#they weaponised their power as white people and when called out by me they weaponised being neurodivergent and being a woman

[coruscanti-arabi]

white people stop telling fans of color what is and isn't racism.

!Impossible Challenge!

!NOT CLICKBAIT!

[thebreakfastgenie]

Since this has come up again I gotta say I disagree with you about the use of the word. I think it’s bizarre to call it a slur that is extremely offensive to use and then also say it’s been “defanged” in the same breath. I also think it’s strange that I’m sure I have seen you reblogging posts about why people ID with slurs but then you also say that use of slurs is just “edgy” and “white noise”.

I assume you’re not really interested in a good faith discussion about it but the gist of it in my opinion is as follows.

1. Many people have had these slurs weaponised against them and using them in a casual context or self-identifying with them allows them to reclaim them in a positive way and take away the power of them. I.e. this isn’t a scary word because it was shouted out a car window at me or used by the person who assaulted me. I am not scared of this word. This word is who I am and I am okay with that.

2. Some people find that words commonly used as slurs feel more true to their experience than the polite, socially acceptable versions of the words. This can be for a variety of reasons but one I’ve commonly seen is that they feel as though the softer word is shying away from how they identify rather than facing it head on.

3. It can be a way to make people pay attention and get your point across. This can be wielded politically like in protests or pride parades or in pseudo political protests like online calls to action. As in, “the people who hate me call me a [slur]; well, this [slur] has something to say”.

4. Some people feel rubbed the wrong way by rainbow marketing (I.e. big corporations putting rainbows on things in June and talking about how inclusive they are while not actually doing anything meaningful to support the community and sometimes actively working against them in other ways, purely in the interest of getting the gay dollar) and like to self identify with words that squeaky clean corporations are never going to sell back to them.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it covers a few of the common reasons that I have seen. And it’s certainly not just the f word for gay men that gets used this way. Consider Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For, a piece of lgbt pop culture so entrenched that the term “the Bechdel test” is commonly used in media criticism. It certainly wouldn’t have been improved, in my opinion, by being named “Lesbians to Watch Out For”.

I think I was pretty clear that a word can be defanged in one context and remain a harmful slur in the other. The crux of my issue with using that word is that I do not know how it is being used when a stranger says it to me. As I have mentioned before, I live with two gay men, one of whom does use that word, and when he does it I am comfortable with it because I know him and I know the context in which it is being invoked.

I do not know that context online and I am not going to assume a stranger on the internet is a safe community member just because "tumblr is the gay website." First of all, it isn't, and I don't make a habit of assuming strangers' sexual orientations without strong contextual reasons to do so (e.g. gay bars, and even there it's not a guarantee). Secondly, people can be members of the community and still use slurs inappropriately.

I do not feel that everyone who is using slurs on tumblr is reclaiming them in any meaningful way. It looks much more like this is the cool new word, like a bunch of second-graders who just heard the word fuck for the first time. This is why I talked about it being defanged. My reference to white noise was because the word "gay" has been overused so much on this website (e.g. "gay little [x]") that it barely means anything anymore. It's practically a filler word. The alternative used to be "queer," but now that's been overused and sanitized because it was adopted by the mainstream and corporations found it. People picked up on "fruity" for whatever reason, probably because it's a bit old-fashioned and not used much by serious homophobes anymore, and also just sounds kind of funny. And that was quickly overused, the way memes are run into the ground.

But here's the thing: there is no word that is safe from rainbow marketing. There isn't. Maybe they would never use f*ggot now. Give it time. If you want to outrun mainstream society, you will always be hopping to a different word. Especially with the internet. People become desensitized very quickly to memetic language, simply due to saturation.

Tumblr users did not reclaim f*ggot. They turned it into a meme. They did the same thing with the limp wrist. And yes, gay people do these things with each other. In private. In gay spaces. Not on the public internet. Even if tumblr were a gay website (it's not) content from this site ends up on twitter, instagram, tiktok, and facebook. I do believe the use of slurs on this website is edgy. I won't speak for individuals, but as a trend it is at least partially motivated by being cool and getting clout. My point in saying it had been defanged was it was no longer accomplishing its purported goal of reclamation. Some of the reasons you listed for using slurs--facing things head-on etc.--rely on shock factor, and therefore have a naturally limited lifespan. People still say "queer as in fuck you," but when queer is the standard academic term and has been adopted by mainstream institutions, does it really hit the same way?

Each slur has its own history. I'm a fan of Dykes to Watch Out For. I attended a Dyke March last year. I am personally uncomfortable with f*ggot because unlike other slurs, I have personally experienced this one being used by homophobes. I think it was fairly popular in the United States in the 2000s, so many people have this experience, and therefore it is still more strongly associated with homophobia. This is still true outside tumblr, regardless of the defanging I observed here.

I am concerned about the eagerness of some to use slurs and engage in "ironic" homophobia (e.g. limp wrist) at a time when many countries are facing such a serious homophobic and transphobic backlash. I am concerned about slurs for the LGBT+ community in particular, because the idea of "who can reclaim them" is more fluid than with racial slurs and many other slurs. Someone can be raised in a homophobic environment and be a homophobe who calls people f*ggots, then come out as gay themselves and continue calling people f*aggots but it's "okay" now, whether or not they ever had any self-reflection about it. I am not accusing specific people of following this exact path, but this pattern is responsible for a lot of internalized and intracommunity homophobia.

I do believe that reclaimation is a conscious, active process. A lot of talk about reclaiming words on tumblr sounds like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy: I didn't say it, I declared it.

I hope I've explained my opinion a little bit here. Contrary to your assumptions, I am interested in a good faith discussion. The person who asked if they could call me a f*ggot was not.

[ofmythsandmadness]

to be called beautiful | d.h.

❛ do you ever miss, having someone around to love you?❜

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SUMMARY: vigilantes!au. you push the boundaries of your relationship, and ask for a wish you know won't be given back. (or — it's late, and after another night of patrol, loneliness sets in deep.) WARNINGS: slightly nsfw??? mentions to sex, no descriptions. it's not a sexual story, just a part of an inner monologue. WORD COUNT: 2.6k+ NOTES: reposting this in hopes it shows up this time (pls pls pls i'm gonna cry). i've been writing a whole other series that is a totally different writing style, but i've been trying to work out my emotions in small, focused pieces like this one when i can't focus. i might develop this into a small ficlit series of it's own, bc i think it's kinda fun — but we'll see how this goes.

THE BEAST THAT IS YOUR LONELINESS has been your burden for too long to say.

It's hold on you is a familiar ache, one you've felt for years, like a chronic tight tugging on your heart that refuses to give in no matter what you try. But you still refuse to name it for fear of coming to terms with the implications of it all. That you're really alone in this life and you're terrified of what that means and the fact that you can't have what your childhood stories promised would be yours.

Like the fool you are, you cling to the idea that it's just passing notions. You'll get over it one day. The flitting daydreams of a fairytale romance better fit for a vanilla Hallmark flick suck, but one day they won't hurt so bad. You'll numb and find a way to fill the void. And you try, you really do, pushing it down for the quick release of meaningless acts and walks of shames and cold bedsheets.

Sex is a toxic friend. You choose it's pull when your heart aches most and the loneliness begs for your breath to the point where every gasp of air is a privilege, not the bare minimum. It's not what you crave. There's no romance, no love. It's a trade and one that always leaves you feeling robbed of something you're not sure you ever even had.

You rarely remember their names. You know they probably won't remember yours. And why would they? The shudders, the whimpers, the cold moans that amount to nothing but crumbs of a supposedly passionate act only pass an hour, then they're gone. Or you're gone, if you're lonely enough to risk it. A bit of fun, a breath of pink and white and the feeling of someone pulling you closer, begging for your skin against theirs.

And then, it's all grey again. And you're alone at your apartment, washing your body free of the marks some stranger dared to press into your wilting skin, wondering what it would feel like for a lover to kiss you that same way. Running your fingers over every inch that has been caressed by so many faceless guests, trying to hold yourself in the way your foolish heart pounds for. But it's never enough. Your hands don't cup your flesh, don't mould and kiss and promise the carefully knitted lies any lover had dealt you in the past. And you're as cold as ever when they fall back to your sides. Nothing enflames your skin like you wishes it could — like those you wish would.

It's a discontent you live with. Just as you're sure millions of others do. That's what life is; you push yourself through the day, through your mundane day job and your taxing nighttime hobbies (because you sure as hell can't claim what you do as real work if your only pay is in blood and tears). You cling to the good times that happened too long ago to remember clearly, and make the moments that you're alone with your thoughts as small as possible.

But there's no time to consider all that now.

You scrunch your face up as tight as you can, squeezing your eyes shut to the point where you see stars, exploding like confetti in some absurd black void that hides behind your lids. For a moment you hold the pose, watching the stars erupt, until the position hurts too much and you have to release.

Surroundings blur and then clear as your eyes readjust from their disassociation. You stare blearily at the random coffee shop you and your 'associate' chose for the night. It's just as generic as the last five visited, a thousand shades of brown and red and weary smiles the bored baristas wear just for a cheap check that'll barely cover their asses. It's worn and empty; no one's hear except the two of you and the workers who probably hate you for being here so late.

Normally, you would feel like an asshole staying so late. But you can't bring yourself to move, or even suggest to. It's all too heavy. And even if it's in brooding silence, you don't want to leave your partner. Not yet, you beg the universe, just a few more minutes.

And, speaking of—

"What's got you so blue today?"

You blink. Look over to him, only to see him already watching you.

There's really no point lying. He always unravels you too quickly, too easily — it's the detective in him, unravelling anyone and scooping their truths from shivering flesh. Some sort of childhood trauma response he developed into another super power.

You used to hate it. Now...if you concentrate hard enough, his sharp gaze feels like one of a lover's.

"Don't know what you mean," you tell him, foolish and flustered. "I'm just fine."

"Bullshit. You've sighed a dozen times in the last five minutes."

"Tch. No I haven't."

"Did too!"

His teeth glint, white and clashing against the full pink of his lips. You wish you could denounce all the times you wondered what it would feel like to have them graze against your keening skin — but not even all the gods could cleanse of you of those thoughts. Those desperate, pleading, melancholic memories stain; he can't see them, but you do when you look close enough. And you can't escape it, much as you try.

"Seriously, though. What's up with you?"

Your gaze falls down to your hands, eager to escape his allure, though it's not a great distraction. It only makes you more bitter, really, taking in all the flaws that litter your weaponised limbs. They're calloused from a million fights. Your knuckles are scarred, aching from wounds you reopen every other night. A thousand scars from a thousand scrapes, cuts, slashes and grazes linger on once perfect skin. You don't know how many there are, anymore, only that you wish you could wipe them off. Start over, have a clean slate. Erase all your mistakes and be beautiful again.

"I'm just tired," you lie. It's tense and pitiful; you know you've screwed it up the second the words leave your lips. "S'all."

"Ri-i-ight, and I'm the goddamn queen of England."

The absurdity of his retort makes your lips twitch. It's not enough for a smile, your self-inflicted misery makes sure of that, but it's a seed of something. "Wow. Didn't know I was in the presence of royalty."

"Yeah, yeah. Shut it."

"My apologies, your highness."

"Shut up, you little shit," he grumbles, but it's as soft as you get from him. It's practically a cry of love — or your foolish mind paints it as such. You take his teasing insults as promises of adorations and his arguments are poems of lust and infatuation that tug on your heartstrings in ways you know they shouldn't.

You're partners, for crying out loud. Professional coworkers (if you call the bloody mess you two create work). You don't get to miss him, or crave him, or love him like you do.

"Something happen to you?"

You watch his own hands fold and unfold on the table. The long, delicate fingers stand out on a man like him; someone who paints himself in only sharp angles and cutting lines. But you think they match him well. They promise life. Bleed hope, even in the raised scars that lace his skin like your own. You've watched those fingers grip a blade, launch it into flesh, pull and push and dig and rip and take and committed acts of atrocity most people would run from. You know he probably thinks of his hands the same way you do. But you think they're beautiful.

"Nah. It's...it's nothing. Really."

You can't see his face, but you imagine his narrowed eyes and furrowed brows asking for an answer you're just not willing to give. "C'mon, just tell me. Can't be that bad."

Your body laughs. You hear it from some place far away. It's cold and hoarse; you wonder how long it's been since you've heard a genuine laugh from yourself. You wonder if he notices (and wishes he did, foolishly, frivolously...).

It's probably stupid, but you go for it.

"You ever miss having someone?"

Something creaks; his chair, groaning as he shifts his weight. One of his fingers taps against his empty coffee cup; idle music for a restless soul.

"Like, in what way?"

"I..." Your nails dig into your palms. This was a mistake, but one you have to follow through with. He won't accept silence after something like that. "In the cheesy, domestic sorta way? That whole, havin' someone to come home to, someone who you can talk to, someone who..." the words stick like molasses in the back of your throat. Try as you do, they refuse to give themselves to him, so you have to substitute. "Just, someone who likes you, past your body or, or whatever."

"Oh."

"Sorry." It's your turn to shift in your seat, awkwardly searching for something to occupy yourself with as this uncomfortable energy you've created carries on. But your cup's empty, and you don't have the cash to ask for another overpriced latte. "Forget about it. Let's talk about somethin' else, yeah?"

He doesn't answer that. In fact, he doesn't say anything at all for a moment, long enough to make you wonder if you've just crossed the line of no return. You can't bring yourself to look at him, hell your cowardice is painful enough to make you wonder if you should just make a run for it, say au revoir! to the bond you've built with this knife-obsessed robin hood and crush your heart forever.

It's tempting, and you consider it, but then he fills the silence.

"I miss Eudora sometimes."

Finally, your gaze tilts up. Your eyes meet his lips. He's not smiling anymore.

You guys don't talk about exes together. It's a forbidden topic, same as family or childhoods or the number of people that have cut you open and bled you dry for fun. It's too personal, and in this line of work, personal doesn't fly. But you know Eudora Patch, because this line of work requires a couple run ins with people like her, and because your partner in crime has never learned how to stop his emotions from bleeding into his expression.

"Not because I still love her, but y'know..." his fingers wave aimlessly. "It was nice, when it worked. I liked having someone to sleep with. In a non-sexual manner." His lip curls a little. "Guess the sex part was nice too, though."

You nod. "Yeah, I get that. It's...it was nice, having someone who knew you. Who wanted to make you feel good, not just for themselves but 'cause that sort of things matters."

"Mm."

"Y'ever consider pursuing that sort of thing?"

He shakes his head. His adamancy is a truck smashing into your heart — though you know you should have expected no less, it still hurts. "I can't. It never works, with people like us. Y'know?"

"Yeah. Makes sense." You want to say more. You probably should say more — but you doubt he wants to hear your woes about intimacy, and the pathetic ways you crave affection you probably don't deserve. "Yeah."

"Why?"

"Hm?"

His brows knot. "Why're you asking? Someone do somethin'?"

"What? No."

"Cause, like, if someone's hurt you, I'll—"

"I'm fine," you promise, and without thinking, you reach across the table to pat his hand. To reassure him like one would a lover. But just before your fingers meet his, the bitter reminder that he's not yours sets in and you draw back. Your hand falls a couple inches from his own. "And I can take care of myself, if I wasn't. Don't worry."

He chuckles mirthlessly. "Y'sure about that? You're still the dumbass that tripped over her own feet twice walking down an empty sidewalk, and—"

"—oh, you are such an asshole, why can't you just—"

"—so if you need someone to cut a bitch, I'm available."

You soften slightly. Try to smile, even if it's a false promise and probably hangs like a broken door on mismatched hinges. "I appreciate that. But I'm okay. Think I'm just tired, and a little lonely."

"What, I'm not good enough for you anymore?"

Bitterness seeps onto your tongue; it speaks before you can shut your lips around it. "You're fine as a partner against crime. But you're not anything otherwise, are you?" It feels like a taunt. You hadn't meant it to be — though, maybe you had.

If he takes your jeer poorly, though, it doesn't show on his face. He's still smiling and watching you, eyes simmering with a joke you wish you were in on.

"It doesn't matter though. Having someone's too complicated, 'specially for fools like us. Sometimes it's just..." you don't have a good answer. Not one he'd want to hear, anyways. "I just miss it sometimes. It'd be nice to have someone to talk to, or eat breakfast with in the mornings."

He nods slowly. "Yeah. Was nice, having another body around."

"Yeah. Ha. I," you stutter out a chuckle. Tug at your lip, nibbling at the cracked skin that comes with your long nights. "No one prepares you for how lonely adulthood is. Like, I'm half tempted to make friends with the takeout guys, just so I have a friend at all."

"We're friends."

"You know what I mean," you mumble, swallowing the bitter 'are we?' that almost makes its way off your tongue. "It was just nice when I had the time, to have a person around. Someone to like, hold hands with, or-or call me beautiful, sometimes. I-I can't remember the last time called me that, any..."

Fuck.

You hadn't meant for that last confession.

He wasn't supposed to hear that. It's too personal, too personal, too fucking personal for someone you don't even know.

Everything trembles; you're shaking like an avalanche, ready to sweep it all away under some snow drift. Never to be seen again. But you can't do that, there's no taking back the way your voice cracked as it reaches it's last word, and how your hand slips into a fist, ready to charge even though there's no punching your way out of this fumble.

You crack. Stumble out of your seat. Before he can talk you're moving, throwing a couple bills (too many for your poor wallet, you'll pay for that later) down and mumbling something about heading home. Your head's spinning and you just want to sit down again, pretend like this never happened and ask about some meaningless moment in a meaningless day that you wish could be yours and his, not just—

"—text me when you're goin' out again," you say, high and nervous. "I'll be around."

You turn.

"You don't have to leave."

"I got work tomorrow. Early."

"Thought you had the day off?"

Fuck, la deuxième acte. "Taking a shift for someone."

"Oh." He doesn't believe you. He would be a fool to. But he agrees anyways. "Okay."

"See ya, Kraken."

He doesn't answer you back. It's probably better that way.

BONUS

Many hours later, you're in bed, finally dozing off. You've rinsed off the filth of the night and resigned yourself to a barely adequate rest alone, too tired to consider what usually makes your mind race. It's been a long day; let future you contemplate all the ways you've screwed up.

Just as you're about to fall asleep, however, there's a small ping! that immediately wakes you up A notification sound reserved for only one person.

You groan but still roll over. Your heart may be a humiliated, burning mess, but it still beats for him, much as you've tried to stifle it.

kraken // 2:36 am. you available at 11p tomorrow?

kraken // 2:37 am. got word somethin going down at east docks, wanna check it out before it gets bad.

Relief is a sweet blessing. You exhale and smile into the darkness. He's still a professional, even if you seem unable to understand what that means.

you // 2:40 am. for sure. meet me at my place whenever and we can prep.

You leave it at that. Whatever he has to say after that, cannot be too important to waste your precious hours of sleep. So you roll over and shut your eyes and let yourself forget about the empty space that fills your place.

It's a decision you regret the next morning, when you wake up and realise what you missed.

kraken // 3:31 am. you ever get lonely for someone, feel free to let me know.

kraken // 3:32 am. might not make a great boyfriend, but i'll eat breakfast with you. so long as you're cooking.

A/N - I had a whole idea for two tired vigilantes (like what Diego does in season one, but partnered up) who both are really lonely and tired of life and all it's shit, and rely on each other more than they'll ever admit, and...I'll probably never write it, but this was a fun bit of that. two lonely emotionally deprived assholes who can't accept that maybe they can be loved and the person who wants to is right in front of them. :)

[qqueenofhades]

Hey, I loved your post about queerness in historical fiction. I was wondering if you could help me find a better way to explain (or know of someone who could) to the white (usually male) fans of Tolkien who are currently losing their minds because in the series for Amazon they have cast Sir Lenny Henry (a black man) as a hobbit. It feels like the exact same argument that was dealt with when Anya Chalotra was cast as Yennefer for The Witcher. It just seems like only white people are screaming that the entire cast must be white in both the case of the Witcher and Middle Earth in order to be "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" when it's all fantasy. I'm a white person and I don't get it. It's really frustrating that the only way to convince them that people of color should be allowed to play characters who aren't evil-doers is to bring up the existence of the potato in both Middle Earth and The Witcher. In this most recent fight, I've been called all kinds of names (one dude keeps saying I'm racist when I haven't brought up race or anything like that) and it's ridiculous because Henry was cast as a Harfoot who were hobbits with dark skin that they claim means Mediterranean not Black.

Ooof. I admire your initiative, I really do, but also: there comes a point where all good-faith efforts are totally futile, because these people don't actually WANT their beliefs challenged, and there won't be anything you can do about it except to exhaust yourself. You can throw all the material or documentary evidence at them that you want, but it won't work, because racism, white superiority, and the assumption of a monolithically white medieval history are a helluva drug. They are eager to split ridiculous hairs like "dark skin means Mediterranean instead of black" because, well, racism, whether or not they want to acknowledge that. Because Mediterranean is at least European, whereas for them, Black is Bad, Inferior, or otherwise Unacceptable. This doesn't even get into the types who want to claim that Ancient Rome (which was rather notably, y'know, Mediterranean and North African) was actually lily-white, because even dark-skinned Southern and Eastern Europeans can't ultimately make the racist cut.

Tolkien himself obviously had problems with his depiction of race and racialized people (witness the Haradrim, "men from the South," being the only people of colour in the story and generalized as an indiscriminate evil force fighting for Sauron against the white/Northern European heroes). That's not to say Tolkien was actively racist (see: the letter he wrote to the Nazi German would-be publishers of The Hobbit, inviting them cordially to get fucked), but it does mean that he was steeped in the usual assumptions and expectations of a white upper-class British man in the 1920s and 1930s, and not least the mindset that the (white) rulers of the (nonwhite) British Empire were superior, morally correct, and the privileged resisters of "evil" political systems. (This isn't even getting into how Germany was admired throughout the long 19th century for its perceived cultural and social superiority, the American eugenics movement directly influenced the Nazis, a lot of people thought that Hitler's only mistake was being too obviously crazy, and America and Britain only actively entered World War II when their territory/perceived global power was infringed upon.)

White people tend to assume that if they personally don't hold discriminatory attitudes (and they usually do, just because that's what society has taught them for almost all of modern history), they can't be racist, and it's a personal insult to call them that. They know that Racism Is Bad, but likewise, it's always someone else's fault, not theirs. See the huge brouhaha over the supposed plan to teach "critical race theory" in American public schools, which is really just acknowledging that centuries of racism and discrimination have created a system that disadvantages people of color at every level. This is absolute heresy for today's right wing (which has become ever more extreme, reactionary, and historically amnesiac) to admit. They can admit historical racism, sometimes, maybe, only in demonstrably "bad" people, but as far as they're concerned, there was no lingering effect whatsoever, and it's "un-American" (read: anti-white supremacist) to insist otherwise. Land of the free! Everyone treated the same! Etc. etc. The continued inferior or disadvantaged life outcomes of people of color is, according to these types, simply a result of them not being motivated/ambitious/smart enough to fix their own broken circumstances. Those centuries of genocide, cultural destruction, use as literal chattel slaves, etc, has nothing to do with it.

If this sounds ridiculous: well, obviously, it is. But as reactionary mindsets have become troublingly normalized and social media has allowed people to spread both passively and actively racist content to unprecedented degrees, it has also leaked into media. The type of white-man-fan you're arguing with won't accept any "historically accurate" argument for the inclusion of non-white people, even as they're staking their own (bad) arguments on that hill. This is because they want to claim the sole privilege to create a nostalgic/imagined/fantasy space that looks just like them. Their underlying belief is that people of color never had any power or consequential role in history, and shouldn't have, so they don't want to see a space, even an explicitly fantastic/non-historical setting (like LOTR, The Witcher, GOT, etc.), where this is the case. Whether or not they want to say it, or even if they're aware of it, they feel that even if they've been unhappily forced to accept a small lessening of their cultural power just because we no longer automatically accept that white men get to run everything, they at least can take comfort in a (white) past. And now, or so they think, the "politically correct" types also want to ruin their racist fantasy comfort zone. They can't even escape from multiculturalism in media, as it too has become steadily more diverse.

Basically: it's racism, Jan. It's many levels of racism, you can't argue those people out of it, and you have to identify and understand that, especially since their favorite diversionary tactic will be the schoolyard maneuver of going, "no, YOU'RE the racist!!!"

(Also: "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" should tell you everything you need to know. These people know absolutely nothing about history, but that won't prevent them from weaponising it in defense of the perceived threat to their cultural and racial domination. Besides, yet again, fantasy universes have no claim to historical accuracy, and if you say that, I assume you just want to feel justified in creating a fictional universe where the only powerful/consequential people are white heterosexual western European-coded men, because you not-so-secretly wish it was still that way in reality.)

[luna-rainbow]

i dunno if this is the right place but i need to vent. okay just delete this. but i legit just witnessed a disabled poc mcu fan get dogpiled on for calling out abelism in this fandom. by other poc. I hate it here i wish i could leave.i hope you stay sake. fuck.

Before I start, I’m sorry that people have had to witness that. It sounds like quite a few of my Tumblr mutuals are living with disabilities and it’s disheartening to see their experiences being dismissed. That said, I haven’t seen the post in question (erm, please don’t send it to me) so I’m not sure what the discussion was.

It’s definitely been a persistent trend ever since the show screened and I feel like there’s a few issues at play here, and I’m going to try and not put my foot in it (again).

Firstly, I think people are just overjoyed that there is finally representation. It’s taken the MCU 13 years to put a Black American superhero at the forefront of a franchise, and to its credit, it made race a central discussion of the series. For a lot of people this is meaningful and necessary and long overdue, and they’re willing to overlook a lot of flaws because it’s finally happened. I feel like most people are probably in this camp. This series means a lot to them and even objective, thoughtful critique can feel hurtful because of how much sentimental value they’ve attached to the series. I know I can be that way about things I love and…there’s not much either side can do about this because they’re both valid.

Secondly, there’s no argument that race is the central theme in this show, and some fans might feel by criticising the ableist aspect, people are trying to detract from the important issues of racism. For these people, I’d invite them to consider that ableism and racism are actually tightly intertwined, particularly when you pull eugenics into play. I just saw a post recently about “racial norming” in football players that denied compensation for African American players who acquired chronic traumatic encephalopathy from the sport. Is it racist? Shockingly so. But it’s also reflective of the pervasive ableist attitude in sports that made it take decades for CTE to be even acknowledged.

The disabilities that Bucky has - namely his amputee status and PTSD - are not unique to his race or gender. A study in 2005 showed that African Americans (based out of Chicago) were less likely to have been offered limb-salvaging surgery and were more likely to have lower limb amputations, even after controlling for disease severity and complexity. Amputation care doesn’t end with surgery - these people go on to have lifelong needs for rehab, prosthesis and equipment, all of which cost a lot of money. PTSD is also more common and more likely to persist in African Americans because of the intersection of racism and health culture. Health and disability is such an important aspect (and perpetuator) of systemic racism that it’s a disservice to dismiss discussions about the problematic portrayal of disability in TFATWS.

Thirdly, and I believe this is a very small minority that I see more frequently in the real people/Sebastian fandom than the TFATWS fandom, is people weaponising the term “racism”. It is a powerful label that once you stick onto your opponent essentially invalidates everything else they do or say. Again I think the number of people who do this is very few, but it’s uncomfortable when it happens because it prevents any nuanced discussion from happening, and it also feels in some way like people capitalising on the real struggles of systemic racism (it’s particularly irksome when white people do this…). I also feel it’s vital to make a distinction between “racist (action)” and “racist (person)”. Most situations fall into the former and the person is not intentionally malicious, and they should be allowed the opportunity to correct that one action instead of being wholesale labelled as a racist.

But yeah…not all of the fandom has welcomed discussions about the series’ ableist attitudes. Remember your friend the block button and use it liberally 😉

[derpcakes]

So we watched (nay, Experienced) the BBC/Netflix Dracula series

Brought to us by everyone’s favourite team, Steve Moff and Mark Gatiss, promising to be an innovative and exciting new vision of the classic novel

Boy it was definitely something!!!

First I will say: obviously Moff is not my favourite TV writer and my fam and I did go into this with a bias. I’m happy to report, though, that it’s going to be one of these shows that haunts me forever, because if it had just been bad I could have said “bleh” and deleted it from my brain. But because parts of this were genuinely cool, interesting, and fun, and parts of it genuinely had potential, all the bits that were bad stand out as so much worse and the whole thing feels as cursed as a 500 year old undead count. 

Things that were enjoyable and well put-together:

Van Helsing has been gender-swapped into a vampire-hunting nun and her cat-and-mouse game with Dracula is rife with belligerent sexual tension. I was ready to hate this, and ready for like, Sherlock and Irene Adler 2.0, but their dynamic was actually pretty fun to watch! Their power balance is kept even throughout most of the show, and Helsing is never struck down because of ~womanly failings~ or infantilised. She’s consistently really clever and, even if there are some cringey one-liners, I found her and Draccy’s playful quest to murder each other one of the most fun parts of the show. It could’ve been better, but it was enjoyable! (I also like how Helsing isn’t Young and Hot, but is a capable older lady, and her actor and Draccy’s even seem about the same age. Amazing)

The second episode is a spooky murder mystery/horror mini-movie on a ship, with a cast full of interesting characters who all had different things going on and different relationship dynamics that were compelling to watch. There’s even an interracial gay couple! And they’re like, written pretty sympathetically and to be layered and flawed in ways that didn’t feel too stereotypical! And they don’t die first!! Wack! I understand the bar is on the ground, but it’s still worth a mention

Some fun with vampire lore: Draccy absorbs knowledge and traits from people he drinks blood from (which is how he learns languages. Get Duolingo, dude, stop eating people), leading to the intriguing suggestion that myths like “vampires will die in sunlight” and “vampires are afraid of holy symbols” have kinda become real to him even if they don’t literally work, because he’s swallowed so many people to whom these superstitions and beliefs were law. I’m sure this isn’t the first time this has been done, but groundbreaking or no it was kinda neat

Things that were not enjoyable and well put-together:

EVERYTHING ELSE

Episode 1: a weird speedrun of most of the original novel, feat. weaponised nuns and a weird fixation on whether or not Jonathan Harker and Draccy boned. They did not. Dracula pops out of the body of a wolf and he’s Whole Ass Naked. Him and Van Helsing have a power play where she stands just on the threshold of a convent and calls him a little bitch, knowing he can’t come and get her. A knife is licked. 

Episode 2: aforementioned cool ship horror story. Definitely the best ep. It really makes me think about hbomb’s critique that Moff is pretty good at doing standalone stories (and pilots), but when things are tied into a bigger narrative things get zonkers. 

Episode 3: Things Get Zonkers!!

Let me just. Okay. I have the most to say about this one because this is where things really got batshit. And yet, also really boring? How does that figure? Anyway:

Dracula emerges from under the sea and finds that 123 years have passed and he’s now the star of a Modern AU. Upon setting foot on British sand he is immediately accosted by what appears to be an anti-vampire task force. There’s a helicopter. It is later explained how they knew to pounce on him at this exact moment, but holy god it was wild to watch the entire British Secret Service descend on this one wet bastard in a suit

The editing shifts aggressively in the direction of Sherlock. Mark Gattis is there playing an amazingly annoying character. There’s a fuckign.... Underground Secret Society devoted to studying vampires and they put Drac in a Designated Glass Prison for Smug Geniuses (also as seen in Sherlock). Van Helsing is dead but her great-great-grand-niece is played by the same actress and. Okay. Van Helsing, vampire hunting nun, possesses her descendent and rises through the ether to roast Drac one last time, and he’s DELIGHTED TO SEE HER AGAIN. 

And she has cancer, right, so her blood is poisonous when Draccy tries to bite her, but in the end, right, the end of the episode, right, the final shots of the show, he comes to a place where he’s willing to die, and she’s already dying, and so he drinks her blood and they die together on a table while cinematic metaphor vision shows them having sex in the middle of the sun

There was a badly CGI-ed vampire baby. Jonathan Harker falls from a tower and a scene later they flash back to this event by reversing the footage of him falling down, meaning we just see him go VWOOP up through the air, bouncing off the wall on the way. Van Helsing says the words “come boy, suckle” when she’s goading Drac into drinking her blood. The show sits in a weird middle ground where the characters talk about sex a lot (”dID yOu HaVe sExUaL iNterCOURSE with COUNT DRACULA?”) and Drac is clearly meant to be super magnetic and sexy but the characterisation and cinematography is not horny at all. People have these sexy-type dreams of their lover of choice when Drac is drinking their blood but even those are very boring and weirdly chaste, except of course for the final one where, if I  can take the chance to remind you, Van Helsing and Dracula have symbolic Mind Palace sex inside the centre of the solar system

I can’t speak too much on its quality as an adaptation since I actually haven’t read the book, but splitting the story so that some characters (the Harkers, Van Helsing) existed in the time the story is set, and some (Lucy, Dr Seward) exist in The Modern AU felt very strange. Was there any reason to set the third episode in modern times, apart from the fact that I guess they wanted to do their Sherlock thing again? Or, perhaps, because they wanted to do their Jekyll thing again?? Oh my god, that’s what the editing reminds me of - the small clips of Jekyll I’ve seen. The zooming. The slow-mo. The emphasis on The Monster Man’s weird goddamn teeth

(Also, I don’t really feel qualified to dig too deep into it, but I will say there felt something a bit uncomfortable about Lucy being black in this version, while also being written to be very promiscuous and vain. idk. Also, since it happened in an ep of Sherlock as well, “weedy white Nice Boy rescues the Very Cool woman of colour he has a tragically unrequited crush on” is now an official Moffattis trope)

Count Moffatula is an experience. Its pacing is buck wild. The speeding through the original plot and the mish-mashing of elements in the Modern AU section feels like another expression of contempt for the source material on Moff’s part. Someone says “reality is overrated” in a show set in the 1890s. Draccy quotes a Beatles song. He also makes quippy allusions to having eaten various famous figures and basically winks at the camera every time. Granted, this wasn’t as obnoxious as I was maybe expecting, but there are still too many lines of dialogue where you think “oh, the writers high-fived each other after they wrote that one, huh”. The fact that Moff has such vitriol against fan fic writers is more and more grating every day because this is so, so clearly a zany-ass fanfic that he happens to be getting paid for. The costumes are nowhere near as nice as they could have been, and Dracula’s cape looks like his mum made it for him for the school play in which he is playing Dracula. 

This show is So Much. Watch it to share in this fever dream. Or don’t, and save approximately 5 hours of your life. God. 5 hours. Who was I before Count Maffatula. Who am I now. Why was his cape so bloody ugly. Why did they bone in the centre of the sun

[snow--blanket]

little soldier, smaller gods

word count: 4846

fandom: ikemen sengoku

characters: tokugawa ieyasu based off/inspired by leigh bardugo’s work from the language of thorns!! please read it i implore you ***

There is a place where the children knew not to go and where the adults would twist their arms when they tried to. The path there started from gravel, to wooden pickets pledged to the earth, and ends at a dirt path, where it wound like a crooked finger beckoning. 

This cottage had the roof tilted unsightly, like an abused seesaw heavy on one side. the windows could only be called such – the aging moss and grime had kept it shut for years and years, and it resembled more like a foggy lens than transparent glass. 

In this cottage lived a man. He was old, hunched-over back and his movements were like old machinery. His voice, at the very least, he was still proud of. It rang silver and regal, and whenever he spoke, the words were like breath commanded. 

However, such was the cause that had driven away the people around him. 

This man was old and lonely, and he lived alone in the shamble of a house he once called a castle. The vacancy in his home bred boredom, and so he chipped away at little crisps of the cracked wall and stole iron wires from a crow’s nest. He melted steel over the hearth of his humble kitchen and it bled into his hands as it did into the molds. 

With his coal-ash fingers and his squinted eyes, the old man had created ingenious machinations – one, a clock that told the time by different twittering of different kinds of birds. Second, a mechanical wolf that howled and hunted cotton-like rabbits, and when gnawed on, had raspberry juice flow like blood. The third, gingerbread man that moved and danced on a tightrope, balancing things on its head. Fourth, a roulette wheel of different kinds of murders, and whichever the ball stopped at, it would happen in tandem the next day. 

Once, the roulette wheel stopped, and the next day, you could hear the hounds howl silencing the screams of a man being ripped from stomach to crotch. His blood flowed like raspberry.  

It seemed more than a little pathetic for an old man to tinker with toys, and still, still, his empty little heart desired company. Company, most of all, to admire his genius inventions, to awe at his skill. He wanted an audience. 

And so the old man’s hunched back bent over once more, his baked hands and his sight – strained like lemon being juiced – he created a toy soldier, decorated with six buttons on his uniform and a medal crested onto his lapel. 

Tokugawa Ieyasu, he said into the empty air, gazing at his creation. That is your name. You have been made to protect me, to serve me, and to bring me glory. 

The green soldier started moving, it’s fabricated limbs now stretching like clay, and appeared before him was a soldier whose eyes would only observe green, and the hair dyed from the petals of a sunflower. 

The old man sent the toy soldier to guard the front of his crooked house, as crooked houses attracted the crooked and the morbidly curious. 

Ieyasu stood dutifully under the loom of the tilted roof as shade with his hand dutifully at his waist, a ready grip at the hilt of his sword. 

When curious children came, he unsheathed his sword and swung in an arc, a warning. The children yelled and skittered away back into the village, and they would tell their mother and fathers about a little toy soldier with a sword in his hands. 

The mothers would go, Oh yes, my dears, I’m sure it was, and roll their eyes at them. Now, would you like to tell me the real reason for the dirt on your knees and the scraped elbow? 

The fathers would let them be, saying that a little adventure never hurt anyone. But still, late at night in the pubs, you could hear the exchanges between men regarding this fellow soldier with a sword, about the war that passed yet was still in the hesitance in their voices and the matchlock rifles hidden under the creaky floorboards, if only you stepped the right way. There are wolves, they’d say. Dangerous times for us all, and no wolf will eat my child. Still, they couldn’t help the lingering feeling that it was not so simple.

They were right. 

Ieyasu reported back to his master, and he frowned. “It seems you’ve scared them away,” he’d said disapprovingly. Ieyasu did not understand. Was that not what he was made for? 

The old man set foot in his room once more, engineering himself a painful brace to straighten his posture and screwed in teeth as glossy as steel into his bloody gums, his magnificence only slightly overwhelmed by the yells and rips of pain he’d vocalised, muffled only by an old, wooden door. 

The next day, it was observed that the old man no longer looked old — his bearing was upright as to effect a soldier’s, and his teeth were gleaming and his hands were dusted in powder so as to rid the burnt charcoal and molten ire that had been engraved into them. 

Ieyasu was ordered to venture forth into the forest, now. “Farther, into the forest, there is a beast of which can only be slain by the likes of you,” his master said, and crested upon his lapel another medal. It was only Ieyasu left. The gingerbread man had gone missing, and the roulette wheel went unspun a long time ago. 

Ieyasu felt his lungs fill with pride and marched on forwards into the forest once more, the steady thump-thump-thump of his heart beating to the drums of war. 

Time passed like this, and the mystery thickened around the crooked house with the old man whose posture was dignified and commanded respect, and the voice to charm them so. The deeper into the forest Ieyasu went, the more people took notice of a soldier in the forest, with his nimble fingers and white teeth. 

Finally, a group of scampering adults said enough was enough, and decided to open the closet lay in the monster. They took upon the pitchforks — sharpened like fangs of some beast — and swished here and there, chancing upon the crooked house. 

When they barged into the house, they were greeted by the smell of honey lemon tea brewing, the miraculous lights strung from both end of walls, even as there was no generator or power source anywhere in sight. The floorboards were shined like glazed cake in caramel, and the windows, more window-like, were open, letting the smell and sights waft out.

“I see we have an audience,” said the old man, who did not look old. His smile showed his polished, refined teeth, and the townspeople became all the more wary. “Sit down, why don’t you? The tea is almost done.” One might have thought it was a suggestion, had they not hear the voice that carried it. 

This is the problem with lesser demons. They dress in tailcoats and emblazoned suits, are pleasant conversation partners, smiled when needed and laughed little, so as to captivate the young ladies and make older women clutch at their handkerchiefs in bashfulness. They do not show their horns until you are impaled in it. 

Ieyasu, however, was still deep in the forest and rested under the shade, shifting his sword to a more comfortable position. 

A beast, thought Ieyasu. A beast that can only be slain by the likes of me. 

The likes of me. What exactly did that mean? He let his eyes rest on the sword by his side. Weaponised? A soldier? Perhaps both? 

He didn’t notice the wind this time, did not hear the high laughter of an old friend bark at him. 

He thought he heard the howl of a wolf somewhere, and the trees that once gave him shade lent to him darkness he found difficult to accept. “Who’s there?” he asked, his sword unsheathed in one swift movement.

The darkness answered, and a shape moved towards him. He felt the grip on his sword tense. An enemy! The first he’d slay. 

He thought about the medal crested on his chest. A beast that can only be slain by the likes of you. 

The shape moved, darkness peeling off its body like second skin. “I am not an enemy, sir. I come in peace.”

Peace? No enemy would be one with peace. “Lies! Unsheath your sword!” 

“I do not possess such things,” said the shape. It moved closer and closer, out of the darkness, and into the light. Ieyasu’s hand trembled. 

The shape was shaped like a human, at least like the humans children drew on sand with sticks. Except…. “I apologise,” said Ieyasu. 

The gingerbread man smiled, his how-many-days frosting, which once smelled like vanilla pods, now a smudge on his face, like the crying cottage, leaking out from it’s corners. His arms were gone, the edges bitten out by some zig-zagged teeth, and whenever he walked, crumbs followed him like a second shadow. 

“It is no bother. I have no need for these arms, anyway.” The gingerbread man’s eyes smiled, frosting eyes curved like a crescent moon inverted. He looked at the sword Ieyasu still held. “Though it seems you do.” 

“Yes,” said Ieyasu, and his lungs filled with pride again, his jaw cut sharp like shrapnels. “I've come to slay the beast that terrorizes this forest.” His tone was somber, as if he wanted to give the gingerbread man his own sword – to protect himself. “And the one that inflicted on you pain.” 

The gingerbread man’s eyes were pitying, two pricks of eyes of black that looked at him as if he was the one without arms. “It wasn’t the beast that made me so. It was myself.” 

“What?”

“Have you ever wanted something, soldier?”

“I live to protect other people, and my master. It is my duty and my honour.” The words felt familiar and came easy. 

”It started when i wanted something, you see. I was a mere gingerbread man, yet I was used as a toy placed on a string. He stacked books on my head and magical, glassy balls with it’s hook pierced into my hands. I wanted to be eaten, and I felt myself move. Then, I wanted to eat. so I used one of my hands and broke the brittle arm of the other, and I ate it.” 

“You are crazed,” warned Ieyasu. “Return with me. My master will fix you anew.” 

“Crazed I may be, I wanted it.” The gingerbread man looked at him. “Is there nothing you want, soldier?” 

“I want to protect my master and my people.” 

“And when he finds another soldier?” asked the gingerbread man. “If your people find another hero, and your sword will not be yours?” 

“I—” A beast that can only be slain by the likes of you. He had said that. The likes of him. “That is impossible.” The likes of him. There was only one him, after all. 

“Like a humble treat like myself might move?” 

“You are—” The likes of you. “We are different from each other.” Ieyasu snarled, but he was not able to hide away his confusion. “I am loyal.” 

“Maybe you are.” The gingerbread man nodded, and then tilted his head. “Perhaps instead of telling me to return, ask yourself why you remain.” 

“You are supposed to be nothing but a juggling toy,” hissed Ieyasu.

“That is the will your master has exerted upon me. I danced on the line he tied, and I walked at his command. But at night, when he is not watching, I tore pages from the books that would be my burden, and in doing so I thought: why not another page? Why not another book? Why not shatter another glasspiece?” 

���That is greed,” said Ieyasu. “I am not greedy.” 

“And nor are you righteous.” He looked at him differently this time, like he was nothing but an innocent cookie nibbled by the cupboard rats. “Tell me your name, soldier.” 

“Ieyasu. Tokugawa Ieyasu.” 

“I see. What master do you serve?” 

That was an obvious question. “Master—” But he couldn’t remember. Or had he known it at all? His master never called himself by anything but. Ieyasu remembered the moments where his master picked him up and laid him down somewhere high, and there he saw many people like his master enter the room. They hadn’t called him by any name either. “I don’t…know. but he is my king nonetheless.” 

Speaking of which, a king of which kingdom? He hadn’t seen any other soldiers in the barracks, only he. But, well, given his master’s private disposition, it was only to be expected that he only trusted one soldier as his guard. 

“I see,” said the gingerbread man. “And what of your medals? What was the first one for?”

Ieyasu looked at his lapel. “The first one—” the first medal that had been crested onto him, the first of everything. He’d slain the beast, he had killed a wolf once, one whose teeth shone like knives, and claws that tore at his arm, removing it from it’s sockets and two creatures howled in pain that night. And yet. Yet, his arm was here. Which wars had he won? What put the honour on his chest, this medal? “I do not recall,” said Ieyasu. 

The gingerbread man looked at him softly, and Ieyasu imagined that look was the kind one might give to a child. “I live with ants now, can you believe it? It seems there’s use to my balancing act, after all.” the gingerbread man turned on his heel and started to disappear into the shadows of the trees. “I hope you can find yourself, little soldier.” 

“I am not little!” yelled Ieyasu to the darkness. The wind howled then, a barking laughter that silenced the voice of a whining child. 

He didn’t understand. He was Tokugawa Ieyasu. He remembered this. His master was….his master. His king. He used to slay beasts, vanquish the evil in the name of protecting his master. He remembers the pain of his arm being torn, the pain of being snapped in half like brittle candles. So why? Why couldn’t he answer? Why hadn’t he? 

In the end, Tokugawa Ieyasu chose to slay the beast. Indeed, he was Tokugawa Ieyasu in the end, and who he served did not matter. He was a soldier, and he had a duty. He was to defeat the evil, protect the good, return to his master with another medal on his chest and the heart of the monster in his hands. 

Ieyasu stepped into the darkness once more, in search of the beast. It did not take long. Once he stepped into the shadows, it felt like an overbearing something was pressing to his sides, and there was a heavy stone in his chest, weighing itself in the cavity of his lungs. 

His feet brought him to the entrance of a cave, where it smelled like rotten flesh of a man whose insides were torn at and the scent of decay that followed suit. It was here. The beast was here. 

Although he wanted to pinch his nose, it wasn’t very soldierly of him. Yes; this, too, was part of his hurdle, part of the challenge in loyalty. He had to remain unwavering. He gripped his sword tighter. “Beast!” he yelled, and the sound echoed, like the cave was whispering on his behalf as to silence the doubts in his mind. “I've come for your head!” 

Instead of a powerful howl that shook the trees, what answered was a whimper. A dog came lumbering, dragging along its weight like a ball and chain. “You’re here again, boy.” said the dog, and Ieyasu flinched, reflex lost to instinctual fear at the sight that met him. 

The dog had two heads, parted at the middle like a tree branching east and west. He returned to his stance once more, noticing the blood that stained it’s gums, it’s yellow teeth like bones hollowed and sharpened. 

He pointed his sword onto the dog, a challenge. “What did you mean by ‘again’? Was there another soldier before me?” he pushed forth, courage bought by the blade. “Did you eat him alive as well?” 

“It has never been more than one,” said the dog, both heads speaking, and their voices overlapped like the cave that echoed. Caves of caves, voices on top of voices. “What did he make you into this time, boy?” Both heads tilted, like the slanted roofs, like wilting plants. 

“He made me into a soldier,” This, he said with confidence, for it was an irrefutable fact, no matter what anybody else said. “I see. Then a soldier you must be until a soldier you are no more.” 

One head twisted, warped like kitchen towels rung out to dry, and the blood squeezed out of it and watered the ground, dripping, dripping, dripping, like an overfilled kettle bubbling with foam and overflowing. The tendons stretched like gum, stretched in an unsightly way Ieyasu knew could not be right. 

Plop! One head of the dog fell to the earth, and it presented itself to Ieyasu like the silence of graves, like the smell of death masked by smoke. Something choked at his throat – a lump had made itself home there, and Ieyasu was no heavy eater, but he felt like he might throw up whatever he had for breakfast. 

“Well?” asked the dog, eyes like blood moons. “You have my head. On you go, boy.” the dog retreated into the cave, and his voice echoed. “Be careful of the master you serve.” Voices on top of voices, doubts on top of doubts.  

Ieyasu picked up the severed head of the dog, and its eyes stared back at him like it was truly alive. He turned his heel, remembering that it was nearing night, that his master was waiting. 

All the way back to the house of his master, there was no satisfaction to be found. What happened to heroism, to conquering fear? His hand still shook like a creature of fear and his heart pounded like a jackrabbit caught in some wolf’s fangs. Even with the medal crested upon his lapel, he could not ignore the feeling that he did not deserve….whatever he got. 

“I've returned with the beasts’ head.” These words, although sounded vain, were shame that stuck itself to the roof of his mouth, like moss to the ceiling. 

His master smiled, and even that couldn’t soothe his heart rate. “Good work,” he said. His master took the head from him, and the act was disturbingly casual. He gently guided Ieyasu away, back into his room with his work table. “Rest,” he cooed. “You must be tired.” 

Ieyasu found that he was tired, and stifled a yawn. “If you’ll excuse me.” The thrill of one whole day wore him down, and the beat of his heart followed the humming of his master’s. 

Ieyasu sat down on the chair, and he closed his eyes. Drowsiness took him – but before it could do so, he heard the high voice of a child in his master’s room. Of course, he had not been there to protect his master, and now some child had wormed its way into his master’s castle! 

Ieyasu leapt to his feet, and his unsheathed sword sliced the midnight air. With rickety, careful steps, he approached the opening of the door, the light cutting the darkness in one thin line. Ieyasu steadied his breath, tightened his grip, squared his shoulders. 

“Your name,” The voice of his master sounded through the wooden doors, and Ieyasu halted. “Is Tokugawa Ieyasu.” Ieyasu felt the air leave his body, felt the blood drain him like he was one of the rabbits in the mechanical wolf’s jaws, makeshift blood spilling onto the grass. “You have been made to protect me, to serve me, and to give me glory.” 

Ah, yes, this feeling. He remembers this feeling, remembers the stone in his lungs and breakfast threatening to exit his stomach the way it came. Ieyasu covered his mouth, a sourness taxing his tongue. 

The likes of you. He remembers these words well. The likes of him. What did that mean? His master had created another toy. With the same name, with the same voice that had commanded his movements. Tokugawa Ieyasu, he called it. 

Another soldier. Another one like him? 

Ieyasu crept to the door, the glazed caramel floors now looking murky and like the rust of gears, as if showing their true colours in the night. Ieyasu had never stepped a foot outside at night before, but…. the likes of you. The likes of him. The words resounded in his head, and he needed answers. 

He did not count his steps as he usually did, did not follow his legs to the beat of war drum in his heart, a memorised tune. He ran until his legs were weary, ran until all the breath in his body spilled to the cold air, ran like a thief under the watch of moonlight.  

When he arrived at the cave, he yelled. “Beast!” the sound echoed, the night wind paying no heed to the haste in his voice. “Come out of your cave!”

The darkness answered with a howl, and Ieyasu unwittingly took a step back. Unpeeled by the moonlight, a shape resembling the dog moved forward. Once it revealed itself, Ieyasu felt that sensation again, his tight chest, his body a scale weighed by stones. “You are not the beast,” his thoughts could come up nothing braver than ones that had slipped forth. 

The beast — now true to its name — howled heavenwards, as if answering the beck of some god that had come calling, answering to the moon that was their witness. “I am a beast by night,” the wolf snarled. “Your master made it so.” 

That was impossible. But was it really? Ieyasu had remembered the gingerbread man, remembered his master’s voice calling another his own name. “I do not understand. My master— he has created another soldier. please–” Ieyasu was not beyond begging now, with his shaken core and his forested eyes like trembling leaves. “–please help me.” 

“I told you, soldier. It has never been more than one.” The wolf looked at Ieyasu pitifully. “You are the same boy that has returned to me again and again, seeking my head on the orders of your master. Perhaps the soldier your master created is simply a toy.” The wolf tilted its head curiously, and it resembled the kind of curiosity he’d seen in children. “And perhaps you are one too.” 

Ieyasu wanted to open his mouth to reject the words, but before he could the wolf had pounced on him, digging his fangs into his arm. Ieyasu screamed in pain, trying to shake the wolf off him, but it would not budge. 

“Help!” he screamed, hoping the night would take his voice far. “Someone help me!” the wolf would not budge. My sword, he thought. Where is my sword? Ieyasu’s eyes scattered until he felt up the hilt of the sword nudging his ribs, and slowly, his right hand took hold of it. 

Ieyasu swung the sword and the wolf, barely scratched his muzzle, a small slice comparable to a child’s papercut. Ieyasu swung blindly into the night; hoping that it would hit, somehow. He had little options, he thought uselessly. 

In the perimeter of his eyes he saw the slight glint of ruby catching moonlight – like fragmented pieces of gems had come to his call for mercy. Thousands – thousands of ants had approached him, and they all came to swarm the wolf biting at his arm. 

From the darkness, the ants were led by an armless gingerbread man, whose voice carried the weight of more souls than Ieyasu. It was incomprehensible, surely. Why? he wanted to ask. Why you? Why am I not the saviour? What have I done wrong? 

It is no bother. I have no need for these arms anyways. He remembered the words of the gingerbread man, and realised why he had not needed swords. He had allies. An army. His blade was in pieces, and it remolded itself into blood steel when he needed them. 

“Run!” yelled the gingerbread man. “Run, little soldier!” 

So he did. And oh – what a disgusting feeling it was! He hoped that his legs would sag. He hoped his breaths would stop. He hoped for his heart to be squeezed out of his chest. How cowardly was he? A soldier in name, a coward at heart. He wished regret or justice made his body linger, but he ran like a coward until his sweat was condensation in the air. 

When he arrived back home, his master had looked at him like he knew he was out the entire time. “You’re sweating. You must be tired.” 

“Master, I—” Indeed, as if the air was purchased back into his lungs and the trembling in his arms stilled like dead wood, Ieyasu became all the more tired and drowsy by the second. Still, he had to find answers. He could not sleep until he got them. “Master. I did not slay the beast.” 

His smile was as deceitful as the smiling moon. “Yes, I know.” 

Ieyasu’s heart ached. “Then why did you…” Ieyasu gulped. “How did you know?” 

His master tugged at his hand, leading him to a supply closet full of old, unused toys. There were several lines of nutcrackers, a dusty doll in disrepair with it’s eye gouged out. “Because I created it. I created you.” 

Created. Not employed. He was not a soldier. He was a toy. “That is impossible,” said Ieyasu. “My heart beats. My hands shake. I bleed red.” 

“You move as much as the gears in a clock do, and bleed like breaking dams of a river. You are as alive as either.” 

“You are stolen,” his master said. “I kidnapped you from the village and fed you clay and ash, shaped your fingers that would perfectly fit a blade. You stand still when I do not wish for you to move, and you are tired when I say you are.” 

“No. No!” But he felt his throat choke on sawdust, the ashen gunpowder coating the film of his mouth and his tongue tasting steel. His arms were harder to move, as if walking through mud. 

“You are a hero,” he said finally, and Ieyasu felt that cowardice come forth again. “You return to me with the beast’s head everytime I tell you to, and another medal will be embedded into your chest.” 

So it was simply smokes and mirrors, then. He was to dance for his master, to perform. He realised then that he was not a soldier, but an actor. 

“You are nothing more than a toy,” his master whispered, and were his words not immortal? “And nothing more will you become when I do not think of you.” 

Ieyasu didn’t know exactly when he’d felt hatred for his master fester. Perhaps it was the hard, lonely rock carved out of someone who had too much darkness with them. 

Months passed and Ieyasu could only barely be conscious as the days blurred together. He reminded himself of what he wanted. He was Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was no soldier, but he was an actor, at the very least.  

The villagers stopped coming by his master’s house. They heard rumours. The house is haunted, they say. There are corpses under the caramel floorboards, they whisper. But it was simply an excuse, for no one could tolerate his company and the way he spoke like royalty. Mysteriously, more and more kids went missing around the vicinity, so they chose not to risk it. The village patrols were much too frightened of the wolves at night to ever conduct a search of the toymaker’s house. 

Eventually, the passing of time made the house as rotten as he, and the toymaker died in the hinges of a wolf’s fangs, the roulette wheel stopping: death by loss of blood. 

With time, more villagers came to the house – the weeping mothers in mourning of their children, and the rowdy teenagers in search of a dare. 

Ieyasu remembers each and every one of their wishes, whispered into the eerie air. He is an actor. He would perform for those who would watch. And so, he took upon those wishes and could barely muster a voice, not at all serene and all knowing, But a voice that had seen the many wandering souls and the secrets and bodies they’d buried. 

Now, Ieyasu waits in hiding. He bides his time with every new morning, waiting for a prayer of some lovestruck fool or greedy, traitorous bastard waiting to stab his master in the back. 

He never has to wait long. 

[tattypotamus]

Depravity of Indifference

Racism is not a case of white vs black. Seeing it as such guarantees it’s perpetuity. Racism is an offence against nature. 

The charge of Third Degree Murder requires proof that Chauvin committed a felony and, in so doing, was indifferent to the foreseeable risk of death of George Floyd. If I was his attorney I would have told him to plead guilty to that in the hope of some leniency at sentencing. The evidence, short of some bizarre left of field accident damns the officer completely & I am pretty sure it is conclusive against his co-accused who stood by throughout.

There is a different theory in which Chauvin heard him say “I can’t breathe”and should have known from that that death was imminent unless he got off his neck. As a police officer trained in the use of restraint it can hardly be doubted that he knew what he was doing and the outcome. And therefore that he intended that outcome unless he can argue some compelling reason why he was forced to stay kneeling with his hands in his pockets on a handcuffed man who may or may not have committed a non-violent offence. This is how 2nd Degree murder will play out. I don’t really want to hear it. George Zimmerman escaped a conviction for murdering Trayvon Martin by arguing some outrageous compulsion. The officers who lynched Rodney King escaped justice too. Jean Charles De Menezes killers were released from incredible culpable incompetence. It is possible that the officers in the Floyd case are being overcharged in order to extract a plea to a lower charge. I take a little comfort in the hefty bail demanded. If that tactic doesn’t work, the prosecutors will find themselves the targets of rage. 

Tragic that this sits in parallel with the debate it has ignited, mostly online. Question: Is Racism simply an attitude of indifference to endemic structural disadvantage for blacks (on every metric, worldwide, poorer opportunities and poorer outcomes) or does it require specific knowledge, specific intent to do harm, malice and an evil mind? Do we put racism into degrees, for arguments sake, or construct intersectional models to classify and identify and differentiate. 

What made Chauvin, or any officer for that matter culpable is that they sit in a role in which indifference is in itself unlawful. They have to care. They have to serve, they have to protect. The same goes for doctors, teachers, lawyers, judges. Elected politicians. We sign up for it. This isn’t really about that. This is about every person looking at the news, social media, their friends, their family.

One arm says that anyone in a position of privilege should be aware of it and act in an anti-racist manner consistent with it. It is controversial, when so many ‘white’ people are also systematically and institutionally disenfranchised. Another arm says you gain understanding through shared circumstances. A wonder therefore that so much hatred of blacks is found amongst the poorest whites in America and elsewhere. This is about identity and some very extreme circumstances that are evidently not shared. Institutional racism has pervaded the life of every black person. I don’t know any that are not aware of it.

And all of society too. No-one is enriched by the multiple disadvantages faced by blacks. Sure, the odd person gets the promotion on a wink and a nudge but that is not a benefit to any society. The dishonesty of racism cannot ever deliver a net positive, even to white supremacists, who, if they succeeded in their goal, would be left faced with their own telling oxymoron. Racism is not a case of white vs black. Seeing it as such guarantees it’s perpetuity. Racism is an offence against nature. It has been constructed, weaponised and fostered for the sake of maintaining power and wealth. It is as big a problem as climate change and requires the same solution. Everybody must know about it. Education needs to shift from systematically ignoring or hiding it in history to actively teaching it. And politicians must be held to account when they do not deliver against it. If you consider how we now treat leaders who are indifferent to the state of the planet, you may understand what I expect. 

In our homes, work places and social spaces there should be enlightened and informed conversation. Not a debate about whether racism is wrong but rather what it is and how events and contexts are affecting people. I see numerous memes quoting Dr. King condemning silence as complicity and just as many insisting that the movement and it’s artefacts are reserved exclusively for ‘black people’. One cannot demand that people speak up and then prescribe exactly what, when, how and where they should say it. If anyone of any ethnicity wishes to support, engage and enable the end of racism let them speak in their own voice.                                                                                       

What of me then? I cannot say nothing when the voice of my brothers��� blood cries out to me from the ground. That George Floyd is twinned in death with Eric Garner multiplies the tragedy. That there have been so many before and in-between makes me despair.  Breonna Taylor brings to life the worst of nightmares. Those who die without justice do not rest in peace. Memorial day in the USA, when George was murdered coincided with Africa Day. I cannot divorce the endless cortege from the centuries old pillaging and looting of the  Motherland. From Amadou Diallo to Tamir Rice to Breonna Taylor the trail of bodies continues relentlessly. I live in Glasgow, a city built through slavery with some of the worst poverty in Europe. In a nation of warrior poets, some of whose sons & daughters worked people to death in Jamaica & founded the KKK in the American south. Where Sheku Bayoh died inexplicably at the hands of the police. Britain, the country of empire, executing my ancestors, Boer concentration camps, xenophobic Brexit (Don’t tell me racism is simple). We visit my brother, my sister, my niece in Maryland. I fear for them. I have friends across the states snd across the world of all complexions. I will answer to my children if I do nothing. 

What of you? I don’t care much for hashtags. Do what you would do if it was your children’s lives at stake. When you vote, vote against the person who called immigrants swarms. When it is a privacy law, ask your MP if and how this affects anyone disproportionately. Ask them why families are not guaranteed legal aid for inquests. Ask them how Jerk Chicken can be the favourite dish in the Commons while the government of the day deports British Jamaicans to certain death, Don’t buy from racists including the Daily Mail. Don’t allow your government to create a hostile environment or deliver a racist message on vans without real consequence. Don’t let this issue become suffocated by other current issues. Tell them that you expect better from Police Officers and that the law should reflect that. Demand real accountability. Demand it. Demand real participation. And when they fail you like they have failed black people, demand it again as if your lives depended upon it. Ours do.

[boglog]

Soooo I'm gna get mauled here but tumblr's unquestioning praise of Killing Eve as a progressive, prestige show about womanhood and sexuality is... looking like a problem to me.

This is not to shame people who watch the show or even to guilt people out of enjoying it, especially seeing as I've done both, (unabashedly admiring Phoebe Waller Bridge's distinctly quirky humour and Fiona Shaw's deliveries). This is to say, though, that the Killing Eve franchise is something to think more critically about before we give it more praise, more money. We can be critical of media we like, not limit activism to media criticism and not feel that media criticism in some way robs us of something. In my opinion.

[tw for discussions on sex, rape, pedophilia, violence, death, q slur]

[[more]] <---more --!>

Firstly the generation-wide age gap: Eve's original portrayal in the book is 24, exactly two years Villanelle's senior so the only logical excuse for it be added in the adaptation was bc the crew were desperate for big name actors. And while I love Sandra Oh, it was not worth it to create bizarre sexual tension between a forty year old and a twenty year old. This isn't even the first time Jodie Comer was the on-screen love interest to a middle aged person (see also Dr Foster), which is doubly messed up. Ideally replace Oh with an actor Comer's peer or replace Comer w someone Oh's age. It's not that hard.

Second, the age gap is exasperated by Villanelle's "mental age" which is far below twenty. Honestly the fact that both these problems were added into the adaptation by female actor/writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge makes me wna scream. Book!Villanelle was appropriately mature enough—emotionally, psychologically, intellectually—to warrant her high-ranking status as an assassin. Her behaviour, while still devoid of empathy, manages to be a believable portrayal of an upper-class 20 yr o behaving like a thirty year-old. Phoebe Waller-Bridge (and co)'s reinterpretation has Villanelle being a hyperfeminine, materialist, petty teenager that slowly spirals into impulsive outbursts and a scene where she's crawling around a suburb in a onesie. How do we reconcile Villanelle's lust and her love of violence with this childish persona? How is Eve's attraction to her justified? How do ppl think that's hot? It's comedic shock value flirting with homophobia, pedophilia, and the Born Sexy Yesterday trope. Not to mention the violent little girl trope. Despite all of Luke Jennings' flaws, he at least did not do That and my God is the bar low.

Both book and show heavily overplay Villanelle's sexual promiscuity to the point of being voyeuristic. Villanelle's sociopathy is largely an excuse for her violence, sex life, and lack of empathy to be over-the-top, even comedic, especially in the show adaptation. Villanelle's only true human connection is her infatuation with her language teacher, Anna. Which, rather than explore the show's pedophilic undertones, only serves to justify it via backstory.

The show does handle this way worse though: through Anna's dialogue, we're assured that the attraction was mutual ("She seduced me.") and that they've had sex. Which at the time would be when Oxana (Oksana) was in her late teens as she was still a high school student under Anna's tutelage. In the show, Villanelle murders Anna's husband partially out of revenge and possibly bc she took Anna's joke too literally. Book!Villanelle meanwhile castrates Anna's rapist. The former attempts to draw parallels between Eve and Anna, Nico and Anna's husband, treating the story like a melodramatic Shakespearean love triangle while once more reminding us of Villanelle's immature social skills. Which, again, serves to justify age gap lust. Meanwhile, the book attempts to question Villanelle's warped attempts at human connection via vignettes of violent shock value, it's marginally better than the adaptation but in the overall scheme of things I'm not sure Jennings makes enough commentary on violence against women to warrant this.

Finally sexuality in the franchise is a big question mark. Eve and Villanelle's attraction to each other is explained simply by obsession and lust intermingled with violence. Villanelle and Anna's relationship devolves into much the same in the show. Eve and Nico have a relatively stable yet dispassionate relationship meanwhile Bill is implied to be bisexual with an open marriage, though this is never seen and he's murdered shortly after this confession. A Chinese politician has a hospital fetish and, in the book, a right-wing fascist has a kin/kink for Eva Braun which leads us to a highly disturbing transphobic scene involving an exploding dildo. Notably, Villanelle's on/off frenemy romance with Lara (who is... you know... her age) in the book is cut and replaced Nadia, whom she basically kills as soon as possible.

The relationship between Oxana and Lara is explored more in the book (and it's post-season 1 sequel) though ultimately, Lara dies and Villanelle can't feel remorse let alone love. Both book and show have Villanelle hooking up with various people but the book goes into painstaking detail about her sexual promiscuity being motivated by her desire to manipulate peole. Clearly, Jennings shows that Villanelle's sex life includes all genders yet with little regard for her intimacy and level of attraction for anyone. She is "bisexual" (or "lesbian") only insofar as actual physical sex is concerned. Emotionally, she is attracted to no one. Which let me just say is a capital y Yikes.

And the cherry on top of course is that the show is getting accused of queerbating due to the heavy marketing a nd WLW undertones despite Sandra Oh's denial of any romance btwn her and Jodie Comer's character. 🙄

All of these play heavily into existing homophobic stereotypes. The predatory lesbian. The hypersexual bisexual. The manipulative, hedonistic, childish, lustful qu**rs, who, having foresaken family values to screw anything and everything, are not emotionally mature enough to be first class citizens. From watching the show and reading the book, the writers play with these "dark" themes with little introspection to how these relate historically to LGBT politics, how their use of sociopathy and age gaps has political and sociological significance. There's little real deconstruction or reflection on gender, sexuality, violence etc to be considered satirical and these aspects are largely thrown in for entertainment's sake.

Jennings and Waller-Bridge have both, respectively, made attempts at thematic critiques of wealth and gender. Neither of which in my opinion saw its theme through enough to be satirical. There's something to be said about how PWB converted Jennings' anti-materialist subtext into "empowering" aspects of literally weaponised feminity (i.e. all of Villanelle's weapons are high-end women's products) almost as a critique of cultural dismissal of femininity and it's association with materialism. PWB seemed to want to create a comedic, empoweringly gendered, spy movie but this theme of weaponised femininity nose dives at Villanelle's immaturity not to mention its superficiality. Weaponised femininity directed at whom? The show seems much more fascinated with Villanelle herself than the fact that she's employed by The Twelve, which obscures the importance of who Villanelle is killing, who Villanelle exerts weaponised feminity against and why. Not to mention the concept of the feral, empowered or weaponised woman has always been positively attributed to white women, which to make a long story short is not new or progressive or empowering.

I'm not too puritanical to understand the use of taboo themes in satire. This is not satire. KE's appeal seems to be the sexualisation of its deuteragonists at the expense of nuanced conversations about sex, violence, and gender. PWB was way more fixated on comedy than I think she should have been, and both creators rely most on shock value than anything else in how they construct what they believe be the most entertaining and well-structured narrative. There's little evidence that they regard the responsibility they have in portraying bisexual women in positions of power, in age gap relationships or as violent characters in a political espionage thriller. This is not satire this is a very eclectic comedy with clumsy homophobic caricatures at best.

Lastly, there are essays on why leftist fixation on "representation" is a symptom of our digital hyperreality and at best will never truly address material problems faced by real people. Big ass metas on tumblr is not necessarily activism and as I'm sure you know the revolution will not be televised. But should show runners and co be rewarded for so called groundbreaking dark comedy that in fact seems to support harmful stereotypes? And goddamnit am I tired of people unironically romanticising Villanelle and Eve. Thank you for listening to my TEDtalk.

[howlsmovinglibrary]

i'm mad bc dany has been doing problematic things for seasons now but a lot of it has been framed heroically and it pisses me off that the showrunners called that "foreshadowing" as if the audience was entirely to blame for thinking dany's "heroic" behaviour meant she was a Good Guy, when they were the ones who framed it that way. then we had to waste time with tyrion + chairs and jon's emo trek into the wilderness when idgaf ??? sansa being queen in the north is the only thing im not mad about

I’m mad for the exact same reasons. There were some genuine flaws in Dany’s personality and her belief in her entitlement to the throne despite evidence of her being terrible at managing a city, that would’ve been good to exploit in a genuine, nuanced, hero-to-villain arc. I’ve always wanted Danaerys to become a villain, and have her problematic shit - which you’re right, the writers always seemed to portray as good and heroic - called out. But the writing was so rushed and disingenuous that it simultaneously undoes all the groundwork that was done for setting up this interpretation of her character, while saying that we should’ve known it from the beginning.

Instead of exposing her as a coloniser who weaponises non-white people to achieve her own ends, the show seemed to imply that her freeing people with initially good intentions was a sign of evil from the very beginning, rather than the hypocrisy of a would-be monarch who uses liberation rhetoric to try and justify the reasons why she should be given power. Tyrion’s whole speech regarding her past actions as symptoms of madness equates a slave rebellion with a million innocent civilian deaths, when those two things are very differe. What’s more, through the way this speech echoed criticisms of appeasement to Hitler in the second world war, this entire section of dialogue implied that a rebellion against slavery was the same kind of “warning sign” as, you know, racially motivated genocide. Meanwhile ‘Savage’ Dothraki and faceless Unsullied are used as the true signifiers that Danaerys has become evil -_-

I could’ve bought an evil Dany whose character was an exploration of imperialism. Instead I was given an evil Dany who is genetically destined for madness ‘because reasons’, whose sexual desire and ambitions for power turns her evil, who is surrounded by evil people of colour, none of whom question her actions while all the good white man start having deep and meaningful man pain and doubt.

And agreed, Sansa’s plotline was one of the only consistant threads of the series and one of few bright spots in this last episode. I eagerly await the ultimate starcrossed enemies-to-lovers fanfiction where her and Yara Greyjoy set up a Northern alliance in Theon’s memory and gradually fall in love despite the bad blood between their families.

[fluffmugger]

introspectivenavelgazer replied to your post: introspectivenavelgazer replied to...  CYBORGS? WHAT? I AM SO CONFUSED. aconiteherbalist replied to your post: introspectivenavelgazer replied to... Yes? Explain? Please?

OK. This is gonna be full of massive fucking spoilers, ‘cos I’m gonna lay it all out rather than feed it to you piecemeal as the show did with the slow unfurling. also people are probably gonna yell at me on this and that.  

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS LIGHT

ok, you probably noticed this show is huge on stealing from religious mythology. Chiefly abrahamic.

So: Progenitor species ( Yeah you could call them aliens, or celestial beings, it’s really down to whether or not you want to be religious or scientific or both, because the show allows for both and lets be honest the progenitor species fulfill all requirements for god.) sends out “seeds” to various planets.

One of these, called in the series Adam landed on Earth. Adam is known as the Seed of Life.    The seed of life creates god-like creatures, these were known as the Angels. 

However, later on (the First Impact) another seed hit earth.   This was the Seed of Knowledge and is known in the series as Lilith, which would create a species that in’t god like, but instead is co-operative and uses technology. This is the creation of the human species

 Two seeds aren’t supposed to hit the same planet because the combination of the two would result in god like powers on the same level as the progenitor species - this is what they called “forbidden knowledge”.  So Adam went dormant and the angels left Earth. 

Just to dogleg here - the seeds came via “moons” (FUCKING TRANSPORT MODULES) with a “lance of longinus” as their control system.  Adam came on the “white moon” and Lilith came on the "Black Moon" and lost her “spear” (control system). Since Adam’s spear (control system) was still active, it picked up Lilith’s arrival and shut down due to safety protocols to prevent a merging.  The “dead Sea Scrolls”  are actually a user manual, but seeing as we’re also talking about a species with PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER they're also prophetic and shit as perceived by piddly human brains. 

So humans ended up evolving and breeding and covering the planet and so you have our reality.  La di frickin’ da.

So you have SEELE who have been poking at this manual and realising what's happened and going HEY LETS BECOME GODS.  They already have Lilith - that big marshmallow fucker that's nailed the cross, it's basically a big Meaningful Imagery of a species progenitor kept in check, what's leaking out of her is Primordial Ooze - but they need the other Seed.    They fund an expedition (lead by Misato's father), who then goes poking around and finds Adam, its Spear of Longinus, and the White Moon in Antarctica. (The progenitor program, control system and space ship). They decide to poke it with a stick, and fuse some human (lilith-created) DNA with him, which created the Fifth Child / Angel (Kowaru).  This triggers a safeguard and causes the Second Impact because, you know, THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO MERGE.   (They also use the lance to reduce Adam to an "embryonic" state to try and stop the angels from reactivating and returning. )

 The "official" UN story is that the second  impact was a meteor strike.  Two billion people in the southern hemisphere were killed by tsunamis caused by the explosion, with more worldwide drowning in coast floods.  In the chaos that ensued wars broke out due to the destabilisation of many nation states, food supplies were fucked, it was catastrophic. Civil wars broke out everywhere, refugee crises, ethnic tensions, the whole shebang. India and Pakistan went full trump and nuked the shit out of each other, and finally 2 days after the disaster another nuke was detonated in "Old Tokyo" killing two million people. (and leaving that bloody huge hole)   Worldwide war broke out for a year.  Basically all the shit we're looking at in a worse case scenario with climate catastrophe happened.  Half of the human race and thousands of plant and animal species were wiped out entirely.

 And so we have the world of Eva, the result of the Second Impact.  Pretty standard "mankind meddling with things he was not meant to know and now we're all fucked" trope.

 Misato was at ground zero, but her father managed to place her in a protective capsule, so she survived, but the injuries left that massive scar on her chest, and massive psychological scars which is why she's a raging drunk.

 AAAAANYWAY  Seele aren't done with the befucking however, because as we all know humans are garbage and groups of men in darkened rooms sitting around a table even more so.  So they keep right on fucking.

  Seele embark on the "Human Instrumentality Project", which is to use a controlled third impact to force the evolution of humanity to the same level as the original progenitor species - a fusion of Knowledge and of Life seeds.  This would also result in the erasure of individuality, with all human souls fusing into a single "being" for want of a better word, the physical forms goopifying and creating a sea of primordial soup, known as LCL. I don't know if you've ever watch DS9, but the Great Link of the Founders (Odo's species) is a pretty close parallel.

 Problem is, the Angels are awake.

 The Angels are attempting to return to Earth, to basically initiate their own second impact, except in this case it would involve re-activating Adam which would erase all humans.  This would be done by an "AT field" clash  - basically AT fields are what binds a life form together - not just the physical form, but psychological, so essentially an unmaking that would revert all non-angel life to primordial goop. An Adam-generated "Angel" life form template would goop a Lilith-based "human" template.  (for the majority of the series, Lilith  is actually misidentified as Adam if that helps. If anything helps. It's a h o t mess).  Particularly where Evas utilise their AT fields, think of it as an EM field + extras.

 And so  you have Adam's "Children" (Known as angels,  but also referred to as apostles) start hitting earth one after the other, and this is where you get the Evas pulled into production and the Big Robot Battles

 NOW TO THE EVAS

  Unit 01 (Shinji's) was actually generated using genetic material from Lilith itself. It's also known as a clone.  As  a result it tends to go batshit fucking insane ("Beserk") on occasion. It's a living being in an armoured suit with a lot of intertwined mechanics - the Evas are in fact, cyborgs.    There are indications that Eva was an attempt to create a controllable Lilith - Lilith (progenitor program that created humanity) having lost her "spear of longinous" (Control module) is essentially unusable.    Shinji's mother and Gendo's wife Yui initiated a contact with this eva unit pre-series, but in fact merged with the eva - her body goopified, but her soul remains inside the unit. This is why Unit 01 runs so well with Shinji (her son) as pilot, and goes beserk in battle situations where he is threatened.

 Unit 02 has a similar deal, except it went wrong. Only part of Asuka's mother's soul was absorbed, the resulting schism driving what was left of her insane ,and she commits suicide.  The part of her that still resides in Eva-02 is what makes Asuka her pilot, but without the same level of integration and control that Yui has in 01, having fully melded.  Asuka, honey, I know you're pissed that Shinji is a better pilot than you, THERE IS A REASON FOR THAT.

 Evas are cyborgs with merged human souls.  Once they worked out it made the fuckers work, they really went to fucking town on it, so every Eva is a human soul, preferably one who was the mother of the pilot if they can get her (weaponising maternal instincts yooooo)

 Go, take a break, take a walk, try and digest it for a bit.

So to give us the cliff notes at this point:  Eva is about a battle between two species over who gets to become god, with humans using genetically engineered monsters that have absorbed human souls.

 Now to REI what the fuck is up with Rei

 Rei is a clone.  She was an attempt to retrieve Yui from Eva 01 using what they could scrape up of her DNA, but Yui basically told them to go fuck themselves she wasn't coming out.  So Rei is used as a vessel for Lilith's "soul" - she's basically an attempt to first rescue Yui, then later an attempt to create a control system for Lilith.  This is why she can pilot 01 so readily, and why she's so disconnected from reality.  There are at least three Rei's in the series:

 REI I:

The first attempt, the little girl in the red dress who got strangled by Akagi. Seen in flashbacks she was very different from the others, and seemed to have more of a personality. To this end there are theories that her soul was used for EVA00, which would explain why it seems to hate her, and hate all of NERV because she's fucking well aware of what the cunts did to her, and being part Lilith has the full capability to express this.

 REI II:

This is the one we see throughout the series as a teenaged girl, who is killed when she self-destructs her Eva unit to kill Armisael.

  REI III:

Fresh clone right out of the vat and seemingly more involved and aware. She rejects Gendo's attempt to control her, giving the complete control of the third impact to Shinji instead (SHINJI TAAAAAAKE THE WHEEEL) 

RIGHT, NOW TO SKIP FORWARD A BUNCH TO THE THIRD IMPACT

The idea behind it:

Seele wanted to initiate Third Impact to bring about Instrumentality. They would use an Anti A.T. Field to neutralize the A.T. Fields that separate human beings from each other, causing all of humanity to revert into a giant ocean of LCL, freeing their souls. All the souls of Earth would then be collected inside the Adam/Lilith hybrid being.  Basically we goop, then Great Link as mentioned above.

Gendo doesn't really give a shit about humanity, he just wants his wife back.  He approaches Rei III (the most lilith-like and most human of Rei clones) with the Adam embryo, and she rejects him, takes the embryo, then returns to Lilith to fuse with her.   After assimilating Lilith, the inchoate form begins to merge with Evas and with all of humanity, causing everyone to go sploosh as they approach "the divine", seeing their loved ones and going all religious ecstasy.

Thing is, at the end of the day, Lilith and Adam, as advanced as they are, are created functions.  They have control software and with the introduction of Rei, Shinji becomes the pilot.

And shinji is realllllllly fucked up, hence that whole wtf ep where it's basically the destruction of his ego, the exposure of his self loathing, jacking off over Asuka, trying to choke her, facing all the fucked up parts of himself then learning that everyone else is as fucked up as he is and no dude, NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK THEY'RE DOING.  It kinda derails for a lot of people at this point as it's a confusing montage of imagery, but basically that's a big ol' trip through a teenage boy's psyche, and reflective of the mental issues Anno himself had at the time. 

 But it ends in a breakthrough.

SERIOUSLY WATCH “THE END OF EVANGELION” ITS BASICALLY THE SERIES END REWRITTEN AND SANER AND OH MY GOD 

 And so Shinji rejects instrumentality.  The process is left in a state where everyone has the option to *choose* - to remain linked in the singular being, or be individual, which in and of itself isn't really a failure as the ability to control your own physical forms was part of Adam's lifeform archetype.    Hence the sea of LCL, with dotted humans.  Shinji and later Asuka return to human form, but the fate of everyone else is left open.

 OK I'm gonna take a break for a bit here because holy shit this is tolstoy here and I’m actually at work, so please PM me with further questions and I shall do up further posts, but this should be enough to get you going.  No one gets Eva on the first watch, it's a fucking glorious mess and even after years of watching you're gonna pick up some new shit.

[scripttorture]

Torture in Fiction: Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, Paradise

This one was a recommendation from @skeerbs and I enjoyed the beginning a lot more than my previous Star Trek review.

Since I believe in stating my biases; this canon still isn’t for me but this episode is an excellent pick for a review.

Once again I’m rating the depiction and use of torture, not the movie itself. I’m trying to take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims and torturers.

Commanding Officer Benjamin Sisko and Chief Miles O’Brien are looking for habitable planets when they come across one that already shows signs of human settlement. It’s not documented so they decide to beam down and have the look. The community they find is made up of former Star Fleet personnel, stranded on a planet where all their advanced technology has stopped working.

The community initially appears to be an idyllic pastoral fantasy but as Sisko and O’Brien spend longer there the horrific set up of the community becomes more apparent. People are dying of treatable diseases. ‘Criminals’ are tortured. The community leader, a white woman called Alixus, seems to hold absolute power.

When O’Brien tries to get some of his technological equipment working in order to save a dying woman Alixus accuses him of the ‘crime’ of wasting time. The punishment is torture; a day in a cramped box, exposed to high temperatures with no food, water or sleep.

She chooses to have Sisko rather than O’Brien subjected to it.

At some point during the day she has Sisko removed from the box. Alixus tells him how ‘hard’ doing this is for her. She then says Sisko can have some water, if he agrees to take off his uniform.

Sisko, who is portrayed as unable to speak and almost incapable of walking, refuses. He staggers back outside in his uniform and gets back into the box.

In the meantime O’Brien manages to persuade a member of the community to let him search the area for the source of the energy field interfering with their technology. He finds a machine generating it.

O’Brien shuts it down and storms back into the village, releasing Sisko and revealing Alixus’ betrayal to the community. Sisko calls for rescue and offers passage back to civilisation for any of the villagers willing to leave. They all elect to stay.

Sisko and O’Brien are beamed up, along with Alixus and her son so they can answer for their crimes. The final shot is of the villagers dispersing, with two children looking at the empty box.

I’m giving it 6/10

The Good

1) To start with I think all the actors in this episode did a wonderful job with the script they were given. Avery Brooks does an excellent job throughout and the conflict between his character and Gail Strickland’s is really damn good.

2) At no point does this episode gloss over or downplay he damage torture causes. The first person the audience sees coming out of the box looks half dead. He’s unable to stand, he can barely speak. He trembles. The audience is very much shown he’s in pain and the characters explicitly refer to the incident as torture.

3) The torture here is realistically low tech. It is literally a large box. It’s a combined sort of torture encompassing dehydration, starvation, temperature torture and often stress positions and sleep deprivation as well. Boxes like this were actually used as a torture for hundreds of years.

4) The effects of these tortures seem to be shown accurately both for Sisko and Steven the first victim the audience sees.

5) After ordering him to be tortured Alixus tries to bribe Sisko into compliance, offering him water in exchange for taking off his uniform. Sisko rejects this, sticking to his beliefs and later he does this again, arguing with Alixus immediately after torture. There’s a dignity to the way Avery Brooks plays these scenes that gives them a real weight.

6) This may be a good point to talk about Alixus. One of the things that stood out to me during this episode is the positioning of Alixus as a character. Thinking of films like Get Out and the discussion it generated around the role white women play in violence against black men- well it makes the casting choices here feel very deliberate and weighted by history. I’m not an expert in American history or racism so I don’t think I should try to go into a lot of depth here. But it’s a detail that I appreciated in this story. There’s a highly racialised thread running through this portrayal of torture, with the gardens looking like cane fields and the use of a torture that black men were often subjected to in American jails.

7) Alixus’ use of social manipulation is incredibly well portrayed. She’s shown constantly adjusting the situation to get people ‘on side’. She points out how every one ‘agreed’ to the rules regarding torturous punishments. She positions trying to save a woman’s life with technology as a betrayal of the woman and the community’s values. She tries to get Sisko ‘on side’ by manipulating a young woman into an attempted seduction. She doles out humiliations and punishments on a whim and positions them as in ‘everyone’s’ best interests.

8) Alixus’ ‘justifications’ for torture are the kinds of justifications torturers use. She claims that she’s doing this for the sake of social order and bettering society. ‘This is painful for me too’ she tells Sisko, apparently unaware of the irony.

9) The end result is one hell of a villain. She’s awful. Manipulative, prone to random outbursts of violence and adapt at disguising those outbursts in socially acceptable ways. She orders Sisko to stand watch during the night and then using social pressure to force him back into the fields in the morning. Weaponising sleep deprivation while giving herself a socially acceptable excuse, ‘he could have said no’.

10) There’s also a small but rather nice discussion on the limits of compliance here. Sisko refuses to remove his uniform because it represents so much of what he believes in. One of the villagers feels unable to ‘look the other way’ while O’Brien goes looking for answers. But he does let O’Brien knock him unconscious. Which allows O’Brien to do what he thinks is right, while allowing the villager an ‘excuse’ to present his community. It demonstrates disagreement, but not disagreement as deep and fundamental as Sisko’s.

The Bad

My only real problem with this story is that I don’t feel it goes far enough when it comes to challenging or undermining the torturer’s views. She’s given a lot of speeches justifying her behaviour but the characters opposing her aren’t given much to say in return. They say she’s wrong and that’s about it.

Her actions lead to deaths and suffering but despite that the narrative hedges its bets at the very end. It writes her victims as not wanting to be rescued. It shows them volunteering to stay in a community founded on violence and lies. That action seems to support the justifications Alixus gives for torture; that it’s building and protecting her community.

The truth is torture tears communities apart. It leaves survivors with severe, life long mental health problems. It does the same to a good proportion of witnesses. It polarises and radicalises people. It stops people trusting and engaging with the authorities; crimes are not reported and witnesses don’t volunteer information because torture is a likely response.

For me this story really didn’t go far enough with its ending and it suffered for giving the torturer narrative time over and above her victims.

Miscellaneous

The first character that the audience sees tortured appears to be compliant and agree with the ‘justification’ his torturer presents for torturing him. But he is in her presence at the time so it’s arguable as to whether this is showing anything beyond a survivor paying lip service to a torturer to avoid further pain.

Overall

I enjoyed the majority of this episode and it does have some really good elements to it. The story goes out of its way to show the damage that ‘clean’ non-scarring tortures cause. It shows resistance in survivors.

But I think it does fall down at the very end by allowing the torturer the last word.

The narrative choice, giving her a big powerful speech with swelling music, where she justifies her atrocities, means her views are never effectively undermined. The fact the people she manipulated, tormented and denied medical care for a decade all opt to stay behind in the name of her ‘community’ seems to give weight to her ideals.

It’s close. For me it’s closer than the last Star Trek episode I reviewed. It’s coming down to the implications in the narrative, the editing and the way things were acted, rather than the more fundamental flaws in the script or concept.

But for me the end result feels like another narrative cop out. As though the writers weren’t quite prepared to commit to the idea that torture is bad.

That’s a subjective analysis, and many people may disagree but it’s why the score here is middling rather than good.

Disclaimer

[butyouvealwaysbeenthecaretaker]

Rationalism: Pros & Cons

I’ve been toying with both adding “rationalist adjacent” to my Tumblr bio, and attending an IRL meeting – but I’m feeling very two-minded. The pros are so powerful and important – but so are the cons, and I’d venture to say the cons are actually worse.

I think it would be good to come up with a new label for a certain sort of Rationalism. The diaspora is very big, and like many social movements, has a lot of different splinters. I’d like to use a new term for “the bit of the diaspora I like”, because there is so much here I don’t want to be associated with. And so much I do.

I really like what Rationalism means on Tumblr, and how I understand it from participating here. We could call it Handmedown Rationalism, 2nd Generation Rationalism, or maybe there is a term for it that I've not encountered. Maybe the term is "Tumblr Rationalism", although I am not positive that using "Tumblr" as a prefix will communicate kindness and gentility well. "Kelseyan Rationalism", perhaps.

You get a radically different vision of what Rationalism means depending on...

You mostly read EY and Less Wrong

You mostly read r/ssc

You mostly read theunitofcaring

You actually live in San Francisco, and these people are in your social structure, not merely your news feed

It's very important to me to communicate "I believe in a kinder world, and want to be part of making it happen". Rather than "statistically, white people are better, and consent isn't evolutionarily sound" or "The biggest issue of our time is a hypothetical technology's hypothetical behaviour, and if you don't sign your children up for cryogenic freezing you are a lousy parent".

I've been researching and reading for months now, and I don't think I can use the term because there's such an huge iceberg of esoteric ideas below the surface, and too many of them are silly, terrifying or wrong. But I think most people who've encountered Rationalism through Tumblr are in a similar place about what they want to communicate when they say "Rationalist", and what they think "Rationalist" means - or want it to mean.

Is there another word? Can we make one?

Under the cut, long post of my “pros and cons” of adopting the label…

Nice things about Rationalism

1) Discourse norms which make me feel comfortable and supported to participate in discussions. The only people I feel entirely safe around on Tumblr. Both: people I always feel safe commenting on or reblogging, and people who rarely if ever put distressing content or behaviour in my newsfeed. The sorts of complex conversations and big ideas Social Justice promised - but no one is yelling at me or weaponising social shame.

2) Evidence-based reasoning, and a call to be open criticism, change your mind, listen to those you disagree with, and back up your positions.

3) Optimism that we can change the world – much needed, in the face of cynicism and apathy. Beautiful traditions like celebrating the eradiction of smallpox.

4) Social structures offering alternatives to the traditional role of religion: whenever core Rationalist bloggers write about their lives, I am deeply envious. Co-living, people who are united by shared values and vision, social norms favouring neuro-atypical people, etc. I would like this in my life.

5) I really like the idea of stepping away from the “Culture War”, because it generates “much heat but no light”. There’s an important kernel of truth there, about focusing on facts and productive work over clickbait and quick wins.

6) Some of their low-level issues are salient for me. This includes – attempting to have a more generous approach to men as a group, a general fear of Social Justice norms, and a belief in experimental self-care/improvement regimens.

7) I really grok Rationalists. I'm on the same wavelength. They're people I want to spend time with. Rationalism makes people happy and gives them purpose; that's always a good.

I think most tumblr people who use rationalist/rationalist adjacent are primarily communicating 1 & 7. They have discomfort with social justice norms: they want the discussion, politics and tolerance, without the shouting and death threats. And they intuitively see Rationalists and think "ah! my people!"

Unsettling things about Rationalism

Pretty much everything in this category boils down to “it is most rational to act effectively to achieve a stated goal. Too many Rationalist community tropes encourage extremely inefficient approaches.”

1) Missing the wood for the trees. Or focusing so hard on the wood you walk into a tree.

Like: politely playing footsie with fascists. There is such thing as too much civility. It’s good to be open minded and question your assumptions – but life is short. I’m OK with calling scientific racism a settled conversation so we can move on to something more important and productive. Like: a lot of the background noise about women, relationships, and consent. Sometimes things can’t be explained from a pure rational stance, and it’s uncomfortable to watch people try. How comfortable am I being associated with a group which includes Robin Hanson…? His writings about rape are - simply awful.

I do not for one moment wish to be mistaken for a person who agrees with those articles, or believes racism deserves a fair hearing when repackaged to sound sciency.

Every group is like this, right? But it's an odds game. I'm OK with identifying as a feminist, because I know our fringe crazies are safely on the fringe and small in number. With Rationalism...the fringe is putting the best ideas into practice effectively, while the core writings and influential figures are so far out the Overton Window they've actually hit the ground and started walking.

2) There’s nothing more stupid than a man who believes he is very clever.

“My idea is more logical than yours” functions a bit like “I’m more oppressed than you” in Social Justice spaces. If the space holds the value that “the most logical argument is king” or “the most oppressed person is prioritised”, then you don’t actually get rational debate or equality. You get a stick everyone tries to use to get ahead. Too many people presenting themselves as clever, not enough actual humility or uncertainty. When more status is granted for Writing Clever Worldbreaking Things, it encourages overconfident pseudoscience instead of authentic, accurate doubt.  

Also: factoring in emotions, impulsivity, and irrationality is a vital part of getting the right answer when it comes to human beings.

3) Subcultural norm against participating in politics. Political engagement is an important tool for changing the world. It’s not perfect, but it’s what we have – ignoring it is dangerous and daft.

4) Related: subcultural norm for starting from scratch over participating in someone else’s project.

The world is changed by those who do the dishes and take minutes at meetings. Lots of big-scale Rationalist projects attempt to duplicate stuff that already exists, or re-invent the wheel, instead of improving something imperfect and building on work already done. The Libertarian streak encourages this attitude towards government, and the urge to set up parallel agencies and initiatives – instead of working at the grassroots. Which is not glamorous, but it is effective.

5) The wrong goals.

You can change the world at a local level – whether that’s pressuring a local store, supporting local people, writing to councillors, becoming a councillor. Focusing on existential risk is…well, to reuse the phrase, it’s a lot of heat and no light. Masturbation and no money shot. Debates without answers, actions, or measurable outcomes. In short – it’s bad activism. Martin Luther King won by focusing attention on a particular cafeteria protest, a particular bus company.

6) Poor use of power.

Rationalism appeals to some of the smartest and most influential people on the planet – well-paid people in tech, who are ambitious, courageous and motivated. I’m pretty furious and horrified the ideology channels this energy towards AI Risk rather than, say, global warming – something which is definitely happening, hurting people right now, and could absolutely benefit from that passion, innovation, money, and a Libertarian alternative to government dawdling. Tech is – worryingly – powerful in the ways that governments are powerful; if you’ve developed a ideology which connects powerfully with people and makes them believe they can save the world, it’s a crime to then tell them to LARP about with imaginary robots. Like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos farting around with Mars rockets instead of nuking wealth inequality, or setting up top-quality schools in deprived areas, or eliminating HIV, or…

7) Feels like a dodgy pyramid scheme.

“We should pledge to give a percentage of our income in effective ways to change the world” – brilliant! “We define ‘effective altruism’ as ‘AI research done by the founder of our movement’ – even though AI research has minimal impact, and our founder has no credentials.” Hmmm. Also "thank you for donating to our group for teaching Rationalist thinking. We have now decided to change our focus towards the aforementioned AI research. Alas, it's so speculative, don't expect measurable results or accountability for this - just know your money has been well spent, saving the world."

I think it’s very ugly to fill people with beautiful feelings, and then channel them into giving you money.

I think it's unsettling that Rationalism provides community for people who are outsiders, who are disabled, and who have scrupulosity issues - then says "good people in our community donate to our founder. It is the most rational action, and the only way to save the world."

Like, you have a captive audience of people who have - at long last - found their tribe. They're very vulnerable to social pressure which may lead to exclusion from the group. They're motivated by the idea of acting rationally, inspired by purpose you gave them to go out and make a difference - and experience acute distress at thinking they are not doing enough good. Do not. Squeeze these people for money. You asshole.

I don't think it's deliberate - but it's still wrong.

8) I like what the Sequences stand for – but not the Sequences themselves.

Learning how to reason, how the mind works, learning critical thinking, developing flexibility and introspection are all excellent. But I want to learn that from original texts by the best thinkers in the world. That is pretty emphatically not You Know Who.

9) Related: Amateurism.

In theory, I like the idea of teaching individual citizens how to use statistics, analyse scientific papers, how to run experiments, and tailor their own medication etc. In practice, these fields have experts in for a reason. Someone who attempts to use statistics, and does it poorly, is far more dangerous and worse off than someone who does not pretend to know, but trusts a reliable source. Core-Rationalism frequently includes people making definitive statements and presenting themselves as an authority, and being very overconfident about their expertise.

(A lot of this is neurodiverse stuff, right? Setting up your own grandiose project from scratch; being an auto-didact; mistrust of traditional authorities; being very clever etc. I’m too ADHD to function, so I can see where it’s all coming from – but it’s hardly optimised for efficiency or outcomes.)

10) There is no such thing as a safe community, and getting these things right is very difficult.

However, it is discomforting how many people close to the heart of power have credible abuse accusations against them. Also, how one of the key Rationalist organisations responded to an abuse accusation, with an inadequate internal process which concluded everything was fine. They’ve since backtracked. That’s not enough for me, because abuse scandal management reflects your innate understanding, bises, beliefs and background. You can’t backtrack when you realise that it looks bad, because the original misstep continues to reflect your group’s true values.

Also, the wider movement has a lot of beliefs which lay the groundwork for abuse: mistrust of feminism, economic approaches to dating, gender and sex, evolutionary psychology and pseudoscience, key figures arguing that rape is nicer than being cheated on...

11) People who say "I don't like Social Justice", and lowkey mean "I don't like feminism or being nice to transsexuals". Rather than how I mean it: "I don't like being frightened or walking on eggshells, I don't like how rage and shaming are totally OK, I don't like how inflexible and bad faith ideas are, I don't like how I've seen it used in real life as a weapon to gain power and control. I don't like bullies."

We are on the same venn diagram, but not nearly enough of an overlap. (Given the choice between a nasty person who supports my rights, and a kind one who does not, I choose: cutting off contact with humans and never leaving my house again)

12) Rationalism is a mere degree of separation from a lot of online movements and subcultures which are definite problems. The resurgence of polite scientific racism; anti-progressive pushbacks on LGBT rights and feminism; some of the MRA stuff, some of the incel stuff; treating Trump/politics as a dinner party debate rather than an active threat...

Can one promote Rationalism, without accidentally building these movements too...? It feels too close, and wilfully blind.

13) I want what the Rationalists I follow have. When I think about attending the local meetup, I imagine an evening spent with reddit users who think racism is very clever, and use phrases like 'not technically rape". How can I even consider adopting a label when I figure the odds are like...70/30 in favour of the rape Nazis? I do not imagine meeting people I would like to leave my child with. I do not think I will find an IRL mirror of for the cool, compassionate, nerdy people I follow online.

If you even have to ask "what percentage of this group are likely to be rape Nazis?", your have your answer.

[tezla7]

Attention!

I noticed this thing this morning.  A guy repeatedly micro jump cutting through his own video.  Then I opened another video and here’s a lady doing the same thing.  I’ve seen this before but, I’m starting to wonder if this is actually a new normal for a specific demographic.

When I was a child we had children’s TV programs made from hand drawn animation and stop motion clay.  15 years later I caught an episode of a then modern cartoon on the TV at a friends house with their children- it gave me a headache.

Last week I was on a business course.  One morning the lecturer was teaching us how to use Facebook for maximum reach without paying any fees- how to manipulate the algorithm.  After a few hours I had to leave.  After another hour I realised I’d had and was actually having a mild panic attack.

In 2000, an English teacher was lecturing us about ellipsis and how mobile phones were changing the character of speech.  Back then the screens were black and white and SMS messaging was ‘the new thing’.  Each message was expensive and limited in length.  Words were losing their vowels, new mysterious acronyms were infiltrating young people’s vernacular and the English department was losing its mind- lol.

Jump cut to 2018 and if you can say it with an emoticon instead then 👍🏼🤗😂

Subject jump back to the business course last week.  It’s one thing to have a general idea, it’s another to have someone show you how to do it.  The teacher was explaining how to manipulate an algorithm, instead I was hearing an explanation of how the algorithm manipulates Facebook users into voluntarily turning their brains into mushy peas.  That was weaponised with a replay loop of the Rohingya massacres in Burma I couldn’t get out of my mind.  Facebook is a company that not only cares nothing for the long-term, but cares nothing for the health and well-being of the species in the short-term either and here was a lecturer touring the country teaching people exactly how to get with the program.  A panic attack didn’t seem particularly irrational after I understood that.

Video- it’s all about video.  Live video is the holy grail- it’s all about live video.  Right now immediately is the only thing that matters right now this second, this moment right now right now, still there?  Now now now.  Now!

While we shouldn’t jump to correlations we need to pay attention.

The Silicon Valley philosophy is disruption, like a bank heist- get in, smash it to bits, take everything you can.  If that’s illegally dumping scooters in San Francisco, obviously that’s annoying.  Facebook in Burma- are facilitating genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Jump way back to pre-digital I-don’t-know-when in a caravan park in the Lake District.  I saw something, ran to get a camera and came back to make a picture of rays of light coming down through stormy clouds onto hills behind a lake.  It’s cropped down and used as a header on my old blog.  Before or after or sometime around that time- cameras became a thing for me, I got hooked on the magic.  Film camera magic.  Photographs were a way of dealing with and articulating my words and thoughts without the tedium of long books I didn’t have the patience for.  That’s had its consequences for me and my attention span, but I’ve learnt a craft.  The more you study photography the more you realise that directed vision requires attention to unpack- the very same attention appearing to vanish in our collective modern noise.

Historically photography was superseded very early on to walk in the shadow of motion pictures.  But it’s still, and still remains a powerful medium that’s under appreciated and overlooked.  Within its constraints is its mystery and disclosure.  The disclosure that says- this is not moving, this is not real, but it looks that way.  This is a sophisticated illusion we call a representation, used with skill we call this poetry.  New technology is obsessed with removing this cognitive gap, so the illusion becomes so real that people don’t want reality anymore.  Instead of deep concepts that require work, we incentivise narcissistic popularity contests- does the art have value or is it important because it looks good on instagram with me in it?

This leaves us in a continual paradox.  The efforts to slow people down are ignored because people are moving too fast to notice.

[mnemonicmadness-blog]

Arrow - A brief and biased but (hopefully) comprehensive guide

I know I’m not the only one really looking forward to Michael Emerson as a supervillain. I’m probably also not the only one who found the prospect of watching all of Arrow... daunting. But I did make myself watch it all and thought I might as well summarise it for those who understandably don’t want to. Needless to say, Spoiler Warning!

Another warning: I personally don’t like Arrow, and that’s definitely reflected in this, but I encourage you to not let yourself be deterred from watching it and forming your own opinion.

Background Stuff:

Star City (renamed because why not; formerly Starling City): The main location of Arrow and the home of its characters.

Central City: The main location of The Flash, it’s often mentioned. Also, beware the crossover episodes! I recommend skipping those, unless you want to keep up with The Flash (imo The Flash is even worse than Arrow, so proceed at your own risk) as well. They tend to affect the other episodes in only minor ways.

Lian Yu (Mandarin for Purgatory, often only refered to as the island): The island Oliver was stranded on. It exploded in the last season finale.

A.R.G.U.S.: A secret special ops devision of the US government.

Metahumans: In the beginning of The Flash, some experimental reactor exploded, which gave random people all sorts of superpowers.

Palmer Technologies: Formerly Queen Consolidated, which used to be (surprise, surprise) the Queen family’s business empire. If I remember correctly Queen Consolidated went bankrupt and was boght by Palmer Technologies. PT belonged to a dude named Ray Palmer aka Captain Atom, who is alive but officially presumed dead after an accident with his shrinking suit.

League of Assassins: The name is pretty self-explanatory. They’re essentially ninjas, wear black outfits and mostly fight with swords. After a long leadership dispute, they were disbanded in s5. They used to have a thing called the Lazarus Pit, which can heal injuries and even revive dead people, but with some considerable drawbacks.

Helix: A powerful hacktivist group founded by a guy named Cayden James (probably ME’s character?). Felicity Smoak briefly worked with them.

Bratva: A Russian organised crime group.

Main Characters:

Original Team Arrow:

Oliver Queen/The Hood/Green Arrow: The protagonist, rich kid, former cast away, has a perpetual identity crisis. Whether or not he’s willing to kill people could so far be determined by number of season: In the odd-numbered ones he kills, in the even-numbered ones he doesn’t. His middle name should be ‘Drama‘. He slept around a lot before getting stranded and has a son with a one-night-stand about whom he didn’t know until s4, I think? He is skilled at archery and various typed of hand to hand combat, he was trained by various individuals on the island and was a temporary member of A.R.G.U.S., the League of Assassins, and the Bratva. Oliver changes his mind a lot despite having quite the self-righteous streak, nontheless he’s rather predictable, which the big bads like to take advantage of. He is also frequently melodramatic and prooobably needs a shitload of therapy.

John Diggle/Spartan: Oliver’s bodyguard, assigned to him after he returned from the island. Oliver kept ditching him until he found out Oliver is the Green Arrow (back then still known as the Hood) and subsequently became the first to join Oliver’s cause. He is married to Lyla Michaels (see: Recurring Characters) and has a son with her, who used to be a daughter until a timetravel crossover episode happened, which I skipped. He is loyal and veeery principled and considers Oliver his brother.

Felicity Smoak/Overwatch: The second person to join Oliver. First his friend, later his on-off girlfriend/love-interest/fiancée. I’m actually not sure whether or not they’re together at this point and I think they’re not sure either. After Ray Palmer’s “death” she became the CEO of Palmer Technologies until she was kicked out by the board. She’s the tech support and an excellent hacker, for which she has a bit of a reputation. Felicity is sweet, babbles a lot, but is one of the more reasonable characters. She was recently paralyzed, but regained the ability to walk due to a microchip in her spine.

Extended Team Arrow:

Thea Queen/Speedy: Oliver’s younger half-sister (although they didn’t know she’s only his half-sister until season 2, I think). Used to have a drug problem, but since she got her shit together, she’s probably the most reasonable member of Team Arrow (the bar really isn’t high there), despite being something of a hothead. She was almost killed and subsequently saved by the Lazarus Pit, which left her with a periodically occurring bloodlust that goes away once she murders someone. She received League of Assassins training by her father, Malcolm Merlyn (see: Recurring Characters).

Quentin Lance: On-off alcoholic. Former policeman. Father of two adult daughters (see: Recurring Characters), who both dated Oliver Queen, pre-series they did so simultaneously. Needless to say, he really hated Oliver’s guts at first, but has since warmed up to him. Is currently Oliver’s deputy mayor.

New Team Arrow:

Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific: The Gay™ (I’m all for rep, but to me he seems a bit too much like the “Look at this gay character we made, look at him, aren’t we progressive???”-type of gay character.). He’s also a tech-savvy sweetheart who babbles a lot but has surprising moments of reason. Pretty much a male Felicity. He met Felicity while working for Palmer Technologies’ R&D department.

Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog: The superhero name reeaally suits him. He has a massive temper, zero chill and authority issues a mile wide. He means well though. He has a daughter, whose mother had a drug problem and was murdered in their home by a dealer. Rene really fell off the wagon after that and lost custody of his daughter, but he’s trying to get it back now, after being encouraged by Quentin Lance.

Dinah Drake/Black Canary: A metahuman and former polivewoman. She was working undercover when the reactor explosion thin occurred, was discovered and tortured and her partner/fwb was killed. Her superpower is the canary cry, aka weaponised screaming. Also one of the more reasonable characters, but also has a bit of a short fuse.

Recurring Characters:

Malcolm Merlyn/Dark Archer/The Magician: He’s played by John Barrowman so I like him. He’s an old family friend of the Queens and is Thea’s father, since he had an affair with Moira Queen. He’s been a long-standing nemesis of Team Arrow, and occasionally their mistrusted ally. Would do anything for Thea and proved that by stepping on a landmine in the last season finale, so he might be dead, but we haven’t seen his body yet, so... He was part of the League of Assassin and was their leader for a while, a position contested by Nyssa Al Ghul, the previous leader’s daughter.

Lyla Michaels: Ex-soldier, Diggle’s wife, works for A.R.G.U.S. Not much else to say, except she’s a badass and her morals are a tad more flexible than her husband’s, a frequent cause for friction between them.

Sara Lance/White Canary: BAMF. Bi af. Quentin Lance’s younger daughter, had an affair pre-series with Oliver, while he was together with her sister. She accompanied him on the boat ride that ended with him stranded of that island. She was long presumed dead, but was actually saved by the League of Assassins. Was together with Nyssa Al Ghul. She was killed by Thea Queen, more or less by accident. Her sister revived her using the Lazarus Pit, which ended with Sara being soulless for a while, but they fixed that. (Or rather, John Constantine, one of my favourite fictional characters ever, fixed that. Sadly, it was his only appearance on the show.)

Rory Regan/Ragman: Currently gone off, finding himself or something. Everyone gets identity crises on that show. Marginally less lame than ‘Ragman’ makes it sound, but really not by much. His town was destroyed by a nuke (Flicity’s fault, she steered it there to avoid hitting an even more populated area after s4′s big bad fired said nuke.) and he’s the only survivor thanks to his magical rags. Don’t question it.

Slade Wilson/Deathstroke: Australian. Badass. Pretty much the only cool character on this show so far and probably the most competent one. Ex-soldier. Ex A.S.I.S. (Australian Secret Intelligence Service) operative/assassin. Did I mention he’s a badass? Was stranded on that infamous island with Oliver, saved and trained him, because he’s a badass like that. Intelligent, competent, reeeaally smooth. He lost an eye after being shot by an arrow by Oliver and was dosed by some stuff called Mirakuru, which saved his life, gave him super strength, enhanced reflexes and senses, etc., but unfortunately also turned him insane, which ended with him trying to take over Starling City (he also murdered Moira Queen, Oliver’s and Thea’s mother). It wore off after a few years though and he tuned good again. He’s still a badass.

Alena: Hactivist, member of Helix, idolises Felicity. She’s friendly and carefree, but also intelligent and manipulative. She also appears to care deeply for Cayden James.

Anatoly Knyazev: Leader of the Russian Bratva/Brotherhood. Oliver saved his life but later also pissed him off, so they’re kind of friends but currently also enemies.

Nyssa Al Ghul: Daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, the deceased leader of the League of Assassins. Arse-kicking lesbian. Technically, she’s Oliver’s wife, but that was an arranged marriage to their mutual benefit. Sara’s girlfriend. She really, really adores Sara and usually only refers to her as ‘my beloved’, it’s really quite sweet. She’s also a badass and usually Team Arrow’s ally, though occasionally their enemy.

Dead Characters that might get mentioned:

Laurel Lance: Ugh. Oliver’s ex-girlfriend and oldest friend. Alcoholic, boring, hypocritical, next-level annoying. Used to be the Black Canary before being killed in s4. She has an evil, parallel universe counterpart known as Black Siren who is also annoying but at least marginally more interesting. Black Siren is also a metahuman with the same ability as Dinah Drake, though she’s not very good at it, or at least not as good as Dinah. She ended up in the show’s universe due to some Flash crossover fuckery that I haven’t watched.

Tommy Merlyn: Oliver’s childhood best friend, Malcolm Merlyn’s son. He died way back in s1 but is still occasionally mentioned.

Shado Gulong: Also used to be stuck on the island with Oliver, Slade and her father whose name I don’t know how to spell (Yao Fe?? Something like that?). Helped train Oliver. Was briefly together with Oliver and killed on the island. Slade also had a crush on her at the time, which was the reason his chemically induced insanity focussed his revenge on Oliver.

[revolutionaryeye]

Trump’s Racism

Adam Shatz on Trump’s Racism

In late July, HBO unveiled plans for a new show set in an alternative reality, in which the Confederate South, led by General Robert E. Lee, has successfully seceded from the Union. D.B. Weiss, one of the producers of Confederate, explained the thinking behind the series: ‘What would the world have looked like if Lee had sacked DC, if the South had won – that just always fascinated me.’ On 12 August, in Charlottesville, Virginia, Weiss got his answer, with the ‘Unite the Right’ demonstration against the planned removal of Lee’s statue in Emancipation Park (formerly known as Lee Park). This ‘pastoral scene of the gallant South’, as Billie Holiday might have described it, was open to anyone who hated black people and Jews, from members of the Ku Klux Klan to neo-Nazis. Emboldened by having an ally in the highest office in the land, they came with Confederate flags, swastikas, medieval-looking wooden shields, torches and, of course, guns. They came to fight. One young woman in the counter-demonstration was murdered by a man who rammed his car into her, weaponising his vehicle just as jihadists have done in London and Nice and Barcelona. A helicopter surveilling the event crashed, killing the two officers inside. Dozens were injured.

The ‘Unite the Right’ protest was a reminder that the dream of the Confederacy has never died: the vision of Herrenvolk democracy has continued to smoulder since Union troops left the vanquished but still defiant South, scarcely a decade after the end of the war. Eric Foner has described the Reconstruction era, when ex-slaves became citizens and the first biracial Southern governments were elected to power, as America’s ‘unfinished revolution’. The battle over Reconstruction never ended; it has simply changed form. Nor has it been confined to the South: the North has had its own, scarcely less virulent form of white supremacy. The struggle to achieve full enfranchisement for black people in the United States has produced many martyrs: Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King; James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. And now Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old paralegal killed in Emancipation Park.

It is true, as some have sanctimoniously pointed out, that even in her death, Heyer was a beneficiary of white privilege, remembered as a ‘strong woman’, rather than subjected to the invasive examination of background typically meted out to unarmed black people killed by the police. But her biography suggests that she would have been the first to object to any special treatment. ‘If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,’ she wrote in her last Facebook post. She broke up with a boyfriend who expressed unease over her friendship with a black man, her manager at work. White supremacists have reserved a particular loathing for white women in the civil rights struggle: ‘nigger lovers’, they call them. One white woman at the counter-demonstration reported a jeering fascist saying to her: ‘I hope you are raped by a nigger.’ Heyer is likely to have heard similar things.... Read on:- https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n17/adam-shatz/wrecking-ball