#to be fair chambers was pretty racist as well

[rollerska8er]

hp lovecraft: a weird racist who never went outside and was afraid of his own shadow

robert w chambers: pretty normal guy who wrote a bunch of stories about men-about-town kissing pretty girls, made bank off it, also happened to write the king in yellow and accidentally invented weird fiction, just as a side hustle

[thetepes]

Not to play devils advocate, but I feel like lilys opinion on the usage of the n word is valid. Regardless of someone’s race, I think it’s a little backwards to dictate what someone has to say about another races cultures just because they’re white (or not of that culture), differing opinions aren’t the end of the world and hers wasn’t inherently racist I fear the same goes for the anime thing too, I’m sorry but Japan DOES have of a loli problem, even if her wording was extreme

I’m not white myself (to be fair, not black/japanese either), not that I think it matters to what I can and can’t say about this but I don’t want you to assume I am white because I somewhat defended lily, which is someone I did NOT want to run defense to but maybe I’m too conservative for this space but I mean this in the most respectful way possible, it feels like some of you are reaching on some things just to paint her in a worse light, as if she wasn’t already famously bad 😭

(Feel free to correct me, I’m not trying to be intentionally ignorant for the sake of it I’m just tired of hearing of a lot of echo chambers about the issue without getting to WHY what she says is racist when I think like pretty reasonable??)

Anon, my friend, I do not know how to break this to you, but that is racist. I know you do not mean to be. I know you're trying your best to be as inoffensive as possible. I'm going to do my very best to answer you genuinely because you seem genuine.

Saying Japan has a Loli problem is like saying America has a child pageant problem. It's there. It's a problem, but it's not something floating on the surface everyone in Japan is aware of the magnitude of. It's a niche genre of ero fiction that comes up about as much to your every day Japanese person as child pageants in America.

In the 80's there was this loli boom that took place where it split off from your more typical bishōjo into lolicon. You would find stuff like Future Boy under that genre long before you'd find any ero.

It wasn't until an otaku named Tsutomu Miyazaki was arrested in the late 80s that the darker side of loli came to the awareness of your every day Japanese person. It was a popular genre so there was a LOT of hentai of it. He killed and murdered several little girls between the ages of I think 3 to 6 and it started a panic very similar to the Satanic Panic that happened in USAmerica. He had a massive collection of anime and hentai. I mean massive. From normal things you'd see in Walmart to stuff you could only buy from very specific websites online no normal person would even know about. It wasn't just Loli that was effected though it was all anime.

It's why Otaku culture was so repressed and shameful for a long time and it even killed the Loli boom because the style was associated with the killings. It wasn't until very recently that Otaku culture made a come back, but still Loli isn't making that come back because of the online opinion on Lolicon. It's gone from an art style to something a lot darker and I think that's where the communication sort of faulters? Because if you say to a Japanese person "you have a loli problem" they're going to think you're having a Satanic Panic moment at them.

At least that's been my experience.

This whole thing is why there was the Moe boom in the 2000's, it was an over correction on the part of artists. Trying desperately to get away from that label and people taking advantage of that as well to make slop.

The rise of the Lolita in Harajuku also muddied the water on this because there's an entire beautiful subculture there that branches into a thousand different expressions. "You have a loli problem!" What's the problem with girls in frilly dresses?

You as someone online, who is adept at being online, in critical spaces and animation/anime spaces have so much more exposure to this stuff than anyone on the daily in Japan.

The entire world has a porn problem. The entire world has a sexualizing little girls problem. To point at Japan and specifically repeatedly deem the entire country as having an issue with pedophilia is racist. To go out of your way to bring it up when you're not even discussing anime or Japan is racist. When your hate and ignorance for a place and it's people bleeds into everything you do

That is racism.

[adobe-outdesign]

OK to Jynx Review?

While I'm not the biggest Jynx fan, Smoochum is okay. Jynx was always kind of a weird pick for a pre-evo, as it doesn't really feel like Smoochum's presence really enhances the line in any way, but it is nice to at least have one design here that isn't quite so questionable.

Visually, the pink and yellow palette is nice and there's a fair amount of emphasis on the lips, which makes sense as kissing things is Smoochum's entire deal. The hair is cute and has a nice shape to it as well. It's nothing all that memorable, and I'm personally not a huge fan of human-like baby Pokemon like this, but it's harmless.

Also, side note: Smoochum looks 10x cuter in its original GS art. The slightly wider body shape, inquisitive expression, and little buck tooth really make all the difference.

I've gone on record saying that Jynx is my all-time least favorite Pokemon and yeah, sorry, not a fan of this one.

Obviously the biggest problem here is its face, which is undeniably pretty racist and generally just uncomfortable. This is not helped by it being extremely human-like and vaguely sexualized, with the kissing thing and the chest. They did try to fix it a bit by giving it purple skin as opposed to the original pitch black color, which is slightly better—but purple's not that much different and they didn't really do anything to fix the face, so it's kind of a band-aid solution at best.

Speaking of which, I've noticed that most people try to justify Jynx's design with baseless speculation, which is weird because we know exactly why it's Like That. Here's a design from the beta version of Red and Green (the following information is courtesy of Helix Chamber):

This is either beta Jynx or a Pokemon closely related to it. Its name is Buu, which makes it obvious that it's based on the Ultraman monster Woo, which is A) female (note that Jynx is 100% female), B) a yeti-ish creature (hence the parka here and Jynx's inexplicable ice-typing), and C) a creature with a dark face:

There's no evidence to suggest that GameFreak meant any harm here, but that doesn't make either the beta design or Jynx itself less racist. Just kind of an unfortunate design all around.

Also, even putting that aside, there are just some other odd things with Jynx. It's abnormally humanoid, with hair, five fingers, a dress, and even boobs for some reason. I love humanoid 'mons, but this is a bit too much, and it's hard to see Jynx as something that lives out in nature normally. I also wish something in the final design reflected its ice-typing.

Here's a particularly good redesign that fixes most of my issues with Jynx but still feels like it captures the spirit of the original to some degree:

However, and this is going to sound weird: I think Jynx should get a regional.

Here me out: I get that GameFreak probably doesn't want to acknowledge Jynx too much, but a regional would be the perfect opportunity to redesign it— the regional could even be featured in place of regular Jynx going forward in things like the anime. There are some interesting elements to the design that you could play with—give it tentacles or fins and make it a water-type siren, make it normal-type and give it a viking theme, theme it after different kinds of dancing like Oricorio, etc.

Though on the bright side, Jynx's existence did at least give us one very pretty TCG card, so there's that much, at least:

[honourablejester]

My sister and I were playing Far Harbour for the first time last night, and I’ll be honest here, I really don’t like the dialogue wheel when DiMA asks you if you might be a synth.

Like, okay, your options for responses are as follows:

How would I know?

I’m a human

I’m a synth

Sarcastic

Just looking at the flat, on-the-face-of-it choices for a moment, that’s …

This is where the dialogue wheel really struggles. Because those look both completely flat and completely arbitrary. Except for the first one, which is something you might actually say. So we said it. And then he prompts towards how you might know (dodgy memory gaps), and then just basically asks you again, so you have to choose one of the others.

Look. Before we get to any of the other answers, I don’t like this.

This is one of the driving questions of FO4. There is so much doubt, for everybody you meet, over who might be a synth, what that might mean, are their memories real, are they real, how would they know, if it was confirmed what would they do, and so many other questions. The entire Commonwealth is having a mass existential crisis over this question. No one knows the answer. And DiMA (or at least the dialogue wheel) just wants you to … arbitrarily pick an answer? With no indication of how you came to that conclusion? Yes, I’m a synth. I decided just now. No, I could only possibly be a human. Never mind that I’ve been helping the Railroad for ages and I’m in love with Nick Valentine, I instinctively reject the possibility that I could be a synth myself. They’re not …

I know how it’s maybe meant to sound. That you’re picking what your character instinctively feels about themselves. But there’s no room for doubt. The wheel just plops it flat. Are you or aren’t you. There’s no allowance for how pretty much every other person he could ask that question will have spent a decent portion of their lives wondering. Unless they’re a confirmed synth who knows their designation, and even then, they probably still wonder.

If you pick either option from that annoyingly flat and blunt choice, they expand out to:

I’m a human being, not a synth

I have to be honest, um, in the back of my mind, I’ve always suspected …

So, yes, apparently the first option was meant to make you sound vaguely racist. The voice acting (at least for the female survivor) puts a bit of an emphasis on ‘not a synth’ that does make her sound vaguely defensive and/or disgusted. It’s portrayed as a knee-jerk rejection.

If you choose the synth option, Nick likes it. So I’m guessing it was meant to be the more friendly option if you’re a general ally of synths. Or, you know, in love with one.

But. The thing is. Why are you saying either of them? There’s been no indication up to now (at least in our playthrough, and to be fair we haven’t gotten into the Institute yet) of what the survivor might actually think. There’s been no real indication of what she should think.

Why would she think she’s a synth? I’m not saying why would she wonder, there’s an infinity of reasons for that, I’m saying why would she pick an option that initially looks like conclusively saying she knows she is one. She doesn’t.

She could be. Very easily, though since we haven’t gone to the Institute yet our survivor doesn’t know a good few of the reasons why it would make sense. The most logical place for her to have been swapped would be that first wake-up in the cryo chamber, when Shaun was taken. It’s very easy to imagine that the original survivor actually died then, rather than got refrozen, and the one that woke up the second time was a synth. Especially since I gather it looks like Father was doing a lot of experimenting in general in allowing the survivor to be woken up. It would be very easy to think that the survivor that exists in the wasteland is a synth. There is the question of the memories, how would they have gotten a brain scan enough to picture some of the pre-War things from a corpse frozen in a tube, since Father himself likely can’t remember, but there are a good few sources of pre-War memories in the Commonwealth (hi Nick!), so it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine the Institute got their hands on enough to prompt and then fake the rest.

There are lots of little dialogue options in the game, usually when you’re talking to pre-War ghouls and/or Nick himself, that do make it sound like you have more pre-War memories. Remembering the details of Silver Shroud episodes, things like that. But, again, the Institute clearly has access to pre-War brain scans from CIT, so that can be explained.

But that doesn’t prove she’s a synth. And there are a lot of reasons for her to think she’s a human that have nothing to do with apparently being slightly racist. Primarily, because her story is already so weird as it stands. I’m a pre-war popsicle (possibly with brain damage from being frozen, defrosted, refrozen and defrosted again) that woke up in an apocalyptic wasteland. That’s a lot to swallow from a standing start, without wondering if I’m a robot with fake memories on top of it.

Admittedly, DiMA does say that. There’s a lot of explanations for dodgy memories that could happen to anyone, let alone someone with such a massive trauma and huge before-after divide as the sole survivor. Which, possibly, makes it more likely for her to be a synth, because hello tailor-made past to explain away internal inconsistencies. She’d make a great experiment. But it doesn’t make it more likely for her to believe she’s a synth. She thinks she comes from a time before they even existed. She has every reason to believe her own internal narrative about Vault 111 and waking up 200 years later. Regardless of her feelings about synths in general, she has no particular reason to believe she herself is one.

Which I think is my main problem with this dialogue wheel. It’s not really posing the question as a philosophical or existential conundrum, a question the survivor might actually ask herself. It’s asking the question as a means to make her pick a side.

So the option to say you’re human comes out vaguely defensive, something a Brotherhood operative would say. And the option to say you’re a synth makes the synths around you happy.

The wheel has nothing to do with what you actually think you might or might not be. It gives you no option to say you’re really not sure, you can’t decide, you don’t know. Well, it does, and then forces you to make a choice between them anyway. It makes you pick an option, and only gives a nod to doubt in hindsight, and only if you pick synth. The way the options play out, it makes it sound like you don’t make the choice based on what you think you are, you make the choice based on who you plan to side with (or have been siding with back in the Commonwealth). While presuming that the only reason you’d pick a side is that you’re part of it on a racial level.

It makes it sound like the only reason to think you’re human is because you hate the thought of being a synth. That any reasonable person would think that they probably are one, especially if they already like them and are an ally to them. That the only reason to be an ally with synths and want to help them is the idea in the back of your brain that you are one yourself.

Like, I don’t know if I’m overthinking this slightly because I didn’t like the flatness of the choice and then how our particular choice played out. We picked human, because to the best of our knowledge our survivor had no real reason to think she wasn’t one. And then what we said came out sounding like Maxson could have said it. Which, given that we’re a staunch Minuteman/Railroad member, and in love with Nick Valentine, did not please me in the slightest.

But I really do feel that the wheel is too flat, too arbitrary, comes out of nowhere, and frames your choices in a really manipulative way. While the base game does ask a lot of questions about who is or is not a synth, and several people do challenge you as one because they’re in paranoid meltdowns, this is the first time we’ve really been asked if we think we might actually be a synth. And for the first time you’re asked something, especially something so existentially fraught as this, are you really going to be able to give a flat, definite answer? Yes or no? Sure, I’m totally a synth. Not sure how I came to that conclusion, but absolutely I am one. Off the top of my head, yup.

(Sidenote: the way it dismisses your question of ‘How would I know?’ also annoys me. I know it’s because it’s meant to be a general ‘asking for clarification’ prompt, but it actually makes more sense as an answer in itself. How would she know? Why can’t that stand as her answer? But no, the wheel/DiMA presses you on to make a binary choice)

Why would you, as the player, pick ‘I’m a synth’, except that you’re siding with synths? The game has given you no evidence or asked you no direct questions up to now for you to genuinely think that your character is a synth. And I get RPing doubts, and the expanded version of that answer, what you actually say, is something I might have said had that been given as the initial option. In the back of my head, I have wondered if I might be. Because basically everyone in the Commonwealth has probably wondered that by now. But we had no reason to say ‘I am a synth’, like that was a thing we knew. Because we don’t.

The baseline assumption is going to be that you’re human. All your memories and evidence point that way. Unless you’ve been to the Institute and pulled your file and synth designation off their databanks, you’d have no way of knowing you’re a synth. So why would you say you are?

To get in good with Acadia. That’s why you’d say you are. Because you want to ally with synths, or infiltrate them, so you blithely say that you are one. Because clearly everyone knows that the only reason you’d help a synth or ally with them is if you are one.

I don’t like this dialogue wheel. I really, really don’t like it. I know it’s a system problem. The wheel system doesn’t expand on what you’re actually going to say, so you have to make your best guess based off dodgy summary prompts (which is why we basically never choose the ‘sarcastic’ option, because holy Hannah we’ve no idea if we’re going to be mildly snarky or cut someone to the bone with that one, and most of the time we’re not chancing it). But the particular way the initial prompts and then the actual dialogue in this one plays out has some very unfortunate implications. It does really feel like it enforces the ‘humans vs synths and if you are one, you’re antagonistic to the other’ divide. It feels like a choice designed to make you pick a side, and to declare yourself racially in order to do so. And I don’t like it.

Um. Right. Sorry for the rant.

(For the record, I am enjoying the DLC generally at the minute. Far Harbour as a setting is fantastically spooky and Lovecraftian, and running around it with Nick is great so far. But that particular moment really bugged me. Like a lot. Heh)

[creepyscritches]

That's a yikes from me, chief. Why do people gotta be shitty 😔😔😔

Because they grew up benefiting from being racist, homophobic, islamophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, and partaking in literally every other prejudice in an active or passive manner and it’s only very recently that it’s not been a universally beneficial experience for them to continue behaving that way.

In the south, you are socially rewarded for being intolerant of anyone not:

White

Male

Straight

Cis

Christian (any denomination)

This doesn’t mean you get into some exclusive Super Racists Only Club, but you are accepted into social circles for being quick to make transphobic jokes or you’re sympathized with if you play the wounded animal after someone (rightfully) accuses you of racism; that kind of stuff. It’s just literally the fabric of surface social interaction here and is what white families teach their kids, whether they realize it or not.

I’m no exception, I had to unlearn A LOT of stuff that I didn’t even KNOW I HAD LEARNED. As a kid, I’d make horrible gay jokes, even when I was growing more and more nervous I wasn’t straight. As a teenager, I made misogynistic jokes left and right. I’m definitely guilty of my fair share of blatant racist jokes. This was all stuff that I did because I was rewarded with some sort of “social cookie” for doing so. I was also not connected to the rest of the world online like I am now, so it was pretty much just an echo chamber of “no it’s not a big deal” whenever someone would question if behaving that way was okay.

After I got online and met all sorts of people and began to see how horrible it was to talk like that, even jokingly, I began to actively try to change my habits and educate myself to be better than I was. It was a lot of independent effort and well-deserved criticism to even begin to break out of that Southern Echo Chamber, but it was worth it to know I don’t hurt people and I am able to genuinely treat people with respect.

Needless to say, I lost access to those “social cookies”, but the crowd that rewarded that behavior was swiftly replaced by a much more fulfilling social circle that didn’t operate on a shitty reward system. I don’t miss it.

UNFORTUNATELY, some people, especially older generations, feel like their entire identity is in these social reward circles and would rather die than leave them. It doesn’t matter who they hurt or even if they’re actively aware of what damage they cause, they will not leave this prejudice culture. It’s a shame and sometimes I feel a little heartbroken to realize how cruel people I grew up loving truly are and how conditional their love for me is in reality, but at the end of the day you can’t force them to change.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. 

You can show a casual racist/homophobe/transphobe/etc the consequences of their venom, but you can’t make them change.

[yoshimickster]

Rwby Volume 7 Episode 1 “The Greatest Kingdom”-MICKSTERECAP

Wiggity what, what’s that, its the Micksterecap, wiggity what, what’s that, ITS THE MICKSTERECAP!

HEY everybody,  how y’all been? I’ve been good, working a lot, the usual. For anyone who doesn’t know,all Micksterecaps will be aired a WEEK after they air on Rooster Teeth and Vrv to avoid spoilers, and so I don’t have to tag as spoiler as HEY HEY I don’t get as many notes logically. With that-CLICK THAT READ MORE BUTTON AND LET’S LOOK AT SOME SHIPS!

HELL YEAH-aircrafts!

0:41 We then see the first shot of Team RWBYQOMJNR looking ALL sorts of terse about flying into the the occupied as ALL HELL kingdom of Atlas.

Weiss: I’ve never seen our forces deployed so aggressively before.

Ruby: What about at the Vytal festival? Bunch of ships there.

Weiss: Trust me, that was SLIGHTLY less aggressive than how aggressively they’re deployed here, its like coke and pepsi, a SLIGHT differentiation. 

The crew then decide to go seek out Winter(the only Schnee besides Weiss still worth a damn) and then get distance from the fleet and THEN WE SEE-

1:31 -one HELL of a cityscape, man I’d love to Batman that shit in a video game, just grapplin’ around like a fool, it’d be SWEET. We ALSO see-

1:54 -JAMES VIA BROADCAST-in all his bearded glory, a beard that I REALLY  hope he doesn’t shave off dramatically to signify that he’s getting better or some shit because DAMMIT-beards are not a symbol of depression their just awesome facial hair! You know what movie I’m talking about.

The crew then get told by the radio-lady that they gotta dock their ship, but its okay because Weiss says her sister will TOTALLY let them sneak in-

2:57 Winter: -failure to cooperate with Atlas military personnel is a punishable offense. 

Aw man, I wanted to see Winter and have her conspire to murder her and Weiss’s terrible dad. *SIGH* Maybe next episode.

Maria then decides to take them to a totally not important person with relevance to previous characters, docking their ship, and then meeting some of the local flavor of Mantle including:

3:57 Loose exposition about the current political state that wasn’t lazily explained by a main cast member(for ONCE)-

Antles Joe, preparing to play his Banjo-

-random graffiti that the show focuses on for NO foreshadowing reason, none at all so stop talking about it-

-A camera drone whose JUST two weeks from retirement.

Yang: GAH-my visage, it has been stolen!

Yang: YEET!

*SMASH*

Yang: OOH. Maybe we should pick up the pace?

Ruby: Maybe YOU shouldn’t kick surveillance drones!

Weiss: For real, that shit gets uploaded to the cloud IMMEDIATELY.

Yang: I DON’T LIKE SUPRISE PHOTOS OKAY?!

The group then continues their leasurely stroll and see NOTHING that bums them out about the city they’re i-

-ooooooooooh right, exploited Faunus workers...’dat not good.

After Blake makes a light comment about the crappyness of the city, they are THEN verbally acosted by-

-DRUNK GORDON FREEMAN! Man, the wait for the final Half-Life game is messing him up to huh?

Seriously, TELL ME this dude don’t look like Gordon’s shitburg little brother, its un-CANNY!

Blake being the nice young lady she is apologizes for insulting his hometown, and then Drunk Gordon fucks up in the worst way possible.

*PTOOIE*

Anytime a character spits after someone talks, you KNOW their gonna start shit.

Gordon: Shtupid faunus like you, wouldn’t understand-

It was at this point Drunk Gordon realized, he fucked up.

Weiss: Ain’t NOBODY shit-talk my girlfriend’s girlfriend.

After giving a drunk racist what for, the group then go to-

6:00 THE HEALING STATION-to replenish the HP and MP! I just hope it works Toad House rules where you don’t gotta pay, at least until the NEXT game where you pay for replenishing, which I GUESS was okay given you can earn more coins but BLEH.

Its here where we meet-

-PIETRO-absentminded genius of Atlas, and adjuster of Maria’s cybereyes and that is all he is, stop asking if he’s related to someone important SO THERE!

Pietro then gives them the straight shit telling them that after the fall of Beacon, James got SUPER paranoid given that whoever hacked Atlas’s codes was either a genius...or one of their own. And I just can’t even IMAGINE who it could be-Watts, its gonna be Dr.Watts, the trailer pretty much proved it.

Its at this point, where Pietro FINALLY realizes that he’s talking to Team RWBY, and given his absentmindedness he’s the ONLY  person I’ll allow for not recognizing said celebrities right away. And when Yang tries asking  him about Mantle he goes all-

Pietro:...you PAINTED it...and added bad ass scratch marks!

Yang: Well the scratch marks were an accident, but I’m not sure why you’d care abou-HOOBAZAWAH?!

The team is surprised he knows them(for some reason despite celebrity status) due to his daughter telling him about them, said daughter baring...NO meaning...to...the plot(KEEP IT TOGETHER MICK). Right before Rubalubes asks about his daughter-RANDOM GRIMM ENCOUNTER TIME-to which EVERYONE is fully armed fo-

10:07 Blake: DAMMIT-my blade is still symbolically broken, guess its bullets only.

And then Team RWBYQOMJNR just kics EVERY Grimm’s ass, Ren goes that way, Ruby goes the other, just a BILLION awesome attacks I’m not even gonna BOTHER clipping because this is just a still recap blog post and their all really fast and the next episode is 20 minutes after I’m finishing this so don’t call me lazy.

HOWEVER-I will show ONE awesome clip, LASER TIME BABY!

11:45 NICE cuh-leeeeeeeeeeeeeean cut!

Then lasers here, lasers there, LASERS EVERYWHERE! WHO-is the bad ass laser lady? Like I EVEN need to FUCKING say it!

12:15 Ruby:...Penny?!

Jaune: Oh so YOUR almost-girlfriend gets to come back to life, that’s fair.

SHE’S ALIVE MOTHER FUCKERS! Brought back to life by sacrificing a Maximal protoform, ALSO giving her flight capabilities! And yes I’m comparing Penny to Optimus and you can’t stop me.

And the next scene is JUST adorable.

Penny: Sal-

Ruby:...huh?

Penny: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Ruby:(...OH SHIT-)

Penny: -TATIONS!

*PFFT* Paused at the RIGHT moment yo!

Ruby: AAAAAAAAAAAAH-INCOMING GIRLFRIEND!

Ruby: Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

Precious.

13:04 Pietro(who is also her dad if you weren’t paying attention) than reveals that after the fall of Beacon, they were able to recover her Spark Chamber, I MEAN Core from the arena and fixed her RIGHT up! Even gave her flight abilities that look NOTHING like in the manga, but that’s loose canon at best so whatevs.

After Penny flies off to fight the rest of the Grimm, Nora then channels the ENTIRE Rwby fandom in one sentence:

13:46 Nora: I can’t tell if I completely understand what is going on, or have like a MILLION questions!

After that craziness, the team then follows Professor Polendina to his house where nothing else bad happe-

SHIT-anime streaks, BRACE FOR IMPACT!

14:15

DAMN-critical Dexterity fail all around.

Close it out with the team being arrested for saving the day because television, and that’s EP ONE yo! Really fun, glad Penny’s back, and can’t wait to see Ironwood either apologize or shittalk the team for doing their jobs because as said, TELEVISION! EITHER WEITHER-see you next week on MICKSTERECAP!

[mobius-prime]

121. Knuckles the Echidna #22

Dark Alliance (Part One of Three): You Say You Want a Revolution…

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Jim Valentino Colors: Barry Grossman

So fair warning - this arc is very politics-heavy. I've already criticized the inclusion of politidrama plotlines in the comic before, despite my own personal interest in them, so I won't go over it again. What I will go over is that this arc also includes quite a few tasteless references to the Nazi regime of World War II, starting with the intro page. See, every issue in this arc begins with, rather than the traditional intro page that recaps past events and introduces plot points to come, instead a speech or quote relevant to the current story. This one is a parody, if you will (though played completely straight) of the "First They Came" poem by the German pastor Martin Niemöller, referring to how many people stayed silent while the Nazis oppressed and enacted genocide upon groups that those in silence didn't belong to. In this altered version, "Anonymous" claims that Robotnik came for hedgehogs, squirrels, rabbits, and foxes first, during which the speaker stayed silent as they were an echidna and didn't want to get involved, and so by the time he came for the echidnas there was no one left to speak up for them. Of course, quite aside from the fact that this is completely disrespectful to the real-world situation that the actual poem describes, that's not even how the Robotnik coup went down. Robotnik, upon dethroning King Acorn, pretty clearly just started roboticizing all Mobians indiscriminately without regard to their individual species. Not only that, but he didn't even get a chance to start on the echidnas, as all of them were either contained in their pocket universe on the Floating Island, or hanging out in Albion, which it appears Robotnik never even knew existed. I don't know, the whole thing is clearly an attempt to seem really intellectual and deep on Penders' part, but it just comes off as insensitive instead.

Anyway, onto the actual story. We open in the house of High Councilor Pravda, who appears to be the main political leader of the city. In the dead of night, Pravda is awakened by a window smashing downstairs, and angrily stomps down to confront the intruder, believing it to be "dingo trash up to no good." Instead, he is dragged out of his house roughly by several Dark Legionnaires, while the leader, called Kommissar (her title, not her name), admonishes him for his apparent hypocrisy regarding his anti-technology stance.

Well, she seems lovely! As she has her people drag him away, we pan to Haven, where Knuckles is demanding answers from his grandfathers on his father's whereabouts. To his credit, Sabre is genuinely apologetic to Knuckles, believing that they should have been a lot more forthcoming with him a lot sooner, but Knuckles really isn't having it, and can you blame him?

As a side note, this is about the point in the comic where the eyes of characters such as Knuckles and Tails, formerly depicted as black pupils as in the classic games, start to gain some color. We already saw it with Tails a little while back during the Sand-Blasters two-parter, and it's very inconsistent between issues (for example, you'll notice his eyes are blue instead of purple up there), but you'll start to notice it in screenshots from here out before their designs finally stabilize to their modern forms, similar to their designs from the games.

While Knuckles continues to demand to see his father, we ourselves see Locke, who is dropping off Remington, Julie-Su, Lara-Le and Wynmacher back in Echidnaopolis. Remington asks him how things went with Lara-Le again, and Locke acts like he's all regretful that he couldn't woo Lara-Le back to him or something, which like, really man? You're divorced and haven't spoken properly in years, and she has a new fiancé now, did you really expect to just manage to sweep her off her feet again and get remarried? Julie-Su tries to approach Locke to thank him for saving the whole group, and finds herself recognizing his appearance somewhat. Upon asking, she's shocked to find out that he's Knuckles' father, and asks him about Knuckles' whereabouts. Remington ushers her away before they get a chance to speak further, probably to protect Locke's privacy, and as he jokes with her that it seems like she actually cares about Knuckles, Locke muses to himself that his son is likely furious with him, which, yeah, not far off there buddy. He has an idea of where his son might have gone, and as he speeds off in his air vehicle, we jump over to the Kommissar, who has by now dragged her captive all the way back to the Dark Legion's current hideout… and oh boy, inside we get to see a familiar f- …uhh… okay, well, I won't call him a familiar face, because we've never seen him looking quite this messed up before, but it's Dimitri, okay? It's Dimitri back on his BS.

Guess he had to have some, uh, extensive reconstructive surgery after his rather literal fall from grace. And unfortunately for everybody who doesn't want to be ruled over by a cyborg'd up monstrosity of a dictator, he's got a new takeover plan in mind for the city!

Back in the more civilized areas of Echidnaopolis, Remington is having his driver take Wynmacher and Lara-Le back to their apartment when they find the streets blocked by a protest from dingoes, agitating about their lack of housing and accommodations within the city. Remington tries to resolve the situation peacefully by requesting that if they must protest, to at least let traffic pass while they do, but at that moment a giant flaming fireball comes out of nowhere and starts wrecking the place, and the whole thing devolves into a big brawl between the protesting dingoes and the watching echidnas.

Remington calls Haven for backup, and while I'm not sure who exactly in that nest of grandpas he expected to go rushing out of there for something as simple as a protest gone wrong, luckily for him he mentions Lara-Le over the comm, and Knuckles immediately enlists Archimedes' help to poof him out there to help his mom. Meanwhile, we get to see that Locke has completely, thoroughly misjudged where Knuckles would be hanging out at this moment, having thought for whatever reason that he would be brooding inside the Chaos Chamber next to Mammoth Mogul's ugly frozen mug.

Now this is some well-appreciated character development from Locke. I've been heavily criticizing him this entire time for how he's handled his interaction, or lack thereof, with his son, and I'm glad to see that Lara-Le's admonishments seem to have gotten through to him. While he won't get a chance to catch up with his son right at the moment, at least we know the big talk isn't that far off in the future.

Knuckles and Archimedes poof into the fray on the streets, and Knuckles begins throwing punches at whoever gets close enough, which as everyone knows is the single best way to end a violent brawl - by participating! Despite being an echidna himself, he doesn't hesitate to throw punches at other echidnas in the bunch, with Archy adding some of his own fire breath into the mix. If anything, I'd say he accurately judged the situation, which is that the dingoes were peacefully demonstrating and it appears to have been an angry, racist echidna who threw the first molotov. General Von Stryker makes his entrance, and despite him predictably acting aggressive and blaming echidnakind in general for the dingoes' treatment, Knuckles actually agrees with him that the echidnas are being really crappy, and offers a truce so they can discuss what went wrong and how to resolve it. Meanwhile, back in hell - I mean, the Legion's hideout…

This is probably the single most disturbing page in the comic so far, if you ask me. This guy is begging, screaming, for mercy and they put him under like nothing's wrong and start doing surgery without his consent (obviously) on his brain. Dimitri, watching the proceedings, starts mwahaha'ing to himself about the whole affair, as apparently Pravda is the direct descendant of Menthor, the councilman who denied his and Edmund's proposal to use the Chaos Syphon all those centuries ago. He's determined not to get careless with his power again in the future, and now that he's defeated death by old age through the sheer power of adding more and more cybernetics to his failing frame every time something goes wrong, he's ready to get his long-due revenge.

In another part of the city, Knuckles and Archimedes poof right into the middle of the Chaotix, who are pleased to finally see him and hopefully get a chance to catch up. As he explains what was going on with the protest, Julie-Su arrives and gives him the "why" he was looking for, which is that, naturally, Pravda was kind of a racist ass and wasn't working very hard to ensure the dingoes would have housing built for them in a timely manner. However, elections for the position of High Councilor are coming up in a few days, and Pravda has ever-so-mysteriously been missing since the previous night, with his traumatized wife too messed up to be able to talk about what she saw. She slyly mentions when questioned that "a little birdie" gave her all this information, leading Vector to rather rudely blame her for "having friends in low places" and generally acting as distrustful of her as ever. Seriously, Vector's been kind of a jerk to her ever since she left the Legion, and you just know that situation is gonna come to a head sooner or later. But enough of them - let's head back to the Kommissar, who's having her people reenact Kristallnacht in the streets of Echidnaopolis! (Told you this arc is full of tasteless references to WWII…)

She reports in to Dimitri, who is pleased to hear about her progress on the senseless property damage and random citizens she's beating up for no reason. Like, the regime seems cacklingly evil enough to want to do this kind of stuff, sure, until you hear Dimitri's actual plan for takeover this time - he's implanted control chips into Pravda's brain, and is going to use him as a mouthpiece for the Legion's ideals in the upcoming election!

So, wait. You want to get your new mind-slave to cast your organization in a positive light, and at the same time you're having one of your main commanders go around smashing windows and beating people up in alleys? How is this master plan of yours supposed to work, exactly? That entire Kristallnacht page could be removed from the comic and not only would it not impact the story, it would make it make more sense than it currently does. I seriously think that it was only included to draw more parallels to the Nazi regime, because there's just no way it makes any real sense otherwise. Sigh, Penders. Why do you have to be like this?

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

I’m no stranger to antisemitism.

Like pretty much every other Jew who has grown up in a non Jewish environment, I’ve heard my fair share of insults and accusations. Many of the antisemites I have dealt with have attempted to hide their prejudice behind the guise of “anti-Zionism”, but there was nothing hidden about the racism I had to experience last Shabbos, and none of the insults I’ve had flung at me over the years prepared me for it.

Picture this. You’re walking back from shul on a Shabbos afternoon, talking to your friend about this and that, when you start to hear chanting getting louder and louder. You’re in an orthodox Jewish neighbourhood, namely Stamford Hill, and you feel safe surrounded by hundreds of other Jews.

At least, you feel safe until you turn the corner and come face to face with a 20 strong group of protestors, shouting through a loudspeaker, spewing the most vile hatred you’ve ever heard.

“Your money won’t save you from the hell fire!” “You’re gonna go back to the gas chambers!”, “We will smash your heads in!”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Every time an orthodox Jew walked past, this violent group began shouting antisemitic insults through their loudspeaker, calling Jews devils, and money worshippers, screaming about their “long noses” and saying their tzitzis would send them to hell.

The group were later identified as the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, an offshoot of the Black Hebrew Israelites: a racist and black supremacist fringe group who believe that white Jews are destined for hell.

Never before in my life have I felt so terrified by a group of people, but my friend and I stood our ground, refusing to cross the road and leave them to target other Jews. We convinced a non Jewish passerby to call the police, explaining that we could not use the telephone on Shabbos, and thought that the nightmare would come to an end.

But it only got worse. As time passed, they became more and more virulent in the minutes leading up to the arrival of the police, claiming that our attempts to stop them would send us straight to hell. When the police arrived, they stated that they were understaffed, and that the two available officers could do nothing to prevent the much larger group from spewing hatred. While they negotiated with the leader of the demonstration, my friend and I found ourselves surrounded by a sea of people – ordinary looking, well dressed citizens, who turned to us and said, “You hear them?! They’re right. You put him up on the cross and still you think you’re better than everyone else!”

A blood libel in the 21st century? I should have been more surprised, but by this point I felt I had seen everything. If violent, racist demonstrators and seemingly normal shoppers can spread hatred so freely on the streets of Stamford Hill, while policemen stood by complacently, perhaps I am no longer safe as a Jew in London.

After statements were taken by the police, and a few more curses were thrown in my direction by the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ (“Your synagogue is a home to the devil and it will burn!”), we walked home, trying desperately to make sense of what had just happened. I wasn’t sure why it had happened to me, or why the police thought it was okay. But I was sure of one thing: if the police wouldn’t fight antisemitism, then I would fight it myself, by being a prouder and more open Jew than I have ever been before.

Save

[yakkety-yak-art]

Why Bioshock Infinite Wasn’t Working (for me)

As someone who loves the first and second games (the first largely for the story, the second largely for the gameplay and characters), I have really felt out of place in the fandom for just....not liking Infinite. Ever since it was released, people have been touting it around on a pedestal like it’s the best thing since sliced bread, but I just have never seen the appeal. Sure, it looks pretty, and there are some interesting parts, but it just never worked for me. And I figured out why. (Note: this is opinionated, so if you disagree and feel the need to respond, do so politely. I will be keeping this as fair as I can and there’s no need to be rude just because you disagree. If you like this game, that’s totally fine, and I can respect your opinion even though it doesn’t match up with mine! This is just my thoughts on the matter, and I am not the end all be all on the topic. You are free to feel however you wish about the game, and if you are more sensitive to criticism about things you like, feel free to just ignore this post!)

This game is a run-of-the-mill FPS with repetitive fights that traipses around in a facade of deep thoughts and hard-hitting hot takes. So many of the people praising this game praise it because the story is deep and riveting. to which I must eloquently say, “Nah.” The story is the equivalent of someone standing on a soapbox, gathering a crowd with the promise of a new concept no one has ever thought of before; something life-changing, something thought of only by a deep thinker; and this someone faces a crowd of Americans, waiting with bated breath to hear something they haven’t been aware of literally their whole lives, only to tell them in an extremely pretentious manner that, “America’s past was no fun :(.” 

No shit, Sherlock. 

The original Bioshocks dealt with things that will really always be topical: the implications and consequences of extreme capitalism and objectivism, and, conversely, extreme communism and mob mentality/hive mind-esque organizations; the importance of choice and the realization of people as individuals coming together being stronger and more unified than an echo-chamber group (yes, there’s a difference); the implications of moral decisions on the future for oneself and the entire world, and extremely beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking portrayals of the importance of platonic relations, found family, and positive bonds between parent and child (particularly fathers, which is refreshing and interesting, since a lot of dads don’t get a very good rep in media); the consequences of classism; finally, breaking free from the roles laid out and expected, and thinking freely (truly freely, not wrongfully convinced of free thinking when in reality the government is in control, seen with Atlas, Ryan, Lamb, etc. The games also give you extremely interesting moral decisions and topics; do you serve yourself, or sacrifice to save the children? Are you really any better than the splicers who were taken advantage of and left to rot, and while you must kill them to survive, are they still people? As you splice, do you become exactly what you are trying to save yourself and the few innocents of Rapture from?

These are all interesting and topical ideas to bring up. So what does Infinite have to share?

Racism is bad (an important topic, but handled poorly). Religion is also bad. Schrodinger’s cat, maybe? Infinite universes mean infinite possibilities!!! Except, no, not really. For a game that puts emphasis on infinite possibilities, it only really explores the same one. 

Firstly, “racism is bad/America is bad/religion is bad” is hardly a hot take, and they are portrayed in the most basic forms that they possibly could be. All the bad guys are racist to the extreme, the entire city is a haven of white supremacy, and basically all because of religion. The main villain only becomes the villain because he gets baptized. It’s extremely on the nose, with public humiliations/lynchings, and public worship of the dude who assassinated Lincoln. Not only does it seem, well, preachy, due to how on the nose it is, it’s not even interesting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s extremely important to discuss racism and xenophobia, especially as it occurred in the past, but because of the world they have set Infinite in, it comes across as implausible. Like, ok, fantasy world, but that’s just it: this is a fantasy. There could have been an amazing discussion on, not blanket “hurr durr institutionalized racism is bad”, but the society that Vigors, a majority working class of non-whites/immigrants, a search for utopia, and the extremes of religion AND science, paired with the idea of facades, would create. Why not have more of the public use Vigors? Like the Vox, in an attempt to gain more control and power? As Columbia had to travel from continent to continent, have the racism be always present but constantly hidden. Rather than public carnival games with racist caricatures, have a society that seems so perfect on the outside that it cannot possibly be. Everyone who is not white or is Jewish or Irish is always creepily smiling and re-asserting that they love their jobs, and their city. Perhaps one is seen speaking out, and they are quickly taken out. Uncovering an extremely unnerving facade like this proves the underlying corruption, power, and horror of the city a lot more than the extremely blatant examples in Infinite do. It’s like the difference between your teacher telling you people were racist in the past, and then reading something about how beautiful the world is and how nice the town they live in is in--only to then find a photo of the writer in a creepy black and white photo, smiling at the camera as they lynch someone--or even, being the subject in the photo who was lynched. It’s so creepy and obviously a lie, but unless you take the time to dig deeper, to find out why the writing had seemed so, well, strange or unrealistic, you could remain blissfully ignorant despite knowing something is wrong. That’s an interesting moral dilemma faced in everyday life. In Infinite, you can just kill them. Problem solved. In fact, it’s so easily solvable, apparently, that it makes you wonder why everyone else hasn’t done that already. It’s also extremely lazy to make all of your villains racist and all of the good guys totally not racist™ and just shoot everyone. I mean, really? they don’t even try to have a conflict of morality, like with Tenenbaum or Sinclair. It’s unrealistically black and white (ha), and because of this, predictable, lazy, and boring. Again, discussions of racism is not a bad thing--but it’s handled so poorly here that it’s almost like the story just stops to remind you that racism is bad, before continuing. 

The parts of the story that don’t deal with social issues are not any better. You can tell me all you want that the ending and the story are just sophisticated, and that I just didn’t get it, but to that I respond: maybe writing a story that has so many possible implications, endings, and theories that could all exist or not exist or sometimes maybe happen unless we were wrong about this one thing, in which case maybe not isn’t sophisticated, and is instead pretentious, lazy, and a lot fucking worse than you giving me a whole story with a jumping off point for my own ideas and conclusions about it’s implications. No, Infinite doesn’t do that. It’s so hackneyed, so convoluted, with it’s “infinite” lighthouses and “infinite” outcomes when in reality, no matter what, there’s just this one racist evil religious dude who is always religious and racist and evil. It could end, not in a “maybe it’s a Schrodinger’s cat?” cop out, but in one of those alternate outcomes (like, clearly alternate, not hinted at alternate), leaving the player with questions about the importance of decisions if there is always another place where the decision either was or wasn’t made, or whether or not the world should even be respected to the extent that it is when, with Elizabeth (and, in theory, her ability to create others with her powers), it is possible to just find a new world. Those are interesting, and also leave the player with some moral questions and debate topics, whereas the actual ending just sort of looks and sounds deep, but in reality is just a writer’s inability to live up to his own setup of the multiverse.

there are some other reasons, like how elizabeth’s powers seem really pointless as they are underutilized, how the game could have worked better if you played as her, how the game literally could’ve been standalone, seeing as it has nothing to do with Bioshock’s story except for Levine’s lazy attempt at “connecting” the two canons, but those are the big ones. All in all, I can’t like it because it has potential that was so ultimately wasted--it’s lazy in it’s story, in it’s tackling of social issues, and in it’s basic requirement at having anything to do with Bioshock, when it could have so easily been an amazing game, not only at the surface, but truly, as you dig deeper into the story. But I really, truly wish that I could love this game. It could’ve been great.

[schraubd]

Election 2018: Post-Mortem

We're not 100% "post-" yet, as there are still a decent number of races outstanding. Here in California, the mail vote could yet push around some House race numbers (though Montana just was called for Jon Tester!). Nonetheless, we've got enough of a picture to give a pretty solid account of yesterday's events. Here are my takeaways: * * * Dems winning the House is huge: This was not something to take for granted. Let's not forget, there was a good chunk of time where people thought GOP gerrymandering had placed the House out of Democratic reach. And control of the House doesn't just prevent Congress from ramming through far-right pieces of the Trump agenda. It also gives Democrats a key fulcrum from which to launch investigations into the deep cesspool of corruption that characterizes the Trump administration. On that score, I actually don't recommend starting with Trump necessarily. There are so many targets to choose from, and if there's one thing I think we learned from how the GOP handled the Benghazi (non-)story, it's that a steady and constant drip-drip-drip of scandal is far more powerful than blowing everything in one shot. Start with easy marks like Zinke, and the noose will slowly begin to tighten around the inner circle. This was a continuation, not a reversal, of 2016's trend: One theory about 2016 was that it was a fit of temporary insanity, whereby good-hearted Americans had a bout of temporary insanity or rage or anti-Clinton derangement and chose a President whom they didn't really endorse or even like. Under this view, 2018 would be a "snapback" election, where these voters would revert to form and go back to supporting sensible candidates while repudiating Trump's extremism. Another theory about 2016 takes Trump voters more seriously. It posits that in certain very conservative parts of the country -- generally more rural, generally less-educated, concentrated in Appalachia and the American southeast -- they liked Trump, and they continue to like Trump. All the lying and racism and extremism and utter off-the-wall demagoguery -- the love it. Meanwhile, other parts of the country -- more suburban, more diverse, and especially in the southwest -- were moving away from Trump and Trumpism. Last night, I think, decisively ratifies the second theory. By and large, the people who like Trump still like Trump. Rick Scott's numbers in Florida were almost perfectly correlated with the 2016 presidential race. And at the same time, we saw a more decisive shift away from the GOP in the sort of districts where people already didn't like Trump. From what I saw, Democrats did better in Romney-Clinton districts than Obama-Trump ones, which verifies this instinct. And Democrats are continuing to make big strides in Nevada and (yes, even in defeat) Arizona and Texas. The partial exception to this view is the midwest (where Democrats won governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan, and a decent clutch of House seats as well). But even here, the news was mixed: Democrats lost the Senate races in Indiana and Missouri, the governorship in Iowa (albeit while winning 3 of 4 House seats) and Ohio, and their two pickups in Minnesota House races were offset by at least one and probably two GOP flips (which were some of the only such GOP wins nationwide). There is a truth that is important for pundits to get through their head: conservative Americans like Trump. He's not an aberration. He's not deus ex machina. He's not someone they begrudgingly tolerate. American conservativism, right now, is Donald Trump. If that's a scary thought -- and it is -- start reporting it like something scary rather than pretending that most Republicans basically pine for Gerald Ford but somehow got sucked into an authoritarian nightmare they wish they could escape from. State Races Matter The national focus also has somewhat obscured how Democrats did on the state level. A bucket of governor's mansions have just turned blue -- Maine, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, and Kansas -- and there were no blue-to-red flips (solid holds in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon, and Colorado). And it looks like they've turned over at least six state legislative chambers too -- not bad! Priority #1 in any state with Democratic majority: lock in voting rights. It's embarrassing that a state like New York has a train wreck of a voting system, and it needs to end immediately. Republicans really did overperform Senate side Yes, it was a brutally tough map for the Democrats. But Republicans nonetheless exceeded at least gameday expectations. Democrats taking back the Senate was always a longshot, but if the GOP holds onto their leads in Arizona and Florida (likely), then they'll have come close to running the table on their best realistic Senate scenario (with only Montana and Nevada as the blemishes). That's legitimate GOP ammo for the spin cycle. And, of course, it does give Trump the ability to continue to pack the courts with right-wing ideologues, which is substantively terrifying. The Democratic Party Neither Needs To Pivot Left Nor Pivot Center The favored post-election parlor of any pundit after an election is to explain why the results decisively demonstrate why a given party needs to adopt the political positions they already supported. Among Democrats, this has typically shaken out along the Bernie/Establishment divide that we're apparently doomed to relive forever because this is The Bad Place. But the fact is, there was no clear trend in which sort of Democrats were winning and losing last night. A bunch of more conservative voices went down in the Senate, but in states which were already punishing turf. And some progressive darlings -- like Ben Jealous in Maryland and Andrew Gillum in Florida -- lost too. On the other side, some establishment picks did their job and won their race (think Jacky Rosen in Nevada, or Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan). But progressives had their stars too -- Beto O'Rourke's campaign in Texas certainly performed better than Texas's red tint should've allowed, and there were a bunch of more progressive challengers who are among the entering House class. Which is to say: different races are different, and different candidates are good fits for different districts. The Party isn't the enemy here. What I think has been shown is that the more extreme "Bernie" accusation -- that there were a bunch of winnable races that Democrats were quasi-deliberately letting go Republican because something-something-corporate-money, and if we only ran Real Democrats they'd be ours -- has been decisively refuted (I don't think Ben Jealous necessarily did worse than Rushern Baker would have done in Maryland, but he certainly didn't do better). But that was a colossally stupid take anyway. Which probably means it still won't die the death it deserves. Briefly on Beto -- Yes, He Deserves Praise This isn't even a hot take anymore but obviously O'Rourke deserves a ton of credit for how he performed in his race against Ted Cruz. I'm seeing some mockery from the usual conservative suspects on this, since he lost, but that's a dumb take. Yes a loss is a loss, and yes everyone hates Ted Cruz, and yes Texas has been slowly purpling. But a sub-three point victory in a statewide race in Texas (by contrast, Governor Greg Abbott -- no political superstar -- won reelection by 13 points) is a monster performance. And his tailwind likely carried a few House races over the finish line as well. The New Redemption is (Sort of) Upon Us I'm by no means the first to come up with the idea that we're going through a "second redemption" to undo the "second reconstruction" that was the civil rights era. But I think there is something to be said about the re-energizing of White racist attitudes that's occurred in America over the last few years. People have talked a lot about Trump and, before him, the Tea Party, not so much creating prejudice as "activating" it. I think that in places like Georgia or Florida, there was some demoralization among the White racist crowd where they had basically given up on the possibility that open racism was something they could "do" anymore. Now, they're downright jazzed -- and from that we get both Kemp and DeSantis likely entering a governor's mansion. That said, the story does seem too pat in some ways -- especially with the passage of Amendment 4 (felon re-enfranchisement) in Florida. It's no exaggeration to say this might put Democrats firmly in the driver's seat in a state as evenly divided as Florida (a full 40% of Black male adults in the state regained their right to vote through this measure), which makes it all the more surprising that it managed to clear the 60% threshold. And to be fair, some amount of credit thus has to be given to those voters who punched a ballot for both Amendment 4 and DeSantis/Scott (there must be a lot of them). One-State Wave! With Rashida Tlaib's victory in Michigan, we not only have our first Palestinian-American Congresswomen, we also will have the first Democratic Representative to openly support a one-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. She will join approximately 2/3 of the House Republican Caucus in taking this view (and if you're a pro-Israel type who's about to respond "that's not fair -- Republicans only support a one-state solution where Palestinians aren't allowed to vote!" stop and listen to yourself). Mixed Results for Anti-Semites Tablet did a whole bit on "antisemites running for Congress", but I found their list far too restrictive (or in a few cases -- most notably Rep. Andrew Carson and GOP challenger Lena Epstein -- too expansive). Overall, it seems like the worst-of-the-worst antisemites -- the open Holocaust denier sorts -- lost, but some more "moderate" cases did fine. I may do a more in-depth exploration of this later. Early Frustration is Misleading There did seem to be an extent which last night felt like a letdown for Democrats. Obviously, the Senate is a clear case where that sentiment is justified. At the same time, it seemed like the night got better for Democrats as it went on -- a couple of races which seemed to be slipping away (Wisconsin, Connecticut) broke blue late, and some of our biggest victories (Nevada) were also well into the evening. On net, there's no question this was a big night for the good guys. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2AQsRAy

[maczealots]

American Healthcare Remains To Be Undefined

There are many things that remain a mystery to us even with the passing of time. And to us citizens of America, nothing is more perplexing than the state of our healthcare delivery system. Ever since President Trump assumed office, he openly attacked the Obama’s Affordable Care Act or Obamacare and vowed to get rid of it while he is in office and that is exactly what he has been doing for the past months. He has been known to pressure Republican legislators both in the upper and lower house to repeal Obamacare as soon as possible but that still has not happened until now.

Well, it’s true that nation-building and simply running a nation is entirely dependent on who’s on power. In this case, it’s a total newbie to politics who is focused on rebuilding America’s greatness and with a strong sense of American spirit. Sounds good, right, but not really. His somehow racist mindset is rubbing off on his actions and he is barely making any progress in realizing the platforms he promised during the last election. And as such, he has compromised a lot of things that Americans hold dear – education, healthcare, and the arts, among others. Until today, nothing has yet been set in stone regarding the US healthcare system and it is making many people worry.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) acknowledged Monday that Congress's next steps on healthcare are unclear after Republicans failed to repeal ObamaCare. 

"Obviously we had a setback on the effort to make dramatic changes on ObamaCare. The way forward now is somewhat murky," the Senate GOP leader said at a Chamber of Commerce event in Kentucky with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. 

A GOP push to pass a "skinny repeal" of ObamaCare failed in a dramatic 49-51 vote before the August recess. A broader repeal proposal and a measure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act simultaneously also failed to get enough votes to pass in the Senate.

(Via: http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/347373-mcconnell-path-on-healthcare-murky)

Since Obamacare is still the recognized healthcare law in the US, it has put Republicans in a dilemma as to what else can they still do to realize their goals and appease the demands of the sitting president. Add to that the challenge in stabilizing the insurance market remains to be a cause of worry among legislators who are torn as to whether or not to repeal Obamacare for real. It is true that the Affordable Care Act has its fair share of flaws but totally overhauling the system without implementing realistic and considerate reforms will eventually make the people suffer and the system collapse.

McConnell told the audience Monday that he would wait to see the legislation that Alexander comes up with, but cautioned that the idea of providing further subsidies to insurance companies absent broader reforms was "pretty controversial."

Before leaving Washington for recess in August, McConnell indicated that the Senate would leave behind its campaign to replace Obamacare and turn to tax reform.

Nevertheless, one version of legislation to change Obamacare ended up just one vote shy of passage, and McConnell could bring another bill up at any time.

When Congress returns in September, it will face the pressing business of raising the federal debt ceiling and passing legislation to fund the government.

(Via: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/mitch-mcconnell-acknowledges-that-path-forward-on-healthcare-is-murky/article/2632131)

For sure, Republicans (including President Trump himself) has long been frustrated as to the way the Obamacare repeal is going. It has been months already but they’re still empty-handed. But then, is the issue here having them realize their own healthcare plans for the country or the welfare of the majority of the American people? Let us not forget who is on the losing end of all this as politicians fight one another for their own vested interests.

Health is a serious issue especially if you have experienced a near-death experience yourself. And given just how expensive health care is these days and insurance companies further reduce their coverage, Americans struggle with their health and finances while politicians keep on ignoring their pleas leaving everyone wondering when will all this madness stop.

American Healthcare Remains To Be Undefined Find more on: https://maczealots.com/

from https://maczealots.com/american-healthcare-remains-to-be-undefined/

[mysteryfanfictheatre3000]

The Bargain and the Inevitable Fall, Part 1

The Bargain & the Inevitable Fall

by Somber_Resplendence

Summary:

Minister Frollo made a bargain and the gypsy gave in to the inevitable fall; or perhaps they both gave in.

This is another Hunchback story, but more “adult” and tagged as “extremely dubious consent.” And by that, they mean “graphic sexual assault.” The consent isn’t “dubious,” it’s just nonexistent. 

So, yeah. Warning: graphic torture and rape.

A snickering guard's laughter resonated within the darkened dungeons, his grip tightening on a blood dripping whip, speckles of the dark liquid covering the floor like stars covering the night sky. A darkened figure, garbed in black judicial robes, a crimson ribbon fluttering behind, swept the empty, forgotten corridors of the dungeons. His footsteps echoed, alerting the hopeless prisoners of the foreboding sense of death. He clasped his pale hands together, spindly fingers entwining as his rings of emerald and ruby gently clinked against one another. The Minister of Justice had arrived.

Well, at least it’s true to how he was portrayed in the movie. Lookin’ at you, Danisha.

"Minister Frollo!" the guard gasped, eyes widening in terror at the sight of the towering, menacing man whose granite eyes shimmered in disapproval as he narrowed his hardened gaze upon the blubbering guard.

"What are the charges?" he asked, his deep, baritone voice sending tremors through the stone walls. The guard shivered, lips quivering in response beneath his thick mustache where bits of breakfast were stowed away.

That’s a description I didn’t need to hear. Though, to be fair, gross mustaches should honestly be the least of my concerns.

"Thievery, Your Honor," said the guard, "She's been restrained for three days."

If they’re talking “restrained” as in “shackled to a wall restrained” for three straight days, I’m willing to assume at this point that Esmeralda is in severe pain if not unconscious, has muscle atrophy, and all the rest. 

 Trembling in the brooding presence of the Minister, he slid to the side, allowing the bright glow from within the prisoner's chamber to spill into the corridor. The orange pool of light cascaded upon the minister's tall frame, accentuating his stark features. He craned his neck and peered in, a black eyebrow shooting up in raw suspicion. Inside, a curvaceous body hung motionless from a set of rusted chains which were bolted to a brick wall; her head hung low, ink black hair shielding a beautiful but battered face.

Mixing the description of a woman being tortured with description of her curves and her beauty comes across as weird and very wrong-feeling. Don’t do that. Pick a mood: threatening or sexy.

Minister Frollo growled in satisfaction. He'd been expecting her. He twisted his dry lips into a wicked grin, and it stretched across his aged face, nearly reaching his ears.

Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew...

"Leave us be," he said, gracefully waving a slender hand towards the guard who quickly scurried away at the command, his clanking armor fading away as he scampered down the lonely corridor.

The Minister entered the grimy cell, slamming the door behind him, causing the prisoner's head to shoot up like a child waking from a terrible nightmare, drenched in sweat and panicking. 

Comparing a woman who is about to be raped to a child and expecting readers to find this alluring is... not right. It comes across as disturbing and makes people want to protect Esme, not have sex with her.

However, her nightmare was existent and on-going. Red-rimmed, emerald eyes fixated on the skeleton draped in Death's garments, and she shivered in alarm.

See, this is tagged and titled as if it were romantic and not horror. And that just doesn’t seem okay.

He neared her, cocked his head to the side, and jutted his chin out, cynical eyes watching her down the length of his aquiline nose; she was delicious. Her arms were pulled back, chained to the brick wall behind her alluring form, causing her chest to jut out due to the uncomfortable position. 

What’s sexier than a terrified young woman who’s been chained up for three straight days and described as being child-like? Boy, does that get people aroused. Innocent girls being tortured is so alluring!

And the Minister's eyes drank in every curve of her plump, succulent breasts, sweat glistening upon them and slipping down their shapely form into the crevice between them.

I feel like just reading this is putting me on a list.

He bit his lower lip and attempted to regain his soundness by straightening his narrow form and placing his needy hands, which longed to run across her shapely figure, behind his back, pale fingers entwining.

Needy is not the word this makes me think of. This makes me think Frollo is a literal demon from hell.

Also, where the hell are Phoebus and Quasi? Did they just vanish? Are they prisoners, too? Are they just okay with this happening to Esmeralda? What the hell?

"I'll make this simple for you, gypsy. You give me what I ask for and I'll let you walk out alive. An offer I'm sure you cannot refuse," he said. His voice slightly cracked due to her appealing position which stirred a burning sensation in his loins. 

Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew....

She teased him. Even in confinement, even in the nethermost, murkiest chamber of his dungeons, she tempted him. 

She is not teasing him, she is dying, and scared, and in pain. Talk about victim-blaming.

And as a means of suppressing his enduring, lustful passions, he began pacing the room, dense footsteps falling upon the blood stained floor, a rosary wrapped around his thin wrist swaying back and forth like a pendulum with his every swift movement.

"However, should you fail to comply with my demands I'll have to bestow upon you a befitting punishment. Is that understood?"

Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew...

"I'm not afraid of you," she hissed, fury brewing within her gut, bubbling forth from her luscious lips. Her emeralds narrowed on his daunting frame, her gaze burning through his robes and setting his him aflame. 

These oddly sexualized descriptions are very out of place. 

She loathed him, and until the end of time, she'd use her every breath polluting his order and denouncing his reign.

"I believe you," he said flatly, "But I do trust that you have neither the authority nor the time to make such accusations, for as we speak my men are on the hunt, searching for that diminutive hideaway you so dearly consider to be enthralling. I, most assuredly, can guarantee you-"

"You'll never find the Court of Miracles," she interjected, her body lunging forward, chains rattling in the dead silence that followed her revolting words. She was lovely when draped in frustration, and the Minister grinned; his plan was unraveling perfectly.

A.) plan? and B.) how the hell did you capture her if you don’t know where the Court of Miracles is? If the charges of thievery are legitimate, that’s pretty racist. And why would she even need to steal, anyway? She made tons of money at the Festival from dancing alone.

"Correct you are, my dear," he said. Drawing near, his large frame towering above her, he forbiddingly ran a thin finger down the side of her hot cheek. His touch sent a cool sensation throughout her body, yet she refused to admit it, for he was a foul, loathsome beast. 

Yes, he is. And why everyone treats him like a sex bomb is beyond me.

And though his peculiar gesture made her stomach churn and her heart ache in a strange and unexplainable way, she couldn't help but to shudder in odd excitement at the feeling his dark and mysterious presence brought her.

*EW INTENSIFIES*

"However," he began, absentmindedly twirling a finger into one of her ebony locks, "I am willing to make a bargain with you. Give me the location of the Court of Miracles, and I'll let you walk out of here alive."

"Never," she said, turning away from him, allowing her lock of hair to gently slip away from his parched finger; the silky touch of her hair had felt heavenly.

Again, weird sexualized description is weird.

"I expected you'd say that," he said, withdrawing from her and steepling his fingers. "I suppose I'll have to change my methods."

Her brows knitted together in confusion as he crossed towards a wooden table which lay to the left of the small, dingy cell. A puddle of dirty water drowned its crooked legs, and a few splotches of crimson, which the gypsy assumed was blood, coated the countertop; the foul decoration of past victim's fluids was a worrying sight.

This entire story worries me. And, by the way if you’re ever trying to make a scene feel intimidating, don’t make half of it scary and half overly sexual. 

 The gypsy swallowed hard, daunting visions of unbearable torture swirling in her head; the crack of a whip filled her ears and made her jump, the pinch of clamps made her knees buckle, and the touch of hot wax dripping onto her goose bump skin nearly had her yelping in fear.

This is just making me want to hug her! The author’s intent is to have these seem arousing but all it accomplishes is making the readers sympathetic for Esme.

Silence entered the room and took a seat, and as she impatiently awaited her death sentence, vowing to seal her lips at all costs, a sound drew her from her thoughts. A golden ring, an emerald stone perched atop, fell to the table. The clanking sound shoved silence out of the room, and the gypsy stiffened, hands balling into fists within the metal restraints, chains slightly rattling. Another golden ring fell to the table, a red diamond hitting the wooden surface, and she clenched her teeth.

What is with this thing with the rings? Does Frollo even wear rings? Even if he does, why are they emphasized so very much?

Minister Frollo rubbed at his naked fingers before turning his attention back to his prisoner. The anxiety in her eyes was captivating, and to know he had sublime power over her weak emotions was gratifying as it was engaging. Growling lowly, he neared her again, his body pressing up against hers, forcing her into the damp brick wall behind.

NOT SEXY, JUST CREEPY.

"Tell me, gypsy. Where is the Court of Miracles?" he asked, a wandering hand climbing up the length of her leg, fingers digging into her flesh and leaving red imprints behind like a trail to be followed.

Poor Esmeralda. Like I said, not sexy. This is flat-out disturbing.

"You're dirt," she said, shivering in disgust at his actions while devastatingly trying to keep her secret kept.

"Don't insult me, you filth!" he snapped, a free hand snatching her by the neck. She stifled a breath and suppressed a cry of fear, but his grip didn't prove to be treacherous, for the rapid beating of her heart pounding from beneath his grip enticed him, and the soft touch of her flesh upon his own aroused once dormant feelings. Slowly, he loosened his hold, fingers gently sliding down her neck.

Prose purpler than Purpleberry Pond.

"Perhaps you aren't so filthy; perhaps you're sweet," he said, his desperate lips sinfully approaching her inviting neck where the beat of her heart beckoned him to draw near. "Shall I have a taste?"

*EW INTENSIFIES MORE*

His words pierced her, created a hole within her chest, and she fell cautious, confused, and oddly curious. But it was the way she parted her delicious lips in hesitation, and the way her shinning emerald eyes lost themselves in his question, which ultimately pulled at the rusted chains binding his suppressed longings. His lips gently brushed against her neck, and she winced; whether it was from disgust or shock, she didn't know. However, his breath warmed her and invited her to lose herself within his madness and to give into corruption. She refused, temporarily.

This is just... incredibly gross and squick-y. And the consent is not dubious. It just flat out isn’t there. This is verging quickly into sexual assault territory.

Tarnishing her, he ran his tongue along the length of her neck, and she gasped, chains rattling from her sudden jolt. His lips pressed onto her flesh, teased her earlobe, and carefully trailed down the work of her jaw line, nearing her quivering lips. A hand entangled itself within her raven hair, and she cursed him over and over; yet, when he claimed her lips with a kiss, darting his tongue into her hot mouth and scavenging every area he could, the world fell apart and burned. Her mind screamed obscenities, her body fell weak, and her lips unfaithfully deepened the forbidden kiss. It was unwelcomed, but needed; it was toxic, but relished. 

Woah, woah, woah. Stop. Quit making rape seem sexy. This is an elderly man molesting a young woman after she’s been tortured and chained to a wall for days on end. Hell, her muscles are so weak at this point (I mean, looking at this from a clinical standpoint, being shackled up for three days doesn’t help your health) that she wouldn’t even be able to stop him, making consent just nonexistent. 

He was warm, as if the sun lived within him, and she craved it; however, it was the fires of hell which warmed his blackened soul, and to the flames they committed.

Quit romanticizing rape.

His hand, stripped of golden ornamentations, lifted her skirts and trailed up her thighs, pausing at her most intimate region which was aching for him. From within their mad entangle, she felt his lips jerk into a wicked smile and before she could pull away and protest, a single finger slipped inside of her hot core. 

Again, literal, actual rape.This is not romantic. She is not giving consent. She is shackled to a wall. This is rape.

Her breath hitched, eyes widened, and her sanity fled her; She wriggled beneath his tall frame, ashamed at her desire to have more of him within her needy cunt. And as she hopelessly forced to break free, her every movement caused him to push his finger deeper, motioning it into a 'come hither' gesture.

She’s actively resisting him. He is penetrating her anyway, without her consent. This is rape and would be treated as such in a court of law.

She trembled and bit her lip in disgust at her sickening needs, but he reveled in the inner war she waged with her conscious.

NOT ROMANTIC. SHE DOES NOT WANT HIM. STOP.

[two VERY graphic passages cut because I may have done a story about Snaoe/Teletubby buttsex, but even I have standards.]

 She was panting, chest furiously rising up and down against his warm body, half-lidded eyes focusing on the blurred gleams of his golden rings lying on the table.

Again, what is with the focus on rings? 

"Tell me," he said in hoarse voice, breath tickling her neck. "Tell me where it's hidden and I'll set you free."

EW HAS INTENSIFIED TO THE POINT WHERE WORDS CAN NO LONGER EXPRESS IT.

She shut her eyes, the golden blur vanishing from her mind, and slumped forward, forehead resting upon his shoulder as his fingers continued to swirl within her. 

[more grossness cut because yuck]

This last sentence in particular is like something out of a romance novel- between an elderly rapist and a young woman chained to a wall. That doesn’t sit right with me.

"No," she gasped, voice hoarse and broken. He growled in frustration.

"Well, I suppose release will never find you," he hissed, removing his fingers, her sweet ecstasy dripping down his hand. He withdrew from her, his sudden warmth leaving her body cold, and she shuddered from the realization of being denied release. 

See, the author is talking about orgasming, but I am getting more of a sense that she wants to be “released” as in “no longer shackled to a wall and beaten.” I mean, she’s just been raped. I doubt she wants him to come back.

He refused to spare another glance at the gypsy and strolled towards the wooden table to collect his valuables. His game had been fun while it lasted, but it was a game nonetheless.

"Disgusting," he said while rubbing his fingers together, her hot fluids staining his pale skin. Scowling, he carefully adorned his slender fingers with the golden rings, as if they gave him comfort in returning to his supposed cleanliness and celibacy.

Again, stop with the weird focus on the rings. What is with this? They’ve been mentioned really often and it’s off-putting.

"Please," she begged pathetically, sweat sliding down her cheeks. "Please don't leave me like this."

Again, author is talking about sex, and I’m just thinking that she probably wants to be not chained to a wall anymore.

He halted, spindly fingers dripping with her ecstasy clutching the brass handle. For a moment he was silent until a thought blossomed in his darkened mind.

"I do not believe it is in your authority to make requests," he said, relishing her sigh of anguish that followed. "Well, no matter," he continued, easing the door open, "I'm certain you'll soon appreciate my generosity, gypsy. I'm a patient man, and should this little escapade of ours continue to carry on, then I shall be more than willing to oblige until your lips have spoken fact." He curtly smiled before stepping into the dim-lit hall and shutting the door behind, leaving her alone to rot in her misery.

Ė̸̡̛̛̥̥̭̼̹͉̗̠̤͔̱͙̟̟̋̈́͂̄͆͒͆̓̀ͅͅW̷̛̤͎̩͖̾̍̒̈́̇̐̉̀̀͠͝

For hours her legs trembled, her heart raced, and her body craved his touch; it was diabolical. However, as Minister Frollo returned to his quarters, gracefully gliding down the dungeon halls, he couldn't resist the urge to slip his fingers into his mouth and savor the gypsy's sweetness.

Į̸̛͕͉͎͉͕̻̬̺̜̺̤̮̫̝̺͎̟̙́̾͒̍̽̆̓͌̀̋̍͑́͆̽̒̀̌͋̀̓͝͝ͅͅ ̵̨̠͔̜̗̫͖̼̫̥̈́̀ͅw̷̧̮̭̦͍͇̫̬̫͔̬͖̝͍͇̭̰̻͚̻̬̕ͅa̴̜̱̍̈́̅̽̃̏̕ņ̸̡̛̛̤̫̩͉̜̞̯̖̥̠͓͓̯͚͉͕̄͊̓̓͗̈́͌̐̑͗̅̎͒͆͂̈́̏͘͘̚͜͜ͅt̷̝̮̻̳͔̜͎̰̤͍̖̗̥́̋̊͂̉́̋͒͒̐̋̉́͘͜͝͝͝ͅ ̸̛̜̥̟̯̜͒̓͂̒͋́͑͌͋̾̚͝͝͝t̵̢̡̡̧̛̺̻͈̮͉͎͙̝̰̝̤̣̦̘̩͇͙́̄͂̆̈́͐̽̏̅̈́̆͊̔͑͋̏͘̚͘o̸̢̞͔͎̩̰̩̥̩̟̪̭͒̽͆̅̃̌̓̅̃̽̐̏̐͋̄̂̃̿͆̚͝ ̶͉͋͂̓̿͗̊̉d̵̛̲̫̳̻͇̭̻̦̫͎̙͚͈̝̘͍͎̭͍̝͉͎̲̒̒́͂́̿̎͆̄́͑̒̑̇̔̈́̿̆̾̔̎̀͋̿̚͜͝͝į̶̭̱͓͖͔̳̦̙͓̮̞̗̫͉͚̞̳͐̂͒̎͒͆͊̀́̊͜͠ͅè̷̦̻̰̤̹̉̉̈́̄͊̀̏̊͒̾́͊

[the-desolated-quill]

Venom, Silver & Black, And The Sheer Incompetence Of Marvel And Sony - Quill’s Scribbles

I should warn you that Marvel fans are not going to like what I have to say, which is an opinion. It’s my opinion. It’s my subjective opinion. It’s an opinion. I’m very frustrated right now and I really need to vent it, so if you can’t handle a different opinion to your own, why don’t you toddle off to your private echo chamber and find somebody who does share your opinion instead of sending me your badly spelt death threats (although, to be fair, I’ve said a lot of mean things about Marvel over the years and I’ve received little to no grief from the MCU fandom. It’s the DCEU fandom where I normally get the death threats from, usually when I talk about how utterly rubbish Suicide Squad is. Oh yeah, because that movie is worth threatening someone’s life over).

Let’s start by playing a little game. We all love games, don’t we? Take a look at this GIF of the Marvel logo for me:

And while you’re doing that, play this music over it:

Fun fact: That’s the new Marvel fanfare now.

You may have heard the news that Sony’s upcoming Venom and Black Cat/Silver Sable movies are going to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Or ‘adjuncts’ to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as Sony exec Amy Pascal put it. Well of course we all got excited, didn’t we? I mean there were rumours that Sony were going to jump ship after Spider-Man Homecoming 2, but this suggests that Marvel Studios and Sony are going to be in an ongoing relationship. Plus this also means that Venom and Silver & Black are going to be the first R rated movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Except what Amy Pascal said completely contradicts what Kevin Feige said a few weeks ago about how Venom and Silver & Black are definitely not part of the MCU. Oh... well, maybe they’ve sorted it out since then. Maybe they had discussions and Feige realised that maybe this is a good idea after all. I mean there’s no way that Marvel or Sony would release this kind of information unless it’s been fully discussed and officially confirmed amongst themselves, right?

Well apparently not because in a recent interview with Pascal and Feige, where Pascal dropped the bombshell that the Sony Marvel Universe would be an adjunct to to the MCU, Feige looked somewhat taken aback:

Yeah! It looks as though this is something they hadn’t even discussed prior to this interview! But how can this be? Surely this MUST have come up in discussions when they were negotiating the rights to Spider-Man within the MCU, right? Well, believe it or not, I do actually have a clip of those negotiations between Marvel and Sony:

So yeah. Everybody is totally confused as to what the fuck is actually go on now and, at the time that I’m typing this, neither Marvel nor Sony have stepped in to offer clarification. Now of course all the Marvel and Spidey fanboys are pointing the finger solely at Sony and Amy Pascal, saying that she’s jumping the gun and trying to put pressure on Feige by putting him and Marvel into a situation they can’t possibly back out from.

Okay. Here’s the thing guys.

I agree that Sony deserve partial credit for this cock-up. And honestly, we shouldn’t be too surprised about this. I mean this is Sony for Christ sake! The same company that expected The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to make a billion dollars at the box office even though there was no precedent for a Spider-Man movie making that much money. It’s the same company that threw millions and millions of dollars at a big budget Ghostbusters reboot in the hopes of turning it into its own shared universe despite the fact that Ghostbusters has never been that profitable a franchise. The same company that want to make a 21 Jump Street and Men In Black crossover movie despite the fact that the two franchises have absolutely nothing in common. Sony are a bunch of dreamers and chancers. Amy Pascal going off script, as it were, and making unrealistic and potentially incorrect promises pretty much seems par for the course for the company.

It’s just... Are we really going to let Marvel and Kevin Feige off the hook? Because let’s be clear here, this is very much Marvel’s cock-up too. In fact I’d argue that Marvel and Feige deserve more of the blame than Sony does. I mean let’s talk about this ridiculous notion that Sony are putting pressure on Marvel. What fucking planet do these fanboys live on? Marvel are owned by Disney, one of the biggest mega corporations in the world. NOBODY puts pressure on them. They’re at the top of the food chain. When Marvel and Sony started negotiating, Marvel were the ones in the driving seat. So if Amy Pascal did go off on one and start making a bunch of statements about the Sony Marvel ‘adjunct’ Universe that weren’t true, then it’s Marvel’s fault because they didn’t make their position clear enough.

And again, we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s Marvel. The bloated, incompetent sequel factory. Say what you like about the DCEU (God knows I have), but at least they hired an actual filmmaker to overlook the franchise. An artist. A storyteller. Okay Zack Snyder may not be very good, but at least he has a basic understanding of how you structure an overarching story. Kevin Feige isn’t a filmmaker or a storyteller. He’s a businessman. Worse, he’s a businessman who clearly doesn’t know how to do business properly. If he did, there wouldn’t be all this confusion about Sony right now. 

Another good example of Feige’s sheer incompetence is in regards to the Marvel TV shows. Feige has been talking for ages about one day integrating the TV and Netflix shows into the main body of the MCU, but to this day there has never been a mention of even their very existence within the movies. This has caused a lot of frustration both from Marvel fans and from within Marvel itself, most notably Chloe Bennet who plays Skye in Agents Of SHIELD. However Mike Colter (who plays Luke Cage and who appears to be the sole voice of sanity within the Marvel TV shows right now) has said that it’s unlikely that the movies and TV shows will ever mix due to logistical problems. In other words, due to scheduling and production conflicts, chances are that the Defenders and Agents of SHIELD and the billion other upcoming TV shows may never appear in the movies. Now I knew this. I’m sure anybody with a certain degree of common sense would have known this. But do you know who apparently doesn’t know this?

That’s right! Kevin Feige! 

You know? The guy in charge of the bloody thing! Give me strength!

See a fish rots from the head downwards. When you put a filmmaker at the top of the chain, while it’s not a guarantee that it’ll be a good, you can at least trust that they’ll be putting the story and quality of the movies first. Feige is a businessman. And what’s the prime goal of any business? To make money in the most cost effective way possible. And that’s exactly what he’s been doing. And for the most part, that’s exactly how the MCU has been constructed. That’s why most of the Marvel movies in recent years have been so shallow and unchallenging, adhering to this cookie cutter formula. That’s why Feige has been adding more and more movies and TV shows to the franchise regardless of whether or not they’re actually wanted, necessary or even worth making. That’s why there has been little diversity in the MCU. Why take the risk of making a movie with an LGBT+ superhero or a POC superhero or even a female superhero when we know straight, white male superheroes sell perfectly well? That’s why, despite the fact that Deadpool and Logan were hugely successful and there’s clearly an appetite for more mature content, the MCU will never risk making an R rated movie. They’d rather play it safe, making the same formulaic PG-13 crap they always make. They don’t have to fit into a cohesive timeline. They don’t even have to be good. So long as they get bums in the seats, they’re considered a success.

That’s why, try as I might, I cannot get excited for Black Panther. And it feels so utterly wrong for me to say, doesn’t it? It’s the first big budget superhero movie to have a black actor as the lead, to have a predominantly black cast and to have a black filmmaker directing. This should represent a major landmark for this genre and despite my misgivings I really hope it does well, but I honestly can’t work up the energy to get excited about this. Why? Because it’s fucking Marvel. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in the Doctor Strange movie and homogenised the Asian culture because it was apparently too difficult to write an Asian character that wasn’t racist. The same company that cancelled the Black Panther And The Crew and Black Panther: World Of Wakanda comics just as the marketing for the Black Panther movie started. The same company that have deluded themselves into thinking that the reason people aren’t buying their comics is because readers don’t want diversity. The same company that looked at the Captain America comics and thought ‘Hey, I know what would be a good idea! Let’s make Cap a fucking NAZI!’

This whole situation with Marvel and Sony right now feels like I’m at a secondhand car dealers. No matter how many times the salesman tries to convince me that I’m looking at a Ferrari, it’s still a tired, rusty old banger. And frankly, I don’t trust the clowns at the fucking wheel.

[sapphic-quarian]

Bioware and wlw

(No pics since I’m on mobile..booo) So, we’ve all probably seen Cora Harper at this point. And she is pretty! She worked with asari commandos! She’s a romance option! Yay! But there’s one thing I’m wondering (besides her possible relationship to the Illusive Man). Is she just a romance just for BroRyder, or can SisRyder romance her too? Considering Bioware’s history with characters like her, she probably can’t. Now, going just by appearances and the little we know about her, Cora seems queer. She’s got that whole “shaved side” look that screams “butch” (not trying to say all wlw are butch or all girls that look like that are wlw, Cora’s appearance is just similar to stereotypical perceptions of a lesbian.) She is also connected to the asari, which are a LITERAL RACE OF BISEXUAL WOMEN. But let’s look at wlw in bioware’s past games.

I’m gonna start with Jack, cause I played ME2 recently and feelings about Jack are fresh in my mind. Jack is a badass. The galaxy’s strongest biotic, a master criminal, and also a bisexual woman. “But Kate,” you cry, “Jack was only a romance option for male Shep!” Yes, yes she was. But if you talk to Jack about her criminal past, she mentions a couple she used to “share a bed with.” So Jack has canonically had a relationship with a woman. A poly relationship with her and man, but still. And let’s take a look at Jack’s appearance. Like Cora, she has masculine look to her, with the shaved head and bound breasts. Jack would not be out of place at a gay bar. And yet, she’s still presented as exclusively heterosexual, and rebuffs a female shep’s advances.

And, going back to Bioware’s early days, their very first non-heterosexual romance, is Juhani, from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Juhani is a “romance”, but her feelings towards a female PC are only vaguely referenced in one conversation, as opposed to the fleshed-out romances male and female PCs get with Bastilla and Carth, respectively. Now, this has a simple explanation. This game was co-developed with LucasArts. George Lucas was vehemently against any queer characters in Star Wars, and had his fair share of complaints about Han/Luke fanfics back in the day (they published gay fanfic in magazines! Respect.) So Juhani’s treatment is more the best Bioware could do while still meeting LucasArt’s wishes than intentional portrayal of f/f relationships as meaningless.

And then we come to the asari! Everyone loves the asari right? It’s a race of sexy blue bisexual women! While I could write a whole other meta on the asari and femininity, right now I’ll focus on their sexuality. Liara T'Soni, in Mass Effect 1, is the only bisexual romance, being available to both genders of Shep. But the femshep version has one big difference. Liara assures Shepard that their relationship is okay, because asari are a monogendered, female-presenting race. She’s basically saying “I’m not REALLY a woman, so it’s totally not gay if we kiss each other.” When i heard that, I went back and romanced Kaidan instead. I did not need to go through this feeling like my sexuality was being invalidated. And Samara in Mass Effect 2 is no better. While both genders of Shepard are rejected when attempting to romance her, Samara serves as a weird cautionary tale-thing to asari. She was the product of a marriage between two asari, and she married another asari who also had two asari parents. Their daughters were asari afflicted with a genetic condition, known as Ardat-Yakshi, that caused them to consume their partner’s nervous systems when they mated. Two of her daughters agreed to basically become prisoners-slash-nuns, but one of them escaped. Samara’s loyalty mission involves you tracking the third daughter down, and killing her. Morinth, the third daughter, is a textbook example of the perception of wlw as predatory. She’s literally a space vampire in a leather catsuit. You find a journal from her latest victim, a girl named Nef, and she describes how Morinth seduced her, implies Morinth convinced her to take drugs, and eventually killed her. Once you find Morinth, you then have to seduce her. Then, her mother kills her, or you recruit her. If you recruit her, she flirts with Shepard and you can eventually sleep with her. Of course, your nervous system melts. The idea of the Ardat-Yakshi only being born through a union of two asari makes no sense from an evolutionary point of view. In their home world, asari are the only sapient species, therefore it makes no sense to have breeding with other species being a safer option. The only way it would make sense is if they evolved alongside another sentient species. Basically, asari are all feminine, and they are discouraged from beginning and given consequences for having a relationship with another asari. The idea that cross-species relationships are healthier kind of gives off the “a child with two moms can’t develop well argument.” Then we move to Kelly Chambers. Kelly is your yeoman in Mass Effect 2. Basically, she tells you when your squadmates want to talk to you and when you have mail. She’s also the closest thing the game has to a same-sex romance. Kelly’s pan, and she’ll take all kinds. She frequently gushes about how attractive the alien members of the crew are, and Shepard can lightly flirt with her throughout the game. At a certain point, you can invite Kelly to Shepard’s cabin for dinner. A brief scene of her dancing for Shepard and cuddling ensues, and that’s it. No achievement, no other conversations, nothing. It doesn’t even conflict with existing romances. You can be romancing someone and still invite Kelly upstairs. Her only function, besides informing you about who you need to talk to and that brief moment, is being dissolved by the Collectors if you don’t come for the crew right after they’re taken. She plays a smaller role in the third game, where you can either get her killed, convince her to change her identity, or convince her to change her identity and start a relationship, which only adds a few conversations and the inability to romance anyone else. Then, there’s Samantha Traynor. Samantha’s a lesbian and the Normandy’s comm specialist in Mass Effect 3. She serves the same purpose as Kelly in Mass Effect 3 (informing you about mail and missions) except she can be romanced only by a female Shepard, and she has a full, fleshed out romance. My only complaint about Traynor is that she should have been introduced earlier. She was a good character and I would have liked to see her in more than one game. Now, we go to Bioware’s other cash cow franchise: Dragon Age. Specifically, Dragon Age Origins. Our female love interest for a female Warden is Leliana, a spy-turned-nun. Admittedly, Leliana is a pretty good character in terms of representation. She’s not predatory or overly violent in terms of our setting. However, there’s her former mentor, Marjolaine. Marjolaine embodies the predatory, manipulative wlw stereotype, as shown when she had a relationship with the sixteen-year-old Leliana. Marjolaine’s age is not stated, but she is older than Leliana by a good amount seeing as she had been married once before meeting Leliana. She groomed Leliana into becoming a bard, which in Dragon Age is a spy who can also double as an assassin. She then betrays Leliana and frames her for treason. Later, when Leliana asks the Warden to check up on Marjolaine, Marjolaine plays the victim, and tries to convince the Warden Leliana is not to be trusted. In Dragon Age II, we have two bisexual female characters, Isabella and Merrill. Both are great characters with facets and unique flaws. Honestly, there’s nothing negative to say about them as bisexual women. In Dragon Age Inquisition, we have a trio of lesbian characters. Sera is an elf who’s part of a vigilante group called the Friends of Red Jenny. While Sera is on your side, if a female elf inquisitor tries to pursue a romance with her, it gets a little difficult. Sera berates the inquisitor for being “too elfy”, and at one point breaks off the relationship if they don’t admit the eleven gods were demons. None of the other romances have something like this, where one choice can ruin the relationship, so why does Sera’s romance get it? There’s also Celene and Briala. Celene is the empress of Orlais, which is Dragon Age’s equivalent to France. There’s no other way of putting this, so I’m just gonna say it. Celene is a racist manipulative bitch. She oppresses the elves of Orlais, hurls racist insults towards her handmaiden and lover, Briala, and actually had Briala’s parents killed to maintain her grip on the throne. So, yeah, not a nice lady. But what’s the happy ending of the segment she and Briala appear? Getting them back together! Briala had left her after she did nothing for her people, the elves, and because she couldn’t take Celene’s abuse anymore. I will give Inquisition this, it’s bisexual women, Harding and Josephine, are better written. And in Dragon Age II and Inquisition, last but not least, there’s Cassandra Pentaghast. She’s only available to a male Inquisitor in Inquisition. However, depending on how far you take it, she actually can gain approval from a female Inquisitor’s flirting. “But Kate,” you say again, “Cassandra probably just think’s the Inquisitor’s joking and rejects you when you go too far!” we see in her romance with a male Inquisitor that’s she’s a romantic at heart. Flowers, candles, poetry and all that mushy stuff. She’s probably rejecting a female Inquisitor if she flirts too much, cause she wants a fairytale romance. Also, have you seen Cassandra? For the same reasons as Jack and Cora, that’s a gay if I ever saw one. So that’s why I don’t have too much hope in Cora being a bi romance. Just related to Bioware’s track record of including wlw. We can still dream tho. (In case someone asks why I didn’t include mlm in this meta too, as they arguably receive worse treatment in Bioware games 1. I am not a man attracted to other men, so I would feel like I was talking over actual mlm, and 2. This is already long enough. This was just supposed to cover Cassandra and Jack but I got carried away.)

[motherfuckingnazgul]

gonna jump in on some Prime Jewish Discourse

because im a fucking glutton for punishment i guess BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT JEWS AND OPINIONS*

DISCLAIMER: I REALLY LIKE ROACHPATROL AND HER APPROACH TO THE NEGATIVITY THAT TUMBLR HEAPS ON HER REGULARLY. I DO NOT, HOWEVER, ALWAYS AGREE WITH THE THINGS SHE SAYS. BUT I LIKE THE WAY SHE SAYS THEM, AND I LIKE HER, AND THAT COLOURS MY RESPONSE. I AM BIASED. READ THE POST ANYWAY.

anyway so everyone has jumped on the lovely and talented @roachpatrol as always because she said something about using the shehecheyanu to piss off nazis, which i personally was actually pretty fond of? AS A JEWISH PERSON (this disclaimer is necessary, we’ll see why in One Moment) i kind of like the idea of pissing off nazis by loudly and publically proclaiming my judaism and my gratitude to gd for being able to reach this moment, where i am able to actively participate in resistance against the rise of fascism. Never Again.

but! not all jews agree with this. there are several threads of responses on roach’s post (such as this one) where other jews made very well-reasoned arguments about why such a thing in the mouths of goyim is appropriative or otherwise uncomfortable and non-jews at the very least shouldn’t be doing it. i respect that! i’m pretty much in that camp myself. importantly, roach ALSO respects that point of view - see again jews and opinions. we notoriously cannot agree on anything, and that’s totally okay, it’s basically what our culture is founded on and it makes us better as a people imo.

HOWEVER. not all the response has been so civil. most jews who have come into contact with the discussion have assumed that roach is a goy herself, which she is not. she doesn’t focus her entire blog around her judaism like some of us do, but that doesn’t make her less jewish. there was also an exchange where it looked like she’d received a wish for her to die (this one), and though it turned out that that wasn’t what the person had said, i personally feel that the way they went about their response to roach was pretty evident of gatekeeping. not all jews speak hebrew. i certainly don’t. and it’s pretty disingenuous to switch languages in the middle of a conversation where something you said could be easily misconstrued.

back to the actual issue, however: i don’t there there’s any reason to pile on so negatively. it’s totally fair to disagree with roach’s suggestion. i understand why people are disagreeing, and to some degree i disagree too, for reasons better stated by others in posts that i’ve linked. but roach has been very civil about all of this, has offered alternatives, and has done her best to be calm in the midst of a storm of nastiness.

what this comes down to for me is disappointment. i’m disappointed in tumblr’s jewish community for leaping on one of our own just because she made a suggestion that some of us disagreed with. it’s horrible and unnecessary in a time when we should be uniting. and yes, i do think it’s mainly an issue of tumblr’s echo chamber and the way discourse is conducted in this community, but it’s also... it’s a problem of attitude, and i think it’s something that we should all be thinking hard about. if you don’t agree with how someone is choosing to deal with the nazi epidemic, that’s fine, state your opinion calmly if you want! but i also think that roach doesn’t deserve to be insulted, called a goy and racist and antisemitic and all kinds of other things just because she said something that isn’t universally acceptable. that isn’t how judaism works, you guys.

*that is, some variation of “2 jews 3 opinions”; i am personally fond of referring to myself as “four jewish opinions in a trenchcoat”

[theliterateape]

Neither Left nor Right: Eventually Embracing Ethical Universalism

By Don Hall

“You sound like that guy —Tim Allen—on that TV show. You should go to FOX and see if you could get your own show!”

“I don’t think of you as a Leftie but more like a rational person.”

“What happened to you since you moved to Vegas? Are you wearing a MAGA hat yet?”

“I told him that you were a Chicago Left kind of guy and that saying things like ‘Chinese Virus’ was going to set you off.”

“What? You mean you support the protests? I thought you weren’t a libtard!”

The strange need be a part of one side or the other like political thought is a high school football game has become more pervasive in the past decade or so. Reducing a population of 330 million individuals to the simplistic Red or Blue is no different than the ridiculous notion spawned by Robin DiAngelo and other “anti-racist” proselytizers that the very notion of individualism is a racist myth. Lump everyone into a sub-category, stereotype them, and go with that.

Friends back in Chicago believe I was a full Lefty (which is a bit like the idea from the Ben Stiller comedy Tropic Thunder that an actor should never go “full retard”) until I had my run-in with the Poisonous Latino Storyteller and her gang of Fuckheads. Not true. I was writing about the bizarre hypocrisy of the Extreme Left on my old blog years prior and due almost entirely from my experience of dating and living with a communist and racial activist.

I have never been “full retard” in this ideological gameplay. Perhaps because I’m too contrarian to ever completely follow a dogma or maybe because I’m just in love with having both sides of the coin despise me. Dunno. Don’t much care. I’m Irish, and Freud stated that the Irish cannot be psychoanalyzed so stop trying, already.

I find pretty much every single syllable of the Right Wing position on practically everything to be a bit noxious, so I’d gamble that I’m not conservative. There are conservatives who hate Donald Trump. I appreciate their hatred and that they will do their best to get rid of him but I am not on their side. 

Likewise, I find the Culture of the Woke to be equally obnoxious and hypocritical. I see a coin with White Supremacy on one side and Critical Race Theory on the other. Both equally racist, both equally separatist, two sides of the same racist coin. To posit that rationality, being objective, relying on science, and being on time are vestiges of whiteness is just a flip of the coin to state that black people are irrational, wholly subjective, anti-science, and perpetually late. That shit is flat out racist.

It occurs to me that Twitter has become the FOX News of the Left, an echo chamber, an ideological bubble used to merely spread dogma and one-sided perspective. It’s just as dishonest, just as angry. The battle has devolved in to which side gets to be Big Brother in our Orwellian nightmare.

I suppose I am so much more vocally critical of the Extreme Left because I still consider myself, well, Left. In terms of embracing a label, the most recent one that fits is from Hidden Tribes which, after taking the quiz, indicates that I am a Traditional Liberal:

Traditional Liberals (11 percent of the population) tend to be cautious, rational, and idealistic. They value tolerance and compromise. They place great faith in institutions.

I’m no longer confused at my place on the ideological spectrum. Since Newt Gingrich adopted the politics of obstruction and winning at all cost—his no-compromise solution to power—the GOP has been playing an ugly game, polarizing a base of rigid social conservatives and using those social issues (abortion, gay rights, civil rights, and immigration scares) to do their level best to roll back everything FDR did.

According to most I meet in this camp, I may as well be wearing a Hillary Clinton pantsuit and singing L'Internationale while using my phone to film the police.

The Left was fairly fractured anyway, but the Woke nonsense was at best fringe until we had a nationwide shutdown due to pandemic and everyone spent a lot more time on Twitter. Suddenly, these crackpot extremes of socialist, Marxist, and the wholesale rejection of white people, men, and heterosexuality took hold on a confined population looking for something to do with their pent up frustration.

According to most I know in this camp, I’m a Neo-Nazi, KKK-sympathizer who routinely sexually harasses women while checking up their skirts for a hidden penis.

The core of the far-right's worldview is organicism, the idea that society functions as a complete, organized and homogeneous living being. Adapted to the community they wish to constitute or reconstitute (whether based on ethnicity, nationality, religion or race), the concept leads them to reject every form of universalism.

The core of the far-left's worldview is Identity Marxism, or the idea that society is comprised of two categories, the Oppressor and the Oppressed utilized in the same manner as traditional Marxism’s duality of the Workers and the Capitalists. Adapted to the community they wish to constitute or reconstitute (whether based on ethnicity, nationality, religion or race), the concept leads them to reject every form of universalism.

I, being the Traditional Liberal I am (maybe I should start a bowling league?), favor ethical universalism, that is the position that there is a universal ethic which applies to all people, regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexuality or other distinguishing feature, and all the time.

To quote the late, great John Lewis “We all live in the same house, we all must be part of the effort to hold down our little house. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just... do something about it. Say something. Have the courage. Have the backbone. Get in the way. Walk with the wind. It's all going to work out.” [Bold is all mine.]

Funny that. That belief used to get me in the Leftie Clubhouse. As the Far Left and the Far Right continue to devolve into warring factions dragging the rest of us into their vortex, it seems that those of us less gullible and more skeptical of cultspeak have no clubhouse to occupy.

It’s okay, though. By the numbers (I know—you Far Right guys think the numbers are FAKE and you Far Left guys think the numbers represent white supremacy) there are far more of we Ethical Universalists than the two of the extremes combined.

I’m alright being in that club.