, but convince underpaid and abused sailors to join their ranks.

In modern time, the pirates have formed a society of their own, similar to real life Nassau, where the different crews work together and the strongest and most infamous captains lead. Originally, it was Captain Noirbarbe who was the head of the captain coven, but in 67 PTP, Muireann Duibhshíth took control of her own crew and ship; the Kinslayer, and was titled the Pirate Queen due to her charisma and fierce skill.

Menagerie

Menagerie deals with a lot of smuggling with contraband, especially given the restricted tradeflow with the other kingdoms due to Menagerie's unique formation. It's more common in the coast cities like Asíle, whereas the more inland cities like Vikela find less smugglers for typical out of kingdom goods due to just how hazardous the trip between cities is.

Gambling is also illegal in all of Menagerie, but many places have hidden gambling and betting dens for people to bet on cards, fights and such. They are typically more family run than formal gangs though, whereas the bigger smugglers tend to be agents from organisations off shore in other kingdoms.

That is the basic outline of the underworlds of the kingdoms!

[pandabibble]

Knowledge Fight 383: December 31, 2019

In this episode Dan & Jordan cover the final InfoWars of 2019, and I think we have what will eventually turn into the "what's your bright spot?" opening in the form of just asking if anything nice happened in the previous year... which leads to them covering news of Alex Jones getting his first contempt of court sanction in the sandy hook trial.

They are impressed at the then recent news that Alex was going to have to pay $100,000 for contempt in one of his sandy hook trials, because that's a lot of money! Surely it couldn't get worse...

2019 InfoWars has been harder to write about because Alex Jones pivoted harder into outright antisemitism and transphobia during this year than in the rest of his career, and not in an interesting way; In previous years Alex's MO has been to promote extreme far right figures while either downplaying their violence or antisemitism or while using them to create a sense of distance between himself and people like David Duke by weakly criticising them from the fantasy realm of his conspiracy theory. But in 2019 Infowars dropped its mask, and while they still say "globalist" as code for the antisemitism they use to cover over real problems with capitalism, Alex just has guests on InfoWars overtly deny the holocaust or who can't mention a name of a "globalist" without afterwards having to add "who is jewish" afterwards.

The end result of this is also that it's pushed out a lot of the wacky shit because Jones honestly isn't creative enough to add wacky shit on top of being openly bigoted, and it's not like he couldn't pivot to anti-semitism & talk about spider-goats! What are the kosher implications of that? I'm sure an evil mind could invent something interesting there but no.

December 31 2019 provides a good example of what's missing, being a bigot is the most generic thing possible on the right, but when Alex Jones tries to be transmisogynist but is instead transmisandrist by accident instead, because he hasn't read the stories about Trans Men getting pregnant, but he has read the headlines about them and so decided to add "the globalists have perfected mpreg" into his conspiracy theory...

…And then just as he builds up steam on the wacky evil transphobia train he literally catches sight of his own image in a camera feed, & like a gold fish gets immediately distracted. 5 stars alex, go home and tell your mother you're beautiful.

Of course after this episode comes the hardest stretch of knowledge fight's archives: the early covid era. & it needs noting that Jones had already gone hard into a lot of his anti-chinese rhetoric in 2019 (if you saw any "fentanyl the dragon" cartoons going around a year or so ago, those were from 2019, which is why his vtubersona is named "fentanyl" rather than "covid"). This is going to be rough, but surely Alex Jones can't get worse? surely...

[robustcornhusk]

looking at some upcoming food books, i saw one that talked about vegan & vegetarian culinary history. that sounded super cool! i was into it! so i went to look at the description.

i want to say my thoughts carefully (i will fail at this, and sound dismissive of things i want to take seriously) because i think there's a lot of ways in which this is a reasonable and correct thing for someone to say... but also the fastest, simplest reading of it is kinda weird.

Many people become vegans because they are concerned about the role capitalist food systems play in climate change, inequality, white supremacy, and environmental and cultural degradation. But a world where Walmart sells frozen vegan pizzas and non-dairy pints of ice cream are available at gas stations – raises distinct questions about the meanings and goals of plant-based eating. ... [Book] makes a passionate argument for [vegan cuisine] retaining its radical heart.

look. my initial reading is "people become vegan for these reasons. if walmart sells vegan pizza, isn't this betraying the point of veganism? veganism needs to go back to its roots, which is anti-capitalism."

i don't know about everyone, but i would've assumed that most vegans are vegans because they think it's wrong to eat animals.

(like. those are all admirable reasons to take action. but if those are your reasons for action, i don't know that they end with you becoming a vegan. climate change, maybe, though i think that can have a sightly different set interactions with food - maybe more emphasis on efficient food. inequality and white supremacy? i think that has a very different set of actions associated with it! subsidizing the costs of food, more workers' rights, increasing access to food, etc all come to mind first as culinary-related actions)

i came up with some other options for parsing that section, like, "many people are vegan for these reasons [but other reasons exist]", "when you take the axioms that lead to it's wrong to eat animals and follow them to their conclusions, you necessarily become anti-capitalist", "yeah the vegans think it's wrong to eat animals but that doesn't actually affect the arguments made in this book at all, so to make this book palatable to a wider audience, i didn't talk about that".

partner was also a little surprised at the description, and looked up the author to try to figure out further context, and came up with some additional options. one, that the author is writing largely about their own specific experience (intentionally); two, the author is writing largely about their own specific experience (unintentionally).

it's just a really big gap! like. i'm pretty sure most vegans are vegan because they don't want to eat animals. if you leave that out, it worries me that you're missing the point. this is like talking about, i don't know, gay men and how they're perceived in society, and not mentioning that gay men are attracted to men. it's sorta bloodless, i guess.

...

elsewhere (not sure where because i was reading over partner's shoulder on their laptop), i got the impression that the author really does argue that it's important for vegetarians/vegans to keep being Radical in the face of, y'know, walmart selling vegan ice cream, and that it's being co-opted by The Thing That Results In Wal-Mart Selling Vegan Ice Cream.

i... you're missing the point! one. that's a success. walmart selling vegan ice cream is a success. my omnivorous partner eats vegan ice cream all the time, and that's a success.

two. if you're saying that vegetarianism needs to stay radical - needs to stick to its root values - then i'm pretty sure that the author is the one de-radicalizing it by not mentioning what those root values are. like. baffling.

...

the thing is... i really want to read about shitty vegetarian food in the 70s. i wanna know how weird christian sects and hippies influenced early vegetarian food. i wanna know why all the vegetarians love braggs (regrettable man). where do the punk zines come into this. not entirely sure if this book is going to answer the questions i have, though.

[mariacallous]

you know every time I see a weirdly false claim about Biden/Democrats, like saying weight limits mean something totally different I can't help but think about the known fact that the Russians did a massive messaging campaign on social media to undermine our election in 2016, have kept doing it, did it in other Western countries etc and then it' like "wait am I being paranoid? am I that guy who leftist bros talk about when they say "Russiagate"?" and it's a fun cycle.

to be clear I don't think every negative story or bad hot take etc is a Russian plant or whatever, I just think there's always a chance that one is and even if it's not that it might be getting boosted by them, and that it's crazy as a society we just all act like A) it never happened and B) couldn't/isn't happening now.

Part of the point of the Russian misinfo campaigns (which they've never stopped doing and which they've managed to successfully coopt the anti-vax and other concerns in a number of other countries, particularly focused in Eastern and Central Europe) is not that there was this massive ring of agents lurking and blogging, but that they were able to identify certain characteristics that would both draw people in and get their information boosted and shared with minimal effort on their part. Between figuring out the algorithm and seeing which specific things to mention or highlight or use as cover, they were able to get (usually otherwise well-meaning) a lot of people who, at least generally, wouldn't agree with them otherwise to share and assume the information is accurate.

There's also the fact that a lot of people are inclined to a very didactic and simplistic worldview where America=capitalism and capitalism=bad so therefore America=bad, which means that anything challenging or opposed to America=good, which is something they leaped and leapt at. There's also the far-from-insignificant number of people who are inclined towards authoritarianism and an ideology with an increasingly thin leftist veneer.

The other thing is that no one wants to admit they might have been manipulated or fooled or taken advantage of, especially not the online people where clout and bombast is all, and so they'll double-down on how it didn't happen or it was over-exaggerated.

It also overlooks that the right wing has been very successful at doing much of the same kind of thing for years now - when I say that Lee Atwater is smiling up from hell, it's because the work he started and so many others have carried on has taken root in a lot of leftist and liberal spaces. Some people have become so inured to the distortion that they forget that's not how things are, or are supposed to be.

[eviltothecore13]

OK @spaghettiwig, please don't interpret this as the unfriendly kind of argument (I would genuinely like to discuss this with you because I am interested when people have very different opinions to me) and I'm sorry it's so public but my DMs aren't working: but. Genuine question: how can you play an RE game with Chris in it and come out of it not liking him at least a bit?

Like...it's one thing finding other characters more interesting, funnier, more charismatic... or to think he's appeared in too many games compared to the other protagonists (since he kind of has) but actual dislike as opposed to just...indifference or boredom at most is quite surprising to me. So I'd really like to hear what it is you find unlikable about him.

For me it's like...I don't find him a particularly fascinating character, he's not as funny or quotable as some (Carlos is definitely funnier!), but it's very hard to dislike someone who's gone through so much and is still that good a person (not just in the "saving the world repeatedly" sense but the way he cares about pretty much everyone to the point of moving to protect Wesker right before the tyrant stabs him despite everything he just found out, and still risking his life even to protect a guy he knows is a traitor in Vendetta), not to mention how close a friend he is to basically every other main protagonist (especially if you like Jill--like, I think Carlos has more romantic chemistry with her, but ultimately Chris and Jill are each other's closest friends and in many ways the most important people in each other's lives--it's been slightly lessened by Capcom refusing to show us what Jill is doing now she's not in combat post-RE5 but before that they were pretty much inseparable and from what little we do know I got the impression that they still are, just...offscreen), so while I originally didn't find him very interesting, just the fact that...he's such a close friend to Jill, very close with Claire, friends with Leon (yes they've had their differences but it's also established they had a strong friendship right from their first meeting), with Rebecca, with Sheva, etc...means that writing pretty much any other character eventually meant writing him from their perspective and thinking about their relationship, which kind of made me appreciate him more.

Interestingly while as far as we know he's never met Carlos, I've always felt like they'd probably get on well? Similar courage and dedication to doing the right thing, both have quite strong anti-capitalist views (OK so Chris isn't explicitly a communist, but he gives the whole speech about how capitalism has caused most of America's problems in RE5), both have gone through the experience of finding out they were working for the wrong people, both are loyal to their friends, I feel like they'd find a lot in common if they met. (And since their dynamics with Jill are so different, with Chris coming across more platonically close with her than romantically interested in many ways--though I have read fics with them romantically together than I enjoyed--I feel like he'd have no reason to be jealous and would probably just want Jill to be happy, so there's no need for cliched jealousy tropes to get in the way.)

Like none of this is a "how dare you", because people will always have different opinions, it's more just a... "why?".

what is the opposite of a blorbo. like a character you hate so fucking much for no reason really you just cannot stand them and seeing them triggers rage. you want them dead. what’s the silly goofy word for that

[scarletwitching]

Do you think it would be worthwhile for marvel to do a voices comic for Romani and Traveller characters?

I don’t think there’s ever been any effort to get like. Authentic voices represented there which would of course be good change of pace, but there are also probably enough characters to justify it—Dr Doom, all 7+ maximoffs (I mean. Django probably wouldn’t get his own story but they could do one of the twins childhood and/or something about Natalya), Meggan, I’m not sure whether they’d count Kurt (I would) but certainly the rest of his foster family, Magneto’s family… I’m probably missing some characters but i do think they could fill up a book

I think they should fire Peter David first.

I have... so many feelings about this idea. So many. A million directions I could take this in. My feelings about representation and diversity in mainstream/corporate media have... evolved lately. I used to be very positive and optimistic, but I've gotten more cynical, I guess? Or I've come to see these corporations' actions as more cynical, and that affects my view. Not that I'm now anti-diversity or anything. I just have a more complicated, nuanced take on the matter.

There's two basic paths here: 1) the question of to what extent Marvel is obligated to try to "do right" by these characters and 2) the question of commodification of Romani identity in USian media.

As for point one, yeah, they should try to be less terrible. A thing that I'm not sure has occurred to many people is that, if you are looking for fictional representations of Romani or Travellers in the US (and you're not watching Peaky Blinders), there are, like, 3 places you can look:

adaptations of a couple of 19th century European novels (Les Mis, Wuthering Heights, Hunchback)

fantasy books that have Romani or Traveller analogue races (Wheel of Time, His Dark Materials, Name of the Wind) and their adaptations (and those cat people from Elder Scrolls fit in here too, which... eugh)

Big Two superhero comics (mostly Marvel)

So, none of these are good. 1 is bad because, outside of Hunchback, it is rare to find what you're looking for in the adaptations, and it's barely in the source material (in that it's mostly implied and not part of the story). And then you have Hunchback, which... Yeah. 2 is not great because even when the writers try to push back on certain really negative ideas, it tends to be a lot of stereotypes, and analogue groups are not the best for showing people you have a real history and real struggles and are not a fairytale character. And 3... We've been over it. (I didn't even bother putting adaptations under 3 because well, we've been over it.)

There are other examples, but they're few and far between and also bad. You may have noticed a pattern where the characters' identities are either so unimportant that it's just a small thing that is implied or mentioned once or it's all stereotypes all the time, with no in-between. My takeaway from this landscape is that Marvel has an extra obligation to not suck. It is time to stop being so awful. You're literally the only option.

But point two throws a wrench into the whole thing. One of the problems with diverse media within a capitalist system is that it is beholden to the whims of capital. That's all well and good when Crazy Rich Asians makes hundreds of millions of dollars, but what if your identity is not proven as "bankable"? If the argument is (as it has been lately) that diversity = $$$ and therefore corporations should invest, you're tying people's value to money. So what about groups of people who don't have that perceived value?* Borat made more money than any movie about real Central Asians. The market is not an angel.

The only big media corporation in the US trying to commodify Romani identity in any way (from what I can tell, at least) is TLC. Or at least, they were a few years ago. I don't have cable anymore. They could be playing anything on that channel. And those shows were, from my spotty recollection, not so much the glossy attempts at empowerment of a latter day Disney movie as... like... gawking? Just gawking as entertainment. The way that reality shows tend to be.

If there is $600 million domestic to be made with Balkan Roma heroines going on adventures with animal sidekicks, no one's trying it. Or looking at the ratings of shows about Romanichal weddings to gauge if they should.

Which is to say, I don't think Marvel would bother because I don't think they think there's any money in it. But I also don't think money should be the primary motivator in art or, well, anything. You should make movies with gay characters even if you'll lose out on some box office. People's stories have value regardless of whether or not they'll make $600 million domestic, and that's a dehumanizing scale to judge them on, even if it feels empowering in the moment.

In conclusion, Marvel Comics should prioritize doing right by marginalized people they have historically screwed over, but they will prioritize money. They're at least better at having actual gay characters who are actually gay than their parent company though. That's not nothing.

*There is also something to be said about stories combining disparate cultures into one in order to make something that is "for" the largest number of people. Aladdin? It's about an Egyptian-Canadian man and a British-Indian woman living in the Taj Mahal of Fake Baghdad.

[jewish-microwave-laser]

[id: reply by @isabeau276 reading "When exactly did the last movie about the Holocaust, which is for historical purposes as well as to inform people, including idiot people, about what happened—The stories are endless and need to be told. How bizarre and offensive to label it a fetish—come out and what was its/their name/names. Please help clear my memory; the last I remember is Schindler's List and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Both were extremely important productions. I guess *you* "forget." Thanks. 🙅🏻‍♀️💜🌷🩷🌷" /end id]

hi! thank you for your reply. in my response, i'm going to be pretending i didn't notice the smug, sanctimonious, and sarcastic tone in this reply, and will instead be addressing these points as though they were being presented in good faith:

When exactly did the last movie about the Holocaust

well one recent example was the zone of interest from 2023, which won an oscar. [x] if you need more examples, might i recommend this wikipedia page: [x]

which is for historical purposes as well as to inform people, including idiot people, about what happened

i have some bad news for you about the movies you mention later. i want to bring up an important book that i think will be very enlightening in this conversation: people love dead jews by dana horn. i've already taken the liberty of transcribing and posting some of my favorite quotes, which i will be linking: on the sanitization of holocaust narratives and which narratives end up successful [x, x (oh hey look this one mentions one of your examples), x], on what current holocaust media and education is actually teaching [x, x]

The stories are endless and need to be told

nobody is denying the importance of the preservation and education of these stories. however, it's important that we discuss what narratives are most popular and why (hint: some answers include antisemitism and capitalism)

How bizarre and offensive to label it a fetish

i'm assuming this is referring to @baroque-hashem's reblog containing the phrase "i want goyim to stop fetishizing our trauma." fetishization as a term refers to the act of ascribing value to an object (in this example, a group of people) not because of the object itself, but rather because of what it represents. in this instance, the meaning of this phrase is found in the second half of the sentence: "i want goyim to stop fetishizing our trauma as if we exist solely as a moral allegory for goyim"—meaning, goyim don't actually care about jews or jewish trauma, they only care about their ability to use it as a metaphor for their moral education. refer to people love dead jews to learn more. (also, the sexual meaning of the word "fetish" came after the original meaning [x], which has a very anti-indigenous slant to it but that's for another post. either way, baroque-hashem's usage of the term was correct)

Schindler's List and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Both were extremely important productions

important, maybe, but anything but representative of the holocaust, and they're honestly piss poor education tools. the latter is especially criticized for the literal harm it has done to holocaust education [x, x, x], however that certainly doesn't mean that the former was without rebuke [x (this one lists more films for your list), x, x]

i made the original post while searching for good jewish films to watch that weren't about the holocaust and just treated the jews as normal people. every list of iconic jewish films i encountered had holocaust films on it, every streaming service i searched "jewish" or "judaism" on gave me almost exclusively holocaust films. it's impossible to try to find jewish stories about jews being jews without being inundated by a mountain of media about one example of jewish suffering. (which is another thing—we have a LOT of examples of jewish suffering that aren't the holocaust, why is it that the holocaust is the only event goyim care about, and why is it that holocaust narratives are the only stories about jewish pain that sell?) does it have to be so hard to just find some jewish stories??? it doesn't even have to be about jewish joy—i think i ended up watching the 2009 movie "a serious man"—i just want to watch something that isn't about the fucking holocaust for once! and why are so many movies about the holocaust made by fucking goyim!!! (read people love dead jews to find out)

do you think if we all asked really nicely they would stop making movies about the holocaust

[halekingsourwolf]

As much as I love Cole, I disagree with basically 99.9% of that meta. I know the info came from others, but I feel a lot is reaching. 1) The producers, writers, JD were well aware of Sterek after seasons 1-2, not just on season 3. That's why Sterek barely interacted on season 3, the powers that be didn't want it to be canon - even Dyl said it was weird he didn't have scenes with TH. 2) TH left due to the lack of development of Derek and his/Dyl's pitching ideas for Sterek that never happened etc

(Same anon about the meta) 3) The ‘light’ theory is def reaching- the writers barely kept a bible of the show, forgetting about storylines and characters, moving on without any consideration of continuity- I really don’t think they’d have thought about 'light and its meaning’ for Sterek. 4) Poseygate was def a tool JD used to silence Sterek - it was never his intention to make it happen, his goal was to bait the audience - and he’s still doing it till the end

From X

Yeah, I have my doubts about the meta too. Not to say that I think it was dishonest, but I don’t follow colethewolf’s posts enough to have any sense of who their sources might be and where the info might have come from... and considering the general sloppiness of the show as well as the dismissive-verging-toward-cruel attitude of the showrunners/PR team toward Sterek, it’s hard to believe they had this subtle Sterek plan that just fell apart.

As for your first point, though, I’m not sure what you’re saying about the distinction between “after seasons 1-2, not just on season 3”? After season 2 is the same thing as s3? And that is when the dynamic/screentime between Stiles and Derek started shifting. Sterek were still interacting in pretty significant ways throughout 3A though (Stiles teasing Derek/fist scene, Stiles saving Derek in the elevator, Stiles & Derek shouting match in the hospital, Stiles and Derek chatting during Scott’s tattoo scene, Stiles begging Derek to believe him about Jennifer/his dad’s capture –– and, potentially, breaking her spell over him).

At the same time, though, 3A was the “no homo” introduction of female love interests for both of them. (The clear parallels between Jennifer & Stiles, and Cora & Derek, prove that the showrunners not only knew how popular Sterek was, but was trying to capitalize on that dynamic with straight ships.) This is notable because neither of them had actual love interests throughout the first two seasons (Stiles had his hopeless crush on someone who wasn’t interested, but that’s all) and as soon as the showrunners become aware of Sterek and its popularity, they were both suddenly set up with women.

*I do want to also note, though, that between s2 and 3A, the show moved from filming in Georgia to LA, where it probably came under heavier scrutiny from MTV. I couldn’t say how this impacted the show’s direction, but I think it’s important to keep in mind what else was going on at the time.

But, anyway, the lack of Sterek scenes didn’t particularly kick in until 3B. I don’t think anyone who wasn’t involved could tell you the reasons behind this. Maybe they were anti-Sterek from the start, but thought introducing a “female Derek” in the form of Cora would be enough to distract Sterek fans, and after that didn’t work they decided to cut out the Sterek interaction in 3B altogether. Maybe they thought it was harmless at first, and Jeff didn’t become bitter about its popularity until later. Maybe they actually were being tested out as love interests in 3A...? I guess I can’t say that’s not true, but considering everything going against it I’d need to see more receipts before I really took that idea seriously.

After all, like you said, Sterek continued to be teased and baited throughout the rest of the show, with no payoff. If Sterek was initially planned for but officially dropped by s4, then why would they still include scenes like the one in “Smoke & Mirrors”, or the Derek mentions tied directly to Stiles in 5A, or the way they’ve been linked together in all the promotional materials for 6B? All of those have the same feel as what we were given in 3B’s dream scene (when Sterek was, according to the meta, still the plan), which suggests to me that the scenes were either equally baity (most likely) or equally heading toward a Sterek endgame. If Sterek had actually been planned for but then dropped, then why would they still include romantic-seeming moments later on?

As for the “Sterek and light” theory... this is an interesting case because it’s honestly something I could see Jeff doing. The guy can’t keep a date or basic fact in his story to save his life, but he will occasionally drop hints for future plot points (ex: Chris mentioning Berserkers in 3B) or throw in subtle details just for some kind of coolness factor. I can 100% see Jeff not bothering to figure out where mystery voicemails on Allison’s phone came from or forgetting that Banshees can’t control printers, but making sure to announce to all of his directors that “Stiles needs to be in orange light because, ok??” The guy is not vaguely interested in continuity or things making sense, but he’s all about flash and vague exciting ideas and what looks cool, so I wouldn’t completely put it past him to intensely focus on light placement, while ignoring the plot.

Anyway, I know this reply is kind of a mess of contradicting ideas, but I just want to lay my feelings on each point here instead of starting with one argument and just laying out things that support it. All that I can really say is that I don’t know, ultimately, what was really going on. Cole’s post is an interesting theory though I do have concerns about several points in it, and the truth is we’re probably never going to know for sure what happened and who did, thought, or wanted what.

[sprites4ever]

I appreciate you taking the time to write this, and being the polar opposite to most comments I received on this.

I admit that I oversimplified for the sake of a point. Of course, American fascism, Trumpism and the MAGA cult that combines both, are products of American society and culture. Like how the Nazis distorted a lot of innocuous German social and cultural concepts for their agenda, so does Trump. It's what fascism does, it mutates entire nations into twisted parodies that look like them, but aren't them. This also cycles back to a philosophy of mine, that things can generally be used for good and bad, and it's up to the people to decide what they use them for. In this case, American values being used by an evil person to grow fascism.

However, your primary points of how Trump is a result of US society aren't really valid. Most of what you mentioned are just things that the American bourgeoisie generally has access to, none of these things made Trump into the Il Ducebag he is. Plenty of other rich Americans were brought up by those things, too, and they may be bad, but not like Trump. I'm also pretty sure he was a draft dodger. What you described as the US system 'recovering' from Trump's 2016 election victory is, in reality, quite simply corruption. Trump can corrupt the minds of his voters, so he can also corrupt power structures.

I disagree on Donald being stupid. This is a common assumption, but I think that he's childish and a psychopath, but not stupid. It's like the Chinese Room: It seems like it's one thing, but in reality it's a completely different thing, and the illusion comes from you not knowing what goes on inside. Trump's characteristics make him look stupid, but he's actually playing to that role, precisely to get empathy from actually stupid people.

Your blaming of the Democrats is completely wrong. How is one responsible for the actions of someone else, just due to indecisiveness in terms of reacting to it? The one responsible for actions is the one carrying them out. Trump could, quite simply, not be an asshole. It's not the Democrats' fault that he is, just because they don't treat him like an asshole. You're employing rapist logic. (i.e. "If she didn't want to be raped, she shouldn't dress sexy!")

I agree that people like Reagan were essentially proto-Trump, but they weren't fascist. The dose makes the poison, and while those people were hard-Right, Trump is far-Right.

Ultimately, you make some good points, but you give yourself away at the end; your closing sentences show that you're just another dogmatic anti-Americanist who oversimplifies this, quite frankly, clusterfuck of a nation, to paint it as the axiomatic evil. Not a fan of that, and specifically here, not a fan of how you oversimplify the government structure. In reality, it's not the US' government structure that makes its capitalism so bad, but the lack thereof. The US is a libertarian hellscape, where companies provide services to entire communities, which would be provided by the government, if said government made sense. This is also why lobbyism is so rampant in the US. The US is a loose alliance of 50 states and anything but united. In fact, except for federal bills and if the president starts a war, presidential policy doesn't affect any given US citizen. The only relevant vote is the vote for the governor of the given voter's state.

The far Left acts as though Trump is a result of the US American society’s system, when in reality, he's the one bent on destroying it.

[imminentinertia]

You didn't come across as world weary, and your answers helped me a lot. I had never used tumblr as a place to interact with fandom, and had never lurked one, and a lot of things I saw put me off, I guess, because they are a bit more extreme or intense than how me and my friends and the media I consume approach media. But i get that a lot of people in this kinds of fandom are very young, and tired of being mistreated or baited

By mainstream media when it comes to representation of minorities. I get it. If you get hundreds of crappy het and white couples in tv shows, why can’t you get some lgbtqia ones without one of them suffering a terrible death too? I still thing that only expecting representation from media fails short. There are a lot of things you can achieve with media apart from positive representation, and that’s why the backlash against call me by your name puts me off. 

I wrote a second part to the ask that ended with baited but I think it got deleted? What it said was basically that I get that young fans get upset by the lack of positive representation of minorities in mainstream media. I think its fucking tiring to get 100 of white het couples doing boring shit and almost to none couples with diverse characters doing boring shit as well. I’m not American, and I get tired of watching American couples do boring shit on tv, and this is not antiamericanism, its

Anti capitalism. Capitalism appropriates shit and produces what sells. But I do think that thinking that everything that media can do is positive representation falls short. And that’s why the backlash against call me by your name on tumblr puts me off. I think this did get too much, and I’m sorry for spamming your ask box with discourse. But I do appreciate your answers a lot. I wanted to see beyond tumblr and your answers helped me a lot. Sex anon

Don’t apologise, dearest sex anon, I’m starting to fall a little in love with you here. I’m glad you think my answers can be of some help

Personally I’m generally pretty chill, so the rather intense expressions of feelings baffle me a little. Like with Call Me By Your Name, which I’m just quietly waiting to watch, and then I’ll see if I find anything problematic with it. The age gap in itself doesn’t bother me, but to be a little personal again it didn’t bother me being a teen dating and having sex with significantly older people myself… A teenager doesn’t necessarily think there’s a power imbalance in an age gap.

I do get being so tired of lacking representation, do I ever (I’m a bi woman, so…) and I’m right up there on the barricades about the massive capitalist American popular culture having taken over the world. Also what the fuck is up with the Bury Your Gays trope, seriously! Let’s just STOP THAT NOW. But I can’t bring myself to condemn something I haven’t even watched yet. Also it really doesn’t help all that much that whenever one minority gets representation, the reaction from quite a few is “but what about the others”, I think.

I have pretty much taken refuge in a bit of an echo chamber on Tumblr, to be honest. I’m all for calm and polite discussion (and I’m absolutely not averse to a fair bit of ranting either), but I see so little use in taking in that Group A hates and screams about this and Group B hates and screams about that when it comes to cultural consumption. Not to mention drama that comes from conflating the character with the actor.

CMBYN opens in Norway in late January, so if you stick around I’m probably up for talking about it then, and you’re always welcome to spam me :)

[niedolia]

1/? For your question about west and EE: Media and the government in the west still loves propagating that whole east and west thing and probably won't stop as long as Putin is in charge I guess. Also that whole capitalism vs. communism thing but I have to admit I don't know enough about this to have a set opinion on this matter. Most people think of Russia first when thinking about EE so whatever we hear in the news is what still shapes our opinion on that east/west divide. Personally I didn't

do you consider Eastern Europe “Western”? (

2/? have many opportunities to experience EE. I’ve been to Poland once 5 years ago and it was just different from what I’m used to because I stayed with a group of friends in a friend’s house in a tiny town near the border to Slovakia iirc. I remember feeling the moment we arrived in Poland because we traveled by bus and the road got bad all of a sudden. The religious influence on the government in Poland makes me hesitant to view our countries as the same (the whole anti abortion thing not

3/3 too long ago). Also I didn’t learn much about EE back in school so I might know the names of most the countries between Poland and Russia, but when it comes to the people and the culture I know nothing :( Which is really sad tbh. Compared to other continents Europe is so tiny so does it even make sense to divide it even further?

4/4 an add on to the other asks I sent: tbh I think my country is doing a lot of shit at the moment so I don’t understand why people are still pretenting that we’re “better” than others. and thanks for posting so much about slavic countries and languages I’ve been learning a lot since following you!

Also adding: this is interesting! and reminds me that my opinion is pretty much shaped by being from berlin! you still hear older germans and especially berlins ask each other if they’re from the east or west while the younger generation is like ???

Thank you for giving such an extensive answer !! It’s especially interesting to hear the standpoint of a German (in addition to what stendrr has told me of course !) since you’re a bit closer; yet there’s still a lack of knowing much about EE & you express a view rather akin to what I’ve seen in America —  some of your experiences align rather closely like the mention of being more aware of Russia than the rest of the EE countries. I imagine that would be an odd thing to notice considering Poland & the Czech Republic are right at your borders, but then what else is new in the world of primary education I suppose? ie I know next to nothing about Mexico from my schooling alone. I’m going to let the rest of your post speak for itself!

& yeah my pleasure !!!  I’ve enjoyed being able to share the culture & languages with you all !! Thank you again for your response, I appreciate the depth !!!