#you can still hate roger just accept that he's not a bigot he's mean the regular way

[asurrogateblog]

...sudden radio silence on social media for the last few months i wonder why

[nachoaveragejoe234]

Since I had to block a bozo who defends the hate of Russian civilians, (redjaybathood), here is proof of anti-Russian sentiment towards civilians, it's not propaganda and you ain't a tankie for calling it out.

OK, so I have to respond. Firstly, my criticism doesn't mean "I think Putin's behaviour is the right thing."

Let me ask you something. Why don't you lame Chinese civilians for their government? Why don't you call them names? Their leader is also a communist who threatens other countries. Why aren't Chinese civilians considered tankies? Why don't North Korean civilians get treated like they're part of the problem? Cherry picking.

Next, you're literally doing what the OP and many other people are calling out. Hating the civilians for existing and living in a dictatorship.

And since you freaked that I didnt send the links even though you can look it up yourself (meaning you're lazy), fine. Here we go. Now let's see if you try to accuse me of lying. This is the sentiment that lead to the Japanese internment camps which everyone agrees were wrong, but I know people would cheer for Russian ones. There's a LOT of Russia-bashing, believe it or not.

And serious actual hate crimes and attacks. All called "propaganda" by bigots.

That's arson if you don't speak German.

If a foreign minister needs to call you out, it's not propaganda.

NOTE: Dubs being put on hiatus, Russian non politial products like snacks and drinks being removed or given WARNINGS in stores, none of that happens to other "evil" countries like China. Selective outrage? I'd say so. And literal paragraphs about hate from the Wiki page.

All of these are civilians who are being treated like shit on the ASSUMPTION that if you're Russian, you must hate peace. Dictators are not the people. People are brainwashed. You don't have the right to judge the peopleof a dictatorship because they aren't born evil, they're taught to obey the dictator. It happened with Hitler. It happened with Stalin. It happened with Mussolini. It happened with Pol Pot. It happened with Milosevic. It happened with Hirohito. It happens with Xi. It happens with Kim Jong Un. Why is it that when it happens with Putin, and ONLY with Putin, are the civilians suddenly just as problematic as the leader? You can't judge an entire nationality based on a select number of people you've seen who agree (or pretend to agree, as many may not actually agree but pretend. If all you view them as is cowards, but you don't hold the same values to other citizens of dictatorships, you are in fact, a BIGOT and it's not problematic or propaganda or false to say so. I made myself very clear. If you still disagree that's your problem and you are a toxic person. Jesus fucking Christ)

Tell me again how being Russian automatically makes you a bad person and how civilians aren't victims just because they are living in a corrupt country. You judge the entire population based on what fringe nationalists and some brainwashed people say. Blanket statements about an entire nationality or race are NOT okay. Peoplewho criticizes this aren't automatically pro-tyranny. Not that you care or believe that.

As a bonus, let's talk about how America and Canada (my country) used to HATE UKRAINE, and they had Ukrainian internment camps.

Your reaction to this should NOT be "I don't think Ukrainians deserve peace". BOTH RUSSIA AND UKRAINE DESERVE PEACE AND TO BE FREE FROM HATE. THE HATE GOES IN ALL DIRECTIONS. THAT'S THE REASON WAR IS A THING. PUTIN NEEDS TO STOP FIGHTING. PEOPLE NEED TO STOP JUDGING CITIZENS OF A DICTATORSHIP FOR BEING FROM A DICTATORSHIP. THE MORE RUSSIANS THAT CALL OUT PUTIN ANY WAY THEY CAN THE BETTER. ALL OF THESE STATEMENTS CAN AND SHOULD CO-EXIST AND I YOU DON'T THINK SO, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. "BUT THEIR LEADER!" "BUT I'M UKRAINIAN" "BUT LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE SAY" "SHUT UP TANKIE" "ORC/RUZZIAN AREN'T SLURS THEY'RE TRUE". ARE NOT EXCUSES. The orcs and Ruzzians are Putin and his lackeys, not the people who live in said tyrant's cities. Obviously people should help Ukraine, that's absolutely fine. But people should not do or say anything the people above have said. It's pretty easy to find out of touch comments on Twitter and Quora that blanket the entire population as the same "evil commie tankie orc zombies". People calling out this stuff aren't trying to make a competition of "who has it worse" when in fact war harms EVERYONE.

That's all I can say. Don't like this? Then you should really think.

[fly-flower-fanfics]

Hope

Steve Rogers x Male Reader

Warnings: Dysphoria, transphobic shit

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I grit my teeth as I stormed through the Stark Towers. Anyone who tried to talk to me clearly saw that I wasn't in the mood to be engaging in any sort of conversation. I swore to god that steam was literally rolling off my body. That's what it felt like at least.

I stomped my way into workout room and began wrapping my hands in tape. My bag was up in the back of the room. My 'power' was the I could control fire and sometimes when I wasn't paying attention or practicing, my body itself got heated and would almost burn whoever touch it. 

"Fucking biological my ass," I grumbled, stalking the bag. I swung a punch at it before striking it again. Again and again and again. My fists pounded into the fireproof material. "Piece of shit, she is."

My body build was close to Steve's, but I was just a bit smaller and shorter than he was. Because of this, it caused the bag to swing, which made me feel a little better. I felt more powerful that way.

I stripped off my shirt and threw it off to the ground. I went back to punching the bag, muttering to myself about the things my mother had said to me and how much I hated her. I was sick and tired of her bullshit. Thank fucking god I'd found a family in the rest of the Avengers.

I heard footsteps behind me and without thinking, I turned and threw a punch.

"Woah, hey."

I dropped my hands as I realized who was speaking. Steve. I shook my hands out, biting my lip for a moment.

"Sorry, man. What's up?"

"Everyone said you were pissed, said you came right here."

I shrugged and turned my back on him, going back to punching the bag. Steve went around and held the bag, steadying it for my punches.

"What's goin' on?"

I sighed, dropping my hands back down to my sides. I began to undo the tape from my hands and went to sit on the bench in the corner of the room.

"My mother," I muttered, spitting out the words like poison.

"What'd she do?"

I hesitated. The team knew I was transgender because of all the things I had to work through with it. They were all really supportive of me. Bruce even helped when I got my surgeries and was struggling to do things. The only thing they didn't know what my mother and what a bigot she was.

I loved Steve, and I was afraid what he would say to me if he heard me speak of my mother. Steve had always been there for me, just like Bruce had been. My feelings towards the men developed differently: Bruce became my brother, and Steve became my crush. I didn't ever make a move because I knew how he felt about Peggy and that must've been terrible, so I never pushed.

"She..." I shut my eyes tightly and tossed the tape onto the ground. My anger bubbled up inside of me again.

"Take your time," Steve reassured me.

"She's a fucking bitch!" Steve jumped a little, but he didn't say anything. "She always has something to say to me. Whenever I see her, she brings up me being trans and bisexual. She thinks I'm doing this because it's something she doesn't like. She keeps telling me that I can choose to be like. Like fucking hell I chose this!"

Tears clouded my eyes, but I didn't stop. "She acts like I can just choose to like men and women, but I didn't. She acts like I chose to be trans. I fucking would give everything and then some to be cis! She's always calling me by my deadname and insisting shitty things onto me. Like fuck that! She can suck my motherfucking dick! I'm not going to change just because she doesn't like it!"

Steve rested his hand on my shoulder, but pulled it away almost instantly. That showed me that I was burning up, my powers getting the better of me.

"Need to spar?"

I looked up at Steve, smiled a little, and then shook my head. "I punched my anger mostly out on the bag over there." I wiped my tears away and sighed.

"You do know she's wrong, don't you?"

"Well, of course I do," I answered. "That doesn't make it hurt less..."

"Come back to my room," Steve said, standing up. "It'll do you good to be with someone."

I didn't hesitate to get up and follow him. My room would probably make me more angry just because I would be alone. I wanted to be by myself, but I also knew that that would make my anger boil more, and I didn't want to cause Tony to buy me more sheets even if he always insisted it wasn't a problem.

I plopped down on Steve's floor, afraid I might cause the sheets to ignite. I was calmer though, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Steve sat on his bed and patted the material next to him.

"Up here."

"Steve..."

"Up here. Now."

I got up and sat next to him, soon flipping onto my back. Steve tenderly sat a hand on my arm, testing to see if he would get burned. He didn't, so I guess I had gotten my power more under control.

"Is that what you deal with every time you go to her house?" Steve asked, and I nodded.

"She always has something to say. I didn't choose to be what I am. She doesn't understand how much it hurts me when she says those things. Hell, how can she still call me my deadname? Look at me! I look like Captain America's Walmart-bran twin, and she's still trying to refer to me as feminine things? God, suck my ass."

Steve patted my arm, and I knew it was because I kept cursing. I just couldn't help it. She drove me up a wall. I couldn't stand her anymore.

"That's the last time I'm ever seeing her. I gave her years to try and accept me. I didn't ask for her support, just her acceptance, and I never got it. She drove me out of her life, and I'm done. That was the last straw."

"Maybe don't go that far," Steve tried to reason with me, but I only shook my head. I wasn't changing my mind.

"But you're right," he continued. "You didn't chose. I didn't chose to be bisexual, just like you didn't chose to be bisexual and how Natasha didn't chose to be lesbian."

I opened an eye and looked up at him. "You're bi?"

Steve chuckled softly. "Didn't you know?"

"No. Guess it just never came up."

"Guess not," he answered before continuing. "You're going to be you no matter what happens. No matter who says what, you're still going to be you. And I'm sorry some people just don't see that."

I sat up and gave him a hug. "Thank you, Steve. I know that it wasn't probably great for you to talk about, but just letting me vent was enough."

"Anytime," he replied.

"Do you mind if I stay the night?" I asked quietly. It was getting late anyway. Almost a little too early to go to bed, but I really didn't want to go out and interact with anyone else.

"Of course. You ready to turn in?"

"Yeah. I-I mean we don't have to sleep right away; I just don't want to see anyone else today. May I take a shower?"

"By all means. I'll let you borrow some of my clothing so you don't have to head back to your room."

Once I showered, cleaned myself up, and setting down at the foot of Steve's bed, I pulled out a book from his shelf.

"And what are you doing down there?" Steve asked.

"I'm going to read here and then fall asleep," I replied.

"On the floor? C'mon. I'm not that bad in bed."

"Oh, god, Steve. Never say that again," I laughed, getting myself up and sitting next to him on the large bed.

I began to read again, but soon noticed that Steve was reading over my shoulder. I shifted myself, leaning my head on his shoulder and moving the book between us so he could read it better. He reached out to hold the one side of the book, and we worked as a team to read the book.

"Steve?" I asked once we reached the end of a chapter.

"Hm?"

"Thank you."

"Of course."

"No, no, Steve." I closed the book and looked up at him. "Thank you. I mean it. Thank you for everything. For being there for me. And for listening to me vent when I need you. You're always there, and I know that I can always count on you. You-"

"Oh, shut up," Steve mumbled, pressing his lips against mine.

I was shocked by his bold move, but I kissed back.

"What was that for?" I asked.

"You talk too much sometimes. Also because I wanted to do that for a long time. I... I want to protect you. I want to always be there when you need it, and I love you. I want you to be mine."

I smiled softly and laid my head back down against his shoulder. "I love you, too, Steve. I'm... I'm really touched. I would happily be yours."

Steve pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. "Let's read another chapter?" he asked.

"Of course. Then can we cuddle and sleep?"

"Absolutely, doll."

He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me closer to him. Steve held his side of the book as we continued reading.

After such a shitty day, everything finally seemed like it was going right.

[ad1thi]

the closet

the thing is, Tony isn’t out

Flamboyant, raucous, over-the-top Tony Stark isn’t out

its a shame nobody told Bucky that

--

It starts, as most things do, with Tony falling in love

Tony’s 15 years old and desperate for any sliver of attention and Rhodey is just so good that falling in love is more of an afterthought than a conscious action

and then he’s 17 and he’s well and truly happy (even if Rhodey refuses to do more than some heavy petting until he’s 18) and Howard mails Rhodey a $50,000 dollar check with no note

but Tony knows what it’s for

he breaks up with Rhodey, gets on his knees for Tiberius Stone in an extremely well lit alley, and ends up in the hospital with multiple contusions

in that order

he’s 18 years old and he’s hanging on for dear life

he’s 18 years old and his parents are dead

they died while he was in a coma that his father put him in

he’s 18 years old and Rhodey has magnanimously overlooked the Tiberius incident, but has firmly said that they’re better off as friends

he’s 18 years old and Obie puts a hand across his shoulders, looks at him and says, “It’s a stocks thing boy. You understand”

And as he rubs the bruises on his lips, he does understand

--

It goes on something like this

Tony is 23 years old and he’s gone twelve for twelve with Maxim cover girls 

well, kind of

he and March had a scheduling conflict, but December was twins

(actually, December was triplets but the third was a boy and he didn’t talk about that kind of stuff)

--

Tony is 27 years old and he’s dying

so he does the responsible thing and gives Pepper Stark Industries

she basically runs it anyway

between finagling her into accepting and subtly giving Rhodey a suit, he doesn’t have much time for his new PA Francis Barton

he has just enough time to appreciate the way the man fits a suit, and then there’s a glint in his eyes that Tony can’t ignore so he moves on

(later, when he meets Clint in Randy’s Donuts he’s oddly proud of himself)

(but he still trashes Fury’s servers for sending in a male nark)

(Tony doesn’t talk about this kind of stuff)

--

Tony is 33 years old and Steve Rogers is at his door

“A young boy killed himself last night”

Tony pauses his tinkering on his tablet to look up at him

“Steve sweetie,” the pet-name slips out from habit, “You can’t save everybody”

 “He was being bullied because he was gay,” Steve’s eyes are red, “I thought that was okay now?”

Tony sighs, “It is, technically. But that doesn’t mean bigots don’t still exist. The best you can do is be a good role model, and hope others follow, you know?”

“Be a good role model, as in..?”

“Like,” Tony taps his fingers against his knee, “someone who’s publicly in support of LGBT+ people, or someone big coming out as queer”

“Someone who’s in the TV a lot?” Steve’s voice is slightly squeaky, and Tony briefly looks up and nods

Steve’s head cocks to the side, and even before he says it Tony knows that he’s gonna hate it

“Tony why haven’t you come out yet?”

(he was right)

“Get out.” Tony’s voice is shockingly firm, a stark contrast to the shaking of his fingers

‘No think about it, you’re one of the richest men on the planet, you’re in the news everyday, and you’re Iron Man. It’d be sensa-”

“Get OUT” Tony’s voice raises a few octaves and Iron suits materialise in the air, repulsors aimed at Steve

“Wha- Tony call off the suit”

The whirring of the gauntlet makes Steve take a step back

“I won’t ask again Rogers.”

“Get out”

Steve leaves

--

It ends, as most things do, with Tony falling in love

Tony is 36 years old and he’s in love with James Barnes

who is currently going at it with a lollipop and making Tony extremely uncomfortable in a public space

Tony is 36 years old and in love with James but still in the closet but apparently nobody told James, because he notices Tony staring and smiles before walking over and pressing his lips to Tony’s

in public

in front of cameras

where everyone can see

--

The thing is

Tony understands

Howard and Obie made sure that Tony understood

and he does

he swears

--

Tony is 36 years old and he’s in the goddamn closet but James is kissing him and he stumbles back, breath coming out in short pants

his vision is blurry and he can feel his heart thundering against his ribcage

he winces and flinches away, hands raised in a defense position when he feels someone come close to him, because he understands he swears

--

Fin

[blessuswithblogs]

Katsura Hashino is a Big Fat Creep and Other Observations

(for the record all uses of the word “queer” in this post are meant in the academic sense as shorthand for a wide umbrella group of gender and sexual minorities and not as a slur i hope that is evident from my past history and status as Big Gay Bitch Who Loves Girls but let it never be said i don’t cover my ass)

A few weeks ago, Catherine: Full Body Edition or whatever gross subtitle it got was released. Catherine has had a very checkered history as one of those games that is just kind of slimy, though it has endured with a cult following and a surprisingly successful competitive community by way of the game's multiplayer mode where you compete to see who can climb The Dream Sex Tower the best. Honestly, I don't know that much about Catherine because it is difficult to think of a game that repulses me more on a visceral level, but I want to do my due diligence and not talk out my ass. One of Catherine's initial claims to fame was that it was by Atlus Japan, specifically the same people who made the much beloved Persona games. This is evident in the game's art, music, overall style of delivery, and being basically hate speech.

The original Catherine was a greasy, misogynistic mess with some really vile politics about trans people in particular. Deadnaming your own fictional character in the credits is some next level petty malice. Full Body returns with, stupendously, a double down on this ideology that is actually kind of comical in how convoluted it gets in trying to decry the Degenerate Queer Lifestyle. The game adds a scene with Rin, who is apparently a gay crossdresser from space(???????), getting slapped away and running away crying from their love interest after he learns The Terrible Truth. In another game, with a different writing team, this could have been a teachable moment about the destructive consequences of taking too narrow a view of human sexuality and gender expression, but as it stands it's just another tiresome example of Trans Panic with a sheepish admonishment from the other characters that gosh maybe slapping their hand away was a mean thing to do.

So we're already firing on all cylinders here, but the best is yet to come. The bulk of the outcry comes from the addition of a weird "true ending" cutscene where Catherine, who is also from space, goes back in time to make everybody's life better. Or something. This is already pretty stupid on the face of it because its Fucking Time Travel Out of Nowhere, but the scene then depicts a pre-transition Erica, the game's trans character who got deadnamed in the credits the last time. There has been a lot of exceptionally tedious discussion about exactly when this scene takes place in the game's chronology and what it means for Erica, and some brain geniuses have tied their thinkmeats into pretzel shapes to prove definitively that all this means is that she delayed her transition in this Better Timeline, that might not actually be better, because Catherine is weird and selfish, maybe. And. Fine. Sure. Okay. Let's accept that for now. Given the game's previous track record, and continuing insistence on using Erica's pretransition name in the credits even in the rerelease, it is meanspirited at best to show her before her transition at all (many real life trans people would be utterly mortified for such a thing to happen to them) and overall just in poor taste and pretty lousy writing at that because it's so unclear what any of this actually means. Since the game has not yet received an official english localization, the context of this scene is to begin with muddled by amateur translators on the internet all with slightly conflicting interpretations of the scene. It's a fucking mess, by and large.

So I would disagree that this is a fake controversy manufactured by those damnable essjaydubyas. Even with the most charitable interpretation possible, it's still just really sketchy and gross. Erica's english voice actress, who seems to be very fond of the character, has been vocal about her dissatisfaction with the new scenes on twitter and has recently come out to say that the localization team is going to try and take some steps to make things less blatantly hateful. Between this and Jennifer Hale's recent tweet about it being time to grab our pitchforks in response to Activision-Blizzard's mass layoffs, I'm starting to think that voice actresses are pretty cool. I mean honestly I always thought that but we're getting off topic. One of the top competitive Catherine players, who was by all accounts really hyped for the release of Full Body, just straight up said on twitter that he was quitting the game because he couldn't support something like that in good conscience. I don't know if he's remained consistent on this position since, but it was a bold statement, to say the least.

Now, whenever an incident like this happens, the inevitable string of More-Progressive-Than-Thou white boys who watched an anime once and thought the bouncing titties were a little much appears to start pontificating about the cause of such untoward elements in media. And it's basically all just a bunch of Orientalist bullshit. Every time. For whatever reason, people still really love to be racist towards Japanese people because it's still sort of socially acceptable when couched in the language of "oh japan!!! ecks dee" and so the neverending procession of softboi neckbeards declared with confidence that Atlus's continual inclusion of Actual Hate Speech towards LGBTQ+ people was the result of the inscrutable Japanese Mind and its Mysterious, Antiquated Culture. Many mentions of the philosophy of Wa, wherein the nail that stands out gets pounded down, and lots of very lovely psuedointellectual claptrap. Evidently, people just seem to think that queer people don't live in Japan, or that they don't fight just as hard as we do for equal rights and protections under the law. They do live there, and they do fight as hard as we do. Obviously. You fucking imbeciles.

In their quest to clearly illustrate their moral and intellectual superiority to the backward, collectivist Asiatic Peoples, these highly reasonable and enlightened manboys forsook a very important logical principle: Occam's Razor. Sure, you could blame jApAnEsE cUlTuRe for Atlus's impropieties and just conveniently ignore all of the fantastic queer media it has produced in recent years like My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, Horou Muskou, Nier Automata, etc. Or you could go for the simpler and more logically consistent option: Katsura Hashino is a big fat creep. Who is Hashino, you ask? He is the director of every Persona game since 3, as well as Catherine, and all of these games' gross shit and self-contradictory themes of self-acceptance and rebellion against an unust society (unless you're gay, ew) can probably be traced to him and his gaggle of accomplices. In addition to the fact that Atlus games not by Hashino's team tend to just. not have these problems to nearly as large a degree or even at all, Hashino himself has gone on record saying some really kind of hilariously backwards shit. Most infamously, when asked why in Persona 3 literally all of your social links with girls ended up with Hot Makeout Sessions regardless of like. Previously Committed to Relationships. Hashino simply said he couldn't imagine friendships between boys and girls. So that's where his brain is at. Since subsequent games in the series graciously allowed the player the option to not be a Huge Cheating Bastard, one can assume either his moral development has progressed past early puberty or somebody on the team convinced him this wasn't actually a normal thing to think. Given the man's output, I would say it's probably the latter.

It is because of this man's decisions and behavior that so many people are simply unwilling to give Full Body the benefit of the doubt. The game's director is, quite simply, a well known louse, and not in the endearing, Roger Smith way. Once again, it requires far fewer leaps in logic to assume that Hashino is just being a bigoted creep again than to go through some fuckin galaxy brain Kingdom Hearts-esque dot-connecting to justify it as just a LITTLE BIT bigoted not REALLY SUPER bigoted, or simply blaming the whole ordeal on some strange ineffable property of the Japanese Character. He's a gremlin! An overgrown manchild with a warped view of human interaction and society put in charge of games about exploring those concepts for.... reasons. My bet is that his dad knew somebody and then Persona 3 was successful enough for the rest of Atlus to just go "alright fine let him do it while we do mainline games". Unfortunately, Persona became so popular that the mainline games sort of switched places and became side-projects, at least in the eyes of the Western consumer base (which let's be real is the only perspective that any of these Serious Online Commentators even pretend to care about).

So I would once again caution everyone against just assuming that Japan is some sort of quaint anachronistic country of weird gameshows and backwards social mores. This is both a gross oversimplification of an entire culture and the struggles of their own subgroups and minorities and simply a grand display of lacking self-awareness. Like have you fucking seen the guys in the White House? The preposterous media that gets routinely greenlit on prime time TV, theaters, and digitally? Don't make me laugh. The West has no claim to any sort of progressive superiority to anybody else. The white cishet bubble of comfortable middle class affluence might distort what you see of the rest of the world, but believe me: we got problems too. Big ones. Even the presupposed bastions of Demsoc Virtue like Sweden have an awful track record of discrimination and eugenics. But Dazzlyn that's different, you cry! All of these groups and forces don't represent the entirety of Western culture! Yes. Exactly. Oppression is not culturally bound like cuisine or art. It is a nasty, universal thing that worms its way into everything, and it will use any excuse it can find to murder and exploit. It's against Christian values! It represents a genetic defect that must be purged! It's ostentatious and immature! The list goes on. And every time you giggle and go "oh those silly japanese" you're just being another expression of the same vile ideas.

I'm going to relate some of my own personal experiences, because as a noted Big Gay Bitch Who Loves Girls, I feel like maybe I have some authority on the matter? Just a little? Enough that if I make a well reasoned argument it can't be dismissed out of hand? Let's hope. So, what's the gayest game I've ever played? Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn. Look yeah I know I'm talking about it again but come back this is important. Final Fantasy is a series that has had a lot of LGBTQ+ undertones pretty much since forever, and while they have largely been in keeping with the times in terms of tact and representation (the Crossdressing Cloud debacle is a deeply bizarre, uncomfortable sequence in a lot of ways but there's also some genuine Good Gay Shit in 7 like Cloud's surprisingly cute and genuine date with Barret. I think. It's... it's been a while.), by God, it was at least there, and 13 had honest to god Lesbians, Harold in Fang and Vanille. I don't want to say it has pedigree, but the series has dabbled. XIV continues on the tradition with a vibrant world that's actually got a lot of characters and NPCs that are just incidentally there and kind of gay. The adventurer couple that befriended the Tonberries in Wanderer's Palace, a vendor that appeared in the Rising cosplaying as Minfilia at her wife's behest, a miqote lady bathing in the oasis that lets on she wouldn't mind having cute girls stare at her instead of grabby boys, every horny Elezen in Ishgard, Samson and Guydelot (shoutouts to Lulumi Lumi), and probably more that I've missed. More than that, though, is that because FFXIV is an MMO, it is by necessity a social space, and in my experience it has been one that has gone out of its way to be inclusive to everybody, from the GMs handling reports of abusive behavior right up to the top decision makers who made same sex player marriages a thing just immediately on its implementation and letting boys wear the gold saucer bunny costume too (albeit after quite a bit of pleading). The game's got a huge queer community of which I am kind of part of sort of. It's one of the reasons I keep coming back to it. Hell, they've recently partnered with a pride group in Australia to have an FFXIV float in a parade. I usually turn my nose up at such things as meaningless corporate grandstanding, but it does seem to be more meaningful than two boy pastas getting married or rainbow colored oreos because like. Cheesy as it sounds, it's more than just a brand to a lot of people, it's a place, sometimes the only place, they can go to feel safe and accepted in a community. Having official, vocal support from the dev team means genuinely a lot, I think.

Now, there is one quality about this game of which I am speaking that might strike you as noteworthy: it is Japanese. It's made by Japanese people, in Japan, under a Japanese company. A middle aged Japanese man goes up on stage in Gunbreaker cosplay to speak in Japanese about the upcoming expansion, while a meme obsessed gremlin translates for him. It's not perfect, there are problems, etcetera, why do I even need to qualify that in 2019, when everything sucks, god. But it's better than most things. I hope that it serves as an example to people that even in the supposedly regressive countries of the world, queer communities are still living, fighting, and sometimes even being heard, and that the only thing you're enriching by dismissing them wholesale as socially backwards is your own internet penis. And nobody fucking cares about that you simpleton. I expect 5.0 to be gayer than ever before because they're taming up with Yoko Taro to do a Nier themed raid and by the 12 Warrior of Light Dazzyn Reed is going to kiss 2B or an equivalent model right on the robot lips.

[chiseler]

LOSEY, CORMAN, AND THE RACIALLY-CHARGED MOB

From Birth of a Nation through The Eternal Jew, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Burning Cross, Do the Right Thing and several dozen others, racial tensions and bloodthirsty bigoted mobs have provided generous fodder for filmmakers of assorted political leanings. There are few cheaper or easier ways to manipulate an audience into a righteous frenzy. If you want to push some buttons, just show an innocent, upstanding outsider being set upon by an ignorant mob of rednecks or, conversely, a once pure and wholesome community invaded by a group of uninvited and usually swarthy ne’er-do-wells. Works like a charm every time, and you get the added prestige of releasing a message picture.

After  World War II, a number of African American, Hispanic American and Japanese American soldiers returned home to find conditions here not much improved since they left. Even after serving their country, they were still considered second-class citizens or worse. In a sub-section of the postwar malaise that gave rise to film noir, we also got a burst of social message films that confronted head-on the continuing bigotry faced by non-white Americans. They weren’t high profile films by any means, tending more toward low-budget B programmers, but the fact they were produced at all remains kind of astonishing.

Five years before John Sturges released his all-star portrait of racial intolerance and mob mentality in small town America, Bad Day at Black Rock, Joseph Losey took his own stab at the subject, though with a different focus. While Sturges’ film concerned the murder of a Japanese farmer, Losey’s The Lawless (1950) targeted the plight of immigrant fruit pickers in Southern California. That the title makes it sound more like a Western than the low-budget socially-conscious melodrama it actually is was likely a deliberate move on the part of the marketing department. After all, Westerns were much more popular at the time than movies about the  struggles of a bunch of poor wetbacks.

Losey had always been a talented storyteller with a sharp eye, but he was never hesitant to push his pet social issues front and center in his films. Fortunately here he had screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring (Out of the Past, The Big Steal) to temper the heavy-handed message as much as possible, making the social problem in question the backdrop for a solid and intelligent newspaper movie. Of course when you’re working with Losey. there’s only so much you can do.

Paul Rodriguez (Lalo Rios ) is a 19-year-old Mexican American farm worker, a hard-working, gentle kid from a loving family with dreams of one day owning his own peach grove. Driving home after work with a fellow fruit picker (who also happens to be a vet), Paul  gets into a fender bender with a couple white kids, who hurl racial epithets. A minor scuffle breaks out before a shockingly understanding cop shows up to calm things down.

In the scenes that follow, we get a snapshot of the local socioeconomic landscape from both  the Anglo and Fruit Tramp perspective (as they’re known). It’s a small, quiet farm community full of decent white folk, but decent white folk who don’t trust those dirty lazy Mexicans for a second. The Mexican farm workers, meanwhile, have been relegated to a shanty town on the other side of the tracks, where parents warn their kids to stay out of trouble and stay away from the Anglos.

We’re then introduced to Larry Wilder (Macdonald Carey), a former foreign correspondent for a big city paper who grew weary of the running around and stress, so decided to move to a small quiet town to take over the daily paper. He’s earnest, intelligent and sincere, and is looking forward to the simple small town life. He’s only been in town a month or so, but when he hears the Mexican kids are holding a dance at the shantytown that night, he knows implicitly the townsfolk are expecting violence, so decides to cover it himself. While at the dance, he meets Sunny Garcia (Gail Russell in brown makeup), the editor of the local Spanish language paper, who explains to him what sort of lives the farm workers really lead.

Well, Paul’s at the dance with some friends, the cops have set up checkpoints around the shantytown to keep an eye out for the expected troublemakers,and the Anglo kid from the earlier accident shows up with a few of his own friends to hit on Mexican chicks. Although precisely how it starts is deliberately unclear,the inevitable brawl breaks out, during which Paul inadvertently punches an angry, Mexican-hating cop. He panics and runs, hopping into a convenient ice cream truck to make his getaway.

It’s at that point the film becomes less a message picture about the struggles of immigrant farm laborers than a damning indictment of the power of the media. The only other employee at Wilder’s paper hears about the fight and calls a big city tabloid, blowing a flurry of teenage fisticuffs into an explosive and bloody race riot in progress.

Paul, now on the lam, runs into a string of bad luck. Everyone he encounters suffers some kind of horrible accident, for which he gets blamed. A cop dies in a fiery car wreck. A teenage girl, upon finding Paul hiding in a barn, faints, hits her head, and later claims he tried to rape her. The local TV crew shows up and goes libe with shrill and sensationalized coverage of the manhunt, depicting Paul as a relentless, cold-blooded killer.. THe big city tabloid rruns with the Mexican race riot story, likewise portraying Paul as a maniac on the loose.

The townsfolk, perhaps understandably, get riled up, form a lynch mob, and start tracking him down.

With Wilder’s help, a sobbing and terrified Paul is eventually found and taken into custody without incident. Meanwhile the tabloid paper continues to demonize him, in louder and louder headlines, as a cold and cruel murderous psychopath rapist. This doesn’t do much to help calm the locals, who continue to shriek for his head.

In an interesting but all too typical twist, however riled up the tabloid and TV coverage made the locals, it was nothing compared with the explosion of blind public outrage that followedWilder’s decision to run an editorial in paul’s defense. Only then did the growing bloodthirsty mob start beating up random Mexicans on the street, trashing the newspaper office, and making plans to torch the shantytown.

The Lawless ends on a vaguely hopeful note, but offers no neat resolution, and in fact leabes an awful lot of dangerous loose ends dangling. The crazed racist mob is still wilding through the streets in search of Mexicans, and Paul, so far as we know, is still facing trial for a litany of unfounded charges. And scarier still, Wilder and Sunny decide to form a joint paper, in which he intends to really piss off the locals.

In 1960, a decade after The Lawless,  Roger Corman acquired the rights to Charles Beaumont’s 1958 novel, The Intruder. By that time, Corman’s work with American International had firmly established him as the King of the Drive-Ins, a man who not only reflected but actually helped define American teenagedom with his low-buddget sci-fi, horror, rock’n’roll and juvenile delinquent films. He was also a producer/director with an uncanny prescience when it came to foreseeing emerging trends and shifts in the national mood. With those qualities at his disposal, he’d yet to make a film that didn’t turn a profit. Beaumont, meanwhile, was a novelist and TV screenwriter who was finding his own niche in sci-fi, horror, and mystery stories. For both men, then, The Intruder was an anomaly, an unabashed message novel about a small Southern town torn apart when the courts order them to desegregate the local school. Although Corman had always made a point of keeping any overt social or polytical messages out of his films, he knew The Intruder would be an important film, and the message meant a great deal to him. Beaumont, who had already worked with Corman on a couple pictures, started  work on the script and Corman began shoppong it around.

Unfortunately, no one wanted it. American International passed. United Artists passed.  Everybody passed, feeling the material was simply too inflammatory. AIP was less concerned with the material than the bottom line. Why would someone who had such a knack for turning an easy profit on low-budget exploitation pictures want to shoot himself in the foot with a damned message film. Teenagers on a Saturday night double date to the drive-in don’t want to see damn preachy message films about negroes, that’s for sure.

So Corman and his brother raised the $80,000 budget themselves, with Corman taking out a second mortgage on his house to get the picture made. Although he originally envisioned the film as a big-budget all-star affair starring Tony Randall (!), the lower budget, as always, worked to his advantage.

No longer able to afford Randall, he went with a newcomer named William Shatner, who would be making his feature debut. The final cast would only include four professional actors, the other roles being filld by amateurs and locals.  He then packed up a small crew and headed for southeast Missouri, specifically the little town of Charleston, a community with a history of lynching.

Strangely prescient as ever, Corman’s film went into production in 1962, a year before George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block the entrance of four black students, and a year before Martin Luther King’s March on Washington.

Shatner, in a sinister and oily performance that bears little resemblance to his later staccato cartoon antics, plays Adam Cramer, a professional rabblerouser with a shadowy past and a gleaming white suit. He arrives in the small Southern town of Caxton, where the court-ordered desegregation of the local school is about to go into effect, meaning four poor black students would be joining the all-white student body. Although admittedly not happy with the court’s decision, the locals accept it as the law. Sensing the anger beneath the outward complacency, Cramer sets about, well, rousing the rabble. As required by the form, the families of the black students are presented as quiet, polite, gentle and intelligent. While there is some trepidation about what things will be like at the school, they know it’s the right and just thing.

The locals quickly find this newcomer to be a man who speaks directly to what they were all secretly thinking but could never say aloud. After Cramer makes a few anonymous phone calls and gives a few fiery speeches (about not only the threat posed by blacks, but Jews and communists as well), the suddenly unified and inspired mob takes on a life of its own, burning crosses, surrounding and terrorizing a black family just passing through Caxton, and blowing up a black church, killing a preacher. The only voices raised against Cramer’s incendiary rhetoric come from, again, the local newspaper editor (Frank Maxwell) and Sam (Leo Gordon), Cramer’s neighbor in the local hotel, whose wife leaves after Cramer seduces her. The editor, whose protests are far more public than Sam’s, is sabagely beaten by the mob and loses an eye.

Realizing he’s losing control of the mob, Cramer comes up with a devious new plan to (as in The Lawless) frame one of the black studets for an attempted rape of a white girl.

My only problem with the film is the ending. It’s a little too clean, a little too pat, and a little too Hollywood. After Sam publicly reveals Cramer to be a liar, a scoundrel, and a manipulative, power-mad son of a bitch, the mob sees the light of reason and truth. They set down their torches and pitchforks and nooses, and turn their backs on the outside agitator. As Losey hinted a decade earlier, and as history and current events have proven time and again, True Believers of whatever stripe have precious little use for niggling annoyances like ���truth” or “reason.” Point out to Hillary Clinton’s diehard supporters the candidates well-documented history of corruption, deception, and obfuscation at every level of public life, and they’ll just insist it’s a grand right Wing Conspiracy to smear her. Point out to the Trump mob their candidate has gone on record stating he was more than happy to say whatever he needs to say to get what he wants, and that he’s furthermore a megalomaniac with only a questionable sliver of contact with reality, and they’ll stomp you into the pavement. Then both groups will march on in lockstep as before. The Intruder’s ending is a well-meaning fantasy that gives the human spirit a little more credit than it deserves.

Still, it’s a tough, blunt and complex film with more than a few echoes of Sam Fuller, and the best thing Corman ever directed. But hints of the trouble ahead began arising during production. Although Corman tried to keep the specifics of the plot as quiet as possible from the townsfolk, word got out, and when it did the death threats started flying. Who the hell were these Hollywood faggots to come into their town and try to make them look like a bunch of monsters because they lynched a few darkies? Buncha faggot liberal bullshit is what it is. Things got so bad, according to Corman, as soon as they wrapped the last shot, everyone got in their cars, turned the wheels to the north, and kept driving.

When The Intruder was released in January 1963, young audiences flocked to theaters expecting a sci fi film about an evil marauding sex-crazed alien. They were more than a little disappointed, and Corman himself was labeled a communist, which only makes perfect sense within the broader context of the film. After a brief run in New York, the theater yanked it, forcing Corman to four-wall it around the country himself. It became his first film to ever lose money. Afterward, he vowed to keep any political messages in his films on the subliminal side.

Although The Lawless and The Intruder tell two very different stories about two very different issues, they remain quite similar in a number of ways. Most notably, both films—like the angry mobs they portray—point to outside forces as the true root cause of the trouble at hand. For Corman it’s an outside agitator with a twisted political agenda and a lust for power. Losey, meanwhile, takes aim at a cynical and manipulative mass media more concerned with ratings and profits than the truth. In the end both are less portraits, as generally assumed, of small town racism run amok than they are of the gullibility of a people who’ve lost the ability to think critically, and so are helpless at the hands of a calculating media or a charismatic firebrand. Both scenarios are of course quite true and valid and believavle, making the films far more relevant given the current sociopolitical atmosphere than anyone could have imagined over half a century ago. (Corman himself in a recent interview even came out and directly likened Donald Trump to Adam Cramer.) Both films—and this may simply be the result of the times in which they were made—stop short of saying humans form angry, hate-filled mobs (even if only philosophical, religious, or cultural in nature) as often as they do simply as a result of our collective and innate racism, violence, willful ignorance and fear of individuality.

by Jim Knipfel

[shawnjacksonsbs]

“Just not there yet” and that’s enough, for now, to keep it at the minimum.  3-17-19

“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.” - Fred Rogers To start, or maybe, it's in conclusion, a little misplaced in the note taking department this week, as I had to struggle to make audio notes while driving (because that's a lot of my days lately), so deciphering them meant not a lot of copy and paste this time. It was some work, but here it is; I feel like free market capitalism works better with smaller populations, but as that population grows capitalism loses its humanity and starts to fall apart. My example is billionaire "Clark Couldcare" is more apt to feed or help little starving "Timmy Bornpoor", if he can actually see him in his society, and more apt to help those more closely related to them, where it's harder to ignore the struggles of those in your community. A larger population, like what we have here the U.S., make it damn near impossible to even hear the cries of the little Timmy Bornpoors and their struggles had, or injustice perpetrated on, from poverty to racial equality those cries that are heard can easily be ignored if you can look around and justify "No such struggle here anywhere because I can't see it, therefore it must be exaggerated at best". New generations of young people are on the way, and those days of people only giving a shit about themselves is going to come to an end more quickly than people realize. Terms like progressive liberal and/or socialists are coming with these young people because they've been watching us, and our predecessors fuck shit up. They don't lack the humanity and compassion our, and previous generations, thought was the way to pull the country up by its bootstraps. They see that that only benefits a small, and very limited, part of the population. I had planned on sharing a lot of definitions and different things I have learned to give a little insight into why I feel like this, and why I believe it makes sense, but instead I will only share these two; So·ci·o·ec·o·nom·ic : Relating to or concerned with the interaction of social and economic factors. Universal basic income (UBI) : A model for providing all citizens of a country or other geographic area with a given sum of money, regardless of their income, resources or employment status. The purpose of the UBI is to prevent or reduce poverty and increase equality among citizens. Now, I feel like most of my explanation for the "why" it will work, is wasted on a lot of people because they first need a full understanding of these two words; em·pa·thy : the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. and com·pas·sion : sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. I believe far too many people, even the ones that know what the words mean, lack the ability to use them. If everyone invoked them, man, how far could we go? The skies wouldn't even be the limit. They are not super, or extraordinary abilities either. That's why its so sad. It's mostly about educating myself in areas where I have limited knowledge. Things that interest me, like the economy and the hows and whats and whys. That's the main reason I was going to share any of this, and my theory of how being human is what the economy needs and how I feel it would benefit the country, and how it is absolutely all connected. Most of my research doesn't lean left or right, not like some of my opinions seem to do. It's more general definitions and such, although I have read some articles, and watched some things that definitely lean more left, as much of the stuff I value probably does, not all of it, but certainly a lot. I had planned on sharing several definitions with you guys and out of all of the ideologies that I've tried to familiarize myself with the one that I believe best fits what I think and feel is probably a form of Democratic Socialism, with some form of a U.B.I. (Universal Basic Income). You can research that on your own if you'd like. I would like to mention that I wasn't completely sold on the idea until I watched an interview by Joe Rogan. He was talking with Andrew Yang and the platform he's using to run for President. Although I don't think he's going to get enough momentum to actually be elected president, his idea/ideas are pretty sound and he has plans for action that a lot of politicians lack. I know I shared the interview on my Facebook page, but you can also look it up on YouTube if you want.   But. . . I'm not going to write about any more of that today than what I've already shared. I suppose I'll save my philosophical socio-economic term paper for later, plus I'm still growing in that area anyway. I keep coming 'round to the fact that I can't seem to reconcile with some of the more cold and callous opinions of people close to me. It stays on my heart so much as of late, that more than a few times I've thought, and even decided, that I was done with it. Done with it all, social media, done writing this blog, just done with the selfishness that makes up a lot of my outer, outer circle. Every life has ups and downs, but the absolute lowest revolving points currently in my life are the discussions I have with people who lack compassion for other people, and the people I know in real life who are very open about being bigots and racists. Those are hard to take, but its those who are naively racist, or judgementally prejudice. They just can't see how they are, and it bothers me in the deepest parts of my heart that they are like that. But. . .what am I to do? Right? Wrong! "Some people just aren't there yet." I find myself saying this quite a bit lately. Granted some of them, probably even most of them, are never going to get there. And since I can't know that for sure, I will try harder to be more civil with them when I interact, and communicate with those "unfortunates" who lack the ability to see, and feel with a human understanding as it were, the similarities instead of the differences found in each other, every other. Its the ones who think "what I said or did doesn't make me racist, because look at my black friends" etc. I realized during a conversation with someone the other day that I used to be one of those people "who just weren't there yet". I'm here now though, so all hope is not lost on them. It happened so quickly too. Like I almost completely faded out of the conversation when the realization hit me that some people just aren't there yet. It put a mend on my heart, even if only for long enough to be right here, right now. . . Seeing all the hate in this country, and where I believe it mostly stems from. and trying to not let it consume me to the point of constant insanity can be tough. Sometimes I wish I could turn the "feels" off, but I am so grateful the universe never saw fit to that to me. lol I am trying to provide myself an outlet, and maybe refuge to those seeking out anything relatable, but I'm starting to feel like all the hate that is in some hearts, although it may vary slightly, seems to manifest itself easier than love for a lot of people. It sucks. It hurts my heart like you would not believe. I feel like we need way more Fred Rogers wannabes in this world, and a lot less Donald Trumps. And saying it's easier to relate to Trump than with Mr. Rogers, is essentially just showing, well, to be honest, a lazy side because it takes a little more work to get to where you can feel the love like that. It's just easier to keep hold if your hate, even it's a small amount. Believe me, I know.  I can only relate because I used to be one of those. And before any of you freak out, I'm not saying that Trump is directly responsible. Because he obviously is not. What I am saying is that when you have such a huge public platform in which people with true hate in their hearts, find your topics relatable, it's a recipe for disaster. How come no one can see that a lot of these are a direct causality? A terrorist shooter in New Zealand, says he relates with what Trump stands for. C'mon. Let's say 100 people looked up to you, for leadership. We'll say 85 of them were regular law-abiding people and they may have some small inconsequential prejudices but they never let them surface. Now lets say, 15 hold very strong beliefs in some ignorant hate-based ideologies, such as those involving racism, bigotry etc. Now whether or not you stepped into this role, wouldn't you feel slightly responsible for the actions, if one or more of the 15 started acting out aggressively towards any of the other 85, like assaulting and killing, especially if they do it in relation to you or something you said? Even if they are wrong, and none of it relates with you or your ideals, wouldn't you, at the very least publicly denounce them? We have an acting president that is in direct opposition of my push for kindness, when he publicly belittles other Americans, or other human beings for that matter. Even the mission to help civilize, which I have consigned to help with, albeit it is more localized, is definitely taking hits from his supporters all the time. You aren't allowed to tell me that my blog, and everything it stands for, which currently is the expression of care and gratitude, the push for kindness, and a mission to civilize, is good and the reasoning is sound and acceptable and that I should keep writing, but then turn right around and believe I shouldn't speak out about who and what I feel to be the biggest threats to those same damn ideals! Can you see how that just isn't going to work for me? My blending of politics, which hasn't always seemed, or been inherent at the time absolutely cannot be left out. Everything in our current political system, to include discussions on social media, SCREAM hate. Therefore I will continue to share my objective, in here and everywhere. Be kind and don't be a douche bag, especially in an open public forum. Once I found my way to this side of life though, it's better livin' to be sure, although it does open your eyes to just how much work is out there to be done. When I first started taking notes early in the week for this entry, I was debating shutting it all down, my facebook, the blog all of it. I had all but decided. The people in my social media circle, by and large, are more saddening than uplifting with some limited exceptions. But there is enough nonsense that makes me wonder whether my push for kindness, my mission for civility was even worth it still. That is until I started writing. There's nothing like airing everything in here for the world to see, because I almost always find my own light by the end of each of my journal journeys, as it were. What would Fred Rogers say if I caved and gave in? How would my grandpa Raines feel about me giving up? Man, what is true in my heart, isn't enough if it stays inside and not all fights have to happen, but a lot of them do. You may not want to adhere to all of the same principles that I do in my life, and that's ok (kinda). But I'll be damned if I am going to be made to feel some kind of negative way about my positives either. I can't be done, not now anyway. My fight is nowhere near through. Although, I'll put this part here as a gentle reminder to slow down on posting shit just to stir up shit, and try to refocus on what it is I truly want from all of this in the end. It's not incessant arguing, especially without finding common ground anywhere. I also have to remember that not everyone is "here" yet and that some never will be. Then just continue to move forward. Because that forward progress is what we are striving for anyways. I suppose that's enough for today. Sorry by the way. I'm pretty sure I changed directions 2 or 3 times in the middle of this one. lol Keep sharing the love and laughter with the world around you, and please remember that being kind and civilized is the epitome of being human. It is what separates us from wild animals and the fact that we can feel and share compassion like we do is far more important than knowledge of what it is alone. Until next week; “How sad it is that we give up on people who are just like us.” - Fred Rogers