#trying to change the definition of antisemitism isn’t going to change what it actually fucking is

[theeternalwombtarot]

The fact that real Jews know the difference between anti semantic rhetoric and discourse and advocating for an end to a genocide and the liberation of a diaspora of people who have been killed and fighting for their rights for years and we have people sitting on the news, presidents, politicians and civilians just like you and I arguing that not supporting genocide is anti semantic is always going to be insane to me. It’s almost as if you haven’t been paying attention to real holocaust victims who live in Israel telling you that they get no support from that state, are denied human decency and rights as well or like we don’t have the holocaust to reference in terms of what genocide or the murdering and oppression of a people looks like.

I think the real difference is Islamophobia is a western delicacy and part of our culture and society and the people who are getting slaughtered are of no value to you whatsoever, don’t look like you, don’t speak the same languages as you, and are in a part of the world where the resources under their feet are more important to America than their fucking lives or humanity.

[wizardysseus]

i was thinking about once upon a time (abc) in bed this morning so i decided to write this list

subject to change, since awhile ago i was in the middle of season 6 when they took it off netflix and i never quite got around to picking it back up. i’m gonna finish if it kills me i promise

top 5 things about once upon a time

5. anna frozen

when ouat introduced frozen characters, most fans decided the show had jumped the shark. they were not wrong. however, it was this very thing that allowed the show to be fun again! after an excruciatingly bad season 3 (we will get to that), bringing on anna and elsa literally transported directly from their own unaltered story in cheap ass versions of their unaltered movie costumes allowed the show to let loose and do... basically whatever it wanted. this became the hallmark of the show for those who stuck with it: absolutely not making sense at all, but being fun about it. post-season-three ouat becomes a totally different soap opera from season one, but by god you are never bored.*

personally, the flashback episode where anna annoys rumpelstiltskin and gets the better of him and he’s so fucking mad about it is like top 10 episodes**

4. 2x16 “the miller’s daughter”

this episode is just another personal favorite. it exemplifies what this show was really good at when it was good, and also where everything went wrong. i think cora is a great example of a good ouat villain, i think the twist on the rumpelstiltskin story is great, i think the dramatic beats really work.

...and in typical ouat fashion, cora immediately dies and two more villains we don’t care about at all are introduced. (sonequa forgive me you know i’m in love with you but tamara was nothing. it’s not your fault.) yes we get that great scene of snow aggressively doing archery practice while listening to “bad reputation” but was it worth killing off a compelling villain just as you’d dug into her story?

3. the commitment to regina’s redemption

and lana parrilla in general. i mean i’m gay and she’s hot but the worse the show got, the more acting lana gave it. and this is just speculation, but i think lana is more comfortable with drama than with camp? because regina becomes a much more interesting character as someone conflicted and on the path to redemption than as a villain. and by god, they were gonna redeem regina.

if only she had been gay we really could have had it all.

2. rumpelstiltskin

the sweet spot with rumpelstiltskin for me was seasons one and two when he was unabashedly bastard, there was an attempt to make him sympathetic but nobody except belle actually liked him, you weren’t quite sure how much he knew, he was pulling all the strings, and he was just really fucking weird. it will surprise no one who follows this blog to hear that that is my type of wizard.

1. season one

it’s a good season. it’s a good season. there are some bad things about it, but it was extremely watchable. it was doing fairy tales with occasional disney nods in a (mostly) cohesive fashion. the lore and the magic hadn’t sprawled out of control yet. it had the strongest relationship, imo, between emma and henry, and emma and snow. as for iconic episodes, most of the greats are here, plus sebastian stan as the mad hatter and giancarlo esposito as a series regular. the crowning moment for me is the scene at the end of skin deep, when regina confronts gold in the town jail and he reveals that he remembers his real name (after beating the shit out of belle’s dad with his cane obviously). god. that is some good television.

worst 5 things about once upon a time

5. the adoption politics but everyone knows this one.

4. WASTING the talent

you had the love of my life sonequa martin-green and gave her nothing. you somehow scored oded fehr as jafar and gave him nothing. you had giancarlo esposito and regina literally forgot he existed. i will kill you

3. rumpelstiltskin.

it’s no secret that robert carlyle was acting circles around most of the cast; my opinion is that the showrunners felt that if they committed to either his redemption or his villainy, they would never find someone else with the talent to fill his shoes as bastard wizard. so they flip-flopped on him every half-season, which ruins his story longterm, slowly kills the light in robert’s eyes, and gets reallllllly old. it’s also no secret that my favorite rumpelstiltskin is bastard wizard, but they screwed over belle BIG time in the process and for that i will never forgive them.

also like. the rumpelstiltskin fairy tale is antisemitic to begin with and they did not minimize that by comparing him to a lizard and naming his storybrooke counterpart mr gold. they just. did that.

2. THE FUCKING NEVERLAND ARC GOD IN CHRIIIIIIIIIIIST THAT HALF-SEASON IS EXCRUCIATING

1. captain hook

*it’s my opinion that if you are bored, you’re watching a hook-centric episode. every time i dropped the show and forgot about it for months at a time, it was because i had been in the middle of an episode about hook and just could not get through it. how do i describe all the things i don’t like about what killian hook jones did to the show? with subpoints!

1a. the episode where gold gives him back his hand and he never changes.

**this is actually the same episode i mentioned about anna and, like i said, it’s one of my favorites and not at all boring. look, i’m not pretending this list isn’t subjective as hell.

remember when hook blackmailed mr gold into magically reattaching his hand, which gold has been keeping in a jar, because hook has a date with emma and wants it to go well? but also, gold tells him that if he reattaches his hand with dark magic, it will turn him evil? and then hook spends the episode doing evil things, only for mr gold to tell him “i was just messing with you! the hand was not evil, you gave yourself permission to be evil ;)”

yeah, that’s basically hook’s mo.

1b. episode where emma tells him his brother is lying to him and he learns the exact wrong lesson from this and never changes.

so emma goes to the underworld to get hook back after he dies (while being evil and doing villainous things). they find his brother down there, too, and emma senses that he has a dark secret (because he does) and is lying to them (because he is). but hook always idolized his older brother, so he won't believe her. when emma confronts the brother directly, hook interrupts to rant to her about how he knows what this is ~really all about.

actual dialogue:

HOOK: i don't need proof to know what's really going on here. emma, when are you gonna admit that this isn't really about my brother? EMMA: what else would you think it was about? HOOK: us. you think if you can prove that liam is a villain, then i’ll somehow feel like i was less of one.

who... would EVER come to that conclusion. and why is the lesson he learns at the end “perhaps i do deserve saving after all” (another direct quote), and not “NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU, BECAUSE EMMA WAS LITERALLY RIGHT ABOUT YOUR BROTHER LYING TO EVERYONE”????

1c. the emma dark one arc, where hook never changes.

this would be the arc that leads up to the above underworld arc, and it is deeply dumb, entertaining, and hard to explain. suffice it to say, during this whole arc, killian (along with emma) has all the powers and ~~~Darkness~~~ of the dark one (formerly rumpelstiltskin). unlike emma, he is not aware of this for most of the season. the moment he finally finds out, he turns on emma and goes through with all the revenge plans he’s apparently been holding onto since season two.

it’s supposed to be sympathetic, because emma made this choice for him to be a dark one, which is clearly awful, when he didn’t want it. so i get that. but on the other hand, it is..... boring. because (a) it's nothing we haven't seen him try to do and fail at before, his motivations really aren't that complex. and more importantly, (b) he was the dark one the whole time! the only thing that changed, that made him act evil, was finding out about it. at that point, it's not the ~~~Darkness~~~ making you do evil things. it’s just you. because you’re a dick.

how is this arc resolved? well, he dies. after the underworld arc (which i very much enjoyed tbf), a sizable part of robin hood’s death episode is devoted to people telling emma to slow down and grieve for killian, since at least two arcs have revolved around her inability to let hook go when he is literally dying or dead. (it’s been said a million times but being his girlfriend really sucked the personality out of emma and i miss her.) and in the end he just... comes back anyway. no explanation given; he says it must be a reward from zeus for killing hades... while he and emma make out literally in front of the coffin of robin hood... who actually died fighting hades. killian died half a season before. while he was evil. and emma reverts to tearful girlfriend.

it’s insulting. it’s grating. and it is a Killian Hook Jones Guarantee that his episodes will involve some measure of this.

like, is it more or less the same shtick that the writers kept giving rumpelstiltskin, too? backsliding and screwing over his love interest who gets less and less say in the matter? yes. definitely. the crucial difference is that i, personally, love rumpelstiltskin, while i find hook boring and not self-aware. but clearly i have had a lot of fun complaining about him! again, this is not an objective list.

conclusions

this show ran for 7 years. it got cancelled not because it deserved to, but because no one liked the soft reboot. it was on until 2018.

[sweetsassymusic]

The Long Kaz Rant I Told Myself I Wouldn’t Write, But Here We Are

This is probably an unpopular opinion. And I hope it doesn't come across as confrontational or anything because I don't mean it that way. But I've always been super confused by the way Kaz is accepted, basically across the entire fandom, as either morally gray or straight up villainous? He doesn’t really seem like either of those things to me. On a surface level, obviously there are things he’s done that are normally considered evil. He’s stolen, he’s killed, he threatened a child, he gouged out someone’s eye. And that’s all pretty bad, right? But it completely ignores the context given in the books. (More after the cut because this got too long...)

There’s a difference between doing something evil and doing something that’s shocking, “dark,” or difficult to watch.

Before I read the books, I heard fans discuss all the horrible things Kaz does. And the way people talk about him, I was expecting him to be… Feral Kaz – someone who delights in doing horrible things because he’s just so twisted and angry. The author herself even referred to him on her blog as being utterly despicable. Wow! This guy must really go out of his way to hurt innocent people, huh? So when I sat down to actually read it, I was so surprised. Most (if not all?) the killings were done on some level of self-defense. His “murder victims” were actual evil people trying to kill him or someone he loved. And the reason he threatened a child was because the only alternative was killing her – something he would never want to do. You know, because he’s not evil.

I don’t know if I just have very different definitions of these terms than most people? But to me, the idea of Kaz being “utterly despicable” should not even be on the table to begin with (Leigh Bardugo, you good?) and even the idea of him being “morally gray” is questionable.

When I think of a morally good character, I don’t think of someone who never does anything questionable or always perfectly makes the correct choices. I think of someone who is on a mission–either to protect the world, a loved one, or simply pursuing a personal goal–who at least tries to conduct his mission in a way that either does no harm to others, or (when that’s not possible) does as little harm as necessary to get the job done. 

Whereas, when I think of a villainous character, I think of someone who has no regard for others at all. Someone who either relishes in harming the innocent, or pays zero consideration to whether he harms innocents while pursuing his goals (which are usually, in themselves, harmful to innocent people). 

And finally, when I think of a morally gray character, I think of someone directly between these two. Someone who is a little bit evil, a little bit sadistic, but not entirely evil. He’s got a few good points too. Maybe he’s someone who keeps switching sides, unsure if he wants to be a hero or villain. Maybe he has hurt a lot of innocent people unnecessarily, but he joins in with the good guys for personal gain, and people don’t mind him there simply because he doesn’t interfere with the protagonist’s goals. Or maybe he’s the “Bad Cop” to someone else’s Good Cop: someone who uses more violence than is necessary, just for fun, but still helps the good side in some capacity, so everyone chooses to look past it.

Under these definitions, Kaz (to me) seems more like a good character. While pursuing his personal goals, he protects people he loves, and yes, he does do “dark” things. But he doesn’t relish in doing them (despite his reputation in-universe of being a chaotic sadist. His reputation is not accurate; he invented it for his own protection). He does them because he has to. If he can get the job done right without hurting anyone, that’s the route he’ll take. But that option isn’t always available. And he’s not the type to lie down and die just to avoid getting his hands dirty (nor should he, imo). 

Again, maybe I just have a different idea of what constitutes being morally gray. But I always thought it was meant to be a judgment on the choices you make when you actually HAVE a choice? A morally gray character has the choice to be good or evil, and they choose to do both (which one depending on how they feel that day). 

Whereas, if you do something “bad” because circumstances force you to do it–because you or someone you love will die otherwise–that’s pretty much the same as having a gun to your head. You’re not morally gray. You’re doing it under duress. It’s survival, not a reflection of where you stand on moral topics. Like, if you trap a vegan in a room with only a piece of meat, and you leave them there for days, weeks, that person doesn’t suddenly become a “fake vegan” if they eat that meat to avoid literally starving to death. You forced them to do it. When it comes to their moral beliefs, they would still be a vegan if they had the freedom to make that choice. You just put them in a situation where those choices aren’t available to them. Your lack of freedom in a situation shouldn’t define you.

The same can be said for placing a starving, homeless orphan boy alone in the dog-eat-dog world of Ketterdam. The option of being a sweet little law-abiding citizen is not available to him. So is it really fair to define him by something in which he had no choice?

I’ve come across so many GrishaVerse fans who, while sipping on their Starbucks in the comfort of their own home, go “Ugh, Kaz. He’s so DARK, so EVIL!” (Fun fact: while my mom was watching the show, she said Kaz is evil because “he seems to always have a plan.” Oh no! Not PLANS!)  “He must be some kind of monster to be able to do the things he does and still live with himself! I could NEVER do those things!” Well…you’ve never actually had to do those things? Your life has never depended on it? Idk, to me, it’s just a very privileged take. And I’m not trying to make this into a big social issue. It’s not like criticism against a fictional character is anywhere near the same level of importance as the issues marginalized people are facing in real life. I’m just saying, it’s very easy to condemn activity you’ve never been forced to engage in for your own survival.

One of the biggest reasons people have given me for why they think Kaz is evil is that he is “for himself.” Even the author said she thinks Kaz is worse than the Darkling (who, I’ve gotten the impression, she believes to be irredeemable) because the Darkling has communal goals (he wants to bring positive change for other people/the world at large) while Kaz’s goals are just personal (he wants to bring positive change for himself and only himself). And for one? It just isn’t true: many (if not most) of the things Kaz does is either for his Crows or for his late brother; he just disguises it with supposed self-interest for the sake of his reputation. And second? It’s…not actually wrong to have personal goals or to act in self-interest. Bettering your own life is a valid desire. It’s not the same as being selfish. Not everything you do has to be for other people.

(And, tbh, this is something Leigh Bardugo seems to have a problem with in general, not just in this scenario. I could write a whole separate rant about other characters that were demonized in-narrative for engaging in “too much” self-care, and how her unforgivingly black and white morality ruined the Shadow and Bone trilogy for me. Worst of all, she even seemed to imply recently that the only reason real-life antisemitism is wrong is because “the Jews didn’t fight back”? [Like, if they had met her criteria of “fighting back”, would that make antisemitism somewhat justified to her? What? Idek, but she should really clarify.] Basically, she seems to take “non-selfishness” to an extreme. I don’t know her personally, I don’t want to make assumptions, I don’t have anything personal against her, and I’m not trying to get her cancelled or anything, I promise. But please, when you read her books, please don’t accept all her ideas at face value, because there’s some Weird Shit™ in there sometimes.)

Anyway, another reason people say Kaz is bad or morally gray is that he wants revenge. “Revenge is a bad coping mechanism! You should want JUSTICE! Not REVENGE!” And again, this argument is wild to me. I mean, yes, there are situations–especially in real life, modern, western contexts–where revenge is a bad coping mechanism someone has developed, and transforming their anger into a desire for justice is a way for them to overcome that and express their anger in a healthier way. But that’s a very specific scenario. When we’re talking generally, the line between revenge and justice is a lot thinner than people think (and in some scenarios, there is no line at all). 

For example, real life victims and their families often say they can’t wait to see the perpetrator rot in prison, even wishing (sometimes even fantasizing) that the guy gets abused in prison by fellow inmates. For them, justice and revenge are wrapped up together in one big court-issued sentence. And while some people find that disturbing or take issue with it, it’s…generally considered valid outrage? This guy is evil and hurt them, so it’s okay for these people to want him to suffer. And most importantly, these people called the cops instead of taking matters into their own hands, therefore they’re Good, right? They’re good citizens who obey and rely on the established authority, therefore they are handling their anger in an Acceptable™ way?

But in the world of Ketterdam, if someone has victimized you, or is trying to kill you or someone you love, you can’t just call the fucking cops (and let’s be honest, looking at irl cops, it’s a questionable idea here too sometimes). If we’re analyzing Kaz’s outrage and how he handles it, we have to analyze it in the context of where he lives, not where we live. We have options in our lives that Kaz doesn’t have. So we have to ask, what are the most productive steps he could realistically take in his world?

I see activists and bloggers on websites like this, publicly fantasizing about gouging the eyes out of certain politicians and right-wing figureheads. And they would probably do it for real if they could. On Tumblr and Twitter, this is generally considered righteous anger. The politicians are evil, so it’s okay to hurt them, right? That’s how the logic goes, anyway (I know some will disagree, but it’s a common take here). Well, imagine if, instead of just being a bigot, one of these evil people personally stabbed–possibly killed–your girlfriend. And there were no cops to call, no news stations or social media to turn to, to show people what this guy did. No authority or community on your side. No way to ensure this guy faced consequences for his actions. There’s just you, your dying girlfriend, your helplessness, your anger. What would be the appropriate way to handle this situation, so you were acting out of justice instead of revenge? What does “justice” even mean in a world like that? It’s a world where either you hurt others or you lie down and just let others keep hurting those you love (which, in itself, would be evil). I can’t think of any “appropriate” response Kaz could take. Which, for better or worse, is probably why he just went for the eye. You probably would too in that context. Are you morally gray? I doubt it.

It’s really weird to me how people seem to hold Kaz to this high standard of absolute Moral Purity, but they don’t hold other characters to it. Like, was the dad on Taken being “feral” or “morally gray” when he told his daughter’s kidnapper that “I will find you and I will kill you” and then pursued him with fury? His motivations were personal and not communal. He was coming from a place of revenge, just as much as justice. But most people consider him a hero. He’s not controversial or “dark.” There are plenty of other heroes who do terrible things (sometimes to innocent people! Even when it’s not even necessary!) for the “greater good” or just because it’s convenient. People call them a “badass” and then turn around and say Kaz is just “bad.” Idk, it just seems really arbitrary the way people draw these lines.

If we’re expanding the definition of “morally gray” to include anyone who’s ever done anything questionable, made a mistake, been forced to do something they wouldn’t normally do, done something for personal reasons instead of for the world at large, or wanted revenge for something, then there literally are no heroes in fiction (except maybe a few cardboard cutouts) or in real life.

(Ironically, the most morally gray thing Kaz does, imo, is something most people don’t even have a problem with: the fact he runs a gambling house to “take money from pigeons.” And even that is really mild [no one is forcing the “pigeons” to gamble their money away]. But yeah, that’s one of the few instances I could think of where he actually hurt innocent people unnecessarily. That and the time, as a kid, where he stole candy from that other kid...and even that might be mostly-but-not-entirely excused by the fact he was starving to death. But yeah.)

[probablydidrpgideas]

Not only is “phylactery” not a Jewish word (it’s Greek, actual Jews call the object a “tefflin”) , but the OP lied about being Jewish for that post, they’d even said “I’m not Jewish but I’m I’ll eat my way through Hanukkah food” before making that post. I’d retract the post at minimum, possibly reblog a correction of the post that you can find in the notes, that’s just such a sad thing to lie about.

[Note to start off the ramble before anyone says anything; I am not Jewish. Just spent all day researching this and fact-checking a few things]

Boy oh boy, we stepped in the Drama today everyone.

To get this part out of the way: People fucking suck, sucks about OP. That’s disgusting, and stupid, and just aggravating. People lying on the internet is stupid and frustrating and just. Ugh.

But hey let’s still address this part.

You DO realize Phylactery is, technically, a Jewish term, correct?

The term was originally derived from the Greek, or possibly also Latin or French based on suffix usage during the 12th and 14th centuries. We believe the Greek because we have the Greek translation of the Gospels of Matthew (St. Matthew the Evangelist, AKA Matthew the Apostle) in which the word was used. Matthew was a first century Galilean, and because he was a tax collector, was likely fluent in both Aramaic and Greek, which would’ve pushed him away from his fellow Jews as he was likely seen as siding with the Roman occupation. So, while the term came from a man using the Greek terminology, it still came from a Jewish man.

Moreover, as many people have been SO keen to make me aware, the term tefflin is used by Jewish people, not Phylactery. Believe it or not, I do know this, as I have access to Google. And THIS, my friends, is where my main problem arises with how angry people have been getting over this post.

1. When searching the term Phylactery, most of the top results (including the lovely definition Google posts from another website directly so your eyeballs see it immediately) show Jewish connections. YES, I know, it is NOT STRICTLY a Jewish term - it’s a catch-all, a term simply meant to describe an amulet. Be that as it may, it has become intrinsically tied to the Jewish faith in the eyes of those who are not Jewish. Meaning, while the term is not used by modern-day Jews, it still holds religious connotation and history strong enough to still be tied to that religion.

2. Given that fact, isn’t it still a good idea to stop using that word? If only so we can avoid this very specific kind of drama all over again? I mean, really, what REAL reason is there for us to call the container for a lich’s soul this very specific word? Why not make up our OWN word for it? It’s really not that hard to change it from that original word so that we don’t need to deal with that connotation it still holds.

3. Instead of understanding that, hmm, it really isn’t that hard to change a single word on our part to stop using that word, people went absolutely apeshit in the notes of that post. Like. Jewish People, Anti-semetic people, everyone went apeshit. And here’s the thing!! People keep saying “Jewish people have commented on the post and said they don’t care about this drama at all and they wish it would stop”! Yes! That’s true! And there are also Jewish people on this post agreeing with the fact that we should try to fix this terminology and stop using the term in D&D because of this exact fucking drama.

Ugh. Look, I’ve spent all day looking into this bullcrap. Here are my thoughts, and you can shit on them if you’d like because at this point it’s mostly opinion.

Was this antisemitism? Maybe, but almost definitely not imo. Certainly not deliberate in any case.

Should it change? Hell yes it should because the drama needs to die, so let’s change the word.

Does it matter? Well, let’s see. Has it completely overtaken my dash, turned my entire day into a hellscape of messages and reblogs and “Well ACTUALLYs” and just general UUGH? Yes. Yes it has.

Look. I get it. The big thing here is, there are far bigger issues in the world to handle. There are far worse cases of antisemitism, far more things that need to happen in this world. Changing the name of an archaic word that Jewish people don’t even use and haven’t used in more than a few centuries isn’t going to fix antisemitism. We get that. But in our small bubbles of world that we exist in, we cannot change the entire world. Yes, I would LOVE to protest antisemitic practices and god just EVERYTHING that goes on in this world. But the fact of the matter is, in my current position in life, I can’t do much beyond the scope of my inner circle of friends, and those who follow me on social media platforms.

I will always be vocal about things that I think are stupid or unjust or anywhere inbetween. This is one of those things. Because, as I said, the term is still connected to the Jewish faith, whether Jewish people like that or not! So on the surface level of Being Not A Shit Human Being, we should change the word in our D&D games. That is the easiest possible hurdle. Now, we should also start, idk, erasing the fact that the word is connected to Jewish culture in the first place (and almost ENTIRELY Jewish culture beyond the fantasy definitions) since it’s an outdated term nobody uses. But being an atheist-raised-christian with no current access to literally any Jewish people in my life, and no ability to hack every dictionary website at the same time ---- I think I’m kinda shit outta luck in that regard.

So I will do what I can, in my own little world, to change small things. Because I was raised in an environment where being antisemitic and racist and homophobic was all in the small details just like these. So much so that I didn’t realize how horrible some of the things I said and did were until they were already out of my mouth and I had already offended people.

TL;DR: Please stop messaging me about this. We should still probably change the term as it IS still connected to the Jewish Faith. OP is a crustnugget for lying. Can everyone please stop attacking each other over this post thx. Also let’s all try to be a little less antisemitic. Okay? Okay.

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: October 2020

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of October 2020 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

After months of the Tory government fucking up their response to the Covid pandemic you would think that they’d have some baseline of competence by now, but no, it turns out that the Test & Trace program they were so proud of was nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet - an Excel spreadsheet that lost the data of at least 16,000 people, while also begging the question how they spend £12bn of taxpayer’s money on an Excel spreadsheet, to which the answer is...they didn’t, it was existing software, they just pocketed the cash

It comes as no surprise that proven liar Boris Johnson puts the blame on the rising Covid numbers in the UK on the public - because it's definitely not been his master advisor breaking the lockdown rules to pop to Durham with his family after testing positive for Covid on what just so happened to be his wife’s birthday, not the Tory government changing the rules on masks when Michael Gove was spotted in Pret Manger without one, and definitely nothing to do with cases rising significantly within two weeks of the double whammy of the Tory government saying children “must” go back to school and people must go back to work as they can now be fired if they don’t.  Definitely not their fault,  Not at all...

The approach of the Tory government to Manchester being upgraded to Tier 3 boils down to initially promising to provide the fully-costed £60m package that Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham requested, only to turn around and give them £20m instead and try and justify it by saying it boils down to £8 per head for the entire population.  After all, if Burnham really wanted that money, he’d have been one of Dominic Cummings’ mates and completely unqualified for the job, as that’s the quickest way to open the purse strings as wide as he’d like

It was quite impressive that Margaret Ferrier came to the conclusion that, having tested positive for Covid while in London, obviously the best course of action would be to take a train journey 400 miles back to Scotland before self-isolating, because of course nobody else used that train

...although some of the Tory MPs criticising Ferrier really should have paused before commenting, mainly to check whether they were the ones vociferously defending Dominic Cummings for his 300 mile drive to Durham after testing positive or his subsequent drive to Bernard Castle to test his eyesight

Not only did the Tory government vote against giving free school meals to children a mere ten days after awarding Marcus Rashford an MBE for his work in trying to give underprivileged children free school meals, but they tried all manner of excuses to defend it best exemplified by Nicky Morgan saying she voted to let children starve because Angela Rayner called one of her parliamentary colleagues “scum”, while Twitter troll Ben Bradley claimed that people spent their free school meal vouchers in crack dens and brothels, before claiming he was “misquoted” - which is Tory code for “I have deleted that tweet, because I do not understand how screengrabs work”

Remember how Rishi Sunak has been presented as the human face of the Tory party?  I have to ask, since he decided to yank £1000 a month from Universal Credit payments, and for some reason the “centrists” of Twitter who have been lionising him for several months have been oddly quiet

The batshittery of the Home Office has now extended to coming up with increasingly ludicrous plans to prevent migrants, with the latest bright idea of Priti Patel (and don’t pretend it was anyone else) being to have ships in the English Channel using pipes to blow air into the water that will create waves to send them back to France - as if a dinghy wouldn’t just steer around the ship, or that they wouldn’t make Calais and Sangat the best surfing destinations in northern France overnight

...and it got worse when we learned that Priti Patel was informed that a knife-wielding man stormed into the office of a migration solicitor spouting the exact same rhetoric and injured the receptionist, to which her response was to double down on the rhetoric as if she and proven liar Boris Johnson weren’t inciting violence at this point

...which makes smirking cretin Priti Patel issuing a statement expressing sadness at a couple of child migrants drowning in the English Channel about as sincere and reassuring as a card from Harold Shipman expressing sympathy for the death of an elderly relative

Not for the first time Keir Starmer managed to take all the focus off the Tories and onto the Labour party with his moronic approach to running his own party, namely by suspending Jeremy Corbyn for the crime of...hang on, he actually hasn't said what infraction Corbyn committed by responding to the EHRB report into antisemitism in the Labour party, but he suspended him anyway

...while Lisa Nandy supported this by using a blatant strawman argument saying “There are some on the left” who believe blatant anti semitic tropes...blatant anti semitic tropes that she invoked in the exact same sentence as her obvious strawman argument

Suspected rapist Brett Kavanaugh has been busy using legal loopholes to try and claim that votes in Wisconsin only count if they were tallied up on Election Day and no day past that.  Because as we know, US Presidential Elections have often been straightforward affairs where both vote counts and recounts are always necessary, as Kavanaugh obviously remembers as he was working for George W Bush’s campaign in Florida after the 2000 election

How nice of the Tory government to use a parliamentary loophole to completely avoid allowing a vote on whether or not the UK should import chlorinated chicken, therefore enshrining both the importance of democracy and the importance of food safety standards - in the EU

Once again Keir Starmer seems to think “Opposition” means “Whip your MPs into abstaining”, this time on the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill, because as we all know letting legislation pass that absolves the police of any and all illegal activity is definitely going to win voters around

Good guy Rishi Sunak took the Tim Martin approach to worker relations by telling musicians to get another job if they were so worried about their finances - which not only ignores the fact that plenty of musicians do already have more than one job, but also begs the question why this same advice hasn’t been given to the landlords carping about rent holidays etc 

Not only did The Sun blatantly lie by claiming a photo of Jeremy Corbyn taken at a wake was at a “posh dinner party” as obvious rage bait for their knuckle-dragging readership, but it has to be asked where they got the photos from as they weren’t shared publicly on Twitter or Instagram

...although the Freudian slip by the BBC when reporting the non-story, calling Corbyn “the Labour leader”, not only sums up just how shit they are at reporting facts these days, but also underlines he’s doing a better job of rattling the establishment’s cages than Keir Starmer has

Definitely not a conspiracy theorist Julia Halfwit Hartley-Brewer claimed that the government are combining Covid numbers and flu numbers so that they could...anyone got any idea what the point of making this up was?

Instead of keeping Robert Jenrick locked in a cupboard until the whole “Getting backhanders which influence who he gives property contracts to” thing goes away (spoilers: it won’t) instead they sent him out to justify £25m to a Jake Berry’s constituency - to which he said it was fine, as Jake Berry gave £25m to Jenrick’s constituency so there’s no reason to say anything dodgy is going on

For some strange reason Dominic Cummings doesn't have to face any charges for his failure to pay £30,000 worth of council tax on a property he also broke planning laws to have extended.  Yes, there’s a reason I put this directly after the phases “Robert Jenrick” and “backhanders”...

The ridiculousness that is Liz Truss started the month proudly stating that post-Britait trade negotiations with the US would undermine Britsh farmers - and this wasn’t a flub, she genuinely meant to express this - and ended with the frankly baffling crowing from the Department of Trade about how “soya sauce” which was being sued by Great British Bake Off contestants would be cost the same post-departure thanks to the UK-Japan trade deal, which ignores the fact that most soy sauce is imported from China - also that paying zero tariffs on £100k of stilton being exported to a country with high lactose intolerance while Nissa, Toyota et al face no tariffs when importing tens of millions of pounds of cars a year is not what anyone should be calling a victory...unless they work for Nissan, Toyota et al, anyway

Convicted criminal Darren Grimes learned that there’s such a thing as “responsibility” when he learned that the police were investigating his interview with David Starkey for incitement of hatred, which could have easily been avoided if he was in any way competent or if he admitted he isn't a journalist - and of course, the usual voices of Toby Young, Laurence Fox and Julia Halfwit Hartley-Brewer all came running to his defence...and shut up when they were informed this ruling was introduced by Thatcher

Somebody should have explained to WWE that, when their move to ban their employees independent contractors from third party platforms such as Twitch already cast a remarkably negative light on their shady employment practices, they should ramp it up by demanding their employees independent contractors hand over those third party platforms and then out of the goodness of their hearts WWE would hand them a percentage of those earnings

As if Steve Baker describing himself as “the hard man of Britait” isn’t reason enough to include him, his demanding that the Church of England be disestablished if it doesn’t fall in line with their No Deal death cult certainly is

It has to be asked why Ross Clark saw Jacinda Ardern winning a a record mandate in the New Zealand elections so decided it was in his interests to write a Telegraph article claiming her Covid has been a disaster...you know, a country which currently has 0 cases and a total of 25 deaths since February.  It’s almost as if the thought of a left-leaning leader who hasn’t had a disastrous response to Covid being rewarded by the electorate has Clark worried for some reason...

Professional victim Laurence Fox has identified the biggest problem in modern society: Sainsburys supporting Black History Month.  Of course, it definitely wouldn’t be something like Laurence Fox calling anyone who disagrees with him a paedophile, that’s all part of a healthy society...

The latest idea of Tim Davie to make sure that BBC newsreaders remain compliant drones was to bring in a set of rules saying they are never allowed to state an opinion ever (no doubt aimed at Emily Maitlis, who did) and to ban that favourite buzzphrase of the right, any form of “virtue signalling” no matter how worthy the cause...except for wearing poppies, that’s still allowed, in spite being a clear example of this “virtue signalling” that Davie is banning

Complete and utter nutcase Dan Wootton is dangerous as well.  That’s both the entry, and also a quote from Labour MP Chris Bryant in response to him banging on about herd immunity as if he's an expert and not The Sun’s showbiz bottom feeder who has been elevated for no logical reason

Once again Laura Kuenssberg is quoting anonymous “sources” critical of the Opposition - meaning she’s either not a very good journalist as she can’t even name her source, or she doesn’t have a source so she's a liar.  Has anyone else noticed this is a regular occurrence with Kuenssberg yet?

How thoughtful of Manchester United and Liverpool to pitch a wonderful idea that the Premier League be reduced to eighteen teams, while also christening the concept with the definitely not Orwellian moniker of Project Big Picture under the guise of helping the Football League and not, say, easing their fixture lists by four league games per season.  Of course, they’re volunteering to give up their Premier League places, aren’t they?

Once again Isabel Oakeshott just had to be on the wrong side of a story, this time howling in outrage that an anti-lockdown petition with 15,000 signatures is being ignored - signatures including Harold Shipman, Bernard Castle,  Dominic Cummings of Bernard Castle, Dr Johnny Bananas, Dr Person Fakename, and last but by no means least, Dr Corona McCoronaface...

Former wrestler Joey Ryan is dealing with his wrestling career being over due to a wealth of allegations of him being a sexual abuser in the most healthy manner possible, namely filing lawsuits against literally anyone he can blame, be it the accusers, his former employers, or random people who call him out via social media

So far it appears Shaun Bailey is planning on winning the London Mayoral election with batshit promises to allow corporations to sponsor London Underground stations and change the names appropriately (which won’t be confusing for tourist guides...) and try and say that Sadiq Khan is at fault for fans not being allowed into football stadiums nationwide

Clueless grifter Tim Pool came up with a genius answer when asked why his “centrist” podcast only ever seems to have right-wing guests and that was to claim that his setup couldn’t handle remote interviews - which would make sense if a.) He hadn’t been saying how much money had been poured into his setup, b.) Zoom didn’t exist, and c.) We forget all the times he’s done remote interviews in the past

Your would think that Lars Sullivan would have learned to not potentially jeopardise WWE’s efforts to promote him after a combination of injury and also not mentioning him for months due to being a creepy bastard online, but no, as soon as he returned to TV he was being a creepy bastard to a yoga instructor - while using his official WWE Instagram account to be a creepy bastard

Not only did Alex Hutchison open himself up for criticism by outright stating that Twitch streamers can count themselves lucky that they don’t have to pay licensing fees to stream games and their careers would be over if they did, he also opened himself up for ridicule when his aforementioned idiotic statement led to Google seeing his Twitter bio and telling him that, no, he was not a lead designer for Stadia and needed to change that shit PDQ

Once again Arsenal showed their lack of understanding of juxtaposition, with them announcing their longtime mascot was being let go for cost-cutting measures - and then a few hours later announcing they’d signed a player with a £200k a week wage

Some faultless logic from Apple regarding the the iPhone 12: the box won’t include a charger or earbuds to reduce packaging...yet it cost the same as if it did, while also meaning people have to buy chargers and earbuds separately that requires far more packaging

To nobody’s surprise it’s clear that Kim Kardashian does need it explained to her that saying how haaaaaaaaaaaaaard it is to spend two weeks being screened and self-isolating so you can go to the private island for your birthday is galling most of the time, but outright disgusting during a global pandemic

Oh dear, it looks like Eric Trump tried being clever again asking how Joe Biden owns a house that’s worth $4m on his senator’s salary of $174k...only to be told that Biden bought the house for $185k, sold it in 1996, pays more than $750 in taxes and loves his son

And finally, testing positive for Covid, is Donald Trump - but he assures us that he is fine and definitely not a contamination risk having been pumped full of steroids and aborted foetus cells which are available to so many people, and definitely didn’t need a better Twitter password

[hazel2468]

Hi okay so tonight Yom Kippur begins and I’m fucking salty about everything so here we go. This is going to be long, but I am PISSED. In the same vein as my last post-

If I see one more goy trying to say that you cannot apply cultural appropriation to Jewish things because “Jewish isn’t a culture” or “Religion is universal”- I am going to shit a brick. 

Cultural appropriation is defined as “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.” 

Now, am I going to get all bent up about other people using a six pointed star, or a tree, or a hand, as a symbol? Fuck no- shockingly, people come up with similar things (literally every culture has some kind of dumpling that they invented) all the time. But what I WILL get up in arms about is when I see Christians online (specifically the Book of Faces) talking about “celebrating” certain holidays (this includes Rosh Hashana, Passover, Channukah, and yes also Yom Kippur) to “honor” the fucking memory of Jesus. 

Taking the highest, holiest day of the Jewish people, ignoring the actual meaning and rules of practice, and changing it to be about your religious figure, who is not a meaningful figure in Jewish tradition, is the very fucking definition of cultural appropriation. It is the inappropriate adoption of the customs of a marginalized group by the dominant group. Jewish holidays are also more than a religious thing- our religious practices can have more cultural significance than they do spiritual significance. Jews who do not believe in Gd (atheist, agnostic, etc.) or Jews who are still trying to figure out what the fuck they believe (hi there) STILL take part in Jewish holidays not out of some obligation to Gd, but because it is something we do AS JEWS. It is our culture. 

The idea that Jewish practices cannot be subject to cultural appropriation because they are “strictly religious” is a majorly Christian-normative way of viewing religion. In a Christian-normative view of religion, religion and culture are separate (which btw is fucking ridiculous, I invite every goy who has EVER told me that religious Christianity has nothing to do with culture to look at how massive Christmas is, and NO Christmas is in no fucking way “secular”) and do not interact. Which not only is antithetical to much of Jewishness, but I would say to other cultures as well. 

If you are not Jewish (and just so I am perfectly clear, converts ARE JEWISH. I will not have people being shitty about converts on my posts- people who are converts, who are in the process of converting, who have just started their journey in converting, who are looking to explore their Jewishness that they have not had access to before for any number of reasons, people in interfaith families- this isn’t about them) you should NOT be celebrating Yom Kippur. You should not be celebrating Passover or Rosh Hashana or Channukah. You most CERTAINLY should not be celebrating those holidays and fucking trying to make it about Jesus and Christianity. It is appropriation, it is rude, and it is just antisemitic to do so. 

[alias-b]

Without The Lights~ Billy Hargrove x OC Camille Harper

Chapter 3: I Think We're Alone Now

A/N: Listen, I wrote this chapter and really fell in love with these two. Developing friendship ahoy. Warning for mentions of past rape, abortion, and //sigh// we meet Neil and he’s gross so also light antisemitism & homophobia from him.

  Camille pulled up to a smaller house the next day, parking behind Billy’s Camaro out front. She climbed a few stone steps and knocked three times, backpack clutched over one shoulder. The redhead from the other day pulled open the door and Camille smiled.

  “Hi, I’m-”

  “Camille. I’m Max.” She’d nodded. “You’re popular, the kids in my grade talk.”

  “Right, you’re in Mike’s group.”

  “Thought I was,” the younger girl shrugged and stepped back to let her in. “Billy! A girl!” She echoed.

  “Give me a damn minute, Max!” He’d bellowed at the other end of the house.

  “Like Hawkins so far?”

  “It’s not so bad, I guess.” Max tucked hair behind her ear. “What’s up with Mike and them? You know his sister, right?”

  “We don’t hang out like we used to.”

  “It’s like one moment you’re friends, the next, they start acting all weird and secretive.”

  “Hate to break it to you, that’s been my entire high school experience.” Camille offered a sobered grin and cocked her head. Mike and his friends were acting off as well. She’d definitely missed something. “Give it time. People come to their senses. Not always.”

  “Got that right.”

  “Hey,” Billy came around the corner, buttoning up a shirt that was half tucked and leaving the top three open.

  “Thought the girl last night was your project partner, that’s what you told Neil.” Max relished the awkward beat that followed.

  “You met my stepsister. Mad Max. She was just leaving. Beat it.” He pressed his teeth, eyebrows lifting because he couldn’t say much else with high school royalty in front of him. “Goodbye, Max.”

  “Whatever,” she picked up her skateboard and left out the door.

  “Nice to meet you, Max.”

  “Same here.” The door shut and Camille lifted her lips.

  “I like her.”

  “Take her.” Billy was colder, rubbing his head.

  “So...what girl? I’m not naive, I know you’re making rounds. The ladies love to gush about you.”

  “Not all good things, I’m sure. But, that’s part of the appeal.” Billy shifted, hands on his hips before he gestured. “Drop your bag wherever. Take your shoes off or don’t. I could care less.”

  “Still get the tour?” She set her backpack on the couch.

  “Shithole living room. Ugly kitchen. Garage.” Billy gestured. “My least favorite place: the family dining room.” She followed him down the hall. “Bathroom. Basement. No secret attic. No pool. Dad and Susan… Closet. Max. And me. Not much to it.” He opened his bedroom. A small space that was intimately his. Smelled warm like his cologne. “I skimmed more of the book.”

  “Main character’s name?”

  “Hester.” He set his hands out. “Do I get my medal now?”

  “Mmm, the bare minimum. Only way to my heart.” She entered the space. “Love the posters. Classy.” Bands and scantily clad women. Her eyes drew to a stereo smashed in the corner and kicked off to the side. “What happened there?” Billy almost lied but she was so soft about it like she already knew.

  “I failed the chemistry quiz and fucked up a math test.” He was matter a fact. “Dad found out. He always does. Likes to keep tabs.” Camille clasped her hands with the slightest nod.

  “And your head the other day.”

  “His important lessons in respect usually go over it. Not always. Aim gets better with age.” Billy was hard and sarcastic, opening his window to light a smoke.

  “And this has been going on a long time.”

  “Does it matter?” His eyes lowered. She didn’t hesitate.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s an asshole. Most parents are.” Billy picked up the book and set his cigarette in an ashtray upon the windowsill. “I didn’t like it. The ending.”

  “You actually read it?” She chuckled but sobered when he met her eyes. “Why specifically?”

  “All that shit and planning to run away only for the poor fucker to just die in her arms. Felt like a waste. Pissed me off."

  "Think so?"

  "And this chick didn’t really spit in anyone’s face for the hell she went through. That shit just seemed unfair.” He shrugged and Camille was amused again. Billy offered it and lingered when she closed the distance to take it. Fingers brushed and the book dropped. Instead his head lowered to touch hers. Camille inhaled and he didn’t try to kiss her. It was peculiar, the way he closed his eyes and breathed her in. His usual manner of seduction went over her. Every single time. Not sure if it was by force or not. Billy had to know now. He’d be lying if it didn’t jar him to bits. Foreheads touched and his lips opened. “I want you.” Shivers sparked out from her spine to cover her body in heat. His husky voice reverberated and Camille had to come up for air before she drowned in him.

  “Typical bad boy. Huh? You bat your pretty eyes and drag slowly on smoke. It usually works on us.”

  “You’re all perfect posture and angels singing. When was the last time you relaxed? Let those angels scream it out for a few beats?” He was so fucking close and she didn't leave his space.

  “Been awhile.”

  “I can fix that.” His head tilted. He was so certain too.

  “You only want me now because I’m teen royalty to you and our school. Pretty Knight on a conquest. Have to claim the queen. It’s your favorite brand, I can tell. You can’t get enough.”

  “What does any of it matter?” Billy read her with ease. “Not like we both don’t have flings. I know about you, Harper.”

  “I know… I can’t.” Her whisper sent him reeling back, head lifting. “Year ago, maybe. I can’t do relationships. Even flings. I don't do sex. Not right now.” Those blue eyes flickered at her face. “And Billy, if you must know, I don’t ever date boys from my own school. Personal Queen Bee Code. They should have told you that about me. Rival schools are fair game.” Rejection was an old friend but not from his romantic pursuits. “I was all about your shit a year before. Things change. It’s me. I’m...complicated.” He realized all at once that her angels never sang. Neither did his.

  “I’m not?” He hitched a quick breath.

  “No, you absolutely are. But, that isn’t the problem here. Color yourself surprised.”

  “First time in my life I’ve heard that.” Not being the problem.

  “Look, Billy, I can be a friend. But, that’s all I got in me right now. If that isn’t okay with you...tough. It’s not you or what they say at school. I’m just not in a place to be that with you or anyone at the moment.” She frowned, hands running her stomach before they crossed.

  “I can get used to tough.” He relented. “I don’t know how to be a friend.”

  “Maybe not.” Her head cocked, eyes lifting to his again. “But, what a time to be alive and try it though.” She could have left right at that moment. Yet, she didn't.

  “What exactly do they say about me at school?”

  “Steve has a lot to say. Might want to back down there.” She peered aside.

  “Still waiting to see this mighty King Steve I hear about. Harrington turned bitch but there’s something there.”

  “Will bringing out the worst in someone else make you feel better?” She asked when he returned to finish the end of his smoke. Camille read him to filth. “Fight Steve. Fuck me. High school’s a game. You’re a great player. I knew that quickly.” Billy’s eyes snapped to her again. “Look. You don’t have to tell me what goes on in this house. But, if you...or Max…need a place to get away once in awhile. Lots of school projects to come, I’m sure… I have absent parents and room to spare. Consider it an act of friendship since you’re new to that.”

  “Care about Max already?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “We’re not close.” Billy was tense.

  “Hawkins in a small place. Guess you have time to work on that.” Her judgment set him on edge. “She’ll get older. Start seeing more. Might be nice to have someone standing with or between her and an angry stepfather.”

  “Not like I had that.” He shot back, standing taller. Felt too personal to say that. Guess they're passed it already.

  “Might feel good to give it to someone else. Not to say it's obligatory. Basic kindness. But, what do I know? I’m the rich bitch. Ever notice we’re the first to go in scary movies? Shitty thing too. Bitches and sluts. Your brand. Easy to be rid of. We all move on.” Camille dropped her arms. “C’mere.” Her hand extended and Billy raised an eyebrow. “Just, trust me. We’re trying something. No funny ideas or I walk.”

  “What happened to your perfect student wrath?”

  “Fuck it, it’ll take two seconds to write the paper. Just...” She waited until he observed her and took her hand. A slow, sparking beat pulsed between them. Skin slid against skin. Billy let her lead him to the bed and was surprised when she got atop the covers on her back and tugged him to get in next to her.

  “And this is…?”

  “Two possible friends. Two complicated fuck-ups with angels that wail. Just...enjoying each other’s company. Nothing sexual. Can you manage that?”

  “Not sure anymore,” he mumbled, eyes on the ceiling. “This isn’t like foreplay to you, is it?”

  “In your dreams, beach boy,” she laughed, hand slipping from his so she could adjust and clasp her fingers upon her stomach. Hair splayed around their crowns while they relaxed, she turned her head and peered at him. Something about this all amused her.

  “What?” He caught her expression.

  “Last year, before the whole mess...I was so absorbed in my own shit. Blinded. I don’t know, it’s like I’m awake for the first time in my life.” Camille blinked at him. “Does that make sense?”

  “No. Not at all,” he was laughing and she followed. Billy fiddled with the tiny silver pendant around his neck on a long chain. She’d not seen him without it. “All I see is red still.”

  “Gotta get out, enjoy the night sky for once.” Camille sighed, eyes back on the ceiling. “Saint Christopher. Your necklace.”

  “Yeah.” Billy was near silent, hesitating. “Was my mom’s. All I have of hers.”

  “No pictures?”

  “Not anymore, dad made sure.” Billy cleared his throat. Debated it.

  “What happened to her?”

  “They fought. Got bad. Got worse. One day, she just...didn’t come back… She didn’t come back for me.” His tone grew thick at the correction.

  “I’m sorry, Billy.” Camille offered slowly.

  “Maybe I’ll wake up another day.” He gave a bitter laugh.

  “I hope that you do.” It was cruel. How soft she was against him. “Saint Christopher. Martyr. Protector of travelers, right?”

  “Think so. Guess she liked all that shit. Even made it my middle name.”

  “William Christopher Hargrove.” She mused. “Not terrible. My middle name sounds like some hippie shit.”

  “Hate my fucking first name.” Billy smirked, distant. “Now you have to tell me your hippie ass middle name.”

  “Sage.” Camille rolled her eyes when he laughed at her. “Shut up. It’s worse because my mother’s name is Rosemary.” His laughter hitched again, hand touching his lips. “Sage was my grandmother’s name. She also picked Rosemary. Real funny.”

  “Fucking is actually,” he quieted himself and gave a lengthy sigh. “Never done this before. Whatever it is,” Billy observed then. Camille chewed on her bottom lip, gaze flickering before she gave a shrug.

  “Kinda like it.” She turned again. His advances were small candles compared to the fireworks she set off. Like it was nothing. “What’s California like?”

  “Better,” he was frank. “The air. The beach. The food.”

  “Truly the beach boy type. Hard to picture.”

  “Long, long time ago,” his fingers drummed along his stomach. “Don’t fuck my image here.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it but, you have to do one thing.”

  “What’s that?” He peered over.

  “Say, cowabunga dude, in your best surfer accent,” she gave a bright smile that resonated before he was laughing again. They pushed at each other when her hand touched the warm skin of his arm. It stayed there.

  “You’re something else, Camille.” It was the first he’d really offered her name in that velvet tone. “You know that?”

  “I get that a lot these days. Queen Bee changing up the hive. School can’t stand it. Can’t read me anymore. I don’t want them to either.” She admitted.

  “Drives you mad that I’m skimming the pages, huh?”

  “If you say so.” She changed the subject. “I’ve never been to the ocean or seen a real beach. I’d like to. My parents were never ones for trips. Not with me, at least. I barely really left Hawkins… Never left the state for sure. You...You ever feel like everyone around you is lying most days? Like something isn’t just off, it was missing the whole time and you didn’t see it.”

  “What would they hide from you?”

  “That’s it, I have no idea. Nothing ever happens in Hawkins. Not until last year.” Camille huffed and shook her head. “So, tell me about your fake project partner last night?”

  “Jealous?”

  “Skipping the question much?” She rolled over and crossed her arms to lean on them so she could meet his eyes. “Friends talk about girls and boys.”

  “I am not your damn girlfriend.”

  “Not with that attitude.” She teased. “Come on, who?”

  “Tammy Foreman.”

  “Oh? She’s pretty. We did gymnastics together the last two years. Great routines but she never could stick the landing.”

  “She did last night.” Billy chuckled when she smacked his arm. “What? That was on you.”

  “I know that. Ass.” Camille rolled her eyes, disbelieving that this was her day. Pillow talk with the new keg king.

  “So, did that shithead really write you a nasty letter?”

  “Tommy? Oh, yeah, he wanted me bad. I’ll let you read it next time you’re at my place. It’s certainly...something to behold.”

  “Already a next time?” Billy mused, blue eyes alight at her.

  “Easy,” she turned to fall against her back again.

  “What’s your dad hiding in that attic?” He wondered aloud.

  “Hell if I knew.”

  “Ever thought of picking the lock?”

  “He’ll kill me,” Camille joked. “Yes. A lot though.”

  “I could pick it.” Came the offer. “Friends or whatever.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she shook her head. Billy looked at her face again when she was distracted. This was almost too intimate and they barely touched. “Have anymore dates coming up?”

  “Like to play things as I go.”

  “Ah. Sure… Smooth keg king, always lands the girl.” Not always.

  “Took time to perfect the method. Timing and all.”

  “Hm, method. I’m sure that did take careful practice. Alright, I'll bite. Tell me about your first time.” Camille turned her neck and studied his profile. The slight twitch of his lips didn’t quite reach his eyes. Billy shifted around to see her after a beat, lips curling further with more amusement.

  “I told you about Tammy. So, you first, Harpy.” His brow quirked. "In detail."

  “Not fair.”

  “Hm, is it? Have to give to get, sweetheart.” He earned a long sigh before Camille propped her arm up to rest her chin there. Billy wasn’t letting down so she caved.

  “I was fifteen.” She huffed, eyes rolling when triumph crossed his expression, causing him to twist and mirror her position. Blue eyes direct, he gave a nod so she continued. “He was not.”

  “What? Seventeen? Eighteen? Catch the attention of a senior?” Billy watched her exhale again before she mumbled. “Huh?”

  “He was twenty.” She saw him sober up at that. “College boy in a frat. Gorgeous. Charming. He had a method too. Met him at a new years party. He was visiting the family for winter break. Well off family. I was a friend of his little sister at the time, she moved for college in New York. No one knew about us though and I...I loved it. He told me I was beautiful and mature for my age. Turns out there’s another word for what he was. We were together for months.” Dark brows twitched up and she gave a sort of half smile, sparkling eyes lowered to his chest.

  “Shit.” Was the only sentiment Billy could offer but it resonated even still.

  “A big pile of it, yeah. We kissed at that party and...I kept seeing him. He’d invite me to big college parties and show me off to his friends. We’d go upstairs and...admittedly, he was okay with his hands. Quick everywhere else.” Camille smiled again with a scoff. “After the first time, he said...tell me you love me. And I did. I realize now that he never really said it back. He just wanted me to validate that he’d taken something of mine. That it would always belong to him somehow and I couldn’t take it back... And that wasn’t the half of it.”

  “How’d it end?” He almost took that back when her eyes snapped up to his again.

  “I...I asked him to use a condom and he spun that bullshit, ‘oh babygirl, it just doesn’t feel as good’ crap every single time. ‘Oh babygirl, it won’t fit. Don’t you trust me?’ Excuses. But, I was stupid and I was so mature and dating a college boy. Real badass. Until, something changed and...I was late. I knew instantly. I fucking knew. He reeled back so fast, I thought he might get whiplash. And I made the choice for us...to take care of it. I never asked for money. All I wanted was a ride. Just...support. I was terrified and too fucking young.”

  “He go with you?” Billy knew the answer.

  “I never saw him again. I wish I’d told him to eat shit at least. Left that in a lengthy voicemail later. But, I was so scared and upset...I started walking. I looked like shit and...ruined my shoes after a good thirty minutes. So, I’m determined and a car pulls up along side me. Barbara Holland pokes her head out and asks if I’m okay. You know her story by now.”

  “Yeah. Wheeler’s missing friend.”

  “They were both my friends once until I decided I wanted to be popular and dropped them. Was a real bitch and here Barb was...she just got her permit. I didn’t even have mine. So, I get in and I just...cried. I’ve never cried like that. Not in my life. She doesn’t say much of anything, just nodded occasionally and drove me to the clinic. Walked in and sat there. Waited till it was done. Drove me home...this girl that had every right to let me walk was there for me. So, I get out. Say thank you. Barb gets out...knowing when we get back to school that nothing is really going to change. We drifted…”

  Billy watched her trace a line into his blanket. A melancholy washed over her skin. Camille went on in an even tone.

  “…She came around the car and hugged me so tight. I wish every day that I’d said something more. But, I didn’t. She took my secret with her and I felt it linger in the air at school but we never...acknowledged it. Just slight nods in passing. You’re actually the first person I’ve told since Barb.” Camille stopped to sniffle and blinked several times to still anything else. “My parents can never know. No one can.” They locked eyes and she waited for him to share. Billy fell against his back, arm behind his head.

  “I was fifteen too. She was the most popular girl in our school and she was also the girlfriend of our school’s star quarterback. Both seniors. Older than me. He was a real dick. You know the type.”

  “I do.” Camille smirked when he did before he looked at the ceiling.

  “They were hot and cold. Drama and all, always breaking up. So, she decides she wants to make him jealous and sets her eyes on me for the first time. Hargrove trash. Ate that shit up. We’re at this party and she’s never paid me any mind. Always stuck her nose up. Prissy thing. But, I don’t know, something changed. She’s handing me drink after drink. Smiling. Next thing, we’re upstairs and she’s tugging my pants open. Gets into my lap and starts bouncing like a wild animal. I was fucking wasted, I didn’t try to push her off. She bragged about it after and I sucked up the attention from that. All these girls wanted me. Word got around quick, which she wanted too.”

  “Of course, she did. So, it worked?”

  “Too well. Quarterback and his band of merry assholes dragged me to the field and beat the living shit out of me. I laughed in his face the entire time about it too. I already had her. I was hot shit now. Fight got worse and I managed one good kick. Snapped his knee cap like a twig. Bye bye dick scholarship. Couldn’t even blame me for it. She got what she wanted. A fucking place next to his hospital bed. Dad started plans to move after that. Moved me schools first but, fuck, it’s all red. It never stopped, it just got worse.”

  “Billy, she...” Camille searched for the words. “Got you drunk...and forced you to…”

  “Yeah.” He admitted, swallowing a hard lump in his throat. "Was a real clingy bitch. Half my size and left bruises all over me. Smacked me awake when I closed my eyes because I was shit hammered. Not even sure I got off fully. And I laughed in that fucker's face like it was my idea."

  “That’s awful.”

  “I consider myself lucky.” Billy shrugged. “Put a rubber on me first.” He smiled again, all that Hargrove charm fluttering back. It grew infectious and she followed, falling back next to him. Billy didn’t want to see it that way. So, he reframed. It was just easier.

  “How can that many shitty people gravitate toward us at once?”

  “Hell if I knew.”

  “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Hm?”

  “I don’t feel like working on the paper today.” She whispered. He chuckled at that.

  “Couldn’t tell.” Billy paused. Remembered. “Head still bothering you?”

  “Little.” Came her confession. Camille sighed and tipped her head toward his shoulder. Billy fell silent and she didn’t mind. This moment was unlike anything he’d experienced before. Deliberate and lacking in forced bullshit. Nice. Peaceful. Almost too easy. He realized the terrifying reality that he’d made a friend in Hawkins. Like he'd fallen into a trap she set. Not a challenge or fling. Not fully. Didn't lessen how bad he wanted to have her. They didn’t speak until the pull of sleep threatened. For the first time, the world seemed a little less red.

** ** **

  Max flipped her skateboard and caught it with ease when their mother’s car pulled up. Susan smiled and grabbed a bag of groceries from the back seat.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “With your friends again?”

  “Yeah, Billy had a girl over for some project.” Max shrugged and reached for the second bag to help her mother in the house.

  “A girl?” Susan cleared her throat while she unpacked the food into the fridge. She knew what that usually meant. “Are they still here?”

  “Not sure, her backpack is still here but, his door’s open.” Max wandered down the hall and stopped in her tracks. Her stepbrother was breathing softly, wheezing tiny snores while the Harper girl lie burrowed in his side. Both clothed and atop the covers. Her head pressed to his bicep. “Weird...” Susan crept behind Max to see and smiled at the unexpected scene.

  “Come on, we’ll let them rest. I’ll start dinner before Neil gets home.” Susan whispered and left the door a few inches open before she ushered Max off. An hour or so later, the scent of food roused Billy as a hand shook his shoulder.

  “The fuck, Max?” He jerked to see her standing over him. She shrunk back when he rubbed his eyes. “Hell’re you in my room?” Sleep covered his voice.

  “Neil’s almost home and dinner’s ready. Might want to wake your girlfriend.”

  “She’s not my fucking-” Billy realized Camille was sound asleep next to him. “Shit. Harpy, rise and shine.” He gave her arm a pat and she moaned. “Scram, Max. Stay out of my damn room. Don't make me say it again.” He pointed so she rolled her eyes, leaving.

  “Billy? What are we… Hell, we fell asleep.”

  “Paper isn’t magically done, is it?” He got up to stretch and she followed, joining him at the mirror to fix her hair into place.

  “I should get going. We’ll work on it in study hall. Easy.” She put her shoes on and noticed Billy peeking outside. Neil wasn’t around yet.

  “C’mon.” He cocked his head so she followed.

  “Billy, who’s your friend?” Susan was readily waiting with a bright smile and Billy exhaled, annoyed in an instant. As if he’d been caught doing something actually dirty. Camille came to her.

  “Camille Harper, we share a few classes. Sorry, I stayed here late.” The teen reached out to shake her hand.

  “No, it’s nice to see Billy in...good company. Would your parents let you stay for dinner?”

  “Christ, Susan, she’s-”

  “You both haven’t eaten yet.”

  “I couldn’t impose.” Camille smiled sweeter.

  “Nonsense, we have more than enough. Meatloaf night.” Susan shook her head.

  “Yippee.” Billy muttered to himself and both women ignored him. Max had that smug look on her face so he narrowed his eyes to glare until she moved to set the table.

  “Ah, sure, I’d like that. Thank you. May I use your phone to call my parents, Mrs. Hargrove?”

  “Of course, and call me Susan.” She pointed. Camille went around Billy, eyes locking so she could go check in at home.

  “Why did you do that?” Billy hissed.

  “Your father is coming home.” Susan whispered, wiping down the counter. “Might be nice to have another person...a sweet girl, sitting at the table during the conversation.” She was protecting him. Drawing it out before Neil could tear into him tonight. How the fuck could he see it that way? All it did was give Neil more fuel to burn him with. Billy set his jaw and Camille returned.

  “May I help with anything?” She was cut off by the door opening. Billy shrunk behind her. For the first time, she saw his eyes change. Neil Hargrove stepped in with a steely expression.

  “You’re early,” Susan smiled and let him kiss her cheek. “How was work?”

  “Fine,” he spotted Camille, “and who is this?”

  “She’s-”

  “I was asking Billy.” He cut over his wife. Eyes glued to his son. Magnifying glasses held over burning ants.

  “Camille. We have a paper due.” Billy’s gaze hit the floor so Camille stood taller and marched up to Neil with purpose.

  “Camille Harper, Billy and I are classmates.” She reached out and he seemed surprised but shook her hand.

  “Firm grip, you could teach my son something.” He remarked.

  “Dinner’s ready,” Susan came between them to set the dish on the table. Neil turned on a sort of routine. Father and provider with company around.

  “Allow me.” He held out a chair for Camille before Billy could take it, forcing his son to sit by her so Neil could put himself near him at the head of the table. Max sat across from them with Susan at the other head.

  “Have you always lived in Hawkins?” Susan scooped up plates.

  “Thank you...and yes. All my life.” Camille shifted in her seat and eyed Billy. “Billy tells me you moved from California, must have been beautiful.” She took a bite. “This is delicious.”

  “You’re sweet.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Max added. Billy caught his father’s eyes and sat straight.

  “Thank you, Susan.” He was quiet.

  “Where do you live, Camille?” Neil cut into his food and Billy barely touched his plate. Like he had to force it.

  “Loch Nora.” Camille met his eyes and didn’t let down.

  “They give out the full size candy bars at Halloween.” Max added and Camille smirked at her.

  “You should see the houses at Christmas time. Everyone drives down to see them and we hand out hot chocolates and cider. My family decorates but we’re Jewish so it’s more for the parties.”

  “Jews,” Neil scoffed; gave a tight smile. “Huh. That’s nice.” Billy cleared his throat when Camille’s eyes drew wider.

  “Neil.” Susan cut in, careful as she could.

  “And your parents, what do they do?” He peered at Billy and took a bite of food.

  “My father is a scientist up at Hawkins lab. Mom is a fashion designer.” She replied, sipping water. “Harper Sixx.”

  “Your mother is Rosemary Harper?” Susan cut in and Camille nodded. “Her stuff is lovely, I wore one of her blouses on our first date. Didn’t I, Neil?”

  “Sure did.” His eyes were on his plate now.

  “She’ll be excited to hear that. She did more high fashion and runway when she first began. Celebrities and all. But, she wanted to start seeing her stuff on all women. Think she’s happier with that.” Camille sat back and peered at Max. “I’m jealous, I see you skateboarding all the time around school. I was on one once and broke my arm when I was ten.”

  “I rode into a thorn bush a few years back and got stuck,” Max smiled this time, relaxing.

  “So, what project are you two working on? A paper?” Neil spoke over Max before she could go on. “Can’t write one yourself, Billy?”

  “It’s a collaborative thing for class, two minds equals more ideas.” Camille cut in and felt Billy nudge her thigh under the table. “Large book report but, I’m optimistic, we picked a good one.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Scarlet Letter,” Billy prodded at a piece of meat.

  “Little advanced for you.”

  “Billy actually finished the novel before I did.” Camille gripped her knife and fork on the table. Billy’s leg touched her own again in warning.

  “Sometimes I forget you can read anything outside of Playboy. Or was it Playgirl?” Neil pointed at Billy with his knife and laughed at his own joke, he nudged his son’s shoulder until he forced a tight grin. Eyes watery. Camille felt herself tremble. That headache pounded and then it released completely when a photo jerked from the wall to crash into the floor. Neil whipped around and cursed, standing. “Piece of shit,” he mumbled, going to shut the window beyond it. “Damn wind blew it off the wall.” Camille was dazed and Billy jerked to force a napkin against her nose.

  “Jesus, Harpy. Again?” He pulled her to focus and her hand covered his. Eyes locked, pupils dilated. She felt his fingers shake.

  “Are you okay, dear?” Susan offered another napkin. Max was silent and wide eyed.

  “Yes, sorry, I have this thing. I get them easily. Pardon me.” She held the paper and quirked her brow to save Billy more embarrassment.

  “Yeah,” Billy pulled her to her feet and guided her off. Didn’t think too much of it. Camille shot one last look at Neil and wished that photo crashed into his head. They shut the bathroom door. “Can’t keep doing this, yeah?”

  “Nosebleeds are a Camille Harper special,” she joked, angling her face up. “Your stepmom seemed nice.”

  “She chose him.” Billy was tense. "Just fucking makes it worse when she tries to help." Trembling. Susan tried to defuse the tension. Tried.

  “Sometimes you don’t know a person until they’re already drowning you.” She whispered. He wet a rag and without asking, moved the tissue to wipe her nose. Camille let him, eyes flickering over his while he stared at her lips and edged the rag over them. His thumb came up to trace them before she ran her tongue there. Oh, did he fucking want her.

  “Better?” She watched him nod. “I should go.” Billy was silent again, eyes on his feet before he sniffled and nodded once more. “Walk me out?” She went first and clasped her hands. “Mrs. Hargrove, dinner was great but my parents will want me home. Thank you.”

  “Come over anytime, hon.”

  “Yes. Bye, Max. I’ll see you around.”

  “Sure,” Max lifted her lips.

  “Mr. Hargrove, thank you for having me in your house.” She pushed her hand out with a hard look and dared him to refuse. Tightly, he shook it. They’re all better than you, you son of a bitch. Billy watched this girl stand up to his father without fear, challenging him somehow. It was the hottest thing he’d ever seen.

  “Maybe my son’s grades will go up with you...around him.”

  “Credit would be all his.” She smiled her sweetest smile and picked up her backpack. “Billy.” The teen peered at his dad, watched him fume, and purposefully crossed in front to follow Camille out. “My house for next time? Yes, I said next time, keep the excitement down.” She offered, earning a silent scoff of agreement. Hands shifted and she pulled a pen from her backpack, grabbing for his hand to write her number along his wrist. “Need anything, call. Now you.”

  “Forgot your book inside,” he remarked, inking his number into her arm next.

  “Ah, get it to me tomorrow.” Camille lingered when his hand didn’t release her wrist. Slowly, she came up and didn’t kiss him. She did something far worse. Arms slipped around his shoulders, shifting his hair aside when she hugged him. Brief. Not long enough. Nothing else could be done or said. “Take care, I’ll see you at school. I liked it...the talking and all. Felt needed.” He lifted his hands but she slipped away too quick. “Goodnight, Billy.” Camille turned and he watched her get into her car to drive off. One friend. In fucking Hawkins. Didn't seem too bad.

** ** **

  Camille observed Steve at lunch the next day, seated two tables away from Nancy. Sighing, she approached Nancy first while she packed up to go.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi.” Nancy looked ashamed. “Steve told me I said some stuff to you at the party. I don’t really remember it. But, I’m sorry.”

  “Nance-”

  “No, it was gross. I tossed that in your face.”

  “We all say shitty things,” Camille shrugged, “are you and Steve done?”

  “I’m not sure anymore. Maybe.” She watched her friend sit. Friend. “Last year...I think it messed me up. I love Steve, I do, but...”

  “You’re not in love with him?”

  “I thought I was. It’s not fair. I care about him and I hurt him because I couldn't....” Nancy sighed. “A lot happened and it changed me.”

  “What really happened to Barb, Nancy?” Camille pushed the words out and her lip trembled. “I missed something and it’s eating you.”

  “I’m going to make it right.” Nancy got up in a hurry to go.

  “Nancy,” Camille stood in a huff. But, she was gone. Annoyed, she marched over to Steve and plopped down, appetite gone. “You know something.”

  “About what?”

  “Barb, last year, all of it. You know."

   "Cam-"

  "You've been my friend as long as Nancy has. Two rich kids with absent parents make perfect wingmen. And you're lying to my face, Steve. Why are you and Nancy lying? Does Jonathan know too? That why they’re acting weird?” Camille watched Steve frown, sympathetic to her anger. “She’s dead. Isn’t she? She’s not coming back, what happened to my friend?” Camille smacked the table and above her, the light fizzled, crackling before glass broke and rained down. Gasps echoed. She and Steve jumped under the table to avoid sparks. Every light followed and teachers began to usher kids out in the chaos.

  “You’re bleeding.” Steve grabbed Camille’s shoulder and her head just burned beyond any belief.

  “Ah,” she pushed from him and slid away to go. Lights erupted all over. Students cried out while the power blew. Camille was racing down the hallway when the fire alarm went off then cut. She fussed with her locker and grew enraged when it didn’t budge. “Piece of shit!” She gave one pound and it jerked open. Breathing heavily, she stuffed items in her bag and whipped around as a hand grabbed her shoulder.

  “What’s the matter, Queen Bee? Get scared?”

  “Fuck off, Tommy.” She hissed, pushing him hard to go.

  “Hey, you bitch,” he grabbed her arm and jerked. Camille felt her body lose control. She dodged under his arm and spun once, leg gliding out to kick him in the head. Tommy lost his footing when his nose busted, dropping. Fists up, she blinked and stared down at her hands. “My nose, what the fuck, you stupid slut!” Camille looked up to see Billy Hargrove stunned at the end of the hallway. He took one confused step, eyes unblinking. Behind him, students raced out the doors as teachers ushered them. Frantic, Camille turned and sprinted the other direction. He caught up with her once she got out the back door.

  “What the fuck was that Karate Kid shit?” He snatched for her wrist.

  “Not now, Billy, I have to go home.” She was crying, bloodying her sleeve to wipe her nose. Camille pushed at him to let go and he tossed his hands out.

  “Camille! The fuck?” He yelled but she was already getting into her car to speed away. She didn’t get pulled over by some miracle.

  “Mom!” She echoed to her house once inside. “Mama!” Camille dropped her bag and fell to her knees on the stairs. Sobs ripped from her while her head burned. Hands grasped her shoulders.

  “Milly, what’s happened?” Her housekeeper shook her, gasping when she saw her bloodied nose.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know! It hurts,” she wailed, inconsolable. "Make it stop!" Edna heaved her up the steps and got her into the guest room. Camille’s sob subsided when pills were shoved into her hands.

  “Drink up, there we go. You need to rest, I’ll call your parents.” Edna cleaned her face and helped her undress. “Lie down there. Good. Go to sleep, Camille.”

  “But-”

  “Sink.” The harsh tone caught Camille, frosting her spine.

  “What...did you say?” She fell back in a daze.

  “I said, sleep, honey.” Edna watched the pills work quick and shuffled down the hallway after locking the door. She picked up the phone to dial.

  “Harper.”

  “Sir, she’s getting worse. It’s happening again. Same as when she was younger.” There was a beat and sigh.

  “I’ll be home in twenty.”

** ** **

  “Power goes nuts, half day is nice.” Steve remarked, leaning against his car while students dispersed and Heather nodded next to him.

  “I called Camille’s house, her mother said she was sick. I’ll grab her homework tomorrow if they don’t cancel it.” They stopped talking when Billy Hargrove marched up, poking Steve in the shoulder.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  “Man, not now. Any other day but, I’m not in the mood for you today, got it?”

  “What the fuck happened to her? Harper?”

  “She gets dizzy, I don’t know. She doesn’t talk about it. The hell do you care?” Steve turned with Heather. I don't, Billy almost said. Sick curiosity was ending him. “Go away, Hargrove. Bad enough I have to deal with you in gym.” Billy pushed past him to go to his car.

  “Max, get in now!” He raged so she scrambled. Billy slammed the door and sped off, too many questions rang. Better to just toss them aside and see all in red.

[hypomanicsatanicpanic]

you ever feel like a space that used to be a respite for you is now just...not? I don’t necessarily mean it’s not safe, just that going to a place which was once really productive and comfortable and energizing for you now feels stressful and uneasy? I (likely temporarily) stepped out of an organizing space that I’ve built up over the last year in order to deal with the intense workload around thesis/defense which is happening this upcoming Monday. Anyway, we started at three people and now we have a pretty robust core of about 20. What we’re trying to do is organize grad students into a union at the university where we all work, which is pretty fucking horrendous about how it treats us. This basically meant spending ~20hrs / week finding new students who wanted to organize, meeting with them, agitating, meeting with other unionizing grad students at other schools, managing personality conflicts in the group, etc as well as working on whatever campaigns/ social media stuff we were doing. All while doing grad school full time. It was energizing. We accomplished shit with only very few of us. While it’s explicitly in our bylaws that there is no “group leader,” a lot of things that would usually be directed to a president end up coming to me just because I’m the common person that everyone knows. Most folks in the group have zero other organizing experience; one has quite a lot, and two or three have basically been in the periphery of this one far left org (let’s call it WTF, for Women’s Task Force) in our very conservative small city. Most of us are quite left, though there are a decent number of centrists.   About WTF: basically there’s this one really...problematic? person who is employed by our university who leads WTF (which isn’t affiliated with the university). She, a white cis woman, collects people she can use as symbolic tokens (usually women of color, visibly disabled women, lesbians, and fat women) to use them in promo material, and get them to do errands for, and doesn’t help them gain more power or skills within the group. She consciously excludes transwomen and only allows AFAB nonbinary folxs, and not even those who have a more masc presentation much of the time. WTF is also massively outspoken about Palestine, which is usually a signal that a group may be pretty antiSemitic as well.  She uses her identity markers to shut down others who (legitimately) question her tactics.  WTF, in the 10ish years they’ve existed, has never made any actual policy or political changes in this town. They’ve never actually run a campaign. They basically just show up “in solidarity” with actions other people organize, and host fundraisers for themselves. So having to deal with them is pretty ick, because the people in that organization. WTF is basically bad news. The people from WTF--three women of color and two queer white women--are consistently bad about things which seem to be just fine for literally everyone else in the group. We understand that shit’s stressful as a grad student and that there are a lot of other things we could/ should all be doing in addition to organizing. But the few rules we have are freaking common sense/common courtesy, and not that hard to follow.  When people need to drop off the map for a while, they let others know that they’ll be out for a bit, and then get back in contact when their schedules free up again, so they can be caught up to speed at the next meeting. There’s also meeting notes which you can read to get back in the loop if you thought you’ve missed something: If you think you’re not going to be able to do something, you’re not supposed to commit to it.  If you can’t do something you committed to doing, give others a heads up so they can cover it. Last, since we’re trying to be a space that works for people across the political spectrum (not just like the total of 30 dedicated leftists here), we’re explicitly against callout culture. Meaning that if you have an issue with something someone says in meeting, you’re either supposed to hold it until the group evaluation (where there’s dedicated space for that), OR you’re supposed to have a conversation with the person about the situation, OR you’re supposed to talk to another neutral-party group member so they can have the conversation for you.  The WTF people have committed to following all of these rules and have been consistently bad at actually doing that, as per rules. They’ve consistently just not done the things they committed to, without actually telling anyone, leaving folks in the lurch. They consistently call people out in meetings in a way that alienates newcomers. They’ve consistently misgendered me, despite my asking them to not to, and speaking to them about it after meetings.   About five weeks ago, this started to become a really big problem as we planned a big public recruitment event. I had a few conversations with the people who’d primarily been affected by one of the WTF folks’ failure to follow through on commitments. They asked me to speak to her. So I took several days to plan and rehearse a conversation. She was extremely defensive (ok, that’s fine, whatever), and committed to a whole lot of other shit. My follow up with her was to meet on a regular basis, so we could check in and readjust. We met the week after that, shit seemed fine. The week after that, the day of the big event. she came to the 1:1 meeting we’d set up and basically yelled at me for an hour for promoting white supremacy in the group. I tried to ask her some questions but really it just was her telling me how I’m a white supremacist and by holding women of color accountable to rules which they too had voted for, in a UNANIMOUS VOTE, I’m promoting white supremacy. She suggested I go to WTF subgroup meetings called SURJ (showing up for racial justice), which is basically a reading circle for white people only to “deconstruct their complicitness in white supremacy.” One of my partners went once to learn more about antiblack racism, but was turned away because he’s South Asian, not white. So, nope. Not fucking happening--it’s a completely performative thing IMO. Also the WTF leader person consistently is there and I’m not comfortable around her. They are also definitely under the opinion that “Jews are white and benefit more from oppressing PoCs than other white people.” So not a good/safe place for me.  Maybe I wasn’t supposed to take it as a personal attack, but about halfway through the conversation she said it was specifically about me. So, yeah, a personal attack. She quit the organization and left, leaving us in the lurch for that night. The other thing that really bothered me about this conversation was that she was using her identity as a way to evade any and all accountability for repeatedly committing to things and disappearing. I would have been really happy to talk with her about how to make the space more accessible to her. In fact, we’d had multiple conversations about this. We’d implemented multiple things to help with the issues she’d mentioned...and she’d engaged with literally zero of them. Around that time, before the big event at a group meeting, another WTF member (also a WoC) was on the agenda to talk about “accountability.” Vague agendas are generally fine, so it was like, Of course! We should talk about that. That piece wasn’t really about accountability, it was literally just accusing the group of being a space for white supremacy, telling white people in the group to go to SURJ. Then she also left the group (though she waited until after the big event), though without the “Fuck y’all, I quit” meeting.  I’ve spoken to most other group members outside of WTF about this (both PoC and white folks), they agree that I’m not a white supremacist. Still, it’s probably a good idea to address the issue in more depth in the group. As a white person I really can’t say anything about how WTF members, unlike literally all other people in the group, were using callout culture and accusations of white supremacy to derail conversations, and to block any attempt at getting them to follow the same rules they not only expect others to follow but also that they themselves committed to following. We’ve had like 3 followup conversations in general meetings since then. So far, we’ve scared off 5 people that I’d recruited, as well as 3-4 others had recruited. Multiple opportunities to choose, plan, and launch campaigns have passed while we have these conversations. I can’t point any of this out because when I do, I’m just the white person who doesn’t want to talk about white supremacy.  Basically even though there are supportive people in the group that I absolutely love, I feel like the space has been emotionally polluted for me. I can’t deal with this fucking shit anymore, as much as I think unionizing is important to deal with the fucking bullshit from the university. This has become more of a stress for me than the shitty paychecks that come at unpredictable times; the shitty issues with my old PI/advisor; the really terrible benefits and leave policies; the expensive term fees.  I almost don’t want to go back. Is that terrible of me?

[blakelywintersfield]

what do you think about cancel culture?

So it took me a while to answer this ask ‘cause I have... a lot to say about the subject.

There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to cancel culture. Its roots I like to believe are well intended -- a means to alert vulnerable groups about individuals that have a history of hurting them. But people have taken it... way too far.

I think it’s important to hold people accountable for their actions. There’s a lot of people who get away with horrible things, simply because they produce likeable material (makeup, music, movies, entertainment, etc.). People like Jeffree Star, PewDiePie, and Kat Von D have gotten away with their horrific treatment of others for years because people enjoy their content -- and two out of three of them still are wildly successful. What pushes people over the limit? Often times it’s a matter of what white people take major issue in. In Kat’s case, being anti-vax. Is being anti-vax bad? Hell yeah it is. As someone who’s immuno-compromised it literally could lead to an early, painful, slow death for me. And don’t get me wrong, I wanna die, but not from something that takes months of suffering. But people blatantly ignored her other awful acts -- such as her antisemitic actions (telling her former boss to “burn in hell jewbag” (sic) in the form of writing on a photo she left for him and drawing a Nazi symbol on it), complacency in victim blaming (her neo-Nazi husband blames his daughter’s rape on his daughter), denying and viciously responding to criticisms about her pedophilic makeup names (”Underage Red”, “Lolita”, second not in reference to the Japanese style but the book), and actively killing her pets (she killed one cat by leaving a house full of burning candles -- cat knocked down the candles, house went up in flames, cat died; she also was found forcing a vegan diet onto her cats -- I’m unsure if this has continued but I believe one of her cats died from it). All of these are huge reasons to “cancel” her -- to boycott her products. But people didn’t actively hate her until she came out as anti-vax, something that effects the majority. And that’s part of the issue with cancel culture: people pick and choose what’s acceptable depending on how badly it effects them personally.

Let’s focus on the other two mentioned: Jeffree and Felix. Jeffree has a very, very, veryyyyy long past of being a racist piece of shit. Not even lowkey ignorant white person racist (i.e. ”I didn’t know making fun of AAE and viewing dreadlocks as trashy was racist”). I’m talking straight up using the n-slur, with the hard -er too, towards a black woman. And this was recent, too. There just haven’t been any physical references beforehand, only personal accounts. But people have defended him -- and still defend him -- on these actions, because he apologized. But then he’ll do it again a month later. And there’ll be definitive proof of it. He’ll keep doing it over, and over, and over again. And people will continue to excuse him because he keeps apologizing! That’s not how apologies work! As someone who’s been abused, apologies mean nothing if you don’t actively work on fixing what you’re apologizing for!! My abusers would apologize and then do the exact same thing again so many times that I lost count long ago! And of course, Shane Dawson hasn’t helped because he’s head over heels for the guy, so he’s been using his popularity to try and clear his name -- which is ironic, considering he’s been under fire for being racist in the past too. The only difference is he actually cleaned his act up, until now, of course. Because now, instead of creating racist content himself, he’s defending a chronically racist shitbag. And people continue to defend him, because his shitty actions effects mainly black women -- a minority in comparison to the amount of white people in the states. Jeffree continues to be wildly successful because his problematic behavior only effects a minority, and that’s... not okay.

Felix has a very similar history to Jeffree, but with antisemitism, and in my opinion he’s even worse because he’ll apologize then do something nice like donate to a charity. And that would be fantastic if he wouldn’t continue to do antisemitic things like actively support white supremacists. People continue to defend him because he does charitable things, but I constantly remind people that abusive people aren’t abusive 24/7 -- that’s literally how they get away with abuse. They abuse, then take you out for a fancy date, kiss you gently and tell you how beautiful you are. Then they do something abusive. It’s an endless cycle. And that’s honestly what Felix does. Apologize, do something really fucking nice, and then repeat his shitty action. And he has other extremely influential people defend him -- it’s why I had to stop following JackSepticEye and Markiplier. They continuously vouched for him. They continuously defended him. And they did it in the form of saying “he’s a really good person, I know him personally, he’s really fucking sweet and nice”. That’s what people say about the partner of someone really close to me! Their friends defend them all the time, but they’ve never seen how they treat my friend. They don’t know about how they are in a relationship. And that’s all we ever hear about abusers. No one wants to accept that their longtime friend is shitty. But Mark and Sean contribute to the toxic ideology of “defend your friends to the end”. And it disenfranchises those effected because 1) they’re not Jewish, they have absolutely no say in the matter, and 2) they’re abusing their popularity to keep their friend from being properly criticized. I don’t think either of them are shitty people, per se, but they’re being extremely toxic by not letting their friend see that they’re a repeat offender and need to either work on their shit or face the music. Mark and Sean both have the power to make Felix change if they just give him the ultimatum of “us or this”.

But I digress. The main issue highlighted here is that people who actually do bad things and continue to do bad things aren’t being held accountable because people don’t care to acknowledge what doesn’t directly effect them. This is the first main issue with cancel culture.

Let’s focus on another man under scrutiny: John Lennon. Now, let me put out there for disclaimer purposes that this man is far from perfect and has problematic parts to him as well. He’s done some shitty things. But cancel culture looooooooves to dig at this man. To put it crudely, they really enjoy beating this dead... man. And mainly over one really bad thing he did, which was hit his wife. However, people love to 1) over-exaggerate it, and 2) completely ignore how he handled the aftermath. Cancel culture often refers to him as a “wife beater”, as though this were a chronic habit or that he severely brutalized his wife. But they conveniently ignore that he apologized, both to her and publicly, taught himself about domestic abuse and spoke up for women’s rights, and even wrote multiple songs about how he fucked up and he shouldn’t be excuse for what he did. And, most importantly, his wife forgave him. The victim in this situation forgave him, and people still dig into this one thing and use it as their reason to hate him and his band to this day. Genuine criticism of him and what he’s done have gone to the wayside because of this one fact with no context, and it’s a huge phenomena because people, for whatever reason, love to hate popular things. Like I said, he’s done shitty things! He wasn’t perfect! But to use one issue that was literally resolved to hate him is just a lazy excuse to hate what’s popular, and that comes to our second issue with cancel culture: people want to hate what’s popular and will go to any lengths to excuse their hatred, even if issues that have been resolved.

The last main issue I have is that cancel culture is often set up in very black and white terms. Person does bad thing, they’re bad, end of discussion. But that’s... not how life works. Not at all. I know religion isn’t universal, especially Christianity, but there’s one point in Christianity that is universal: humans are flawed. No human being to have ever existed is perfect. And with the rise of technology and social media, a lot of mistakes have a permanent proof out there. Be it through tweets, tumblr or Facebook posts, Instagram or Snapchat stories, whatever it is, there is proof. And people like to take it way too far.

For example... well, I’ll use myself. There’s good things to not being tumblr famous, and I’m blessed with that, because I used to be a major shithead. Well. Okay, I still am, but I was bigoted, uninformed, and had a lot of internalized issues. For anyone that doesn’t know, I was raised in a conservative Christian household where my father was Southern Baptist and my mother had been raised Catholic (her personal religious views are much more lax though, thankfully). Both came from small towns in Illinois and Missouri respectively, and their parents, the same. I was aggressively homophobic and transphobic (ironic, eh?), covertly racist and sexist, and just overall a really shitty person. And while I didn’t join tumblr until after I’d finally started to grow, a lot of people on here are younger -- some even lying about their age and joining before they’re 13. And like me, many of these kids are in close-minded households. And for the longest time I refused to listen to other people because of the good ol’ backfire effect, but once I began to accept I was wrong, I learned. Of course I still have learning to do -- I always do. I always will. And that’s okay. But if I were 12 year old me on tumblr today, I would, well. I would’ve probably killed myself by now, because of all the bullying and hate for being a shithead child. A shithead, yes. But a child. Someone that’s going to be ignorant to a lot of things because they haven’t been alive for as long. And not everyone has informed parents that make it a point to teach them. Adults are a little harder to forgive, I’ll admit, but children have a lot more potential to learn and grow, and we often treat them just like adults.

The final issue with cancel culture is that it gives no room for improvement and no assumption of someone’s innocence. While it hurts to be on the victim end, we as a whole are obligated to correct the issue. I personally would like it to be those not effected doing that (i.e. someone making a transphobic comment having other cis people explain why it’s transphobic and isn’t okay), but regardless, we need to assume innocent until guilty with these kinds of things. It’s not easy, sure, but if I had been on tumblr while I was a shitty kid parroting my dad’s awful world views, cancel culture would’ve labeled me a piece of shit with no chance of redemption, and if I didn’t kill myself there’s no fucking way in hell I would’ve learned, because that kind of treatment would’ve stuck with me and made it harder for me to listen to the other side’s reasoning, even if they were right. We need to approach people in a manner of calm education, instead of ready to kill. In no way am I saying this is an easy thing to do, but unless they’ve refused to open themselves up in any way whatsoever, immediately chalking someone up as a lost cause is just... counter-productive. We have to acknowledge that people are flawed, and can learn and grow. We need to give people space to improve. It’s not all or nothing.

All in all, cancel culture has a good base, but its execution has become irrational and a means to justify hating those that really don’t deserve it, while turning a blind eye to those that actually are problematic. There’s a lot to be improved on.

[communistvashoth]

Look, i'm not saying i dont see the parallells between illuminati/reptilian conspiracies and historical antisemitism. But the idea of a shadowy, corrupt group controlling the government is a common thread in a lot of fringe theories, and calling it a reference to Jews throws me so far under the bus you wouldn't fucking believe it

I’ve decided to write a pretty long response to this, and i hope you’ll read the whole thing. I promise, I have no desire to throw you under any buses.

(pertaining to this)

I'm sorry you feel unfairly piled on; I dont know who you are, but I doubt you deserve that, most people don’t. it's sadly common in more progressive communities, and the internet in general, for people to respond to mistakes and miscommunications with rigid condemnation and some sort of "excommunication". if that's what you're going through, that probably is unfair, and you're justified in feeling frustrated. it also, just generally, really sucks to be told that something you did or said may have been insensitive or harmful. most people dont mean to do that sort of thing, and when we're told something we did was racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. it often feels like we are being labeled a racist, a sexist, an anti-semite, a homophobe, etc. that feels really shitty, because those are shitty things to be, so being called that feels like being called a bad person. its vitally important, though, that we remember that those words are primarily adjectives. everybody does things that are racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that we are those things. 

we don’t become racists, sexists, anti-semites, homophobes, etc. until we are confronted with harm we caused accidentally and, instead of hearing that, addressing it, changing for the better, and moving on, we become defensive, double-down, and resent the people we’ve harmed for having the audacity to make us feel guilty. 

in this instance, i’m afraid there are more than just parallels, and the anti-semitism is more than historical. many of those fringe conspiracy theories don’t just share the concept of a secret, evil cabal running the world and destroying western culture/white people/free speech/whatever ridiculous thing, they share specifically the idea that there is a secret, evil cabal of jewish people running the world and destroying western culture/white people/free speech/whatever thing. they seem like ridiculous garbage that only nutcases believe in, but when actually investigated and dissected, many of those theories are based in the same bigotries as the blood libels going back as far as the 11th century. the fact of the matter is, most if not all of those such conspiracy theories are not similar to anti-semitism, they are anti-semitism, and they are not historical, they are happening now, and they are motivating anti-semitic violence now. I mean, just look at Qanon and the “white genocide” conspiracy theory. and if you’re not very familiar with those, then you should count yourself very, very lucky that they aren’t things that demand your attention. 

I am sorry for how you are feeling; i know from experience that it feels really shitty to be told you’ve harmed someone when you didnt mean to, and i know what it’s like to be subjected to overreactions about it, and how shitty that is. assuming you are the OP of the post i commented on, i don’t think you meant to harm anyone, you were just making a joke that was, admittedly, funny, and if anyone is saying you’re a raging anti-semite, or evil, or irredeemable, or anything like that, that’s definitely an out-of-proportion response to one post. I hope that you can recognise when people are overreacting or taking out their own unhappiness out on you, and i hope that you can fortify and feel some comfort in the knowledge that they are wrong, and you dont deserve to be treated like that. but i also hope that your feelings of being thrown under the bus don’t harden you to genuine criticism. i don’t doubt it hurts, and you are definitely justified in feeling that a lot of that hurt is unwarranted, but being told you’ve done something harmful will never be painless. counterintuitively, it’s actually a sort of a silver lining to all this; that bad feeling, that unpleasant niggle of guilt, it means that you care when you harm people by accident. but as much as those feelings suck, and as much as it super, super sucks to be dogpiled by internet assholes, we can’t use those bad feelings to insulate ourselves from our mistakes. 

it hurts, but it doesn’t justify ignoring the harm we do to others; being called a racist has never hurt a white person as much as racism harms people of colour. being told we’ve done something anti-semitic is hard, but trying to navigate through increasingly common murky double-speak and covert dog-whistles as a jewish person is harder. they don’t deserve that, but it’s an unavoidable part of their lives. if we care about them, if we want to help them, if we want to help lay the bricks for a new world where they won’t have to suffer that, we have to shoulder that burden with them. sometimes that means examining our language, learning about unpleasant history and its modern forms, and letting a joke go by the wayside when it sounds uncomfortably like a dog-whistle, even if that isn’t how we meant it.

if it helps at all, you’re not alone in this. you’re not alone in your feelings, and you’re not alone in this experience. in fact, if you’re still feeling shitty/frustrated/unheard, i’d be happy to chat with you off anon (altho maybe not immediately, it’s getting late). I’ve also done things that were anti-semitic without meaning to and had to confront that, and i struggle with all sorts of learned prejudices that i want to be better about. If you need to vent about this, if you need someone you can just word-vomit at without worrying about hurting someone’s feelings, i am here, and i am absolutely willing to listen. 

and even if none of this affects you -although i dont believe it to be the case, it’s totally possible you’re coming to this discussion in bad faith; anon means i dont even know for sure who you are, so i can’t exactly check- i hope you will read it, as long as it is. and even if you don’t, or do and dismiss it, maybe it will reach someone else.

i hope you, anon-who-might-be-OP, feel better; i hope you feel heard. i hope you find your way to peace and understanding with this.

i hope any jewish people who were affected by this situation feel better; i hope you feel heard. i hope you find your way to peace and healing with this.

[nonbinarysasquatch]

for the critical opinion on ships ask meme: dramione, rethaniel, joshbecca, grebecca?

Ah, yes, let’s see how many people I can piss off in one go. I’ll tackle these in reverse:

Grebecca: Maybe in some alternate universe these two could work out but not in the one we have. They were very toxic for each other and Greg, frankly, deserves better. I think It Was a Shit Show said everything about their relationship that needed to be said. It was terrible and Greg did the right thing by leaving. 

While I do think Rebecca loved him, as long her obsession with Josh and her on issues went unaddressed she would’ve continued to string him along and eventually they would’ve hated each other. I think they were a really good example of how love can’t save a toxic relationship and you shouldn’t destroy yourself trying to make a toxic relationship work.

I do think seeing all the shippers who harass Rachel and Aline have soured me further on this ship but I still love Greg as a character. He’s (in my opinion) the most realistically human character the show has had.

Joshbecca: Josh is a sweet guy but he’s not remotely emotionally intelligent enough to be with Rebecca. And frankly, they just don’t have much in common. The main way they connect at all is via his childishness but for Rebecca that’s not healthy (and I’d argue it’s not really healthy for Josh either.) 

There’s probably a universe where they could date for a few months and have fun but that’s it. They are just too different and in terms of the actual canon universe Rebecca has beyond treated him awfully and it’s only by the grace of the fact that Josh is the most forgiving and kind character on the show that he doesn’t hate her.

Rethaniel: Oh boy. Are you ever like, “Well, I’m about to say things that literally no one is going to be happy with”?

It’s been an interesting journey tracking my feelings about this ship. On my first watch through I was surprised by how much I was able to like Nathaniel, despite his flaws. But then I rewatched and was better able to analyse his actions (while watching season 3 live it became easy to forget things he had said and done and I didn’t pay attention to fan discussions at all.)

There are definitely Nathaniel moments I like. Actually, I still love his plot in Josh is Irrelevant because I really relate to him getting triggered in that episode for some personal reasons. It’s the only time I’ve found him relatable, though.

The funniest thing is that deciding to check out the CXGF fandom on Tumblr was the thing that really started to bring out my negativity about the ship. Simply because I was stunned to find out so many people... shipped them so wholeheartedly. It made me uncomfortable even though at that point I still hadn’t put an enormous amount of thought into it because frankly: I don’t care about Rebecca’s romantic life at all. It’s not why I watch the show. So my attitude has tended to be “she can have romantic stumbles and bad relationships as long as the end of the show isn’t about her romantic life.”

And I mean, that’s STILL my attitude. I know some people disagree but I’m fine with Rebecca having bad relationships and I know some people REALLY disagree but I think there is value to Nathaniel as a character (DON’T HATE ME LEAH) and deconstructing the privilege and abuses of wealthy straight white men in America.

Now, thankfully, my experience with Rethaniel shippers has all been great and most seem to be lovely people and many of them ARE critical of Nathaniel’s actions. So I don’t hold anything against them, and I’ve been forged in the fires of HP fandom where some truly gross ships are also some of the most popular so...

Anyhow, here’s why I’ve gone from kinda neutral on Rethaniel to them being actually something I’m against:

Look, before we get into any of Nathaniel’s behaviour and meta on his place on the show, I’ll just say: it’s really fucking hard to ignore that every female Jewish fan of the show I’ve interacted with hates Nathaniel. It’s not my place to comment on why that is but when an entire group is like “this dude makes us uncomfortable” I tend to listen.

Meta wise, we now know that Rebecca is Nathaniel’s Josh, aka object of obsession that he’s idealising. Which means that aside from any of his actual behaviour, once Nathaniel can get over that obsession it won’t be healthy for him to continue to interact with Rebecca.

Nathaniel sexually harassed Rebecca while they were trapped in an elevator.

He plotted to deport Josh’s father and to murder Josh’s grandfather so that he could get laid (though it’s debatable whether Nathaniel really thought he would have to go through with these things, I do think if Rebecca had been cool with them he would’ve let them happen and buried any guilt as per usual.)

He repeatedly bodyshames her.

He treats her mental health problems as cute and attractive.

When she breaks up with him he fires her out of spite (something he basically confesses to.)

Rachel Bloom has said that Rebecca is attracted to Nathaniel in part BECAUSE he negs her and that definitely tracks with Rebecca’s low self-esteem. She’s also said that her interactions with Paula’s dad factor why she goes and sleeps with Nathaniel after getting back to West Covina, so erm, unpack THAT.

For me the final clincher is “Nothing is Ever Anyone’s Fault” a song which I should note, I like (as a piece of satire and meta-commentary, which is a case for a lot of the show’s morally not great pieces.) After everything, Nathaniel doesn’t see anything he’s done as wrong. I do think he will eventually but the end of season 3 and the title being “Nathaniel is Irrelevant” to me send a clear message. 

I’m baffled that some people think “Nothing is Ever Anyone’s Fault” is a sweet, romantic song when everything about it is the opposite of the message the show is trying to convey. Rebecca and Nathaniel are saying in that moment that part of what has drawn them together is not taking responsibility for their actions and blaming everything on trauma. It’s destructive and toxic, not romantic. And this evidenced by the following scene in the courtroom where Rebecca rejects Nathaniels amorality and chooses her conscience (aka Paula.)

And like, soon I will finish my season 3 reviews and get into why the season 3 finale is genuinely one of my favourite things the show has done (as it was the next missing piece that I wanted the show to cover... they had dealt with what Rebecca’s underlying problems were but not fully dealt with her need to take responsibility for her actions.)

I think there’s hope for Nathaniel as a character. He can grow and be redeemed and learn to use his privilege to help people, rather than using it as a weapon and a shield. But he needs to stay away from Rebecca. I do think they love each other but their love is destructive.

My final thought I want to attach is that... I think there’s something to be said for the relevancy characters like Nathaniel have for Americans. In this country, our real life villains look like Nathaniel and his family. They represent white privilege and and cold, driven capitalism.

It’s not entirely surprising that so many of us find it easy to love Nathaniel and latch onto him as a character. I think it’s something we’ve been conditioned to as a way of coping with life in a capitalist hellscape.

Observe the way people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are treated by many liberals. Jeff is, to be fair, a liberal but he’s also the wealthiest man in the world and his company has some serious ethical problems with how their workers are treated at all levels (it’s not just the people working in the warehouses, I’ve known Amazon programmers in the past and the work conditions are nightmarish and not sustainable unless you are in perfect health and have no personal life.)

And Elon Musk is a libertarian who has donated to Republicans who want to take people’s rights away but he still gets weirdly treated like some sort of liberal icon.

And I don’t want to poison the well too much, but I would like to at least make a cursory gesture at our president, who is a privileged straight white man who openly sexually harassed women, is guilty endless racism, antisemitism, ableism, misogyny and has of course been accused numerous times of sexual assault. A complete list of why our president is awful would require an entire novel to itself...

But someone like our president was able to get elected. Half the country voted him in. 

And obviously... Nathaniel isn’t wealthy on the level of guys like that (or he wouldn’t be pissing about with a lawfirm like Whitefeather) and he’s mercifully not a monster like our president. But I do think our need to cope with our environment contributes to liking characters like him. If people like him can be good inside and can be redeemed then maybe there’s hope for this country.

But in reality... people like Nathaniel don’t grow and change. But I believe they can. And, for me anyhow, this is the value I see in Nathaniel. They can send a message to straight, white men about privilege and learning to fight back against the patriarchy that lifts you up. He can be a good person. But his road to that might be a little harder because men like Nathaniel don’t change because privilege protects them. Why change when society itself never allows you to fail?

But I think Nathaniel will grow and change. But I think it’s important he does that on his own. Rebecca can’t be his manic pixie dream girl (even though that’s literally how he sees her.) Rebecca’s journey is her own and it’s not about the men.

[bigsistersyndrome]

i really was afraid of this post at first. i thought i could see your argument and it made me reevaluate. my immediate thought is goblins in media = bad. and i read some of the notes about goblin lore history and thought, y’know maybe im wrong, how can i tell? i decided, well, what really matters here is the voice of those oppressed. they are the ones that should really have a say in what they feel is perpetuating their oppression. so i went through the notes, and i of course can’t tell who’s jewish and who’s not. and i’m really not one for call out posts. but it looked, just on the surface, like a bunch of trolls who like to say “oh im just really confident with my opinion, watch out im blunt, haters can hate, im just controversial” which is code for im a dick and i wont apologize for it. like seriously, if that’s your bio what does that actually say about you?

i want to elevate the voice of those oppressed. i do. and i am not part of that community, so my voice is not one of them. but until i can promote those voices, i just have some things to say.

what i think is this: automatically reading characters as jewish coded could definitely be bad. i get that. i think its a good thing to watch out for implicit bias. like seeing a jewish-coded character and assuming they’re evil. but the problem is that the characters who are evil reference the oppressed people, not the other way around. on other points mentioned, i have to be honest the history is confusing. assuming that goblins were just lore pre-WWII, that doesn’t change the fact that these fictional characters and fantasy creatures were stolen. the personality and physical traits of jewish (and others as referenced) were stolen. they were used as oppressive propaganda, we can’t change that.

so, you don’t want to stop saying greedy is bad (its a good lesson for kids i guess). you want to be able to describe a character with a long nose. you even just want some goblin characters in your fantasy fanfic. how do you we go forth using these traits, concepts, and creatures without perpetuating these stereotypes? well we can’t do what we’ve been doing. the chronic representation of goblins exactly as they were rewritten by nazis is antisemitism. portrayal of goblins as greedy and evil is antisemitic. giving the greedy characters physical traits attributed to eastern europe is racist and antisemitic. isn’t it?

shouldn’t we try to think more about how we’re describing and designing our characters? shouldn’t we try to not promote stereotypes. shouldn’t we not make every evil character have physical characteristics associated with jewish people? shouldn’t witches not look like romani people? shouldn’t native people not be depicted as “savage” and bloodthirsty? shouldn’t we try to be better?

just because a person didn’t realize what they were doing when they used the character trope doesn’t mean they’re not participating in and perpetuating an oppressive archetype. just because a concept meant something else in history doesn’t mean you can just erase the new connotation by saying oh but i actually don’t agree with that message.

also, the benefit of the doubt only works if you no longer have a voice or haven’t had the chance to respond yet. yes the books were written 30 years ago and things may not have been understood yet by mainstream white culture. but jkr has had more than enough chances to prove shes not a total shitbag. she has yet to do so, instead digging herself an even bigger fucking hole.

and to that one person,

yes, saying that transwomen arent women DOES MAKE YOU A BIGOT.

The racist stereotypes littered throughout the Harry Potter franchise including the grotesquely anti-semitic goblin’s foreshadowed JK. Rowling’s later bigotry on twitter

[kemeticcallouts]

Like could you fucking be any more transparent? First you claim that you can't be fucking racist against Jews, then when I tell you to fuck off, you start accusing me of being ~racist~ because??? In an ask about THE HISTORY OF THIS BLOG, I even *mention* Smarmy made it?? SHE DID MAKE IT. I didn't say she fucking RAN it, and you using ME as an excuse to distract from antisemitism ONCE AGAIN is simultaneously hilariously tragic yet totally Kemetic of you.

it’s Smarmy this time! This is gonna be a long one because there are a lot of details I want to cover 100% clearly so there can be no reasonable misinterpretation of what I’m saying here, so buckle in.

First of all, Dame’s original statement was only drawing a distinction between racism -particularly the kind experienced by PoC, including her, who are literally always seen as non-white every second of their lives- and antisemitism experienced by people termed “white Jews”. She then felt, within only a few minutes of posting it, that she was in the wrong and deleted the post, immediately posting an apology before you said anything about it. She told me privately she thought she was wrong and should delete it before your ask about it ever popped up. Please note, my explanation of Dame’s intent is not me saying that I agree or am prepared to comment on the differences between antisemitism and racism; I’m only going over what she meant because your description of the conversation, while technically accurate, portrays Dame as dismissing oppression of Jewish people entirely, which isn’t what she did.

You claimed in another ask (which we are not publishing at the moment in order to contain any drama to one post): “You got caught being antisemitic, deleted the evidence, and now you’re flailing about trying to find a way to discredit the person who accused you. You realized you fucked up by trying to pretend I’m white, so the closest you can come is pretending I’m racist.” Here is her actual statement on the matter: 

I deleted the anon response in question because of my own ruining of that post. I just couldn’t be sure on whether or not I overstepped my bounds and accidentally perpetuated antisemitism or not. I don’t want to make antisemitism seem smaller than the huge deal it really is (even if it is way too specific to be so glibly referred to as “racism”). I also don’t want to label Solo as White the same as I would a white gentile, and it felt dangerously close.

Since we discovered that the blocking was an accident and managed to unblocked Solo, I deleted it. I apologize deeply.

–Mod Birb

So here you are not only wrong about her calling you out on the racist shit you’ve been pulling “to discredit you”, but lying: Birb did not “try to hide the evidence”. She admitted wrongdoing and apologized, deleting the post so it wouldn’t spread, as that’s generally considered the appropriate response when you say something wrong.

Secondly, Birb wrote that bit about how it’s racist to insist I’m in charge of the blog and running it as a way to shut up non-white people i don’t like and the rest of them are just going along with it, as you and several others have done regularly, the night before. (You remember sending that ask well before the second argument happened, don’t you?) She didn’t publish it when she wrote it because we have a policy of having several people okay a post before publishing it (which we’ve also mentioned to you recently). It was in no way a response to your reply to her attempt to differentiate between antisemitism and racism -which, again, she had decided to delete before you said anything.

To “prove” this course of events, of course, I’d have to publish a bunch of private messages of us discussing it with timestamps, which I’m not going to do because even then you’ll claim we somehow staged the whole thing, or faked the images, or will otherwise divert the conversation if you’re backed into a corner and it’s proven why we posted or deleted what we did, in the order that we did. We’re not obligated to reveal private correspondences just to prove at which time things happened, especially when we know you well enough to know it’ll do us fuckall in terms of how you treat us and what you claim happened. However, this is still the truth and I want people to know that, even though it doesn’t fit the narrative you’ve chosen.

Here’s what I can prove, definitively: Your ask did not just “mention” that i started the blog. Here’s a copy paste to remind you: 

“ Nah smarmy specifically made this blog because I pitched a fit at how constantly pathetic y'all are at cleaning up your trash and how I wouldn’t need to do it myself if you did it and how y'all think just blocking and ignoring someone on your personal blog doesn’t help and instead need to be forcibly dragged into the Shame Arena and driven out of the community, and Smarmy went “I’ll make a racism blog for the kemetic watch!!” even though that’s the opposite of what I said. Stop revising history.”

This is not you mentioning I technically “started" this blog by being the one to open it on my account, after a bunch of kemetic PoC had all talked about it and decided to give it a shot. This is you saying that I made the blog because of you. Saying that I went “I’ll make the blog!” of my own volition because it’s what I wanted to do, which isn’t what actually happened. That’s what Dame corrected you on- that it wasn’t entirely my idea, it wasn’t something I just ~decided~ to do, and it sure the hell wasn’t to get back at you or shut you up. Sure, you didn’t say that I was currently running it, but you said its creation was all up to me. After correcting you, Dame then elaborated to point out that I also am not running the blog now, addressing not just things you personally said and implied in your ask, but things people such as KCFTP have said and implied about the project, while specifically mentioning that she was replying to those people too.

Dame wasn’t out of line in the slightest by pointing out that it’s racist to ignore the non-white mods’ role in this blog’s creation in favor of saying “nah smarmy specifically made this blog because I pitched a fit (etc)” because it takes the autonomy and role in creating the blog away from PoC and gives it to a white person. That is a textbook white savior narrative that you described in the ask, and that’s what Dame was talking about when saying it was racist. 

This isn’t a matter of opinion: you said something happened that did not happen. When confronted on it, you changed your story, this time claiming you only “mentioned” I made the blog, rather than what you’d said the first time: that I decided to make the blog as a successor to kemetic watch “because (you) pitched a fit”. Then, you claimed that Dame was making up groundless accusations of racism to distract from something she’s already admitted wrongdoing and apologized for, when in fact her accusation is a response to exactly what the fuck you said. This is gaslighting. In the other asks you sent, you’re also bringing up events that have nothing to do with the current conversation in an attempt to browbeat the person you’re arguing with into backing down because of past mistakes that they’ve already apologized for, or are currently trying to fix ( the latter referring to the accusations aimed toward the entire blog/kemetics in general). This is toxic. 

Continuing to engage with you doesn’t contribute to this blog’s purpose, and is actually a legitimate mental health risk to at least one of our mods, so we won’t be doing it. (Inb4 you go “THEY’RE USING MENTAL HEALTH TO EXCUSE THEIR ACTIONS!”- People have the right to draw boundaries based on their health and needs, end of story. This includes during arguments with you.)

We will not be publishing any more asks from you until and unless this behavior changes. We don’t be deleting them either, if only so that we can have concrete proof of what you say. We won’t block you unless you continuously contact us despite telling you, right now, we aren’t interested in further communication. 

-Smarmy

[nexusbeingmoved]

hey pietro and wanda being whitewashed isn’t an isolated event and with the increasing levels of anti-jewish and anti-romani sentiments happening in both the comics and films yall should really learn to shut the fuck up

in m.arvel/f.ox films alone we have seen what? six roma characters have their backgrounds changed to make them white? let’s count: dr.doom in fantastic four, wanda and pietro in the avengers, pietro in xmen dofp and apocalypse (renamed ‘peter’ for White Value), marya maximoff in the same aformentioned films (did she make an appearance in apocalypse??? idr but definitely in dofp), magda eisenhardt in xmen apocalypse, anya eisenhardt (who was renamed ‘nina’) in xmen apocalypse.

so that’s actually seven that i can name off the top of my head including pietro twice.

i haven’t even touched on how absolutely disgusting it was for the films to have erik DESTROY AUSCHWITZ in some selfish fit of rage, something that millions of jewish ppl worldwide take Hard Offense to. no jewish person, esp a survivor of the fucking holocaust, would condone that what the fuck. what else? oh yeah, in erasing magda’s identity as a romani woman, they also erased the fact that SHE SURVIVED AUSCHWITZ AS WELL!!!!!!!! OR the fact that along with erasing wanda & pietro’s jewish/roma heritage in the avengers, they had them volunteer for experimentation by a goddamn n*zi offshoot organization. and then fucking went on to christianize wanda by not-so-subtlety putting a cross decoration in her room in cacw like we weren’t going to catch it!!! BITCH I CAUGHT IT!!!

there have been numerous PSAs about this garbage ass s.ecret em.pire event that is saturating the comics so i won’t get too deep but honestly even trying to make magneto in any way complicit in this n*zi storyline is Heavy antisemitism. just like using a character created by jewish people as a vehicle for said n*zi storyline: Heavy antisemitism. just like the axis retcon that erased wanda and pietro’s relation to erik, thus making them no longer jewish in the comics. that’s fucking trash. that erases decades of characterization and representation and for what? Heavy antisemitism.

so yeah m.arvel fucking hates romani people and jewish people yall can keep it

[amorremanet]

hate meme: harry james potter, abed nadir, freddie lounds & santana lopez? ^.^

“send me literally anything and ill tell you something i hate about it”

abed nadir

sometimes got too much attention and/or narrative forgiveness

like? abed is one of my favorite male fictional characters, period, and he means a lot to me because he’s one of the only examples of GOOD autistic spectrum representation in fiction, and i know that dan harmon and the writers loved him a lot (and for that, i don’t blame them)

but look at troy’s last episode in season five (the one where they had a massive, school-wide game of, “the floor is lava” before troy left to sail around the world with levar burton, but abed tried to drag it out forever, at the expense of literally everyone else, because he didn’t want troy to go)

for one thing: on the in-universe level, abed dragged the entire population of greendale into this game and kept dragging it out without regard for the game’s effects on anyone else (and people were getting hurt, greendale’s ability to function as a school — even by greendale standards — was pretty much dead, and abed was totally fine with that)

and he massively disregarded troy’s agency in the whole matter (because he lied to troy about the purpose of the game; britta, for all her many faults, is the one who went, “uh, troy, abed is screwing with everyone to keep you at greendale”) — and this was all cast not just as sympathetic, but as ultimately more or less okay, because abed only did it because he loves troy so much and he’s terrified of both change and losing his best friend

which *is* sympathetic, and i feel abed on both counts, but that doesn’t make what he did okay???

for another thing: on the meta-level, troy’s last episode wound up being more about abed than it was about troy. like, this was going to be the last time we got to see troy at greendale and he did have an arc in the episode, but his arc was subordinated for the sake of an abed-focused ep

and if they were trying to have a “troy and abed” focused ep, then…

1. troy’s last episode was really not the time for that; abed should’ve been a secondary focus, at most

2. they did not succeed, in terms of foregrounding the troy/abed relationship, because they approached troy and abed individually, rather than looking at their relationship, and they didn’t go back to the relationship enough to make it work (like in the “pillows and blankets” two-parter)


3. there wasn’t a balance between troy and abed like the one you had in the “pillows and blankets” two-parter, or like the abed/shirley balance in “messianic myths and ancient peoples” or like the jeff/shirley balance in “foosball and nocturnal vigilantism” (or basically any jeff/shirley episode; they usually balanced pretty well, without either overtaking the other)

so, yeah. i love abed, but ffs. making him the show’s pet was really not good for anybody. to be fair, i would also say that annie suffered from this at least as much as abed did, so it’s not like abed was alone in this — but it really sticks out in a series that otherwise tried to be good about balancing its ensemble cast and challenging the typical protagonist-centered worldviews you see in most sitcoms

harry james potter

it’s less about him, exactly, and more about how tumblr fandom has taken to handling his status as a survivor of horrific childhood abuse and a few metric fuck-tons of trauma (but tbf, i think most of these answers fall into the heading of, “it’s less about the character, more about X thing in contexts surrounding them,” so)

which isn’t even exclusive to harry, because the hp fandom is totally bogus about handling abuse culture in general, and it’s rife with all kinds of double standards

—like, on the one hand, sirius attempts to commit a very premeditated murder by proxy, and even though the proxy is remus and he would’ve suffered for it more than sirius bc he’s a werewolf and the murder would have happened on the full moon, this is apparently totally 5,000% acceptable because sirius has abusive parents and the intended victim is snape

but on the other hand, you are victim-blaming, abuse apologist garbage if you think that severus is justified in never forgiving james and sirius even if his actions based on that were mostly in the wrong, or thinking that he had every right to fight back against james and sirius when they tormented him in school

(and never mind that james potter was not, at that time in his life, a victim of fucking anything. he is a wealthy, pureblooded man who came from a loving, supportive family, and is canonically regarded as both straight and white

TO BE FAIR, he is also never specified as being white, like voldemort, lucius, and draco all are — and as other readers have noted elsewhere, the way the dursleys talk about james/lily is heavily racialized, despite being about him being a wizard, in the text — so poc!james is one of the, “jkr didn’t say it’s not canon, so it could be” type of headcanons

but he’s also never said to be a poc, so that’s fanon

moreover, it can’t be treated as canon in order to make it out like james’s years of bullying snape were anything but a guy who is canonically privileged in every way that he can possibly be privileged in jkr’s universe bullying another kid who does not have most of james’s privileges [he’s male, a halfblood — less privileged than purebloods but more privileged than muggleborns — and he’s canonically regarded as straight and white; that’s it on the, “privileges that snape has in jkr’s universe” front]

—but hey, if it’s fair game to bring up all of the racialized coding in how the dursleys talk about james by way of trying to ignore the fact that jkr treats him as white in canon, then how about let’s remember all the antisemitic coding in how jkr writes about severus, even though she doesn’t outright say that he’s jewish: source (nb: this post was written in 2005, the author didn’t have dh), source, source, source, source, source

and oh, never mind how james flat-out says that he bullies severus, “more [because of] the fact that he exists, if you know what i mean” [ootp 647]

and never mind how plenty of the people who act like severus was obligated to forgive james and sirius have reblogged things about how nobody is ever obligated to forgive their abusers, and/or condemn him for fighting back while applauding when hermione punches draco [which i say without judging them bc she’s fighting back against a blood purist little snot who torments her and her friends for fun, and i love that moment too], like??

ffs, guys, you can criticize and/or condemn snape’s actions without acting like he was terrible because he saw no reason to forgive james and sirius for what they did to him, or acting like it was Totally Wrong Forever for him to fight back against the guys who meant he didn’t even get a reprieve from his abusive, neglectful home-life at school bc they decided to torment him, and they had classmates who thought it made them cool)

furthermore, it’s apparently soooo totally not sirius’s fault that he abuses kreacher because he’s stuck in grimmauld place and lashing out against his abusive parents because kreacher still loves them…… or so say people who are otherwise happy to call out the wizarding world for having this institutionalized and magically reinforced system of slavery, which i guess doesn’t matter when sirius “cinnamon roll uwu~” black is the person abusing that system to get away with his bullshit and explicitly abusive treatment of another sentient being—

which all goes back to harry because of how abuse culture ends up rearing its ugly head in how people discuss him as a survivor

like, apart from the double standards that all fandoms have toward abuse culture and survivors, there are two big sides that i’ve seen, in this trend.

on one hand, you have the people who want harry being a survivor to excuse him of things like trying to use the cruciatus curse (and successfully using it on amycus in dh!) or similar

on the other hand, there was the shit like what you saw after “cursed child” first came out, where people were going, “omg but harry is an abuse survivor, he would NEVER say/do anything like this to his kids ever” — which…… uh?

no. not how it works.

even ignoring the irl psychology parts related to abuse and survivors of it, jkr has two big models of abusers in the series:

people who are over-privileged af and bully down because they fucking can and who the fuck is really going to stop them (draco, bellatrix, the dursleys, bartemius crouch sr., umbridge, tom-mort voldingdong, albus dumbledore, and oh yeah, james and sirius);

and people who have been hurt by others before and lash out at others because of it, to the point of becoming abusers themselves (severus, sirius, barty crouch jr., peter pettigrew, arguably albus and tom-mort have shades of this as well but it’s very debatable, and if ginny, and remus actually crossed the line into abusive, rather than being, “well, they’re not abusers, but they have these examples of behaviors that could become patterns that went this way,” they’d both be on this list too, but since they don’t, they’re only getting mentioned)

(she has three big models if we include, “abusers who are not recognized as abusers in the text because she didn’t feel like it today i guess” — which mostly means the weasley parents, but other characters definitely have moments of doing shit that should’ve been called out and wasn’t, c.f. harry running around and trying to cast the cruciatus curse, hermione keeping rita skeeter in a mason jar and hexing the signup parchment at the DA, hagrid trying to attack dudley and turn him into a pig over shit that vernon said and dudley trying to eat harry’s birthday cake, fred and george full stop)

so, yeah, uh

idk guys, how about let’s NOT invalidate abuse survivors in fandom by perpetuating these ideas that survivors are and/or have to be perfect cinnamon rolls, while all abusers ever in the world are these ridiculous slobbering caricatures of all things terrible

that’s not how it works

acting like that’s how it works ends up helping police survivors and invalidate their experiences because it plays into things like the idea that all abusers are obviously abusive, which leads to real-world survivors having a harder time being believed when they try to reach out for help

which makes it all a function of abuse culture

if you really care about survivors — and if you really care about harry as a survivor — then don’t use his status as a survivor to make shit harder for irl survivors, period

freddie lounds

i guess this is more of a problem with how freddie was written tbh

but, like…… true, nbc!hannibal avoided being absolute about most things even more than hannibal himself avoids vegetarian recipes

the most absolutism you really got was, “murder is generally wrong, like. killing in self-defense is one thing, but even if you’re trying to get ingratiated with a cannibalistic serial killer again in the name of stopping him (william), murder is probably going to be wrong so you should, like…… not do that, i’m just saying” and, “eating people is wrong unless hannibal didn’t tell you that you were eating people, in which case it is still wrong but it’s his fault, not yours”

all of which is stuff that the show doesn’t really get any cookies for taking a stand on because, “in 99.999% of cases, murder is wrong and should be avoided” is…… not really a unique or groundbreaking moral sentiment

like, it’s one of the beliefs you find in, as far as i know, every human civilization all over the world, throughout history

(there are, of course, differences of opinion on how to punish murderers, and there are exceptions made for people who get around the law by being wealthy and powerful, or by virtue of having some form(s) of societal privilege [e.g., whiteness, or straightness in the case of the, “gay panic” defense], or all of the old arguments about how killing someone during a time of war isn’t a murder and therefore doesn’t count, and then there are all of the semantic debates about, “are all killings inherently murders or what”

—but still. most people tend to agree that murdering other people is generally wrong.)

but yeah, uh

one place where i would’ve liked a little less ambiguity is freddie’s relationship with and feelings toward abigail

like, i wouldn’t have needed her to suddenly develop an increased amount of sympathy toward other victims — whether in general, or even just specifically, “other victims of hannibal lecter,” and given how he treated her on multiple occasions, it’s pretty ridiculous to just expect her ever stop being a pain in will’s ass (i mean, even when she wasn’t in the right, which was most of the time, some of how will treated her was unhelpful to everyone and in the realm of, “yes, i get where you’re coming from but this still wasn’t cool”)

—but with abigail specifically, the show sort of went back and forth between, “freddie is genuinely interested in helping abigail and does have some kind of regard for her as a person” and, “freddie is just out for herself and only using abigail and her trauma to further her own career,” which was all further complicated by the fact that pretty much no one on nbc!hannibal was a reliable narrator about anything, for any number of reasons

like, beverly probably came the closest before she got totally fridged for no good reason, but even she wound up hindered by the fact that hannibal was manipulating the evidence and playing everyone around him like a really overpriced theremin

and idk

i think the best “compromise” or interpretation here would’ve been, like… “freddie starts out just trying to advance her career because that’s just how she does things in general, but eventually, she did come to genuinely care for abigail as a person and to genuinely want to help her, which would explain things like why will was open to working with freddie against hannibal in season two, since he may not have trusted her in general, but he would trust her to want to take down the man whom they thought killed abigail (even though she was secretly still alive, at that point)”

but the show itself was never really clear on that, and it’s like

okay, guys, i don’t think you need to spell out absolutely everything, and i realize that a certain degree of ambiguity in most situations and with almost all of the characters is part of your #Aesthetic

but this would be an example of you once again screwing over the characters who are not named will and/or hannibal, especially since I got a feeling like it’s less that you were leaving things vague on the, “freddie and abigail” front, and more that you just didn’t really care to figure things out about this part of freddie’s character

so……… yeah

santana lopez

okay, i don’t blame her for wanting artie out of the way when he was dating brittany back in season 2 because lmao, i did too, but for starters, artie wouldn’t have been dating brittany if santana hadn’t blown her off in the first place

—which isn’t #Problematic in terms of her character development because…… uh, well yeah, that was the point. santana created the problem by blowing brittany off and trying to convince herself that she was “totally straight, except sometimes scissoring with brittany, lmao feelings are totally pointless and should be hated and santana doesn’t have them” and it was part of the story of her coming to accept herself as a lesbian

but it was kind of, “ummm…”-inducing that she… never actually had to accept her own responsibility for brittany/artie happening, like

first, in the duets episode, she tried to meddle and break them up by going, “brittany’s just using you for the free dinner at breadstix lmao” — which she succeeded in, because brittany and artie didn’t even sing (though they both still voted for themselves in the, “who should win” bit at the end) — and santana apparently thought that was it

tbf, it’s not like she could foresee puck and artie bonding, and puck trying to ““help”” artie get back with brittany by being so thoroughly himself…… but then brittany and artie were back on, and santana’s response was to manipulate brittany into cheating on him by going, “it’s not cheating bc we’re both girls” and expecting brittany to just go along with it

then, brittany calls her on that in “sexy” — inasmuch as brittany got a chance to do back then — and santana only accepts responsibility for anything in the sense of, “okay, brittany wants me to get more in touch with my feelings and admit that i do love her because that is how i fucked up before”

she doesn’t look at brittany’s relationships with other people, or at brittany’s feelings about anything but santana and the current state of their relationship + how it might go in the future, and so on — and this is another example of a situation where santana is presented as being sympathetic but still in the wrong, and brittany calls her on it, and it’s part of her overall growth in the end

but we never really address the manipulation in telling brittany, “it’s not cheating because we’re both girls” (which, by glee standards, is not that bad, and tbf, brittany and artie weren’t perfect angels in any of this, either, since artie was pretty ableist to brittany even before the, “how can you be so stupid, brittany!” “you were the only one in this school who never said that to me!” moment in the fleetwood mac episode, and brittany had her own manipulative moments with both artie and santana

—but it still kinda bugged me that santana had an opportunity to grow and learn more about using her capacity for manipulation for good, and it…… didn’t really go anywhere?

and you can tell that she didn’t learn about manipulating brittany — at least not until way later down the line — because a few episodes later, she’s plotting to use dave to win prom queen bc she thinks she can then go on to convince britt-britt that she’d made a royal decree that brittany had to be her girlfriend)

finally, santana was really ableist toward artie throughout the entire brittany/artie arc

……and beforehand.

…………and afterward.

………………and just in general, even without brittany needing to be involved, because to be fair, this was just one part of a larger overall pattern of ableist bullshit on glee’s part, of which artie wasn’t even the only victim (he was just one of the most notable ones because he was one of the only canonically disabled characters)

so, it’s like? yeah, santana said pretty ableist shit about artie, on a pretty regular basis — the “stubbles mc-cr*pple-pants” nickname is one example i’ll never forget

—and yeah, she said offensive things to basically everyone else on the show (c.f., calling rachel, “yentl”; calling mercedes, “wheezy”; taking her internalized homophobia out on kurt, not in the scenes like, “kurt and blarren sing about how much they love each other all over santana’s pain over being forcibly outed because that’s so what she needed to hear right now, stfu both of you” or in fairly going, “hey, shut up and quit judging MY wedding to brittany as a bad life choice just because YOU couldn’t make it work with blarren” but in all the smaller instances that you barely even notice at first; taking her internalized homophobia out on dave even while asking him to help her win prom queen/blackmailing him into it; list goes on)

but the ableist shit she said to artie sticks out to me, in particular, bc santana’s other examples of this behavior were generally cast as, “she’s witty and outrageous, yes, but you should really probably not actually say things like this, it’s asshole behavior on her part,” while the shit she said to artie…… kinda didn’t

not because the ableist shit she said to artie didn’t get called out

(bc lbr, most of the things that santana ever said didn’t get, “called out”

it got shown to be Not Cool bc it would get associated with people getting upset with her

or it would sound too much like Sue [who is almost always in the wrong, so sounding like her is something that you generally want to avoid]

or it would be used to show that santana is being selfish and rude even without it being called out [like when she called mercedes, “wheezy” before going, “we don’t have to like each other, let’s sing a duet together and win that free dinner at breadstix”]

or it would otherwise have some kind of repercussions

—but it probably wouldn’t get, “called out” as such, outside of REALLY big exceptions, like how they used, “well, but santana was bullying him” as a justification for finn getting her outed, when…… yes, her bullying him was wrong but these things are not the same

or the bit in, “silly love songs” where oher glee club kids [in order: finn, lauren, puck, quinn, tina, and rachel] bite back at santana over insulting them)

but her ableist shit toward artie sticks out because the show always kinda seemed to…… not agree with santana about it, exactly, since her saying it was still narratively seen as Not Cool?

but it seemed to give her a half-pass because plenty of the other characters who weren’t physically disabled expressed similar feelings about artie and his disability, just with less vitriol (e.g., puck, who even got to be friends with artie but still said ableist shit; he just wasn’t actively trying to be mean like santana was)

or they tried really hard to make it sound like, “well, this is just commonsense and how things are, what can you do” (e.g., MOST of them, back in season 1’s “wheels,” where rachel was pretty vitriolic in her ableist nonsense, but not directly at artie

—like, she was one of the, “but this is just how things are, don’t take it personally” when talking to him, but then lumped schue’s, “all of you will spend this week in wheelchairs to learn about accessibility!” lesson plan in with him giving kurt a fair audition for the “defying gravity” solo when she had her little diva moment of, “maybe someday, you’ll find a way to create teaching moments without RUINING MY LIFE” and then tried to storm out while still in a wheelchair)

which is all really less about santana herself, and more about how santana fit into the show’s overall patterns of ableism, but

i’m really hard-pressed to come up with something that i actually hate about santana, which is why hers is the longest answer (bc i had to dig deep and bullshit my way through it, oops)

(harry’s is closest in length but that’s because i had an actual point to make; by my standards, his answer is pretty short)

[who-is-page]

Why are you suddenly freaking out now that Trump is president? The government has always been evil.

Gee, I don’t know! So, let’s just take a look at the ways it’s affected me IRL. 

Maybe it’s because one of my good friends, who only didn’t go to grad school because he was offered a government job that was precisely what he was looking for after he graduates, is now SOL in a couple of months. 

Maybe it’s because my significant other, who had basically their entire life planned out job-wise in what they wanted to do and how they wanted to use their degree and what they were really passionate about, isn’t going to be able to do what they wanted to do, thanks to a massive hiring freeze that doesn’t look like it’s ever going to go away and cuts that look like they’re just going to keep happening, and happening, and happening, regarding the specific area they wanted to work in. 

Maybe it’s because of my own passion and what I really wanted to do in my life to help my country and its citizens (because, surprise surprise, the Marines made me proud of the good people in my country, and gave me a burning desire to do something for them) getting more or less flushed down the toilet. There’s me, the religious studies major who wanted to get a position in the government to help promote religious understanding, and help settle religious disagreements–yeah, I’m sure I’ll be able to do that, what with literal Nazis in the white house. Literal Nazis who, you know, do casual things like wonder if people of other religions are actually people, for example! Yep, my pagan, Sicilian ass can definitely just work in the government to promote religious understanding, especially with my major-focus of minority religions. NOT. 

Oh, yeah, and this isn’t even touching on all my fucking Jewish friends. Do you have any idea how much I am constantly low-key worrying about my friends, but trying not to mention it to them because I don’t want to stress them out? It’s a fucking lot. Antisemitic hate crimes are on the rise, literal Nazis are in the damn White House. Things are quickly turning into a ball of shit that’s rolling down a hill towards a dumpster fire, and I really, really don’t want my friends to get hurt because of some fucking asshole douchebag Nazis. Like, yeah, a Nazi can come after me, and fine, whatever–I’m not white in their eyes, I’m trans, I’m gay, and I know my religion puts a huge target on my back on top of everything. That’s why I’m so adamant about punching Nazis. But my friends? They need to leave my friends the fuck alone. They’re all good people, none of whom deserve to have themselves or their family hurt because of our failure of a president and who he’s decided to openly support, and who he’s decided to openly condemn (and who he’s decided to not condemn).

There’s more than just this, naturally. There’s my worries about my brothers and sisters in arms, and how this fucking loon is going to affect them and their families, there’s my worries about those in my own family who I actually like, there’s my worries about myself, the list does go on. But I think I’ve made my point.

Now, past that, what about the ways it hasn’t actively affected me, but will eventually probably end up affecting me?

Where to start, where to start. Actually, no, I know where to start–the criminalization and utter disrespect of the media. Trump and his consistent blaming and framing of the media (except for a few choice news sources, naturally, most notably Breitbart and Fox News, with the latter very much disliking him) as fake and his pushing of “alternative facts” are horrific. Our president, the leader of our fucking country, is trying to convince us that the truth is fiction and that fiction is the truth. But that doesn’t freak you out? That doesn’t worry you at all? Because I have to ask, have you even been paying attention and do you have any idea the sort of consequences this could bring?

On top of that, there’s the fact that his choices for government positions are all terrible. Betsy DeVos wants to get rid of public schools, which are already strained from not getting enough resources, Steve Bannon is deeply involved with Breitbart, meaning he’s a racist, Nazi piece of shit, but he’s also completely off the fucking deep end on top of that. Scott Pruitt literally sued the EPA dozens of times before, and he doesn’t believe in things like rules, regulations, clean energy, and climate change. The list goes on and on. To act as though this isn’t going to affect me is, well, ignorant.

Then there’s some of the proposed bills that the republicans are pushing right now, that they see they’ve seem to got the opportunity, like, let’s see, “American leaves the UN,” “America leaves the WHO,” “Life begins at conception,” “Dismantlement of the EPA.”

Oh yeah, and let’s talk about the ACA, now that it comes to mind! Now, I’m below the poverty line. I make 2k a year and I’m homeless. I don’t own a car, and currently can’t drive anyways. What makes you think that I’m going to be able to fucking afford health insurance from anywhere? But what makes things worse, is that I am definitely someone who should probably have health insurance. My body is put together with some gum, a feather, a lick, and a prayer. I’m earnestly afraid I’m never going to be able to work a full-time job that requires me to be on my feet for hours at a time simply because my knees and ankles wouldn’t be able to handle it–if just walking around for two-ish hours make it so I shake and stumble, I’m terrified what constant, consistent force would do to me. And this ain’t even touching on my therapy costs!

And the wall, and the vacation days. The wall is projected to cost over 20 billion dollars, not including the money it’s going to cost to either go around or (the more likely scenario) attempt to forcibly steal the land of border towns, the inevitable manning costs, and how the government’s estimates are usually far too low. Oh yeah, and then there’ the fact that Trump plans on taking over 500 vacation days, more than any other president in history and almost twice as many as Obama took in two terms. For that one, I just flat out didn’t even want to know how much it was gonna cost us.

Trump also bottoms for Putin, is harassing and antagonizing our allies, and is a tantrum-throwing baby who signs executive orders he doesn’t know the full extent of. He wants a circuit of court dismantled because they ruled in a way he didn’t like, fired the head of the Justice department for the same reason, and is an absolute fucking laughingstock. There’s more–believe me, there’s more–but I feel I’ve made my point clear.

Anon, I know the government’s never been the best thing ever. But to ask me why I’m freaking out over Trump, someone who’s fucking this country over and affecting my life on a personal level, is just downright ignorant and makes you look like a fucking fool.