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boldbrash-fandertrash · 3 years

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Ignore me, unless I’m right in which case I fucking called it

So I was rewatching the episode for the fourth time and one I realized that Remus is much much smarter than we give him credit for and two I can generally predict how the rest of the story is gonna go.

We’re gonna have another aside video with Patton and Janus before the big season finale, and that aside is going to be one of the most important videos to the general progression of the plot.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the pattern so far, two sides who diametrically oppose each other being forced to work together on a problem they vastly disagree about, usually turning the small issue into something much messier than it ever would be and them learning something about themselves in the process.

Each pairing exists to point out to the viewer exactly what issues exist with each side that need some form of resolving, and the big unifying theme amongst them is “you’re not listening to me”. Roman and Virgil dragging Thomas across the cafeteria in favor of or agains him talking to Nico, Logan and Remus deliberately ignoring and working to undo the others work in an attempt to break Thomas out of the depressive funk he found himself in. Nobody is working together here. The only side to even remotely cooperate with the group was Virgil body checking Thomas into Nico, and it took him and Roman bullying each other and Thomas for an entire video to even get to that point.

Watching Logan and Remus interact, one, brought me immense joy and I will be chasing that high for weeks to come, and two, after an ounce of critical thinking was frankly painful to watch. Any critiques Logan offered to Remus were immediately discarded with absurdity and any critiques Remus offered to Logan were discounted as absurd.

During the obvious scene at the end with the Eyes™️, Logan claimed he wasn’t pretending Remus didn’t exist, but honestly, he kinda was.

The Dunce Cap Scene really accentuates this point. Logan pulls a holier than thou, why won’t you learn I’m always right, bullshit passive aggressive remark, Remus does his dramatic repenting student shtick, starts singing directly into Logan’s ear, and makes a kink joke. Literally the words Remus sings are “can’t fix this guy, all by yourself”. Remus is saying this inches from Logan’s personal face and even still the logical side ignores him outright, because of all the fluff around the message. Hell, in Remus’s introduction video, Logan likens him to a screaming baby on a plane, essentially saying “well eventually he’ll stop screaming so just bear with it for a while and you’ll be fine”. He’s ignoring Remus outright due to a preconceived notion and missing out on valuable information because of it.

The dunce cap scene indirectly calls back to learning new things about ourselves, where Logan is completely unreceptive to the puppet bit because of its perceived absurdity and absolutely refuses to acknowledge any potential the medium might have for learning until he physically cannot anymore.

Remus is capable of, and does often, make valid points and offers genuine critiques of shit happening in their lives. In Forbidden Fruit, almost every single line harkens back to some idea the other sides had been trying, and failing, to communicate to Thomas. “Good and bad is all made up nonsense”, “if you shared those musings with your friends i doubt they would forgive you”, “why deny yourself knowledge, say, knowledge of yourself” “people don’t like me much, Thomas, but that only just cause I’m honest”, “these sorts of things are only thought in the mind of a man who’s soul is truly rotten.”

Despite all of this, he is ignored outright because of his medium. Just like Logan is ignored due to his monotone cadence and large volume of content, just like Roman is due to his flair for the dramatic and artistic display of ideas, just like Patton is due to his playful and childlike nature, just like Janus is due to his perceived role as the Villain, just like Virgil /was/ due to his perceived role as the villain.

They all have become accustomed to being stepped on by the other sides because of who they are and how they communicate, and have in turn learned some less than ideal methods of being heard again. Logan yells and gets passive aggressive, Remus ups the fear factor for everyone around him, Roman shuts down anyone who tries to talk through bullying and raising his voice, Patton manipulates the others into feeling guilt and covers it up with a smile, Virgil whips out the tempest tongue and incites fear in Thomas, and Janus physically silences anyone in his way.

And here’s why I say the next asides episode is going to be the most important one developmentally. Patton and Janus are going to be forced to work together. Patton, who is in the midst of an identity crisis, and willing to listen to any new ideas provided they offer a valid solution to the shit he’s found himself in, and Janus, who knows a lot more than he’s willing to let on, who concerns himself exclusively with Thomas’s self preservation, and loves to talk when given the opportunity. Janus is gonna have a thing or two to say to Patton when they’re inevitably faced with their moral dilemma, and Patton is going to be in just the right mindset that he’s willing to listen. And Janus is going to end up being right, and the small issue they’re facing will be resolved, which will therefore strengthen Patton’s trust, and his openness to changing for the better.

Patton is goofy, and childish, and kinda ditzy sometimes, and because of that we as a fandom tend to overlook any of his moments that are anything but that, but we are not giving this man enough credit. When Patton sets his heart on something, he throws his whole self into it, and is willing to stand up for his beliefs in the face of extreme opposition, and would gladly do anything in his power to defend his family. Once Patton decides that he’s willing to grow, and if he believes that this growth will help put his family back together, nothing can stop him, and that will be absolutely crucial for the growth of all the other sides around him.

Whatever him and Janus discuss during their aside will absolutely give Patton the information he needs to help stitch together the rift between everyone.

I predict the next official Sanders Sides video is going to be the longest one yet, possibly over an hour long, because there’s a LOT of work that is going to need to be done, and Everyone is going to be in it. The big issue of “you’re not listening to me” won’t be resolved, but it will be acknowledged in a serious light by everyone. We won’t be getting any appearances from the Orange Side I don’t think, that would end up just complicating matters even more when each character is already incredibly shaky in their own identity.

Something less than ideal is gonna happen between Thomas and Nico, he’s gonna summon the initial three to deal with the matter but the other lads are gonna worm their way into the discussion, everyone’s gonna start screaming at each other, and Pattons gonna do something that stuns everyone else into silence (I’m guessing he’ll start crying, considering the start of season two was all about him repressing negative emotions and what better way to show character growth than to sob openly on camera).

Once everyone just fucking stops for ten seconds that’s when the apologies start. None of the sides are ever the first to apologize, we’ve seen that time and time again. Their desire to be in the right as well as their pride will always get in the way, however if someone starts the apology train everyone will eventually follow suit. We see that in Alone On Valentines Day, My Negative Thinking, Growing Up, Accepting Anxiety, Fitting In, Moving On, actually in pretty much every video where an apology actually takes place, once one person apologizes the other will immediately follow suit.

Patton is gonna be a goddamn mess, he’s gonna apologize to everyone in the room for anything he thinks he may have done to wrong them, and that’s gonna be what gets everyone to acknowledge all the shit they’ve put each other through, and the others are going to jump between trying to console him and trying to apologize to each other. They’re going to come to the unified decision that they need to work together more on future issues, the group is all going to offer up a solution and decide together on a remedy to whatever happened together between Thomas and Nico, and that will be that. Season three will be about them finding the balance between stepping on toes and being stepped over, while also working out how the orange side fits into everything.

Thus marking the end of my rant.

I started writing this at 2 and it’s now 4. I have to be up in three hours. I have an essay due at 3pm tomorrow that I haven’t started, but instead I typed up all this bullshit. I hope any of this made any sense, and I hope this is a suitable replacement for my emotions essay that’s completely untouched because chances are this is what I’m presenting to my therapist tomorrow. Wish me luck.

#sorry for no page break I’m on mobile #I’ll be fixing that in the morning after some well deserved rest #thomas sanders #sanders sides #ts sanders sides #ts spoilers #ts patton #ts Logan #ts roman #ts Virgil #ts Janus #ts Remus #ts theory

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ofaheadstronghealer · 4 years

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Alma Bio

I know we have official bios but until that was posted I thought I’d temporarily post this to help with interactions, please feel free to message me if you have any ideas for plots or connections or what have you! :)

FULL NAME: Alma

AGE: 36

OCCUPATION: Healer/Slave

CHARACTER TRAITS: (+ Clever +Kind Hearted , -Headstrong - Insecure )

LABEL: The Phoenix

GENDER + PRONOUNS: Cis-female, she/her

BIO

(trigger warning: implied sexual assault)

Alma, an unusual name for an unusual girl. There has not been a moment in her life that could be described as ‘typical’ or ‘normal’, perhaps that is why for most of her life being normal had been something she’d craved so desperately until she would come to understand the true power in being different from the rest. Something her mother had always understood.

Alma was born a fatherless child. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that the man who is her father was not her mother's husband nor was his identity ever known to the girl or to the others in the village in which she grew up. Being branded a ‘bastard’ was her first taste of this ‘otherness’ that she would come to experience her whole life, being the daughter of a woman who was suspected by many of being a witch….well that certainly didn’t help matters. When Alma thinks on it now she finds proof that God has a sense of humor, how hard she fought to be unlike her mother and yet how like her she later became. Alma isn’t a witch, not one of the barbarians ‘Volvas’ or one of their ‘seers’, and neither was her mother before her but that mattered little to the townspeople she grew up around. They were pariahs for her whole childhood, ostracized by the community until one of their people needed a healer with skill unmatched by any other and then only under the most dire of circumstances would they accept them with open arms. Alma wouldn’t realize that until she was much older, a naïve thing desperate for acceptance she would bask in it no matter what the price for as long as it lasted. Sometimes at night she would kneel before her bed and pray, pray to god to show the truth of her innocence to the people so that she might live among them as kin and not be regarded with such fear. The first time God answered her prayers she was but the tender age of 14 and she was shown his power...as well as his cruelty. Had she known the price that God would make her pay for her freedom she would have been more specific in her prayers, would have extended the prayer to her mother as well but alas she was selfish as children so often are and did not think of such things. A life for a life, her mother's death for her freedom. She still remembers the way her mother’s hand felt upon her cheek before they brought her to the pyre, remembers the tremble in her voice as, for the last time, her mother told her that she loved her. Alma was forced to bear witness to her mother's death, forced to stand there as she was engulfed in flame and pleading for her life. Suddenly acceptance didn’t matter so much to Alma, all she wanted in that moment was her mother back.

The years following her mother's passing were difficult in many ways and brought many changes, on one hand she was welcomed back into the community as a show of the villagers' mercy but on the other she was an orphaned girl with no family and no prospects. Her mother had not raised her as a proper lady, she was not educated in the things a girl should be and though everyone around her agreed she was beautiful she was far too clever and her reputation too marred to make a suitable wife for anyone ‘such a waste of a beautiful girl’ they’d mutter as though that were supposed to make Alma feel appreciated. Perhaps other women if put in her position would have simply bowed to fate but not Alma, she had too much of her mother in her for that. If she had no use as a wife then she would find another way to have use, to make herself indispensable so she could not be so easily cast aside. In what she would later realize was a bold move she became a healer like her mother before her though unlike her mother she was more careful in how she was perceived, cautious to never show up the men around her, to curb her clever tongue, and to never perform acts that could be considered miracles and later used against her. She couldn’t really say in any sincerity that she was truly happy but it was as close as she’d ever gotten, she was valued and though people looked at her sometimes with pity it was better than the terror she had become accustomed to in her youth. If only she’d been able to save her mother than perhaps it would have been perfect. Alma lived this way in the village for many years, alone but accepted as much as she could be. That all changed the day they showed up.

The day of the raid was like any other, Alma had been making her rounds attending to the villagers when she heard the screams. At first the healer thought it was simply in her head, it wasn’t unusual for the painful memory to surface; it had been haunting her for years, but it grew in its volume and intensity and soon it became clear to her that they were not the screams she remembered hearing as a child. Of course they’d all heard of the Vikings and their ways, how they would often raid and pillage and kill everything in sight, but as every other town did they never thought they would be targeted. She was still in the house of a patient when it happened, the person too weak to realize what was going on and certainly too weak to fend for themselves. Alma is no saint, she will not deny if asked that there was a moment when she simply considered running and trying to save herself but one look at the pathetic state of the woman laying there and her mind was purged of that thought. She could not abandon her. Alma helped the other woman to the back of the house, hid both herself and the woman in a dark pantry not easily seen and for the first time in a very long time Alma prayed ‘Please God protect us, see us through this, save us’. God answered Alma much like he had the time before, granting her her wish but always with a twist. The Vikings that crashed through the house at first appeared as though mindless beasts that had not the capacity to think beyond destruction and for just a moment Alma thought herself and the woman safe. She was made aware of how wrong she was when rough hands tore her from the safety of the pantry, a foreign tongue that she couldn’t understand flooded her ears but she understood the tone well enough. The only thing that got her through the assault that followed was the sight of the other woman, frail but still hidden. Safe.

Alma doesn’t remember much about the journey that led her to Hedeby, she tries not to think about it. She can recall her captors dragging her back to show the horde their prize, remembers her feeble escape attempt just before they threw her on one of their boats. The rest of the voyage was not memorable, she kept her head down as much as possible on the boat and simply listened. Though she could not understand all of what was being said at some point in the journey she managed to make out that they were going to one of their cities, a place they called ‘Hedeby’. Alma was not certain what to expect, what would become of all those they had taken including herself? Would they be killed? Sold? The thought was frightening but she did not let it overwhelm her, simply continuing to listen and do as the Vikings bid. When Alma was brought to what appeared to be an open market in chains with the others she stood silently as they were inspected by the market goers. As time passed and the other villagers were distributed it became clear to the healer exactly the position she was in, she had always been a slight thing and while that had not been looked at negatively back home it was becoming clear that as a slave she was probably the most unappealing of the bunch. Death, it seemed, would be the escape that God would deliver her. It was not to be so. Much to her own surprise she was bought by what appeared to be a family of little means meaning that they had little to trade and therefore she was the only one they could afford, the man looked brutish, as they all did, but was not unkind in his handling of her. She was in their service for a few years, quietly observing the customs and language of these strange people with whom she now resided, but knew it would not last, she was a healer not a farmer and unsuited for the physical labour demanded of her and every day she grew weaker. It was a miracle of God when one day as she was working the fields a man emerged from the forests and collapsed before her clearly wounded, it was pure instinct when Alma leapt into action. Over the next few days there grew a small gathering of Vikings who watched as she tended to the man, they appeared intrigued by her methods some of which were unknown to them. Unknown to Alma the man she eventually ended up saving was someone that the King of these Vikings held as a very dear friend, King Ragnar demanded Alma be brought to him at once. Alma entered the great halls of the Viking King with the family that had bought her but she did not leave with them, word spread not long after of the healer from a foreign land who was now under the ownership of the King.

That was many years ago and much about Alma has changed, she still bears the status of slave under King Ragnar and his family but as their personal healer she is treated with a great deal more respect than most slaves. Though sometimes she finds herself longing for the familiarity of her old home Alma has managed to settle somewhat among the Vikings and has found respect for some aspects of the way they live their lives and is, in some ways, more herself here than she ever was back at home.

EXTRAS

- Due to how her mother died and having been forced to watch it Alma has a deep and intense fear of fire.

- She can fully understand the Vikings language but she still cannot fully speak it

- When first she arrived at Hedeby Alma was incredibly quiet but since being raised to the royals personal healer and over the years becoming more settled she has let more of her true personality come through, she has a clever tongue and a headstrong nature and does not feel she’s in such a precarious position anymore that she must hide those things though she is still cautious with who she shows it to

- Although she acts like she’s over the whole wanting to be accepted and loved thing she is very much not over it and longs for a feeling of home and belonging and love.

- At first she hated the Vikings and saw them as brutes and barbarians but now for the most part she has let go of that view though there are still moments where she considers them beasts

- One of the first things she noticed and loved about the Viking culture was how they treated their women, coming from a place where she was only looked at as a thing of value through marriage and the fact that she had a brain frowned upon she was secretly impressed at the freedoms Viking women were afforded.

#Bio #temporarily here until the official one gets released :)

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ettadunham · 5 years

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A Buffy rewatch 5x19 Tough Love

aka you are not immune to… internalized bi erasure?

Welcome to this dailyish (weekly? bi-weekly?) text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And in today’s episode Tara’s not perfect and gets her mind sucked out for it, we kick off the season’s multi-episode finale arc by revealing Dawn to Glory, and we draw some weird parallels between two of our dynamics. Perhaps mostly though, I’ll just talk about Willow’s sexuality, because at some point, we need to properly address that elephant in the room.

Okay, so, let’s just kick this off. If you’ve been in this fandom long enough, you’ve been inevitably exposed to the discourse of Willow’s sexuality. And you might be asking now… what’s the big deal anyway? Isn’t art up to interpretation? Wasn’t that one of my main motivations for this rewatch? Why does it matter that parts of the audience ascribe different labels to Willow?

And well… that’s valid, but it also misses a crucial element of our media, one that I alluded to in my rant about Whedon character deaths. Art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And the significance of that is only amplified for folks and groups whose experiences aren’t recognized or seen by society in the first place.

To them it will matter whether or not someone recognizes a character by a certain label. Because a refusal to do so feels like an erasure of their own identities. That’s what makes this whole discussion complicated in the first place.

Now, am I the best person to do a deep dive on this? No. Especially not in one of these barely proof-read long rant posts. I’m sure you can find much better sources, so please do that. But it’d feel disingenuous to ignore it too, so I’m just gonna address it to the best of my abilities as well as provide my own in-universe interpretation of what it could mean for the characters.

Great. Now for that pesky discourse.

Personally my go-to analogy to describe it is the classic Shrek onion one.

You see, you peel away a layer of the Willow’s sexuality onion… and it’s still an onion. You peel away all the layers, you chop it up, and sure, it remains an onion, but now everything’s a mess and you’re crying.

The issue is that you kind of need to peel those layers away anyway if you want to truly divorce yourself from the binary thinking that the show itself often engages with. Which is what’s arguably gotten us into this mess in the first place.

Because however you view Willow’s sexuality, you can’t deny that the show is doing a lousy job defining it. Willow does identify as gay/lesbian as of 5x11 and through the end of the series, but the language the show uses makes it impossible to just leave it at that.

In Doppelgangland, when Willow meets her vampire self, she describes her as “kinda gay”. Not gay, but kinda gay. We also see Vampire!Willow making out with Vampire!Xander in The Wish beforehand, so if Vamp!Willow is supposed to tell us something about Willow’s own sexuality, then it’d stand to reason that she’s bi. Right?

Well, apparently not. But then we run into her actual line in 5x11 where she first uses a label, saying “Hello, gay now!”. Notice, it’s gay now. As in Willow just woke up one day and turned gay. The same joke(?) is repeated in Intervention, where one of the characteristics that was programmed into Buffybot about Willow was saying Gay(1999 - ).

Now, that’s not to say that Willow can’t just have a fluid sexuality and identify anyway she fucking wants to, and she doesn’t need to justify her label to anyone. She fell in love with Tara, and that made her reconsider her own identity. Season 7 almost ends up addressing this too in a scene I think, so that’ll be nice to get to.

The issue mostly comes from the show skipping to engage even with the possibility that Willow (or anyone for that matter) might be attracted to more than one gender at the same time. The closest we get to this is with the love triangle setup in New Moon Rising, except I guess in this love triangle Willow also chose a sexual orientation?

It’s like that episode was the quantum superposition of Willow’s Schrödinger’s sexuality, and upon observation, it locked into either one of its two states. That’s why Tara’s been talking about getting a cat in that episode! Guys, we solved it!

Notice also that I’ve yet to really talk about Willow’s sexual history before Tara in regards to this… because for me that’s sort of less part of the point? If Willow was a real person, and you knew that she had this adorable boyfriend before she identified as a lesbian, you wouldn’t go up to her and question how she defines her own sexuality. I mean… I hope so? Don’t be a fucking asshole.

But that’s both the fallacy of the argument and the reason why you should still respect the label Willow identifies with. Because Willow is not real, she’s a fictional character, and therefore arguments can and should be made about how the show portrays her sexuality… And yet, the people who identify with Willow are very much real, and so are their own experiences of people dismissing their own chosen identities.

So, there you go folks. These are my two cents. Willow’s gay, but we need to acknowledge how the show appears to be either completely unaware, or actively dismissive of the existence of bisexuality. This even comes up in the S8 comics, where Buffy’s sexuality after having a relationship with a woman is continuously referred to as essentially “not-gay”. Because I guess in the Buffyverse canon these are your only two options.

Now that we got all that out of the way, we can briefly talk about this episode, I guess.

To keep it on track, I guess we should dissect the argument between Willow and Tara that sort of caused me to whip this whole discussion out here.

Now, this is a fascinating scene, because it pivots a lot, and reveals a lot about the characters and their insecurities. It also appears to be fueled by Willow’s own lack of self-reflection and Tara’s non-confrontational nature.

It starts with Willow complaining to Tara about how Buffy appears to be trying to be more strict with Dawn. Willow is obviously identifying with Dawn in the situation. But Tara says she completely understands Buffy.

This then probably reminds Willow of Buffy earlier telling her that she wouldn’t understand when she was talking to her about Dawn, which causes a mood shift in Willow. It also reminded me of season 3 of Buffy telling Willow the same thing regarding her connection with Faith, so as a Buffy/Tara shipper that association kind of delights me, ngl.

But as Tara pushes further, seeing that something is bothering Willow, she reveals the insecurity behind it. Willow isn’t just responding to Tara having this wisdom through this major, tragic life experience that she can relate to Buffy with; it’s that Tara’s done all of this so much longer than she has. She’s been a witch all her life. She’s been out much longer.

That however then triggers Tara’s own insecurities about Willow rapidly surpassing her in her own magical abilities, and says that that “frightens” her. She tries walking back on her choice of word later, but it’s too late, and Willow locks into that.

Now, this is some riveting stuff. Because with foreknowledge, the easiest interpretation here is that this will relate back to Willow’s abuse of magic in season 6. That deep down Tara already sees what having this much power will do to her girlfriend.

This is arguably even reinforced in the episode with Willow going after Glory. It’s once again foreshadowing, Willow attempting to take revenge for something that’s been done to Tara; but it also betrays a certain arrogance in Willow. She actually believes that she can take on Glory, a supposed God. (Which, honestly? She probably could by season 7.) That’s the kind of power that she wields and how she chooses to use it.

Still, in the argument itself Tara pushes this fear of hers in a slightly different direction, saying that she’s afraid that she wouldn’t be able to fit into Willow’s life, after all these changes. And that’s where the previous discussion fits in.

Perhaps to understand Willow’s response, we should remember how magic has been used as our lesbian metaphor for almost a whole season. Because she almost immediately jumps to the conclusion, that Tara’s afraid that she would… go back to boys? Which is of course a classic, toxic stereotype used against bisexuals, despite the fact that no one here canonically identifies as bi, so add that to the discourse.

More importantly, it’s said by Willow. Now, Tara totally drops the ball here, asking her “Should I be?”, which reinforces the validity of Willow’s assumption that it’s actually something that Tara is thinking. Even someone as perfect and precious as Tara is not immune to propaganda.

In Tara’s defense, she once again tries dancing back on it, and talking it out before Willow storms out, but yeah. While I’d like to think that Tara’s question came more from a place of general insecurity, regardless of the gender of Willow’s next possible love interest, she sure fucked up in that moment.

Still, the fact that it’s Willow jumping to this debate, might just tell us more about Willow herself and how she sees herself.

Let’s go back to Restless for a bit. In that episode, Willow’s fear was ended up being about how she was scared that deep down she was still the same girl that she was in high school. That all these things she developed through college that made her stand out were just a facade, and that she was merely hiding her true identity as the same lonely loser she believed herself to have been back then.

So… and bear with me here… if we take that fear as a core motivation for Willow’s character, we can interpret the way she identifies her sexuality as a means to distance herself from her old identity. From this perspective, it’d perhaps even make sense for her to feel insecure about a supposed attraction to men, because she sees that as a regression to her old identity.

I can not stress it enough that this is merely a possible interpretation though. And one that would really only become satisfying if season 7 - which was already largely about reconciling with these different aspects of her identity for Willow aside the obvious theme of power - ended up tying it all together with Willow re-defining her own sexuality. It didn’t though, so I’m still left with the same conclusions, and this thought experiment of a character analysis.

Anywho, this is getting so very long, and there are still a few things that I wanted to touch upon this episode. Mainly the parallel we’re drawing between Willow / Tara and Buffy & Dawn throughout.

Normally, I love a good parallel storytelling. It’s efficient and makes the whole thing more cohesive. Here however, they manage to drive the parallel home so hard, that it just becomes weird at some point.

Like the fact that we have these two conflicts in the two relationships, arguably anchoring the episode? That’s good stuff. I also like the fact that Willow and Tara’s argument grows out of their discussion about Buffy and Dawn’s situation.

There’s actually a lot of great interaction in the entire episode. I love Dawn opening up to Spike about how she feels responsible for what would happen to Tara, and how she feels like she can’t be good because of all the terrible things happening around her. That’s a brilliant scene. Spike’s “Well, I’m not good and I’m okay”? I actually love him in that moment, not even gonna lie.

Buffy thinking that she actually convinced Willow to not go after Glory reminded me of a scene in Angel the series, where the gang thinks they managed to curve Fred’s impulses to axe murder her old professor. Do you all even know these people you call friends??? But again, I liked that exchange.

And okay, Buffy needed to be reminded what she would do if something happened to Dawn to realize what Willow was planning. Fine.

But then you’ve got the doctor asking Willow if Tara was her “sister” (to which she of course replied “She’s my everything”, and it’s fine, I’m fine), and then in the last scene, Buffy explicitly equating Willow’s need to take care of Tara with her own feelings regarding Dawn.

Again, I understand parallel storytelling. I love it. But when you’re equating a romantic and a familial relationship there’s a point where it becomes weird, and for me, these two moments put it just over that edge. This is of course a deeply subjective perspective, and I recognize that.

And then you also get Buffy trying to take on these new adult responsibilities in the episode. She’s dropping out of college to try and care for Dawn, and is faced with the challenge to become a parental authority figure in her sister’s life. The scene where she explains to Dawn that the reason she’s being tough with her, is because otherwise she could be seen unfit to be her guardian just gutted me.

This episode is just way too much, guys. And we’re only just at the beginning of the big finish of this season.

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

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ruminativerabbi · 5 years

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The Elections in Israel: The View from Old Athens

Although my Greek never really got good enough to read the great tragedians in the original without a dictionary by my side, I nevertheless grew through my studies to love their work and to understand why Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, all of whom lived and worked in the fifth century BCE, eventually became pillars of Western culture. Even today I retain a real fondness for their work and an appreciation of its value and its artistry. But the part I always liked the best was their common use of an on-stage chorus—known to history because of them as a “Greek” chorus—to act sometimes as a kind of intermediary between the playwright and the audience, but other times as a kind of fictive corporate personality in its own right that interacts not with the audience but with the various characters in the play. In either case, however, the idea is almost always the same—to remind viewers that things are never as they seem, that behind even the most banal off-hand remark can hide a universe of emotion and meaning, and that we are, all of us, bit players in a huge drama that none of us has read and that no one therefore fully understands. It is that specific concept of an all-knowing Greek chorus that I would like to bring to bear in my attempt to analyze the results of last Tuesday’s elections in Israel.

As has so often been the case in these last years, the results at best equivocal—somehow both clear and unclear with respect to their potential impact on the future. As I write these words on Wednesday afternoon, it feels as though Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party will probably end up with a slight edge—something like 32 or 33 seats to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party’s possible 31 or 32. With 95% of the votes tallied, it feels likely that those numbers will hold, but even if the numbers were reversed the outcome will be exactly the same because no one party will have won enough seats—sixty-one— in the Knesset to govern all by itself without the need to form any sort of coalition. (Indeed, no party in the history of the state has ever won a majority of seats, the closest being the 56 seats that the Alignment coalition won in 1969.) And with that thought in place, let’s bring the chorus out onto the stage.

In classic Greek plays, the chorus is often depicted as a chorus of elderly persons possessed specifically of the kind of wisdom that, if it comes at all, comes to most in old age and it is precisely that kind of chorus of wise oldsters that in my mind’s eye I see stepping onto the stage. In my mind’s eye, I see them dressed in shapeless robes, their demeanor suggestive not of creeping senescence but of burgeoning insight as they turn first to face the audience and then, one by one, to the players in the drama unfolding on stage to offer them the benefit of their perceptive acumen, of their deep awareness of how things really are. The strange masks they are wearing are part of this as well: by denying them specific in-play identities, the members of the chorus appear instead as symbols of wisdom itself. And, indeed, the characters in the play are generally depicted either as being entirely deaf to the insight being offered them by the chorus or, in some ways even more tragically, as being vaguely aware that it is being offered but, at the same time, being far too distracted or otherwise occupied by their own egos to take the information being offered to them to heart.

The whole parliamentary system of government is theoretically designed to make elections more about ideas and policies than specific individuals. And that is how things are, at least theoretically, in Israel: voters don’t actually vote for anyone at all, just for the party they wish to see form the next government. Of course, the personalities involved are well known to all: as part of its campaign, each party publishes a list of the specific individuals who will serve in the Knesset if the party gets enough votes to seat people that far down the list. So everybody knows who will be Prime Minister if any specific party gets enough votes to form the next government because that individual appears as number 1 on that party’s list. The only problem is that the system doesn’t work quite as well as intended and, even though Israelis technically aren’t voting for any individuals at all, it somehow feels entirely as though people are voting for the person who will serve as Prime Minister if his party gets to form the government.

And now the curtain goes up to reveal our opening tableau. At the back of the stage on a kind of platform is the chorus, their wise presence as reassuring as their masks are unsettling. Upstage in the center is Reuven Rivlin, the President of Israel, wearing a dark suit and looking as though he knows his lines well enough but can’t quite remember to whom he is supposed to deliver them. To his right is a nattily-dressed but still clearly dejected Bibi Netanyahu. To the left, looking slightly surprised to be on stage at all and not at all ready to be off-book, is a rumpled-looking Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White Party. And hovering overhead, held in place by a hoist similar to the one that holds the Angel aloft in Angels in America, is Avigdor Lieberman, outfitted with a set of outsized white wings like Emma Thompson’s in the mini-series.

The audience quiets down and waits for the play to begin. All eyes, naturally, are on Rivlin, whose job it is to invite someone to attempt to hobble together a coalition large enough to govern effectively…or at all. Clearly, the opening soliloquy, ideally in the form of an invitation to get to work forming a government, is his to deliver. But as he produces some sort of computer print-out from his inside jacket pocket and begins to scan the numbers yet again, the chorus quickly intercedes and sternly instructs him to remember that he is above the system and not bound to the tyranny of its numbers, that he can—that he must—guide the nation forward by selecting the individual whom he deems the most likely to be able to govern wisely and well, not slavishly to turn to the guy whose party got the most votes. That makes his job both simpler and infinitely harder: simpler, because he can act as he wishes; but far more daunting because his decision will almost undoubtedly affect the nation’s future in a profound, perhaps even irreversible way…and he is far too savvy to pretend that he doesn’t understand that fully. As the chorus sings out their warning, his face grows pale, almost ashen. He seems weighed down with responsibility. He himself belongs to Netanyahu’s party. But he knows that his job is not to support Bibi, but to keep the Angel overhead aloft and the ensemble below from being crushed if he descends too quickly or too roughly.

And now Bibi steps forward and delivers his own opening soliloquy. Yes, he admits, his party got fewer votes than Benny Gantz’s. But why should that matter? Is Mrs. Clinton President of the United States? What should matter, he declaims in his weirdly American English, is that he can form a coalition, that he can govern, that he can and will lead the nation forward. He clearly has more to say, but again the Chorus intercedes. Looking not at Bibi but at Benny, they sing out a warning. “Remind him that he won’t be able to lead the nation that effectively from a prison cell…and that even you have lost track of the numerous indictments pending against him.” Then they look to Lieberman, still hanging there in mid-air and looking as smug as ever. “And you there,” they continue, looking up at the kingmaker, “remind him, again, that the way to bring you into the government is to form a grand coalition with Benny and yourself…and specifically to leave the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox, out of the mix. Tell him, again, that it’s you or the black-hats…but not both. Not until they agree to serve in the IDF like every other Israeli citizen. He knows all that, to be sure. (You have told him that a few dozen times in the last few days alone.) But can you be sure Bibi always knows where his own best interests lie? Why not tell him again anyway? What can it hurt?”

And then, clearly on a roll, the Chorus of the Elderly, turns to Benny Gantz. He is a tall man, and wearing his newly pressed IDF uniform—he was, after all, the Chief of the General Staff, the Ramatkal, from 2011 to 2015—he looks even taller. He somehow seems sure and unsure of himself at the same time, confident and ill at ease. He wanted this, obviously. He personally founded the Hosen L’yisrael (“Israel Resilience”) party just last year and guided it into the coalition first with Telem, the party of Moshe Yaalon (also a former Chief of Staff of the IDF) and then with Yesh Atid (“There Is a Future”), Yair Lapid’s centrist party. The resulting Blue and White party is therefore his baby, something he himself created, something in the remarkable victory of which he can take personal pride. And yet he looks uncertain. He looks at Bibi and feels untried and inexperienced in the ways of government. He looks up at Lieberman, still menacingly hovering overhead, and wonders what price he will have to pay to bring Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel Our Home”), Lieberman’s party, into a coalition. And then he looks at Rivlin and wonders what it’s going to take to get him to stop staring at Bibi with that unsettling mixture of awe and frustration.

I would tell you more, but the play is still in rehearsal and only opens in a few weeks when President Rivlin formally asks someone to form a coalition that could conceivably govern effectively. As also on Broadway, things in Israel can (and probably will) change dramatically before opening night. But the Chorus is already in place, already positioning itself to remind the players that what they see is not all there is, that acquiring power and exercising it wisely are not at all the same thing, and that the fate of the nation—and, by extension, the course of Jewish history—depends not slightly or tangentially, but fully and really on what the show actually looks like when the curtain goes up and the show actually opens.

#Binyamin Netanyahu #Avigdor Lieberman #Benny Gantz #Reuven Rivlin #Israel

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staycalmandlovekpop · 6 years

Text

Who You Are

A/N: (Another old request) Sorry anon for super long wait! This was inspired by the K-drama “Kill Me, Heal Me”

Date: March 7, 2018 Patient: Im Jaebum Diagnosis: Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality disorder

Observations of the Personalities 1. Im Jaebum (The main original personality) A normal 24 year-old young man who is caring, warm-hearted, active, and emotional. He just wants to be a filial son, good friend, and live out his dreams. Interests: Music, hanging out with friends and family, composing, playing sports, and joking around Note: Due to the fact that the manager of GOT7 didn’t want Jaebum to know that he had hired a private personal nurse for his disorder, I haven’t met him yet. My contract clearly stated that I had to keep my distance from him whenever he returns to his normal state and to only approach him if one of his other personalities came out. He usually feels a sharp pain in his head like a migraine before the personalities come out.

2. JB (The bad boy) Makes himself known as the “charismatic leader of GOT7” but is actually quite stubborn, has a bad temper, is strong-minded, impatient, doesn’t listen to others, the MOST PROBLEMATIC ONE, and is quite selfish. HOW HE WAS CREATED: I suspect that “JB” was born when Jaebum hurt his ankle and couldn’t dance on stage with the other members. He was quite frustrated with himself as he felt that he was letting down his fans and the members. As a the leader and a dancer he wanted to always give it his all on stage, but his injury was preventing him from doing so. The stress had become too overwhelming for him to handle therefore JB was created to help him through tough situations and bear through the pain. INTERESTS: Getting what he wants, singing, dancing, flirting with girls, being in the spotlight, and going to nightclubs. NOTE: He wasn’t very thrilled at first when he found out that GOT7’s manager hired a personal nurse and refuses to listen to me AT ALL. CAN BE SUCH A PAIN IN THE BUTT sometimes. He’s always causing trouble and just does whatever he wishes to do. Sometimes the way he looks at me makes me feel very uncomfortable... He keeps on winking at me and saying “You’ll fall for me one day Muffin~.” He’s also been showing up a lot these days...I wonder why?

3. Seo Mijoon (The Actor) Possibly JB’s “older brother” but whenever I ask him or JB about it, they both deny it profusely. Thinks he’s a worldwide star and assumes that everybody is his fan. Very arrogant, snotty, rude, but is very serious when acting. HOW HE WAS CREATED: After receiving some recognition for his role in Dream High 2, Jaebum began to feel pressured when he got another offer for the drama “When a Man Falls in Love.” I suspect that he studied the script VERY VERY diligently and eventually the lack of sleep and stress got to him causing alter ego Mijoon to be born. It’s quite likely that’s what happened considering this personality adopted Jaebum’s character’s name from the drama. INTERESTS: Being the center of attention, acting, memorizing scripts, fashion, magazines, coffee, signing autographs, modeling, and taking selcas. NOTE: He didn’t care that GOT7’s manager hired a personal nurse at all. To him, I was someone he could order around to do stuff. He treats me like an intern by making me get him coffee, walking his cat(???), driving him to places, buying him magazines, dusting off lint from his clothes with a lint roller, and taking endless pictures of him. Since Jaebum isn’t focused on acting these days, whenever Mijoon comes out I would always catch him stealing Jinyoung’s scripts and practicing lines in his room.

4. JYP A dorky fun loving ahjussi who is health conscience and is starting to feel his age but still wants to enjoy life to the fullest. Though he exercises and can move around quite well, his knees occasionally go weak and he experiences gastric problems often. HOW HE WAS CREATED: It’s pretty obvious that this personality is based off the CEO of Jaebum’s company. He must be really grateful to Mr. Park Jinyoung for all that he’s done and admire him as an artist as well. INTERESTS: Organic herbal drinks, working out, drinking, partying, dancing, giving people life advice, composing music, playing piano, and wearing glasses. NOTE: He’s a pretty nice ahjussi when he’s not drunk or giving me long lectures about how it’s better to sing with half air half sound and why it’s good to always be honest. Whenever music starts playing, JYP gets into a dancing groove.

You sighed as you finished typing the last note and shut your laptop. You still couldn’t believe that it’s been two weeks since you took this job. Who ever thought that your first official job would be to become a secret private nurse for GOT7’s Im Jaebum?

It was just three weeks ago when GOT7’s manager came to your senior’s office, asking for someone who is plain, average, and could easily blend in a crowd. Of course your ‘oh so considerate’ senior (and mentor) suggested you, a first-year psychiatry resident who was eager to start working and was basically invisible to everyone in the office. You refused at first, begging your senior to help you find a position elsewhere in a local hospital. You knew how messy things could get in the entertainment field, and you didn’t want to be involved. Even if it was a private job.

“Kang sunbaenim, please don’t make me do this! What if his fans find out and assume that we’re dating or something?”

Your senior scoffed. “You? Dating a K-pop idol?”

You rolled your eyes at him. “I’m serious!! If something happens, all the hard work that I’ve done to get to where I am now will go down the drain!”

He then sighed deeply before placing a hand on your shoulder and looking in you dead in the eye. “Listen. You’re one of my favorite pupils and I know that you can excel in anything you put your heart to. Mr. Im is not only our client, but our patient. A patient that needs to be treated and set free from his inner demons. I know very well that you understand what it’s like to have a disorder and how it can greatly impact someone’s life.”

You looked away and sighed. Must he always be right?

“Did you ever consider how hard it probably is for him? Having to deal with dissociative identity disorder AND living as a K-pop idol??”

After a week of contemplating, you finally decided to take the job. GOT7’s manager explained to you about how they were hiring a private nurse behind Jaebum’s back, as he would never have approved of it. You also had to swear that you would never let anyone know about Jaebum’s psychological condition, even if it was already a given that every patient’s information is to remain confidential. Since then, you’ve been following GOT7 around. You went to every event, hiding somewhere in the distance like a sasaeng fan and making observations of Jaebum’s behavior. Today’s schedule was filming for the second episode of their reality show called “GOT7’s Showtime.”

“Cut! Good job everyone. We will commence a ten minute break and resume filming shortly.” The PD-nim announced through his megaphone. A moment later, you get a text from the manager:

“You take a break too. I can keep an eye on Jaebum for now.”

You looked up from your phone and made eye contact with him from afar. He gave you a thumbs up and you nodded in acknowledgment, secretly thanking him since it was an extremely hot day and you really needed a cold drink. You made sure to head the opposite way GOT7 were headed and decided to go to your favorite cafe around the corner.

“One iced americano please.” You tell the cashier as you dig out your wallet from your bag.

“Okay, that will be ￦3,550 please.”

You opened your wallet to find only a couple bills inside. You had forgotten to get more cash from the bank this weekend. “Do you accept card?” You ask the cashier with a hopeful voice.

“Sorry, but we accept cash only.”

You felt your throat get dry, making your thirst for a cold drink even greater. You placed your two ￦1,000 bills on the counter and dumped all your coins out. After counting and calculating, you realized that you were ￦50 short. You were about to sadly collect your coins when suddenly a man behind you spoke up.

“I can lend you ￦50.” He said, placing the coin on the counter.

You were about to turn around to thank the man when suddenly realized that the voice sounded familiar to you. It was indeed HIM. You turned slightly and did a quick bow before walking to the far corner of the cafe with your receipt and buzzer in hand.

That was way too close. Why was he here? Where was the manager? As if on cue, you received a text from him: “I lost him.” You were about to text back, notifying him about Jaebum’s whereabouts, when someone tapped you on your shoulder.

“Hey aren’t you the girl that was in front of me in line?”

You dared to face him and looked into his eyes. A pair of soft brown eyes, and a closed smile which you never saw up-close. It indeed was the real Jaebum who was speaking to you.

“Uhh sorry! I-I can’t speak Korean!” You stuttered in English.

Jaebum tilted his head. “Didn’t you speak Korean to the cashier just now?” “Ahh. I know only little Korean…” You trailed off, hoping to confuse him with more English.

A playful smile formed on his face. “Oh, but you must know enough Korean to understand what I just said. I didn’t ask you in English.”

You slumped your shoulders and sighed, reverting back to Korean. “Alright, you got me. I can speak Korean...Sorry, it’s just that I’m...I’m uncomfortable around strangers.”

Jaebum’s smile faltered. “Oh...I didn’t mean to creep you out or anything. I promise. I just found you...intriguing.”

“Intriguing...?”

Jaebum rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, that sounded creepy didn’t it?” He chuckled, feeling flustered by his choice of words. “You know what, let’s just start over. Hi, I’m Im Jaebum.”

You looked at his outstretched hand, which was waiting for a handshake. Should you hide your identity? Or just tell him your real name? Maybe you could use a cool mysterious name like Midnight or something like Demetria. Yeah Demetria sounded nice.

You slipped your hand into his and shook it. “I’m Y/N.” Shoot. There goes your chance of having a mysterious sounding name.

“Nice to meet you, Y/N. I really want to stay and chat, but I have something to attend to...Do you mind meeting me for a late night snack at midnight?”

Your eyes widened in surprise of his sudden offer. Why would he want to meet up with you?

“I-um….”

You felt conflicted. You knew that it was against your contract to interact with his main personality, but a part of you wanted to learn more about the real Jaebum. Suddenly you were filled with deep curiosity, wondering what he was like personally compared to his other personalities. Maybe getting to know him firsthand will help you with your research.

“Sure. Why not.” You replied with a friendly smile.

Jaebum grinned. “Great. Meet me at the ice cream shop nearby tonight.” After he left to continue filming, you stood there frozen, wondering if you did the right thing accepting his offer. You snapped out of it when your phone rang. It was GOT7’s manager.

“H..Hello?”

“Y/N did you find him?”

“Yeah...about that….”

You explained to him about what happened and was pretty sure that you were gonna get fired...but surprisingly the manager thought that it would be a good opportunity to get to know Jaebum more. So that’s how you ended up waiting outside the ice cream shop past midnight while freezing cold.

You were kicking pebbles with your shoe when you heard someone running towards you.

“H-Hey….Sorry I’m late!” Jaebum said while breathing heavily. Once he caught his breath, he continued. “It was kinda hard for me to sneak out, but I made it. I didn’t keep you waiting too long did I...?”

“Nope. I just got here haha…” (You totally did not just wait over half an hour…) “But wait...why did you ask to meet at this ice cream shop? It’s closed now…” You said as you pointed at the sign and the dark empty room.

Jaebum gave you a knowingly smile. “That’s what most people think, but actually…”

He then starting walking towards the back of the shop and you followed after him. Jaebum eventually led you to the backdoor of the shop and knocked on the door 7 times. The door then opened slowly and a bright light peeped from inside. Jaebum opened the door wide and gestured for you to go in first. “After you~.” As you walked in, your eyes popped out in amazement. The secret backroom was filled with tables and basically everything that the front part of the shop had. You were also surprised to see so many celebrities, such as actors and idols, with their dates enjoying their ice cream together. (For their privacy, none shall be named in this story).

“Surprised?” Jaebum asked after making sure to close the door shut behind him. Since you were there for work, you shook off the starstruckness and tried to keep your cool. “Just a bit…”

“Yeah, the owner here is cousins with the TV personality/restaurateur Hong Seokcheon. He put in this whole separate back part of the ice cream shop when designing it just for celebrities to have a secret hideout.”

“Wow that’s pretty cool~. What if the non-celebrity dates don’t end well though?” You asked.

“Well if anyone were to ever try to expose the secret, the password would change or they will just move to another location before Dispatch arrives. That hasn’t happened yet though, thankfully.”

You nodded in understanding. “So~. Have you been here often?” Although you didn’t really care, you were curious to see how he would react.

Jaebum looked taken aback by your sudden question.”What, me? Pfft no...I just heard about it a lot from my friends.”

Just then, a large man came over and gave Jaebum a big hug. You assumed that he was the owner of the shop. “Ayee JB my man~. Good to see you again!!”

You raised an eyebrow at Jaebum and gave him a look as a flustered Jaebum gave you a small forced smile.

“You want the usual JB?” The man asked.

Jaebum nodded and looked over at you.

“Ahh..I’ll take a cookies n’ cream thank you.” You said.

Once you and Jaebum got your orders, you both sat down at a table near the covered windows. You noticed that he got the mint choco ice cream and made a mental note of that for your report later.

“Sooo you haven’t been here often huh?” You said, trying to poke fun at him.

Jaebum raised his hands up. “I swear I only come here from the front for their ice cream.”

You laughed and took a bite out of your ice cream. “Sure you do…”

Jaebum chuckled. “No, really! I don’t usually ask anyone out.”

You looked at him questionably. “Then what makes me special? Why did you ask me out? I know for sure that it’s not because I owed you a mere ￦50. You even paid for our ice cream without me knowing!”

Jaebum licked his ice cream. “I told you already. It’s because I found you...intriguing.”

“There you go again with that creepy-like word.” You joked.

Jaebum chuckled. “Fine! How about ‘interesting’? Enthralling? Thought-provoking? Fascinating?”

“Oh my goodness. What are you? A walking thesaurus?” You said laughing. “That’s not usually how a guy would describe a girl.”

“It’s just hard to explain...Even though I’m sure we never met before, I feel like you seem very familiar...Like you seemed very approachable..?”

Your eyes widened. Was it possible that your interactions with his other personalities gave him a sense of familiarity around you? “Ah, I see…”

“Also, you just treated me differently that how other people would.”

“What do you mean?” You asked.

“Well, you treated me like how you would treat any man you didn’t know. Haha. You probably thought that I was a creeper at first didn’t you? I just liked how you didn’t treat me like a celebrity. Even though it might just be because you didn’t know who I was...Do you know who I am?”

Although you knew that Jaebum was just asking you if you knew that he was from GOT7, you received the question differently as if he was asking you if you really knew who Jaebum was on the inside. If you knew about his secret disorder and internal struggles.

When you were about to reply, Jaebum grunted while putting his hands on his forehead. The oh so familiar piercing migraine has returned. No...NOT NOW. Jaebum thought to himself.

“Are you feeling okay?” You asked.

“Huh? Yeah I’m fine. I think I..I’ll be right back.” He said as he quickly got up and started heading towards the direction of the restrooms. Why must this happen right now? Jaebum had left his pills back at the dorm and his personalities are trying to take over at the worst moments. As he headed towards the hallway that led to the restrooms, he was struck with sudden dizziness. Jaebum held his hand against his head as he stumbled, going back and forth from bumping into nearby chairs and against the wall. He stopped moving for a moment and tried to stabilize himself. However, once he took another step, Jaebum slipped and hit his ended up hitting his back onto a nearby countertop.

Hearing all the commotion, you quickly ran over to him and found Jaebum slumping over in pain.

Your eyes widened. Did a personality take over already?? “OMG JYP is that you?? Is your back aching again ahjusshi?”

At your comment Jaebum’s pain momentarily went away as he looked at you speechless. “How did you know-”

You looked into Jaebum’s eyes and noticed that his gaze was not the same as JYP’s or any other of his personalities’. WAS HE STILL JAEBUM??

You turned to leave but Jaebum grabbed your wrist and looked at you suspiciously. “Who are you really?”

“Uhh...I...uh…”

“Who are you?! A sasaeng fan trying to blackmail me?! ANSWER ME!” He said in a harsher tone.

You looked around to make sure that no one else was looking over at you guys. “J-Jaebum...Listen, I-”

Before you could continue, he loosened his grasp on your arm as he felt another sharp pain in his head. “Ugh...not now...” Jaebum murmured under his breath as he pulled away from you and pressed his palm against his forehead. He groaned in agony.

“Hey, stay with me now. Where’s your medication?” You asked as you took a hold of his arm to stabilize him.

“Left....it...at...the...dorm.” With those last words, Jaebum lost consciousness and collapsed.

You stumbled as you struggled to support Jaebum’s weight, preventing him from falling on the floor. With a loud grunt, you managed to lean him slouched against the wall with his head down. “Wow. Best first date ever.” You said sarcastically.

When you were about to go call GOT7′s manager, Jaebum lifted his head and stared straight at you. You looked back at him with surprise and looked into his eyes with curiosity.

“Jaebum...?”

He scoffed with a smug smile on his face. “Still can’t recognize me yet, Muffin?”

You rolled your eyes and sighed with frustration. “JB.”

JB stood up straight and put his hands into his pants pockets. “Whoa calm down. I know that you’re excited to see me again, but chill~.”

“Just be quiet and let Jaebum come back out again. I need to talk to him right now.” You firmly said, not in the mood to deal with his bs.

“Jaebum? That piece of trash? Why would-....Wait. Why are you even here next to me right now? Why were you with him?! Did you get caught? Haha wow, I knew that sooner or later you’d-.”

“This is serious!!! There is a misunderstanding that I need to clear with him, so go back and let him come back out right now!”

JB crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. He smirked when an idea popped into his mind. “How about a kiss then?”

You stared at him with an ‘are you freakin’ kidding me’ expression.

“I’m serious! I came out because you made him furious right? Maybe if you kissed me, it would shock my body so much to make me go back.”

You didn’t believe him, but it seemed like you didn’t have a choice at this point. As well, this would probably break a bunch of rules on your contract...Even though you hated the idea of kissing the sleazeball, you knew that you had to do it for Jaebum.

To JB’s surprise, you stepped closer to him and yanked him down to your height.

“Fxxk it.” You said before leaning in and pressing your lips against his.

~To Be Continued...? Maybe, maybe not.~

#jb #got7 jb #jaebum #im jaebum #jb scenarios #jb fanfic #got7 scenarios #got7 fanfic #got7 fluff #jb fluff #requests #kpop scenarios #kpop fanfiction

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aroworlds · 6 years

Note

Hey super big question , I feel like we’re about to be slaughtered this December because Grindlewald is Aro Gay And I’m worried that jk is going to completely dehumanize him with Jonny Depp and that she chose Jonny because of his ability to play dehumanizing characters and the writing and his portrayal combined is going to be horrific for us and I can’t stop stressing about it , and asshole allos had to bring up Grindlewald is Nazi metaphor and then I just read the wiki on Hitler, he was ace fml

I said on the weekend that we should be allowed to connect to characters who are not good representation and express that connection, and that’s absolutely true. This said, it is also true that our connection does not mean other people cannot discuss the problems with that character and story. I can express a connection with Clariel; other people have the right to discuss how her position as series antagonist situates her as another loveless villain and her message is, consequently, damaging. Both approaches are important.

To deny people space to talk about the problems, parallels and metaphors in a work or character because of our connection is as silencing as their denying us space to speak of our connection. There are specific spaces where it isn’t appropriate to discuss some feelings in that space (a fanblog where folks gush about Clariel isn’t the best space to argue that she’s dreadful aro-ace rep) and this should be respected. On your own blog, you can certainly put up boundaries on the conversations you prefer not to see. But in broader, general community spaces, the risk is that people will have differing viewpoints and that many of these viewpoints can be hard for us to take, especially if our connection to a character or work is deep and intense.

As an autistic, it can be difficult to see people have a differing opinion about a special interest. It bothers me if they don’t like something I like; it bothers me even more if they like something I consider terrible! It feels like a personal judgement, and it’s hard not to get extremely defensive in response. When it’s tangled up in questions of representation, erasure, marginalisation and identity, it becomes even more complicated, and my connection to my special interest is such that seeing differing attitudes and evaluations of it that hurt me provoke depression, defiance or anger. Those feelings don’t make for easy conversation about it with other people.

One thing I’ve found as an answer, at least in the realm of a work I connect to being dismissed, is analyzing works myself. Yes, I like it, but what does it mean? What’s the context of this character? What are the themes and how do they relate to real life? How might these themes cause harm to others? What does the context of this character say about identity? What lead them to develop this viewpoint? Is it one I should keep? This allows me to continue to engage with a special interest topic while having desensitised myself to viewpoints that aren’t mine, because part of how I now connect to it is thinking about it from lots of different angles. But this took me years to develop and you may not be yet in a position to approach things this way. It also doesn’t work for attitudes and evaluations of a work based in out-and-out hatred or bigotry; you need to be prepared to dismiss them without being overwhelmed by them, and that’s also an ability that takes time and self-awareness to gain.

I do recommend exploring the idea that a special interest doesn’t need to be perfect to have value to meand that a special interest doesn’t need to be perceived the same way by others to have value to me. Your connection to a work is about you and you alone. That connection is not diminished or erased by someone else’s opinion, someone else’s actions or someone else’s response. This applies for disagreement about character arc or idealised representation, and it applies to erasure and antagonism.

I know nothing about Hitler being ace, but so what if he is? Seriously, so what? There’s plenty of lesbian TERFs. There’s heaps of binary trans truscum causing harm to non-binary people. What of Milo Yiannopoulos? Does that mean all lesbians, all binary trans people and all gay men are irredeemable? Of course not! Being of a marginalised identity does not preclude one from being harmful, dangerous, cruel, malicious or damaging. There are aromantic people out there who are dangerous to me. That doesn’t make them less aromantic or less dangerous. It just means all kinds of people can be aromantic, including those I think morally reprehensible.

Anyone who declares all gay men dangerous because of Milo Yiannopoulosis a heterosexist bigot, and the same applies here. You cannot spend your life worrying that an awful person is gay/ace/aro/trans/autistic (etc) and what that means or if people will use that against you. If you do, you’ll never be able to breathe. The only person you’re harming with this worry is you, and you deserve better than that.

If other people use someone’s existence to dismiss your community, as has happened so many times in antagonistic conversations over the last couple of years, handle it like you handle anyone else hateful. Block them. Report vile hate speech to Tumblr. Move on to more constructive creations and conversations.

The majority of fictional and creative media is at least unthinkingly amatonormative, ableist and cissexist. I rarely get to pick up a book that respects me as a trans, autistic aro, and I have to acknowledge this risk of being hurt every time I start something new. This isn’t right or fair, but it is our reality. This movie is going to be no different on that regard, no different to the rest of the media that hurts us. The difference here is that I think this is a property you care about, one that you deeply connect to--and that’s perfectly right and normal! But that connection makes it harder to see that this is the same thing the a-spec community has been enduring for years and years. We’ve weathered everything that’s come before and we’ll weather this, too. You’ll weather this, just as you weathered every other instance of erasure and antagonism in a fictional work.

You can’t change what track the film takes or how people respond to it. You can’t control other people’s coding. You can’t control other people’s hatred, dismissal and erasure. Worrying does nothing to change the situation; it only causes you unneeded distress. Rowling has supported Depp’s casting despite wide condemnation, so what else can you do? You either see the film anyway, knowing the risks, or you don’t--and not seeing it is a valid and reasonable option, one absolutely worth considering.

Under the cut, I talk about therapy and self-care for handling anxiety:

Given your distress, I do feel it a requirement to say that I think you should look into psychology and therapy services for your anxiety. This ask goes a little beyond the scope of what I can reasonably and ethically offer in validation and support. As someone with severe anxiety myself, I swear to you that worrying about something like this, a situation you cannot change yourself, is a problem that is causing you unneeded distress and harm. I don’t know where you live or what your options are, but there are blogs that detail support options. I genuinely believe that you need professional support here and encourage you to consider this in whatever options available to you.

(If you are already in therapy or treatment, I take this post as an indication that your current approaches are not best supporting you and it may be worthwhile to discuss this with your care providers.)

I’ll finish by saying that you can handle the situation, if you feel that you cannot bear the finished film and conversations about it at all. Blacklist tags relating to content you don’t wish to see. Unfollow people who post content you don’t wish to see, especially if it’s most of their content or they don’t tag. Don’t go searching tags. Follow blogs you trust. Quietly block anyone who annoys you. You don’t need to engage in arguments on something you disagree with; you can block users and, if you really need to get something off your chest, make new posts about it on your own blog, in your own space. Turn off anon asks if you think you might be harassed for your opinions; restrict private messages to only blogs you follow.

I’d strongly advise not engaging in discourse and arguments with people who disagree with you. Block, make new posts on your blog if you must talk, reblog folks who are making points that resonate with you. You don’t have to convince the world of what you know or how wrong they are. You don’t have to engage in activism here. Just block and move on. Getting yourself caught up in arguments with people who aren’t disposed to hearing you will only cause more stress and harm to you. Some people can constantly engage in discourse without losing themselves in anger and aggression, but I’m not one of them, and I suspect you’re like me in this regard. Our activism is healthiest for us when directed into community building and validation, not fighting those who won’t listen.

Likewise, you can prepare for any self-care you need should the above fail. Have go-to media like books, films and music you need to distract yourself. Have a list of activities you enjoy that you know that calm you and work through them. If you have a friend or two you can trust to talk with you or distract you, contact them. If this is in your ability, go outside, go for a walk, go to the shops--away from your computer or phone. Watch a YouTube craft video and attempt to follow it. Play games. Write unrelated fanfiction. Keep a list of Calming Things You Can Do by your desk and on your phone, and work to develop a habit of reaching for that list when even slightly overwhelmed or stressed. Again, this is an area where a mental health professional will help you in identifying and using the interests and tools you already have to cope, particularly in working with your own interests and needs, so if you can’t put this into action on your own, this is another sign that you need a psychologist or therapist on Team You.

It’d be irresponsible of me not to suggest that you, and any other aro-spec who feels this way, seek professional support. That you’re turning towards me says you’re not currently getting what it is you need elsewhere, offline and off. That’s not a criticism on you: you deserve to be supported. It’s in no way a crime to want someone to help shore you up in the face of dismissal, erasure, antagonism and hate; it’s in no way a crime to want support from a fellow community member in the face of the antagonism we are so often dealt.

But right now, I do believe–again, as a person with severe anxiety myself–that you’re in need of professional support to cope with the things you’re finding difficult, much more support than I am ethically able to provide. I know first-hand that finding good mental health care is far from easy for many of us, but if anything is available to you, I hope you’ll consider seeking it out.

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iheartmoonrise · 6 years

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Over-analyzing ‘Something Great’

‘One day you’ll come into my world and say it all’

He cannot say, or can he? An (over) analysis of ‘Something Great’

This journal looks into the songs written mostly by Harry and Louis, with an emphasis on ‘Something Great’, a song that, I believe, is a bit under-appreciated in the fandom of Larry Stylinson. By studying the lyrics closely, this journal aims at reinforcing the idea that Larry is real. It is written in the spirit of reach but cute, and it celebrates #loveislove, #loveisequal, #LGBTQ, and, of course, the love between Harry and Louis that deserves to be out and proud.

Love denied in the official narrative I want to start this by drawing your attention to ‘Something Great’. There are arguably a number of Larry songs (songs that suggest a relationship between H&L, and were often written by/for them), the most famous among which are ‘If I Could Fly’, ‘Strong’, ‘Home’, and, from Harry’s solo album, ‘Sweet Creature’ (hello stage B), ‘Two Ghosts’, and the one that he (obviously) fell in love to - ‘What Makes You Beautiful’. ‘Something Great’ is from One Direction’s third album ‘Midnight Memories’ (2013). The twelfth song, unlike other hits in this album, seems less well-known, and one cannot find a live performance of it on youtube (I couldn't find a live performance of ‘Home’ either) . However, looking closely, ‘Something Great’ is immensely rich in both the lyrics and the form. It was meticulously written by Harry and two songwriters. The words/ images chosen were repeated in many other Larry songs. Bearing in mind that ‘From the Dining Table’ (the tenth song) is Harry’s personal favourite in his solo album, for a song like ‘Something Great’ that seems under-appreciated, it is likely that it actually tells us more about, well, something great, than others, if we listen to it carefully.

First thing that sticks to my mind after hearing it is Harry’s solo part where he sings

Is it too much to ask for something great?

It indicates (1) something great in life is denied; (2) regardless of the difficulties, one doesn’t give up pursuing it. The two elements repeat themselves in ‘Home’, where the lyrics are

Is it so wrong Is it so wrong that you made me strong

Here, again, something empowering is deemed ‘wrong’.

The parallels between the two songs make me think how 'IICF', ‘Strong’, ‘Home’, ‘SG’ share the same trait which is the love depicted in the songs are, in fact, not unrequited. They are somehow hindered and denied by something big - something that is uncontrollable, something the lovers cannot manage. This thing is not their feelings towards each other. The love is never unrequited. The love is answered and the feeling is mutual. However, there is something that stops them from asking for more of this love, that stops them from telling others that this is the one that makes me strong.

This force - unexplainable, obstructive - is not something between the lovers; it is something exterior. It is the official narrative that is governed by a larger institution: the company, the society, the culture. It denies the love; it denies the very existence of something great.

Home in fluid forms

What poses an interesting contrast with the exterior is the interior, which takes the form of ‘home’ in many songs written and loved by Harry and Louis. There is, indeed, a trace of home in ‘SG’ although it is not explicitly mentioned:

I’ll say we’re better off together here tonight

The ‘tonight’ echos the lyrics of the iconic ‘Home’, in which the singer suggests, ‘It’s alright calling out for somebody to hold tonight’ when the date with a girl doesn’t work out because ‘there’s something missing in her eyes’.

The images of 'home' and 'night' join together in more than one songs. In ‘Two Ghosts’, Harry sings:

The fridge light washes this room white, Moon dances over your good side.

The beautiful lines depict a domestic scene where there is moonlight, a fridge, and two lovers.

Home is a place where one feels safe and is in control of things. It has a door that separates the interior from the exterior. It keeps the unfriendly out of the door. Meanwhile, it locks the secrets inside. Home, nevertheless, does not only exist in one form as a place with a set address. In 'From The Dining Table':

Woke up alone in this hotel room, Played with myself where were you?

It is as if the hotel room was a place that the singer lives with his partner. The hotel room where they part ways (in the case of this song), is a place where the singer later brings in some random girl ‘who looked just like you’. The hotel room is there, before the one-night-stand happens. In this sense, it is no more different from saying ‘Woke up alone in my flat … woke up with the girl who looked just like you in my place’. Talking about secret little rendezvous, here you go:

But if you like causing trouble in hotel rooms

This line from 'Perfect' indicates we are going to be perfect for each other if you travel a lot and know how to cause trouble (and get away with the punishments) in hotel rooms. The prerequisite for us to be partners-in-crime is that we are able to spend a lot of time together. Either having a tender moment at home or having fun in hotel rooms, in the end, someone needs to be there in the first place as a roommate and/or a travel companion.

Be it a home with a postal number or a hotel room, as long as someone great is there, the space is surely becoming a place that feels like home.

Lost is mutual

Outside of the home, it is, however, a malignant space. Without the walls and doors that safeguard, the exterior space is where getting lost seems unavoidable.

In ‘Something Great’, the second line is

You say we'll be together even when you're lost

It seems baffling at the first sight as how, one wonders, can people be lost when they are together with a loved one? The almost paradoxical state of being reappears in 'IICF':

When you’re lonely and forget who you are

The above suggests a more curious condition where the person the singer fly right back home to is somehow at sea with his/her self. The destination is clear yet it is also questionable (‘lost’, ‘forget’). Going ‘Home’, it is as if getting lost was a predicament that had to be taken into consideration (‘When you’re lost, I will find the way/ I will be your light’).

It is important to note that being lost is, in fact, suffered not by one of them only, but by both of them. In ‘Sweet Creature’, the protagonist confesses he gets lost too:

When I run out of road, You bring me home.

Later, he stresses they are in this dilemma together:

We don’t know where we going, but we know where we belong.

As we consider that the exterior condition is what reduces them into this condition of being lost, it is possible to see being lost not as that they lose their ways (due to their directionlessness, no pun intended), but as that they are forced to lose their true selves, or that they are forced to receive and to accept (however unwillingly) a fake identity ('womanizer'), a false image ('boyfriend'), and a faux heteronormative narrative.

The uncomfortable silence

The unexplainable exterior force which stops them from being who they are takes a toll on their life, taking its main form of stopping them from saying what they want to say.

I am stumbling, looking in the dark with an empty heart.

The struggle to utter is prominent in Harry’s solo album. From ‘Tongue-tired like we’ve never known/ Telling these stories we already told’ to ‘We haven't spoken since you went away/ Comfortable silence is so overrated./ Why won't you ever say what you want to say?/ Even my phone misses your call, by the way’ to ‘I always think about you and how we don't speak enough’. Even in ‘Sign of The Times’, there are: ‘We don't talk enough/ We should open up’. In Louis’s ‘Miss You’, there is something curious going on as well: ‘And we can’t even be on the phone now/ And I can’t even be with you alone now’. It suggests the failure to talk freely often comes together with the physical state of being in two places. Therefore, it may be argued that not being able to be together is, in both Harry and Louis’s songs, closely linked with the inability to talk freely.

This is why ‘Something Great’ is a song that deserves more attention (and more streaming), because it is all about a lover’s wish for his partner to be vocal. While to talk or not to talk is one of the important motifs in H&L's songs, ‘SG’ stands out because it screams the wish to say it properly. Indeed, the beginning of the song literally put a ‘say’ in each clause:

One day you'll come into my world and say it all, You say we'll be together even when you're lost, One day you'll say these words, I thought you'll never say. You say we're better off together in our bed.

To understand the politics of being vocal, one cannot miss the drama Harry created during his Tour on Live. There had been a couple of times when he teased the fans by playing the prelude of 'IICF' (and in the last shows, that of ‘Girl Crush’) before saying ‘the next song I’m gonna play is "Just a Little Bit of Your Heart"'. Let’s look at the lyrics of 'JALBOYH':

I don't ever tell you how I really feel 'Cause I can't find the words to say what I mean.

Here, the silence is due to the fact the singer cannot confess his feelings. It portrays a protagonist who is okay with the fact that the one he secretly loves is not with him. He blames himself for that as he cannot put his feelings into words. It is a typical scenario for unrequited love. However, as I have argued in the beginning, the love depicted in Harry and Louis’s songs are everything but unrequited. It is unfair to blame the fact that two lovers are not together on themselves. While the song leaves an impression that the reason why the protagonist cannot say what he wants to say is his failure to confess love, the reality may be that he cannot talk about love because he is not allowed to talk about it.

Regarding the ‘teasings’, I would argue Harry did that because he may no longer agree with his position in 'JALBOYH'. It is never the lover’s fault. It is the exterior force that makes them believe they are the ones to blame, whereas they have nothing to be sorry for. Contrary to 'JALBOYH', 'IICF' is about a wish to fight against the odds, to fly back home, and to ask the lover to listen as the protagonist takes the initiative to talk:‘Pay attention, I hope that you listen/ 'cause I let my guard down’.

This is when 'Medicine', an unreleased song Harry played during Live on Tour, becomes so interesting. In the previous songs, it is all about a wish to be vocal (‘Something great’), or still struggling to say it properly (‘FTDT’ ‘Missing You’). ‘Medicine’, however, celebrates a night out when someone is finally being ‘persuasive’, that is, not only vocal, but on-the-point vocal:

If you go out tonight I’m going out ‘cause you are persuasive.

Although there is no concrete evidence that the vocal one in this unapologetically fun song is Louis, it does not impact that this song is wild as the boys are certainly having a blast thanks to one of them being ‘persuasive’. They are, in the end, mastering the power of talking (and, indeed, mouth). Voice, vocal, and mouth join together in this song about male sexual pleasure. It shows how being vocal is empowering, and mouth, when mastered by oneself instead of being controlled by others, releases and receives pleasures.

Scriptless: Make America Gay Again

Going back to ‘Something Great’, one phenomenal thing to note is the form of this song, where in the end, Louis sings ‘You are all I want/ So much it’s hurting’. The solo performance certainly leaves an impression that he is the one who is asked by the other to ‘say it all’. It is, of course, also possible to see Louis’s solo as part of the monologue of the singer himself. But here, rather than argue if it is a reply to the request in the beginning of the song, I want to draw attention to the ‘all I want’ part - it is ‘all I want’ that links the two songs (‘IICF’ ‘Girl Crush’) with ‘JALBOYH’.

In ‘JALBOYH’, the protagonist is satisfied with ‘Just a little bit of your heart is all I want’; in ‘IICF’, it’s much more than a little bit of your heart, as your heart has become a part of me: No way that I can live without half of my/your heart:

I’m missing half of me when we’re apart [...] I can feel your heart inside mine, I feel it, I feel it.

‘Girl Crush’ is all about what ‘I’ want to be. It is loud and clear: I want to be that girl, ie. your lover:

I want to taste her lips, Yeah, 'cause they taste like you, I want to drown myself, In a bottle of her perfume, I want her long blonde hair, I want her magic touch, Yeah, 'cause maybe then, You'd want me just as much.

The protagonist is no longer okay with being a ‘fool’ when ‘you’ are with her. He wants more than that. He dances and he smirks and he sings loud and proud:

The boys and the girls are in, I mess around with him, And I'm okay with it

The controversial part about ‘Medicine’ is whether Harry (as he pointed to himself when singing the song many times) did ‘mess around with him’ or not. As the song first came out it was hailed, interestingly, as a ‘bi anthem’. Although it seems clearer now that it is ‘him’ rather than ‘them’, it would stay mysterious until an official studio version is released and the official lyrics is out. But we have known better than to buy into the official narrative by now. In ‘Something Great’, it has already been suggested that what is being put out there is not what it seems:

The script was written and I could not change a thing, I want to rip it all to shreds and start again.

It is, therefore, the live, the fluid, the scriptless that is more exciting and telling. And nothing beats the interactions between Harry and the fans during the tour. The scriptless part is where he went wild: the one with the gay-vodka, the one when he helped Pilar to find a girlfriend, the one he outed his fans (twice) after he got the permission to read their signs (‘come out because of you’); the one he waved a ‘Make America Gay Again’ and smirked behind the flag. Oh. And the one he waved the rainbow flag in the very LGBT-unfriendly Singapore. Check: Harry Styles is Gay Culture: A Study by Freddieismyqueen, you’ll know what I am talking about.

He cannot say it, but he finds a way to say it. They both do. On behalf of the fans, Harry said ‘Because of you, I’m coming out tomorrow.’ ‘It’s my birthday. And I’m gay.’ ‘Tina, she’s gay! Tina says … she loves it.’

Because talking is empowering; to say it properly is to be free.

May I read the sign? It says: I’m gay and I love you! I love you as well. I mean, we are all a little bit gay, ain’t we?

--Harry Styles, Live on Tour, July 14, 2018, L.A.

#larry stylinson #harry styles #louis tomlinson #harry styles live on tour #one direction #loveislove #loveisequal #pride #something great

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albertfinch · 2 years

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Scripture Of The Day – July 28, 2022

Getting in touch with our DESTINY in Christ can have the single most powerful impact on our own life after being re-born and coming to know the Lord. All Christians are called to be witnesses, but we also have a calling in His Body that is more specific than that.

The main factors that will lead to a revelation of our destiny and being prepared for it are the following:

Resolving to do the Lord's will as the chief pursuit of our lives.

All Christians are CALLED to be "soldiers of the Cross". All soldiers know that they can be called upon to pay the ultimate price for their cause. For this reason, the soldiers of the Cross are called to take up their crosses and commit to die daily to their own interests in order to serve the interests of Christ:

"If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross daily, and follow Me." (Luke 9:23).

"For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it." (Luke 9:23,24)

"You therefore must suffer hardship as a good soldier of Christ Jesus." (2 Timothy 2:3)

"No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affiars of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier." (2 Timothy 2:4)

"And he died for all, that they who live should no longer liver for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on thei behalf." (2 Corinthians 5:15)

Coming to understand and walk in our Christ identity.

Finding and becoming a committed part of the body of Believers we are called to be with.

Receiving the ministry of the five equipping ministries listed in Ephesians chapter 4.

Being discipled by someone other than the pastor.

Regular one-on-one meetings

Keeps us focused on the prize and off of the many opportunities in the Church and elsewhere that will take us away from what God has called us to do -- our destiny.

Receiving weekly assignments, will help us grow in knowledge and understanding that will eventually equip us to disciple others and move to higher spiritual attainments.

Understanding and carrying out our CHRIST CALLING AS WE BEGIN BEARING FRUIT THAT REMAINS FOR God’s Kingdom.

QUESTIONS TO ASK MYSELF

Am I totally sold out to the Lord Jesus Christ?

Am I willing to aggressively pursue the services of someone in the Body of Christ to Disciple me in my Christian walk?

What are 3 reasons why I need someone to disciple me in addition to my participation in church services, Sunday school, bible study classes, Christ encounters, etc?

ALBERT FINCH MINISTRY:

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fernandolscm779-blog · 5 years

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10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About blockchain solar energy

How can we notify if a little something is bogus or genuine in these days’s globe? Such as, a greenback bill, a driver’s license or possibly a vote within the election. How can we figure out no matter if it’s valid or not? The solution? We maintain a history of it. By way of example, Every dollar Invoice incorporates a serial amount that may be recorded because of the bank. Your driver’s license number is recorded with the DMV and voting data are made use of to track who voted and who didn’t, so a similar individual gained’t be capable to vote 2 times. Everytime you would like to validate that a doc is legit, you merely look it up Together with the related authority.

We even have Notaries, people who find themselves licensed by The federal government to work as witnesses to attest and history the validity of items of data or identities. You’ll discover there’s another thing that most of these mechanisms have in typical - They may be all centralized, which means there’s a central authority, whether or not it’s a financial institution, state Office environment, or individual that has the ability to situation and validate information and facts. These central authorities have many power, and as you know electricity may well often corrupt. So what transpires if just one of those authorities wishes to change the facts or even probably alter background a bit? This my sound far fetched, but even our world record is simply a file stored by historians in a very centralized method.

The phrase “Background is published because of the victors” tells us that facts can from time to time be distorted by Those people in electrical power. If you don’t think that’s doable, right here’s a real everyday living illustration. Nowadays, most money is just a history of who owes what to whom. Because of the subprime crisis in 2008, Nearly a thousand providers in the US acquired over 630 billion dollars that never ever existed in advance of. Other corporations had debts absolutely eliminated. Some would argue this bailout was justified, but you can’t deny that someone made a decision to change the documents of simply how much income was owned and owed. This is why Bitcoin was born. It absolutely was the first kind of money that gets rid of the necessity to get a central authority.

Its information are held by Anyone, not merely by central financial institutions. And when everyone seems to be trying to keep track and verifying the information, properly, that means you could no more change the ledger of transactions Each time some thing doesn’t increase up or mainly because it’s more convenient. You even have to get started on getting accountable. But money isn’t the one location exactly where decentralization can Engage in a role. Would you don't forget All those massive encyclopedia guides we used to depend on when it arrived to analysis? Encyclopedia Britannica employed a hundred full time editors and around 4,000 contributors to publish solar energy what we regarded as being the authority on know-how. Just picture the power the editors of those books experienced in determining what was well worth mentioning, condemning, condoning or disregarding. Effectively, the last volume of encyclopedia Britannica was published in 2010. Currently, information is far more decentralized with about 130 thousand active editors that manage distinctive Wikipedia web pages. The chance of any of these “going rogue” unnoticed is far smaller sized considering that Each individual edit is general public and might be confirmed by any person. Decentralization reduces the danger for corruption, fraud and manipulation. Blockchain technologies is a brand new and modern approach to apply decentralization.

Inside of a nutshell, Blockchain technology is an answer for the problem of centralization. It’s a technique for trying to keep records by everybody, without any will need for the central authority - a decentralized method of retaining a ledger which is pretty much impossible to falsify. I necessarily mean, when numerous eyes are viewing and verifying almost everything that’s getting finished, it’s genuinely hard to interrupt The principles unnoticed. You might be wondering why could it be identified as Blockchain? Well, imagine we’re retaining a shared ledger with quite a few pages of documents. Every single web page begins by using a kind of summary from the webpage before it. If you change a Portion of the prior page, you’ll even have to change the summary on the current site. Therefore the internet pages are literally joined, or chained collectively. In technological conditions, webpages are called blocks. And considering that each block is connected to the information with the preceding block, We now have a series of blocks, or perhaps a blockchain. Lots of individuals imagine that Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, made Blockchain technologies. Technically he only made the very first real daily life implementation of it - Bitcoin. The truth is, that term blockchain isn't even talked about in Satoshi’s original whitepaper.

The closest he involves stating Blockchain is “chain of blocks”. Now which you understand what blockchain technological know-how is, we continue to have two important concerns to answer - So how exactly does it actually work, and is blockchain going to alter our upcoming? Allow’s begin with the 1st query. Yet another way to talk to this problem can be - how do I develop a process which allows the development, verification and updating of documents by Most people? Very well, you will discover 4 aspects a blockchain has to even have a life of its possess. The very first thing required to support a blockchain is actually a peer-to-peer community - A community of computers, often known as nodes, which have been equally privileged. It’s open up to any person and everyone.

This is essentially what we already have these days with the world wide web. We'd like this community to make sure that we will be able to communicate and share with each other remotely. The 2nd ingredient is cryptography. Cryptography is definitely the art of safe conversation in a very hostile atmosphere. It will allow me to validate messages and verify the authenticity of my own messages, even when destructive gamers are all-around. We want cryptography due to the to start with ingredient. Bear in mind, I explained any individual can engage in this network - like poor actors. It’s great which i can communicate, but I also need to have to make certain my conversation comes via unaltered. The 3rd ingredient is actually a consensus algorithm. You may switch the technical word “algorithm” While using the phrase “rule”. This implies we have to concur about regulations on how we add a whole new web site, often known as a block, to our information. There are numerous sorts of consensus guidelines, in Bitcoin’s circumstance we use a consensus algorithm known as Evidence of Work.

This algorithm states that to ensure that somebody to gain the correct to include a different page to our ledger they need to uncover an answer into a math dilemma, which involves computational electric power to solve. Desktops around the network operate calculations to resolve The mathematics trouble and in doing so, take in loads of energy. Put simply they do a lot of operate. That’s why when one of them finds the selection that solves the problem and displays it into the network, they’re basically exhibiting a “evidence of labor”. Think about it since the node’s way of claiming: “Hey, I invested quite a bit of Electricity below in fixing this problem initially, so I’m entitled to write the following web page”. As I discussed in advance of, there are other consensus algorithms that don’t demand a great deal Strength, This is certainly just the algorithm style that the Bitcoin blockchain employs. You'll find positives and negatives to different algorithms, but in an effort to operate a decentralized ledger you’ll have to choose one, usually It will probably be truly hard to succeed in a consensus with so many people inside the community.

At last, our past component is punishment and reward. This component is in fact derived from video game concept and it helps make sure that it'll be in men and women’s ideal desire to constantly Keep to the guidelines. To this point, we’ve arrange a network that includes a way to communicate securely, and follows a set of principles for reaching consensus. Now we’ll glue these factors collectively by offering a reward to persons that assistance us preserve our information and incorporate new webpages. This reward is actually a token, or coin, that is certainly awarded each time a consensus continues to be attained along with a new block is additional to our chain. However, lousy actors who seek to trick or manipulate the procedure will end up shedding the money they spent on computational energy or their cash can be taken clear of them. In the long run, the crucial factor to keep in mind would be that the punishment and reward method is effective on psychological behaviour. It turns the rules in the program from a little something you have to follow into some thing you’ll need to follow, because It will probably be in your very best desire to take action. This was just an exceptionally large degree clarification of what a blockchain is made of.

But due to the fact then, much more individuals have started to research Bitcoin and blockchain, and have witnessed the advantages they supply; either in practice, or being an investment. So there you've got it, the five factors of A very open, general public, decentralized blockchain. Up right up until today you will find only A few blockchains which have around 1,000 actually independent contributors, and therefore is usually considered as decentralized - Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero to call a couple of.

If you’re believing that it seems like loads of labor To place a blockchain in movement, you’re Completely proper. But this is where Ethereum comes in. Ethereum is actually a Get it done Yourself blockchain wherever most of these five features are presently in movement. All you might want to do is Construct the correct Option along with it. But that’s a whole distinct whiteboard episode it is possible to check out later on.

Now let’s move ahead to a different time period you might have heard - a private, or shut blockchain. This term refers to companies that monitor and Restrict the gamers who will get involved in their blockchain. It’s somewhat like how the Internet, that's open to Everyone and any individual, is different from an Intranet - an inside network of organization pcs. Even though I believe some businesses will discover worth in running private blockchains to enhance their interior processes, it’s significantly from anything enjoyable inasmuch as it's nothing at all to complete with decentralization. To emphasise this a little more let’s Assess open up, general public blockchains to closed, non-public kinds. A public blockchain is open up to All people, it’s transnational and borderless. It’s censorship resistant, and it doesn’t require any 3rd bash. It’s also neutral - there’s no this sort of issue being a “excellent”, “undesirable”, “unlawful” or “authorized” transaction, there’s just a “legitimate” or “invalid” one particular.

A personal blockchain Conversely, is restricted to authorized contributors only, and It truly is ruled by a handful of entities. Within the phrases of Andreas Antonopoulos, most often of private blockchains you don’t really need a blockchain, you may just share a spreadsheet between the participants. The full concept of blockchain was to decentralize a course of action via most of the people, Which’s accurately the other of what A non-public blockchain does. The features of a public blockchain, Then again, create monumental Advantages. There’s no solitary point of failure. The records are immutable, often called tamper proof. And eventually, it’s censorship resistant so you can’t seriously remove a record or prevent it from finding posted - so long as it follows the consensus policies. In advance of we stop right now’s lesson we still have one important issue to reply - Is blockchain technological know-how another large point? I believe you will have listened to of various startups that are working with blockchain know-how to unravel some sort of a dilemma.

Generally After i listen to of these kinds of a company I inquire two issues: To start with, are they using a general public or personal blockchain? Considering that if they're not employing a public blockchain there’s not really everything extremely disruptive here. Second, do they even need a blockchain? When you try to remember at first of this lesson, we talked about the risks of centralization.

But these dangers are only significant if there’s a lot at stake. For instance, the queue for the pharmacy is managed in the centralized fashion but I don’t really treatment given that there’s not a whole lot at stake and it’s basically more efficient this way. Blockchain technological know-how is superb at decentralizing, but it really’s also very inefficient, sluggish and Electrical power consuming. One example is, Bitcoin’s network takes 10 minutes on normal to substantiate a transaction. Not The best waiting around time for getting a cup of coffee at a 7-eleven. The one purpose to settle on Blockchain engineering as your solution is if your issue is in fact centralization. Should you don’t ought to decentralize something, you most likely don’t really need to use blockchain technologies and are improved off with some centralized Remedy.

Actually it will most likely operate far better. To sum it up, Blockchain technological innovation is truly disruptive, but in the intervening time only A few use scenarios truly have to have it. So the actual question is this: at The existing second, is our planet All set For additional complex blockchain implementation than what Bitcoin now offers? In the early 2000s, there were lots of Amazons, Googles and Facebooks that never ever caught on with the changes they introduced... Nowadays, several of those blockchain startups experience a similar destiny.

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andreynlo705-blog · 5 years

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10 No-Fuss Ways to Figuring Out Your kinds of renewable energy

How can we notify if a little something is bogus or genuine in now’s planet? As an example, a greenback Monthly bill, a driver’s license or maybe a vote in the election. How do we figure out regardless of whether it’s valid or not? The answer? We hold a history of it. For example, Just about every dollar Monthly bill incorporates a serial amount that may be recorded with the financial institution. Your driver’s license range is recorded through the DMV and voting records are employed to trace who voted and who didn’t, so the exact same man or woman received’t manage to vote 2 times. Whenever you desire to validate that a doc is legit, you only appear it up with the suitable authority.

We even have Notaries, people who are certified by the government to work as witnesses to attest and record the validity of pieces of information or identities. You’ll recognize there’s one thing that most of these mechanisms have in common - They may be all centralized, which means there’s a central authority, regardless of whether it’s a financial institution, state Office environment, or person that has the facility to problem and validate data. These central authorities have plenty of electricity, and as you understand electrical power could often corrupt. So what happens if a person of those authorities wishes to change the info and even it's possible alter heritage a little bit? This my seem far fetched, but even our world heritage is just a history held by historians inside of a centralized way.

The phrase “Background is penned via the victors” tells us that specifics can at times be distorted by All those in energy. If you don’t think that’s doable, listed here’s an actual daily life case in point. Right now, most money is just a file of who owes what to whom. Mainly because of the subprime crisis in 2008, almost a thousand organizations during the US received about 630 billion pounds that never existed just before. Other corporations had debts fully eradicated. Some would argue this bailout was justified, however, you can’t deny that someone decided to change the records of exactly how much money was owned and owed. That is why Bitcoin was born. It had been the initial variety of money that removes the necessity to get a central authority.

Its information are retained by All people, not just by central banking institutions. And when everyone seems to be trying to keep observe and verifying the info, well, Meaning you could no more alter the ledger of transactions When some thing doesn’t insert up or because it’s far more convenient. You even have to get started on being accountable. But money isn’t the only area in which decentralization can Participate in a job. Would you bear in mind All those significant encyclopedia publications we utilized to trust in when it arrived to analysis? Encyclopedia Britannica employed a hundred full-time editors and above 4,000 contributors to publish what we thought to be the authority on knowledge. Just imagine the ability the editors of such guides had in deciding what was well worth mentioning, condemning, condoning or disregarding. Very well, the final volume of encyclopedia Britannica was revealed in 2010. Currently, facts is a great deal more decentralized with more than a hundred thirty thousand Lively editors that maintain diverse Wikipedia pages. The potential risk of any of them “likely rogue” unnoticed is way smaller sized because Just about every edit is public and can be verified by any person. Decentralization cuts down the chance for corruption, fraud and manipulation. Blockchain technologies is a brand new and progressive way to employ decentralization.

Within a nutshell, Blockchain technology is a solution for the issue of centralization. It’s a process for retaining records by everybody, with no need to have for a central authority - a decentralized way of retaining a ledger that's nearly unachievable to falsify. I mean, when a lot of eyes are watching and verifying anything that’s currently being finished, it’s genuinely difficult to interrupt The principles unnoticed. There's a chance you're pondering why can it be named Blockchain? Properly, consider we’re retaining a shared ledger with numerous web pages of data. Each individual website page starts using a form of summary from the website page prior to it. If you change a Element of the earlier web page, you’ll also have to change the summary on the current web site. Therefore the webpages are literally connected, or chained collectively. In technological conditions, web pages are called blocks. And given that Every single block is connected to the info of the prior block, We've got a sequence of blocks, or possibly a blockchain. Many of us think that Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, developed Blockchain know-how. Technically he only made the first actual existence implementation of it - Bitcoin. In reality, that word blockchain isn't even talked about in Satoshi’s initial whitepaper.

The closest he comes to expressing Blockchain is “chain of blocks”. Now that you just really know what blockchain engineering is, we nevertheless have two significant concerns to answer - how does it basically function, and is particularly blockchain going to vary our long run? Let’s get started with the initial dilemma. Yet another way to question this question can be - how do I develop a method that enables the creation, verification and updating of records by Most people? Perfectly, there are actually 4 factors a blockchain should actually have a lifetime of its individual. The first thing required to help a blockchain is often a peer-to-peer network - A community of personal computers, often called nodes, which have been Similarly privileged. It’s open up to anybody and everyone.

This is basically what we already have today with the world wide web. We want this community in order that we should be able to communicate and share with one another remotely. The second ingredient is cryptography. Cryptography will be the artwork of safe conversation in a very hostile environment. It enables me to confirm messages and prove the authenticity of my own messages, even though malicious gamers are around. We need cryptography as a result of to start with factor. Try to remember, I mentioned everyone can be involved in this community - like undesirable actors. It’s good which i can talk, but I also need to verify my interaction will come by means of unaltered. The 3rd ingredient can be a consensus algorithm. You are able to change the technical phrase “algorithm” With all the term “rule”. This means we must concur about procedures on how we insert a different web site, often called a block, to our records. There are several sorts of consensus policies, in Bitcoin’s scenario we make use of a consensus algorithm referred to as Evidence of labor.

This algorithm states that to ensure that somebody to get paid the correct to add a whole new web site to our ledger they have to locate a solution into a math difficulty, which needs computational energy to resolve. Computers within the community run calculations to unravel The mathematics problem and in doing so, eat loads of energy. To paraphrase they are doing a lot of function. That’s why when one of them finds the amount that solves the challenge and displays it towards the community, they’re essentially exhibiting a “proof of labor”. Think of it since the node’s way of claiming: “Hey, I put in a large amount of Strength listed here in solving this issue 1st, so I’m entitled to jot down the next site”. As I mentioned right before, there are other consensus algorithms that don’t demand so much Power, This can be just the algorithm style that the Bitcoin blockchain employs. You'll find advantages and drawbacks to various algorithms, but so that you can operate a decentralized ledger you’ll need to choose one, in any other case Will probably be seriously really hard to reach a consensus with so Many individuals while in the community.

Finally, our past component is punishment and reward. This aspect is in fact derived from game concept and it tends to make sure that it'll be in individuals’s greatest interest to always follow the policies. To this point, we’ve build a community that has a way to speak securely, and follows a set of principles for achieving consensus. Now we’ll glue these components together by giving a reward to people today that assist us sustain our data and insert new pages. This reward is actually a token, or coin, which is awarded each time a consensus has long been achieved as well as a new block is included to our chain. Conversely, terrible actors who try to trick or manipulate the method will turn out getting rid of The cash they invested on computational electricity or their coins is usually taken from them. In the long run, the critical thing to keep in mind would be that the punishment and reward process operates on psychological behaviour. It turns the rules on the procedure from a thing you have to comply with into something you’ll would like to observe, since Will probably be in your best curiosity to take action. This was just a really significant degree explanation of what a blockchain is made of.

But given that then, much more folks have begun to study Bitcoin and blockchain, and also have found the benefits they provide; both in exercise, or being an investment. So there you have it, the 5 features of A really open up, public, decentralized blockchain. Up until today you can find only a handful of blockchains which have in excess of 1,000 actually independent members, and as a result may be considered as decentralized - Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero to call some.

If you’re thinking that it seems like lots of exertions to put a blockchain in motion, you’re Totally appropriate. But this is where Ethereum comes in. Ethereum can be a Get it done Your self blockchain in which all of these 5 elements are now in movement. All you might want to do is Make the right Answer in addition to it. But that’s a complete different whiteboard episode you could have a look at later on.

Now let’s move on to a different phrase you may have listened to - A personal, or closed blockchain. This term refers to companies that monitor and Restrict the players who will engage in their blockchain. It’s a tiny bit like how the online world, which can be open up to Every person and any person, is different from an Intranet - an inner community of enterprise computer systems. Whilst I assume some businesses will see value in working non-public blockchains to enhance their inner procedures, it’s significantly from something exciting inasmuch as it's got absolutely nothing to try and do with decentralization. To emphasise this a tiny bit more Allow’s Review open, general public blockchains to shut, private kinds. A public blockchain is open up to All people, it’s transnational and borderless. It’s censorship resistant, and it doesn’t have to have any third get together. It’s also neutral - there’s no this sort of matter like a “very good”, “terrible”, “illegal” or “lawful” transaction, there’s merely a “legitimate” or “invalid” one particular.

A non-public blockchain Then again, is limited to approved participants only, and It can be governed by A few entities. Inside the terms of Andreas Antonopoulos, normally of personal blockchains you don’t actually need a blockchain, you can just share a spreadsheet among the individuals. The entire concept of blockchain was to decentralize a process through most of the people, Which’s precisely the opposite of what A personal blockchain does. The functions of a general public blockchain, Conversely, develop great Positive aspects. There’s no one point of failure. The documents are immutable, also known as tamper proof. And eventually, it’s censorship resistant so you're able to’t actually take away a report or cease it from getting posted - providing it follows the consensus guidelines. Just before we finish right now’s lesson we continue to have one particular main concern to reply - Is blockchain technological know-how the following large point? I think you could have listened to of different startups which have been working with blockchain technological know-how to unravel some kind of an issue.

Generally After i listen to of these types of a firm I question two concerns: First, are they using a public or private blockchain? Because if they're not utilizing a community blockchain there’s probably not anything at all very disruptive here. Second, do they even have to have a blockchain? When you keep in mind at first of the lesson, we talked about the hazards of centralization.

But these risks are only significant if there’s a whole lot at stake. For example, the queue to your pharmacy is managed in the centralized manner but I don’t definitely care given that there’s not a good deal at stake and it’s essentially extra productive this way. Blockchain technologies is very good at decentralizing, however it’s also incredibly inefficient, sluggish and Power consuming. As an example, Bitcoin’s network requires ten minutes on normal to confirm a transaction. Not the ideal waiting around time for getting a cup of coffee at a seven-eleven. The one explanation to pick Blockchain technologies as your Remedy is When your trouble is really centralization. If you don’t have to decentralize a thing, you most likely don’t have to use blockchain know-how and are greater off renewable energy opportunities with some centralized Answer.

In actual fact it will most likely operate much better. To sum it up, Blockchain technologies is truly disruptive, but for the time being only a handful of use circumstances definitely demand it. So the true query is this: at the current second, is our world ready for more elaborate blockchain implementation than what Bitcoin by now offers? While in the early 2000s, there have been lots of Amazons, Googles and Facebooks that never caught on to the adjustments they offered... Nowadays, many of such blockchain startups experience a similar fate.

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thevalkirias · 7 years

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Problematizing Rory Gilmore: the revival

Back when we were waiting to know where Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) would be – mid 2016, before Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life was released – we made a point of saying that the apple of Stars Hollows’ eyes was far from perfect, which was great: Rory Gilmore is complex, and therefore a human character. Since then, the revival peaked and its buzz went away, and nothing in it was more controversial or discussed to exhaustion than the characterization of the younger Gilmore. Rory Gilmore is a monster. Rory Gilmore is a disaster. Rory Gilmore never became a real adult. Rory Gilmore is… complicated.

Beware: this piece contains spoilers of all four instalments of A Year in the Life.

Before the revival hit Netflix, Amy Sherman-Palladino wanted us to wonder in which newspaper Rory would be working and whether she would have already won a Pulitzer. The first episode, “Winter”, came to break many of the expectations surrounding Rory’s career, since she couldn’t be any further from where we thought she would be. Rory has no steady job; her biggest achievement is the publication of an article in The New Yorker – reproduced on every single one of Luke’s menus – and what she’s up to is the memoir of an eccentric British celebrity, which comes to an end before it even starts. By the end of the original series Rory was fresh out of Yale and working as a journalist following the electoral campaign of the then-candidate to the presidency of the United States, the Democrat Barack Obama (2007, good times). Even if her life wasn’t exactly on track (Logan, played by Matt Czurchy, ended their relationship of three years after Rory rejected his – very public – proposal, and her job, intriguing as it was, had an ending date), it seemed promising that Rory was following her dreams, with a job in her field of interest – political journalism –, after the crisis she went through between seasons five and six.

The revival comes to disappoint everyone that saw Rory as a role model. The year we follow in A Year in the Life leaves the younger Gilmore feeling even more lost and uncertain about her future. In a single year, she loses the book proposal, has her meeting with Condé Nast postponed again and again, throws a story away because she finds it uninteresting and arrives completely unprepared to a job interview for a hip website she completely despised, only to be despised by them. Rory ends up coming back to her mother’s house in Stars Hollow, but spends the whole summer telling everyone that wishes her welcome that she’s not back, as if coming back meant acknowledging her failure.

When it comes to her personal life, things aren’t much better. Rory apparently has a boyfriend, Paul (Jack Carpenter), so uninteresting to the whole family that no one – not even Rory herself – seems to remember he exists. Paul is not a character; he is a recurring joke through the four episodes, so Rory conveniently forgets to break up with him, finding it easier to have an affair with Logan. The affair is one of the most complicated issues of the revival: not only Rory is cheating on her boyfriend but, as we come to know later, Logan has a fiancée somewhere in Europe, a woman who never gets a face, let alone a chance of becoming a relevant character. The irony is that in the past Rory herself went through similar situations: first with Dean (Jared Padalecki) and Lindsay (Arielle Kebbel) when she was nineteen; afterwards with the same Logan she can’t bear to let go. Nothing, however, makes Rory nurture any kind of empathy towards Odette, the never-presented bride – she is not a character, she is an obstacle. The fact that she doesn’t have a face doesn’t seem to be fate’s work, but an intentional choice that tries to make the situation seem less serious than it really is, in order to make the plot all about Rory and Logan, as if all the rest were just details; as if Paul and Odette were mere plot devices and not just like any other human being: complex and with plenty of feelings, deserving to be treated respectfully regardless of their role in other people’s lives.

Once again, Rory takes on her most selfish side, of someone incapable of thinking about anyone other than herself. This is the same character that, in the past, had an affair with a married man without thinking twice, that was never capable of recognising her privileges and that has always thought herself superior, even if she never said it out loud. By the time she turns 32, Rory seems to have learned nothing at all from her previous experiences. It’s a radical departure from the teenager and young adult she once was, who always tried her best to be perfect and correspond to the expectations that were imposed on her. However, in 2016 Rory is no longer the apple of Stars Hollow’s eyes, the young journalist with a promising career ahead of her, whose dream was to be like Christiane Amanpour, and she is no longer the young girl who is too good for every guy in her life: nearly ten years passed by since she was this girl and ten years are more than enough to change a whole life.

Throughout the classic series of Gilmore Girls, Rory gave us enough proof she was far from the picture that dehumanized her full time: as any person building her own identity and facing a world of possibilities ahead of her, Rory would sometimes put her foot in her mouth, mess everything up and get frustrated with life not always going the way she expected it to go. This didn’t make her a bad person, but the opposite: as the complex young adult that she was, Rory had many nuances and never limited herself to being just one thing. She was the leading lady of her own story, the kind, smart and understanding heroine loved by all, the young girl with the best grades who never got into trouble and had a promising future ahead of her. But she could also be the villain of someone else’s story – Lindsay’s, for example –, the spoiled little girl that thought only of herself, incapable of accepting that life doesn’t owe her anything. At the same time, Rory would walk on the thin line between being herself and being what others expected her to be. Unlike many teenagers that vehemently deny the images projected on them, going to the extreme opposite, Rory embraced it, basically what her mother, her grandparents, her father, Luke (Scott Patterson) and the whole town wanted her to be, even when that wasn’t exactly what she wanted, even when Rory herself seemed to be close to changing her mind.

The sixth season of the classic series is essential to this line of thought because it presents a Rory that is far from perfect. She steals a boat, has a huge fight with her mother, drops out of college and is condemned to community services, but this is also the crucial moment when she breaks all expectations – not only everyone else’s, but her own too. Nearly ten years later, she still needs to deal with these unfulfilled expectations, but this time the frustration is more her own than it is anyone else’s. Her life took a 360º degree turn: she went around the world, wrote several articles, met and interacted with many people, but curiously returned to the same spot. However, at age 32, being back to the starting point is not the ideal and Rory knows it just as much as everyone else around her. Though she is reluctant to admit her alleged failure and finds it profoundly difficult to deal with it, Rory knows her life is far from what she expected it to be when she was 22. The difference is that instead of trying to evolve and mature she continues to be the same immature and presumptuous Rory she always were, who believes the world owes her a special future just because.

All of these – and many others – recurring slips on the plot have us wondering whether the Palladinos underestimated our judgment capacity, which evolved properly along the years. Our generation may find it difficult to stand on our own feet, but that doesn’t mean we have no clue about what’s going on in the world or have no critical opinion. Which brings us to the “thirty-something gang” and millennials being used as comic relief, presented as people who have embraced failure and spend their days together drinking milkshakes. Actually, sane people who return to their childhood bedrooms spend sleepless nights thinking of ways to put their lives together – that is exactly what Rory does, but in the series that’s pictured as something exceptional rather than obvious. Though it’s hard to take her seriously in her not-back-to-Stars-Hollow state of denial, what she really means is that she doesn’t want to be back because she doesn’t want to feel defeated. In other words, to judge Rory’s new character based on this sentence is a matter of semantics.

Taking the lead in the Stars Hollow Gazette was the (desperate) way she found to fill her time in a way that kept her connected to journalism – even though the citizens are more concerned with the seasonal first-page poem. When she decides to write a book about her relationship with her mother, a suggestion from Jess (Milo Ventimiglia), Rory seems to have found her true project. However, though this was positive for her career, the argument she has with Lorelai (Lauren Graham) based on the latter’s concerns about exposing their personal lives, and Rory’s choice of disrespecting her mother’s preoccupations, bring up, once again, questions about the selfishness that remains a trace of her personality. It is comprehensible that Rory clings to the idea of the book because, amongst her great professional crisis, it comes as a gift and gives her a north. The story of the Gilmore girls belongs to them both, of course, but Rory doesn’t even consider the fact that telling it would inevitably expose her mother. Rory is not a monster for it, of course. These are desperate times for her (obviously according to her point of view, that of someone who still has a ceiling to live under and means to travel around as she wishes). Who can judge her so easily? Who would give up such a concrete, real and doable project, when there is nothing left? But it’s Rory’s incapacity to empathize with her mother, the outrage she seems to feel when confronted by her mother’s point of view and the fact that she simply doesn’t talk to Lorelai before going on with the project that causes so much discomfort.

What we see in Rory throughout the revival, what bothers us, is the presumption that she deserves certain things simply because. That she has the right to tell the Gilmores’ story because it is an interesting life and it can help her find a way. That she can simply show up to a job interview completely unprepared because the site’s boss showed interest in her work (okay, plenty of it, to be fair). Rory has all the right in the world to believe she can do something better than working in a hip website – showing a very conservative opinion, by the way, of what it takes to be a Real ProfessionalTM. Rory also has the right to think that writing about people queuing in lines in order try new things everyone is talking about is boring. But her choice to look down on both things as if they were inferior creates a profound unease, because it sounds as if Rory still believes on the version of facts people used to sell her when she was little: that she was special, too good, the smartest, the best among her pairs – and everything she learned from her unsuccessful internship with Mitchum Huntzberger (Gregg Henry) seems, when we are watching the revival, to have served for nothing in her arc. The teenaged Rory, the one who could talk about the repaving of Chilton’s parking lot in a touching and profound way – or at least that’s what her teacher assured us she did –, seemed way more willing to try, something the new Rory seems to think she is too good to do.

At the closing of the revival, it’s hard to understand what Amy Sherman-Palladino was trying to do with Rory. In an interview with Vogue, she declared that she gave the character this complicated path because it seemed very real to her.

“I had friends who went to college and put themselves through college and worked two jobs. They [thirty-somethings] don’t do that anymore! It’s a lot of kids coming home and staying with their parents after college and saving their money for a condo. […]And these are kids who have all the benefits—they’ve had a great education, supportive parents, but sometimes I believe a little too supportive. Sometimes you have to kick someone out the door and say, ‘Apply to Starbucks, sweetie, I don’t care that you have a master’s degree. Go work, that’s what the world does.’”

It’s hard to understand whether the Palladinos chose to sacrifice the character in order to fulfil some kind of badly-shaped social criticism aimed at the next generation, or if, because between the original series and the revival many years went by, they decided that the public’s vision of Rory was still too idealized and wanted to tell us she is just human and, as such, makes mistakes like all of us. However, regardless of their intention, it was still a bad call, a badly stitched attempt at multitasking that is unable to not make anything coherently. If we are invited to understand and empathize with Rory, a character that must be seen as an imperfect human being that makes mistakes and doesn’t have her life on track by the time she hits 30, why was the “thirty-something gang”, which has no real purpose, turned into comic relief? Why is Rory still put on a pedestal, as if her conflicts were so much bigger, so much more complex than the feelings of many others that find themselves in the same situation?

To problematize (or not) the Rory Gilmore we have last seen is a hard task because the truth is that analysing the revival critically is a complicated – and a bit ungrateful – task. The Palladinos seem to have never accepted their own premature departure from the series or the ending it was given without their approval, just like they seem to have not accepted the fact that ten years that separate the series finale and their chance to revive it on their own terms. What is left to see, even when we glance beyond Rory (at Luke and Lorelai, for example, and the fact that they did not discuss marriage and kids for nearly a decade), is that the Palladinos decided to write a story that did not remain frozen in time in theory – time left its mark on the cast, after all – but did in practice. The Gilmores’ story is theirs, of course, and they had the right to do what they wanted with it. But the way in which they coped with the unexpected paths life takes seems rather immature, contradicting the foundations of their own story. It’s almost ironic to see them turning the alleged immaturity of an entire generation into joke. It’s probably not by chance that the revival really shone when it showed the Gilmores dealing with Richard’s death (portrayed by the late Edward Herrmann) – the storyline in which the Palladinos had to take a turn from whatever plans they had. When the script fails from the beginning, it’s hard to look at Rory in a definitive way.

Rory Gilmore is still the complex and human character she always was, but ten years later perhaps she is no longer the woman with whom we identified so long – or not so long – ago; the girl that inspired us deeply the way only well-constructed and coherent characters can do. For better or worse, Rory Gilmore has grown, became a woman who is far from what we expected, but this does not make her a monster. Life is not a magical genie lamp that grants us all our wishes, and Rory learned it the hard way. However, in choosing to treat her once again as a little snowflake, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life shows a reductionist view of an entire generation, disregarding the fact that the privileged youngsters who had a great education and constant parental support are not all simply spoiled people who believe they are too good to do anything other than the dream job, and that behind all the frustrations there is a world of expectations and pressures that do not exist in the void. For as long as we keep ignoring these issues, it’s hard to imagine a future for Rory that is not filled with darkness and some dragons.

Written by Ana Luíza, Fernanda and Yuu.

This piece was originally published in Portuguese on April, 2017 on Valkirias. Translated by Anna Viduani.

#gilmore girls #gilmore girls: a year in the life #rory gilmore #amy sherman-palladino #alexis bledel #netflix #category:tv #author:ana luíza #author:fernanda #author:yuu #translator:anna viduani

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iwillsendapostcard · 7 years

Audio

There’s been a few posts floating around about how ‘Hallelujah’ by PATD is the song of The Incident (I should know; I wrote a few of them). After all the song played at their wedding- during a conversation about the vows no less! The second verse foreshadows The Incident in a near perfect way, but I would argue that the whole song could be seen as Rob’s perspective of events running from the affair rival up to beyond The Incident reveal:

My life started the day I got caught/ Under the covers/ With secondhand lovers

So, they didn’t exactly get caught in the act but the affair was exposed without Rob’s consent. I absolutely love the idea that for Robert this moment was a total turning point in his life; something of an awakening. After all, at this point, his non-straight sexual identity couldn’t really be denied. Neither could he hold onto the façade of the life he had built with Chrissie after Aaron took a sledgehammer to it.

Oh, tied up in pretty young things

The age gap between Aaron and Rob is six years, which means the age gap between Aaron and Chrissie is twelve years. Aaron might not be a ‘pretty young thing’ but Rob probably noticed a big difference in the attitude and maturity of his two lovers.

In a state of emergency/ Who was I tryna be?

Oh, Robert! As soon as he is backed into a corner he morphs into a pantomime villain! As soon as he is stressed he loses the personality he’s built for himself and reverts back to the thinly-drawn assumptions people have of him. Part of his could just be bad writing- but I also think it is true to the character that has spent his whole life being told (explicitly or otherwise) that he is a disappointment and that he has no heart to revert back to that personality in times of crisis. You can’t disappoint someone if they have no expectations of you.

Then the time for being sad is over/ And you miss 'em like you miss no other/ And being blue is better than being over it (over it)

I’m pretty sure that Rob decided he wanted Aaron back in his bed a substantial time before he got shot. Not the easiest route to go down; he probably should have just left the village. Instead, he hung around, even though it made him miserable because he missed what he had with Aaron too much.

All you sinners stand up, sing hallelujah (hallelujah!)/ Show praise with your body/ Stand up, sing hallelujah (hallelujah!)/ And if you can't stop shaking, lean back/ Let it move right through ya (hallelujah!)/ Say your prayers…

We all know that the abuse reveal and the period after showed Rob’s character in a different light. He was supportive, and considerate in ways that he’s never had cause to be before. Do I think that his change in personality was motivated in part by a desire for Aaron to see him more sympathetically? Yes, at least in part, mostly because I don’t believe there’s any such thing as an altruistic act. I can just imagine Rob going to bed in these months thinking of Aaron, wishing they were together again, praying that it would happen- but only once Aaron was ready.

I was drunk and it didn't mean a thing

The Incident summed up in a sentence

Stop thinking about/ The bullets from my mouth

There has been some discussion about how the most damaging thing that Robert did was not in fact sleep with her but rather the things he said about Aaron before seducing(?) her. I have lots of feelings about this.

I love the things you hate about yourself

Because, well, we know the things he said were not true. I could (and likely will) go on for hours about how “he’s weak” is the most important line in that scene because it invalidates every single word that comes out of Rob’s mouth after it. We know that this statement isn’t true. We know that Robert knows this. It’s the scrapyard scene all over again. Rob has been explicit about the things he admires about Aaron, even coming out with a few surprising things- such as his willingness to break into Home Farm.

Just finished a daydream/ Who were you tryna be?

Good question Robert. Cause I tagged my liveblogging of The Incident as #hello there 2015 Robert. Yes, to some extent it’s the destruction of character development. But, bearing in mind the way Rob tends to ‘revert’ back to what people think he is when he’s stressed, I’m inclined to see this as in-character instead. For me, it would only destroy his development if he kept it up past this scene, and he didn’t. Indeed, it’s canon that his memory of the whole night is sketchy at best.

Then the time for being sad is over/ And you miss 'em like you miss no other/ And being blue is better than being over it (over it)

Which is possibly why he’s doing so well at aggressively pretending it didn’t happen around Aaron. That and the fact that Aaron is with him now, taking up his full attention. After all, they have a lot of catching up to do.

No one wants you when you have no heart and

If they do have a big bust up during the reveal then I can certainly see Rob being accused of this. I’m pretty certain that Aaron will question whether Rob really loved him if Rob is capable of love. This is not something Rob is unused to hearing…

I'm sitting pretty in my brand-new scars and

Hopefully not foreshadowing- I’ll be very upset as t is. But thinking that either of them will get out of this without emotional scarring is a bit naive. Plus, both of them have been in physical fights since Aaron was sent to prison. Let’s hope they just leave it there.

You'll never know if you don't ever try again/ So let's try, let's try, let's try

All signs point to the fact that they’ll still be together mid-June either after breaking up or not. The assumption, therefore, is that Aaron is going to make a decision that it’s worth trying to work through their issues rather than just kicking Rob to the kerb. Is that going to work out for him? Only time will tell…

So yeah, I have lots of feelings about Robert and this song.

@tonyspegasus @misswhimsy @thisdamndesire I’ll try and shut up about it now ;)

#robron #the incident #it's too early in the morning for this much close textual analysis

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therisingtithes · 8 years

Text

The Reeducation of Rare Pepe

On The Transferrence of Communicative Abuse, and The Phases of The Moral Turn

I didn’t plan on writing this one.

First of all, my fiction has been kicking me in the rear lately, so I haven’t been doing a lot of long-form blogging because I know I’ll get so intensely focused on its premises that it’ll take four hours or more to craft one piece and I could use that time literally finishing a short story right now.

Second, even the thoughts I had about the last few PBS Idea Channel videos were overwhelmingly boiled down to ‘wow!’, even when I had questions to ask. Like, what do Bee Movie technical memes say about diligence? Doesn’t Westworld essentially include the premise that one doesn’t ‘find’ a self, but that the act of making one directly proceeds nihilism? Why does everyone automatically assume that artificial intelligence will be the future state of Rawls’ original position even though not only did Mike explicitly state that systems bear their designers’ biases but recent digital history has proven that those biases are literally self-maintained and self-replicating institutional kyriarchy with a side of mismanagement? (Okay, that last one is less of an interesting tangential discourse and more of a heavy frustration, but still.)

And then there was the fact that I didn’t really want to talk about something related to this for a while.

(By this I don’t mean ‘Pepe’, but the looming threat of white nationalism in the wake of the Trump administration.) Because we’re going to talk about things like this a lot. And it will be tiring, and it will be valuable for all actors in this discourse to be well versed in pacing themselves.

And because I already wrote one of the myriad pieces you’ll see online about punching Nazis. Hell, I have a Twitter bot, if anyone cares.

And I want to be sure: I think it was a less than ideal way to engage with the discourse.

I am not saying I don’t agree with punching Nazis. Or that the post did a bad job of illustrating why one should punch Nazis.

I’m saying it because there is so much room to talk about why one should be willing to physically resist white nationalist speech, among other speech acts,

namely the fact that there is a moral, philosophical, and legal framework that already exists to challenge violent speech acts,

but in order to empower violent speech acts, it’s so underutilized by the existing power structure that people literally have said that they didn’t know it existed.

So I want to talk about Pepe as backdrop to answer one of @mikerugnetta‘s final questions at the end of the latest PBSID video:

... can you ignore those extremists, as the Rare Pepe Directory people suggest?

But... I don’t care about Pepe. Or at least I don’t think I do? I care about the history of the swastika, a bit, but people have been split on how to proceed with that as well. So I’m not asking if we can ignore their treatment of Pepe.

I’m asking if one can, or should, ignore extremist speech acts at all.

a. There’s A Rule For This Sort Of Thing (And It’s Already Broken)

It’s worth opening with the acknowledgment that it is perfectly politically possible for the United States, like other nations, to not be in the position of having to ask itself how white nationalist extremism and fascist sympathy came to fester in its space.

In fact, legally, the United States has an antidote for just this kind of problem. It just hasn’t refined that antidote or bothered to adequately administer it in quite some time.

That antidote is the fighting words doctrine.

One of the things that I found most alarming in the growing discourse about the threat of white nationalism in the West is that many people seemed to look over the irony that there is a philosophy-of-language idea called hate speech but that it is legally unobserved for not being a solid enough concept to critique. That is, many people insisted that there is no hate speech legislation in the United States, and that the fact that there is none means not that the US is legally incapable of being critical enough to punish hateful speech acts, or that the US can become so legally incapable, but that hate speech is not a real speech act.

You know. The speech act that has uniquely identifiable characteristics, like the intent to dehumanize, incite prejudicial action against, or threaten imminent violence upon a marginalized individual or group?

Not real.

Which means that when a man writes an article within which he argues that it may be a valuable question to ask how much better the world would be if the US eradicated Black people, it as a result is minimized to the status of merely ‘an idea’ - or worse, ‘just words’.

Part of that difficulty, of course, is directly related to Americans’ strict--and, resultingly, quite lax--understanding of harm. R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul and Snyder v. Phelps both seem to lean toward the notion that what constitutes a violation of fighting words doctrine is whether those words actually lead to violence. That is, words are only fighting words if people do fight.

But it’s because no one has ever had any more serious conversations about institutionalized violence against marginalized groups that very few have considered the impact of simply the threat of inciting discrimination can have.

What’s interesting is how it proves the philosophical weakness of the present approach to freedom of speech in general--that the legal limitations that are observed regularly have such a privilege because we are clear about what kinds of things have consequences upon their uttering, but when those consequences affect the lives of others in long and harrowing ways, we are slow to actually engage.

This is the crux: no idea is worth more than a life unless that idea values life. There are lots of ideas that constitute no value, and we have no problem challenging their value publicly. But when those ideas are fundamentally about the destruction of others, they are not merely of no merit--they are considered intensely unjust. Some statements are not ‘ideas worthy of debate’, they are threats to persons. Suffice it to say in comparison that if an agent of ISIS writes a blog post which says that they wish to destroy America, the intelligence community doesn’t head up their briefings by first going ‘Let’s hear them out first’. Treating ideas such as white nationalism as defensible speech on the merit of being speech means that it is defensible to commit any speech act on the merit of it being a speech act, which the law already doesn’t permit. But more deeply, to argue that a person’s dessert of dignity under the law is debatable as a result of their identity is already a lie--your Constitution says so--so is arguing that they shouldn’t have it any more legally or morally defensible?

If a group says something to signal to marginalized people that they are viewed as lesser, as physically disposable, as people whose physical destruction is in fact a moral imperative to that group’s political ends, then as a rule their act is concerned with an incitement to violence. If it being imminent is the primary concern, then a threat would only be illegal if they acted on it immediately, and would only be punishable if the victim actually suffered.

If it’s not true for small threats, why is it true for large ones?

That is the thing which we are not ignoring: the threat of consistently looming violence, the threat of a widening conspiracy to commit violence and prejudice, a threat which is at the root of every related connection of violence which is born from it.

In some US states, the crime of calling a bomb threat is penalized by twenty years in prison and a fine of $50,000.

In the month of January 2017, there was an undeniably concerted increase in bomb threats made to Jewish centres across the United States.

That spate is therefore punishable. But that spate is directly related to festering antisemitism. And that antisemitism can so fester precisely because it cannot be observed for what it is: an incitement to prejudice and violence against a marginalized group of people.

b. The If/Then on Nazi Pugilism Theory And Praxis

It should follow immediately, then, that discourse on punching Nazis should be equally punishable, no?

That if talking about the destruction of socially marginalized groups is an offense to open communication and the dignity of all men, then talking about breaking the noses of those who talk about such aforementioned destruction is equally offensive?

Because I’m inclined to insist that it is. Philosophically speaking, it should be equally criminal to punch, or discuss the right of punching, a Nazi.

... hence the loop? Observe, as a result, that said loop is not closed! That if I should be punished for discussing the moral right to punch a Nazi, then the Nazis should already be in cells, already emptying their pockets of the same thousands that I don’t have! And if they’re not, and not going to be, then the moral bankruptcy of holding me accountable for challenging other people’s lack of moral accountability is visible in neon.

(This loop also exists re: discussing white nationalist speech as hate speech. Inevitably someone will say that this means that saying that Nazis shouldn’t have the right to threaten people removes their free speech, which means I want to deny people rights, which has already been stated above as the reason we’re here--ignoring that there is already a philosophical, moral, and legal framework under which white supremacist speech is indefensible.)

There is an antidote for widening abuse against marginalized groups for some time now, and it is visibly apparent that it will spread more rapidly and more violently in the coming periods. If you’re really going to tell people that it is more of a moral nonstarter to wish to physically resist violent ideology than it is that violent ideology can intimidate and prejudice and not be considered fighting words uttered in public, then the flaccidity of free speech ordinance makes its efficacy in protecting others moot.

That is to say that, in order to avoid a chilling effect placed on actual racist speech and their speakers by punishing it as fighting words, you have instead enacted a chilling effect on Jews and Muslims, among so many other marginalized groups. Which signals less that you care about preventing chilling effects in general, and more that when pressed to choose the system is empowered by its biases to prioritize the prejudice of Jews and Muslims (among so many other marginalized groups) and delegitimize the imminence of threats of violence against them.

If that system cannot rightly protect Jews and Muslims, and if MLK’s words that “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” can even be considered worthy of debate, then it must reasonably follow that any law, or enactment of law, which delegitimizes the imminence of threats of violence against marginalized persons must be broken.

And that means that one should be able to say that they want to punch a Nazi until and unless the law finally penalizes white nationalist hate speech. It means that one who is opposed to the political idea that destroying people of colour would be good for society should not stand for being punished for saying they’d punch a Nazi before white nationalists are punished for their hate speech.

Not that they should never be punished. Only that if a system doesn’t punish a consistent trend of terrorism, then its decision to punish those who oppose it is nothing but another arm of terrorism.

It also means, though, that in the wake of a threat of violence, one should be willing to physically resist aggressors precisely because the law is unjust, and as such will not defend marginalized people in such an instance.

c. The Phases Of The Moral Turn

A brief segue--not really a segue, because we get to the meat of engaging with unjust systems and their objects--into a critical tool I have become fond of applying.

Think of every moral and political act that one takes as the turn of a game called Civic Activity.

Your opponents are those whose moral and political decks--the ideologies which they value and stand for--are so at odds with your own and their goals that the act of their play puts them in a position for you to counter. (This is a moral principle in general; it is neither left nor right, neither moderate nor extreme. Political acts interact with opposing acts and their actors.)

In a trading card game like Magic: The Gathering, considering the ideal moment, the proper layer, within which to play a card is the strategic foundation upon all the complexity of its play is based. At some moments it is a matter of whether the card can be legally played--sorceries are available only at particular points in one’s turn, for instance. At most others, though, it is a matter mostly of effectiveness--the awareness that if you do not pay close attention to the state of the field of play, do not know deeply the best moments to play certain cards, or forget to ideally act in those moments, your best shot will be lost, and it will cost you the progress required for victory.

There are, then, phases of a moral turn. At its simplest, it is knowing not only what kinds of actions are played at what ‘speeds’--phone calls and social media awareness are cantrip instants, but some other acts cost more and must be played only upon their triggers, like the commitment to voting--but also knowing that one has a moral responsibility to play the best card for the best moment at any moment where victory is not assured.

If the state of the field of play then threatens to disenfranchise and physically abuse marginalized people, and if the opponent has had a very good turn to establish their foothold on such a field,

then one of your essential best plays is any play which counters the loss of marginalized lives long enough for you to remove the enchantments and equipments they have played to promise such losses.

It means not only challenging and undoing the legal structures that threaten marginalized people. It means confronting enemy plays which threaten to imminently cause such harm. It means being willing to stand in front of the people who wish harm, and it also curiously means being willing to physically resist them.

Now, in this analogy there is a clear difference. In Magic terms, there is a difference between ‘target creature cannot attack’ and ‘tap target creature; this creature doesn’t untap during its owner’s untap step’. There is also a difference between these two and ‘destroy target creature’.

In the real world, people cannot be regenerated.

So by the most basic assumptions of ideal play, any action which can tap people who wish to cause harm should be taken before they cause harm. It follows that, if you can assess such a threat early on in the turn, before they have even begun to cause harm, you should take that action if you can, so no harm can ever be done.

The state of play encourages white nationalists to publicly preach tenets of their ideology which specifically delegitimize the concerns of people of colour, among other marginalized groups.

What is your best play, and when shall you deign to make it?

d. End Step

So, to close: we cannot let hateful speech continue to be played in a landscape if we want that landscape to value and protect marginalized people. A system which ignores obvious harm to others on the part of white nationalist fighting words possesses no power to then use that system as a defense from resistance without tacitly confessing to valuing white supremacist terrorism.

... oh right I should mention Pepe, shouldn’t I? Argh. Okay, I’ll say this much:

Much of the things Mike says about Pepe and polysemy are things I have thought for some time without finding words for, and I’m sure even smarter people than Mike have written reams about the transition of the swastika long before today. But I am not sure, to that final question, whether it is valuable to ignore their extremism precisely because others are not. Others are being rallied by such extremism, which is deliberate and well-crafted to a fearsome degree.

I guess my question is that it is not enough to try to redeem Pepe, but to find ways to confront the Pepes that are simulacra of truly terrible people. Those people will continue to rally, after all. Unless those people and those Pepes can be rightly considered unjust speech actors and unjust speech acts respectively, we will continue to have this problem of what worth it has in pop culture discourse and how we should respond to it.

This is not the same as countering their speech, of course, and I can see attempts to ‘reclaim the Pepe’ as potentially valid. But I’m also valid because while I care about the discourse, I don’t care about Pepe. I can’t talk to you about how to ‘separate’ what are simply multiple frames of one character, because I don’t care enough about that character or those frames to see them as such distinct creative objects; and seeing as I didn’t care for the meme at its inception, I can’t say I’d miss it if it died as a result of its present association. Neither of these things are true of my critical assessment of the swastika, something fundamental to some people’s understanding and practice of faith.

I will say that I do think it’s just overwhelmingly hard to do. Its growth as a meme is directly related to its prevalence as a white supremacist symbol; if it weren’t Pepe, some other anthropomorphic memetic would have taken its place. Would you really want to imagine it? A parallel universe where we lost Doge instead? Nah, I’m good, fam.

Which means that it would probably better, to preserve the purity of the character as designed, to... put it out of its misery. To acknowledge that the rot has spread, tell Pepe goodnight, and move on. Because as long as there is a Pepe, and as long as that Pepe is beloved, people will corrupt it knowing that it will remain visible in pop culture. They’ll do it for spite. And this conversation will live longer than we are.

Either ideas mean things or they do not. If they do, either they are stated with an intent toward action, or they are not. If they are, any idea which is stated with an intent toward devaluing people of colour with an intent to guide imminent prejudice and violence is indefensible.

But then citizens have to challenge so much more speech acts than just Pepe, and because history hasn’t been challenging these speech acts, this mess persists.

#Channeling Ideas #PBS Idea Channel #'briefly'#hate speech #resist

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