#some footnotes for extra context to this rant

[homosexual-work-account]

I’ve been rewatching some of the phase 1 MCU films and almost the entirety of Steve’s Captain America trilogy and its made me realise that the partial reason why the new MCU films are complete ass now is that the studio tries to cut most the political ties the characters have, as well as their lack of want to actually have a serious tone; which is strangely most exemplified in Sam’s film (unfortunately)

Brave New World presents you with the idea that it’s a political thriller — even from the name, which is a reference to Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, which is mostly unrelated to the film besides it’s themes of eugenics and exploitation of the ‘genetically inferior’, which was biologically constructed by the upper class to justify that exploitation. The implication is then that the film could potentially explore themes similar to this, specifically with Isaiah — a character’s whose labour exploitation/abuse was justified using his race, a construct made up by the upperclass to justify themselves. It’s a similar thing to Captain America: Civil War, where the evocation of the Civil War aided the themes of stripped rights for the enhanced and the struggle for extreme control or none at all. It’s a purposeful choice to invoke certain political themes.

And Brave New World just, doesnt? It does to a certain extent — it discusses the abuse that Isaiah experienced due to his race but it just doesnt go beyond that. It’s especially put in a bad light once put in juxtaposition with Sam Wilson — an inherently political character due to his past actions and as a black Captain America — who works with the man who tried literally fucking stripping the rights of enhanced individuals, Ross, who literally has very little difference to the people who exploited Isaiah because he commited the exact same actions that stripped Isiah of his rights back in the 50s. It’s actual insanity that the film tries justifing Sam working with the government when he had been considered a war criminal for eight god damn years (I dont think he was officially un-declared a war criminal until after End-Game) and he works with the man who literally forced him into becoming one. The surface level political commentary it offers around race is instantly destroyed once Sam works with the man who literally enacted those exact same systems of oppression against the enhanced, all because the man ‘felt bad’. I’m actually flabbergasted at the audacity.

The film axes whatever political ties Sam had in the past, in turn destroying all previous character work in order to present a Sam that works with the very same government that he went against because his political ideology was inherently against what they were doing. I’ve not seen much of his show with Bucky, but from what I’ve seen it holds similar ideals to his previous characterisation so this film just shat itself because it was too scared to say anything. I cannot understand why they did what they did with Sam. It boggles my mind.

Comparing to previous films like Iron-Man — a film that addresses the military industrial complex and denounces those who make a profit off war and says that you have a moral duty to do the least amount of harm. While it has its issues, it was a decent commentary — and Captain America; The Winter Soldier — a film addressing unstable governments and how the systems it sets up to protect the people becomes ineffective because of the fascistic ideals built into it, as well as government overreach and surveillance. Hell, even the first Avengers film addressed creating nuclear weapons ‘in case’ of invasion, which creates political tension rather than solves it; which the narrative actually addresses by explicitly giving away the tesseract so they don’t. Many of the other films dont have overtly political ideas, but still have politics affect the narrative in some way — the best one off the top of my head being Ant-Man; which is something that I haven’t seen pop up in the newer projects, though many dropped the ball on this as well back then.

Politics, and in turn the darker tones of the earlier MCU films, has been absent because the films are too scared to actually say anything and alienate the audience. It tries adressing identity politics without having a fucking clue what they’re saying so they backtrack and sprinkle it in between tonal whiplash and funny hijinks. It’s too scared to go for the systems so they move towards character driven stories that rarely address the world they exist in — it’s been two years in world after Endgame, three years maybe and yet its rarely adressed that the blipped happened, the accords are dissolved off screen, the political tension of the existence of enhanced individuals are dropped. They sever the political ties the characters have to the events/structures within their own world and when they try to address them they fundamentally misunderstand why the characters are political in the first place.

[mythserene]

AKOM “Fine Tuning,” Episode 6: A prolonged jealousy

Another really excellent episode that I will have to listen to at least two more times to fully ingest, despite having lots of diffuse, unconnected notes where I ranted about most of the same text. They really backed up and gave it context and meaning, including adding a lot of things that I didn’t have and making sense of some of the extras that I did. It was both satisfying and frustrating: more satisfying than I expected, and my frustration feels more coherent and focused now.

I definitely think it’s one of the most important episodes.

There is only one point I would add, and that is just that when you listen to the episode it’s important to realize that Paul’s “jealousy” is the most egregiously non-sourced. There are basically two quotes that Mark Lewisohn uses to support this entire theme. The theme which he so beats into the ground that even if you don’t look at the footnotes it feels excessive.

I’ve mentioned before that when I read “Tune In” I was still very, very new to Beatles’ history. A newborn without any of the historiographical context, no understanding of the long, strange, John-deifying background, and therefore I wasn’t on the lookout for it. And that’s important because I went into the book with implicit trust, loved the writing, and still it was evident to me, fairly quickly, that I was reading an opinion column.

It was the cigarettes that did it

Paul’s care with money was noted—Pete says that while they all passed their ciggies around, Paul would “sneak one of his own to himself”—and he was still needling everyone about the Bambi sleeping arrangements, made all the worse now because he was jealous of Pete getting the best girls.

The second time I read the book I remember thinking, “Surely not that many people spontaneously bitched about Paul being stingy with cigarettes.” And that was my tipoff.

There are two quotes in the book about Paul and cigarettes that appear to be organic—one being Pete’s “sneak one of his own” quote in this episode—but you’d think that half the people Lewisohn talked to about their memories of some of the most famous people ever, and certainly the most famous from Liverpool, just magically thought that one of the most important things about these four guys was that Paul was stingy with cigarettes. And there is just no way that that is true.

But I also know how this works, inside out. You get “an angle” as a reporter. You have a story you want to tell, and then you interview people with that story—that angle—in mind. You ask questions that you think will elicit the responses that back up your thesis. And then, on the other side of the process, you filter the quotes you choose (and don’t choose) that tell the story you want to tell. And to be fair, every reporter and historian does this to some extent. It may just be to organize ideas in a coherent way, or it may be to focus on a theme. But it has also notoriously been used by historians to warp the truth and further a broader historical lie. (A very good example of this and the one closest to me is “the Dunning School” of the US Civil War and Reconstruction, the first real and condensed story of that conflict that injected into US historiography many complete lies, including the especially insane one that after the Civil War the “Radical Republicans” inflicted pain and humiliation on the South, which despite being the exact opposite of the truth is still the story most Americans “know.”)

Mark Lewisohn had a story he wanted to tell, and I believe that story is most obvious in his “jealous Paul” theme because it’s based on nearly thin air and even then is so ludicrously overblown. But I think it was just too tempting a canvas for Lewisohn. Setting up a dead, pretty kid as a sort of saint that Paul persecuted does so much work for everything else he wants to say about Paul, especially in the upcoming books. Hamburg becomes a pressure cooker where Paul’s true colors come out, and if Lewisohn can use Stu—a sort of perfect near-blank slate who never had time to put any of his memories into context—as a foil to Paul and to paint Paul as petty and jealous and seething, then all the rest of his work is easy. Stu is a layup that paves the way to seeing Paul as a bad guy. The concrete dries and everything else falls into place.

And look, there just is no way to see this theme as organic, because it’s not. It just isn’t. It’s not based on quotes or stories. There are a few completely disconnected quotes stretched to breaking that he uses to try to prop all this nonsense up with, but there is simply no defense for even 90% of the primary usage of them, and certainly not of the whole, big-picture story he creates with them.

I’m going to give one example—and there are many—but I admit to liking this one best because it’s all there in one passage based on one quote that doesn’t say any of this.

Passage:

But, as much as Paul liked exhibiting versatility, he was unhappy—he felt he’d been lumbered, that his multi-instrumental ability was tying him down. Who looked at the drummer? By rights, his place was out front, especially with his new guitar. Here he was, paying off the Solid 7 at ten bob a week and hardly getting to play it. Jealousy of Stu was stoked: Paul was in the back line while he remained out front (even if he was hiding and in dark glasses). One thing was for certain: Paul wasn’t going to abandon singing.

The only citation for all that Maca-inhabited resentment is the brief Paul quote already in the text, (FN35) and the next footnote—FN36—is from George on a new topid. There is no citation whatsoever to support any of Lewisohn’s finely-sketched fantasies of Paul’s vanity and jealousy.

FOOTNOTE 35: “I was drumming with my hands, playing the hi-hat and bass drum with my feet and I had a broomstick stuck between my thighs on the end of which was a little microphone, and I’m singing ‘Tell me what’d I say …’ It wasn’t easy!”

*Note: This quote is also in the text right under the ‘lumbered Paul wanted to be out front’ passage, so in some ways it’s an even thinner spread, if that’s possible.

So, according to Lewisohn:

Paul liked “exhibiting versatility” (a whole lot because of the modifier “as much as”)

Paul was unhappy because he felt “lumbered”

He felt he was being punished because he was TOO TALENTED

BY RIGHTS his place was out FRONT

He wanted to be LOOKED AT!

Jealousy of Stu is grabbed from thin air, based on nothing, and “stoked” by Lewisohn.

because, again, Stu was out FRONT

Did you catch the point that Paul is CHEAP?

Again, all of that is cited to this:

“I was drumming with my hands, playing the hi-hat and bass drum with my feet and I had a broomstick stuck between my thighs on the end of which was a little microphone, and I’m singing ‘Tell me what’d I say …’ It wasn’t easy!”

There are at least two more things that I want to say but this is long enough so I will put them off. (Hopefully not for long.) ✌🏻

[sweetsoundsofignorance]

Currently running around bugging people and I want to know your thoughts on this: if you had full creative control of the show, how would you run season 5? You can pick and choose whatever leaks you want to include.

Thank you for the ask! 💕 A very fun exercise, and there has been some excellent speculation from the fandom. I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s takes on it that I’m almost inclined to create bingo cards out of everyone’s nuttier speculations and play Riverdale batshit bingo for the season, a la Cabin the Woods.

I should say Riverdale speculation and leaks can leave me feeling overwhelmed at times, so I drift in and out when they are circling. Therefore, this rant is limited to the leaks/speculation/trailer gifs I have seen or heard about because I have no self-control. I’ve also not seen 4x17 or 4x18 (though I feel like I have through a mishmash of so many GIFs and recaps and speculations). In my mind, 4x17 is just *insert gif of Betty standing in the middle of the woods holding a bloody rock* Atm, no one knows how we got there.

Given the beginning of season five will be the tail-end of season four, perhaps start there? This got away from me, so it’s under the cut.

I imagine they will close four with the reveal of the voyeur and Chic/Charles plotline (with Riverdale you never know where they’re going to be selectively sloppy). In that case, I have fully adopted the following speculation/serenity prayer: see @sullypants theory here. It’s the perfect level of batshit Riverdale and it’s consistent with the hypnosis (cannot keep a straight face just typing it) plotline. I know, consistent and Riverdale should never be in the same sentence without some negative participle in between. So, that “cleans up” the Bughead infidelity but leaves Varchie in the weeds (sigh). It would ex out Charles/Chic. The fallout would break up Falice, possibly.

 FP gets busted for all the shady shit he’s done as sheriff and has to flee the country, so hi, Canada, but no wrestle mania with the grizzly bears this time. Or he gets eaten by a bear. I don’t care.

 Veronica gains some self-agency and leaves for college. Though I want her to get out from under her father, loyalty to family is so engrained with the Lodges that I don’t see it happening. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Hiram’s terminal illness kills him. If Toni and Cheryl break up, Cheronica may happen through their rum business, which takes off. I would not be remiss if Cheryl and Veroncia were endgame, but I know it won’t shake out like that, so. Also, if it is hypnosis, I hope Veronica and Betty would still be friends long-distance.

 Toni takes the reins for the Southside, ends the rampant Serpent misogyny, actually makes the neighborhood a safe space for the residents, and works to end the cycle of poverty. She manages the White Wyrm, and yes, there are still strippers because nothing wrong with that, but the Serpent Dance is barely a footnote. I am curious if they will shoot around Vanessa’s pregnancy, but if they incorporate it into the show, I would not be against Cheryl and Toni having a child together. If they did not break up.

 For Jughead, he got his MFA at Iowa, but in true millennial fashion, never made it past that (for a great fic on the plight of the underemployed over-educated millennial see @imreallyloveleee head underwater). He might have written a first novel that was semi-popular, received a few good reviews but overall lambasted by the bigger names. Head canon is that it becomes a cult classic in later years, perhaps a screenplay. Hard forever no to him being an alcoholic, but I can see some Sideways-level angst dealing with trying to get over writer’s block (plus anxiety block based on the mediocre success of his first) for his next novel and some bitterness about his first novel, which may be the driving wedge between Jughead and whoever ends up being his SO in this scenario.

 Jughead as an English teacher gels for me. I’ve written him as an English teacher. I like reading him as an English Teacher (*cough* *cough* @geekspen). Though they flopped with the Jug and Jellybean relationship in season four, I always imagined Jughead from season one and that brief moment in season three as a very present and considerate big brother type. Based on those brief interactions we have gotten, I would believe Jughead is good with kids, especially teenagers. He’s had experience dealing with dumbass adolescents, i.e. the Serpents, and (kind of) keeping them in line, mainly by out-extra-ing the morons (see declaring himself gamemaster by ordering Cheryl to shoot an arrow through a can on his head). I see him being that curmudgeonly teacher that gets along with those grab-bag students on the edge of committing a crime out of sheer boredom who linger in their English teacher’s classrooms during lunch and after school (that’s how we started our creative writing club in high school), and that leads me to a head-canon about him starting, yes, a creative writing club or running the Blue and Gold. I love full-circle shit like that. I think he would be an objectively bad teacher but a very good one in the context of Riverdale, if that makes sense.

 Bughead long distance did not pan out, and Betty being Betty immersed herself in her career – degree in criminal psychology, BSU at the FBI, the whole shebang. Reports of a giant man with red eyes and wings seen in the vicinity of places where people are disappearing. FBI!Betty investigates these at her alma mater until one happens in Riverdale, which drags her investigation thattaway.

 Veronica is unhappy with her SO for whatever reason (not exactly jazzed about her being with a douche but ok). She is successful but wistful. Her father dies. She uses it as an excuse to break up with her SO and return to Riverdale to help her mother manage the estate. Because Veronica is successful in her own right, most of the estate goes to her mother and Hermosa. She returns to Pop’s one night for nostalgia’s sake. She signed the diner back over to Tate years ago.

 Jughead is there struggling to write after a fight with his SO.

 Side note: I don’t like love triangles. Even less, I don’t like setups for more infidelity, even if it would lead to my ship ending up together. I understand that is often the reality (I’ve witnessed it), but I think it is bad writing. So, for any of the core four’s respective SOs, please no cheating on them. Break it off. Learn from your mistakes. Therefore, Jughead soon breaks up with his SO after meeting Veronica in Pop’s.

 Veronica sits with him. Cue some reminiscing. Perhaps the mystery starts in the speakeasy, of which Veronica is still the partial owner. This connects Betty and Veronica down the road. Because Jughead witnessed it, Betty crosses paths with him.

 Initially, Betty is reticent to let Jughead get involved with her investigation. However, Jughead is just as obsessed with the mystery (because he’s him), so they keep running into each other. He gets in the way a few times (more tension). Eventually, Jughead ends up discovering some important piece of evidence that Betty needs, so she gives in. Before he joins her investigation, he may be keeping his own personal murder board in the Blue and Gold at school after hours… Lots of sexual tension. I’d even be down for friends with benefits because *insert gif of Donna accusing Betty of being addicted to Jug’s vitamin D*. But Betty knows she isn’t going to stay in Riverdale and they’ve already tried and failed long-distance, so she keeps putting on the brakes. Jughead starts to get his writing mojo back, too, because I will never not believe Betty is his muse.

 Archie. Oh Archie. Deployed overseas for a time, though I cannot stand the idea of giving this kid anymore PTSD. He returns, and for a while, spends most of his time alone at the old gym and in the Andrews home. His old army buddy shows up out of work. He works with Toni to create a real community center for the Southside youth because I enjoyed that poorly executed plotline in season four. This also gives his army buddy a job. His army buddy is from New Haven, so he ends up being a Mothman suspect, given it started at Betty’s alma mater.

 Through his work with Toni, he gets dragged into Jughead’s orbit. Maybe they both try to reactivate the community center’s big brother program together. It’s just very difficult for me to imagine Jughead accepting/forgiving Archie, and though I cannot imagine how they would resolve it, I would like to see it.

[abolishcis-blog]

ABOLISH CIS

“Please include a 150 word description of yourself as the author of your article;”

Sioni fenyw. Welsh prole. femme. White. Abled. Aggy/angsty. Tumblrless. [Well..]

_________

olwyn o dân___

*This is a call for the not-cis against the cis.

*Cis is cis-normative or else it is nothing at all.

___It is normative in both senses.

______As norm, the cis pre-dominates, making us the minority [qualitatively as much as quantitatively]. As the normative, it is the coercive cis-morality imposed upon us, making us other, lesser, abject, false.

*To be against the cis-normative is to be against that which [re]produces the cis.

___Cis isn't simply [dis]embodied in individuals – it's a dynamic, a relationship of domination.

______Against its system of birth designations. Against its violent socialisation and policing of these cis-binary gender roles. Against the legal and extra-legal apparatus of state and capital which identifies and records. Against the transphobia, transmisogyny and queer bashing: against cis-domination.

[non]terms of attack___

*Cis [and so not-cis] is a western term used here by a white westerner to locate a western domination. Western cis-normativity is colonially imposed on to non-western, non-white and Indigenous peoples, as others have attacked. Cis-normativity cannot be attacked through imposing western non-cis identities, such as "trans", on to non-westerners. [1]

*In naming the cis [and ourselves as non-cis] we do not [re]produce it: rather, we mark it as a target to be destroyed. Cis-normativity is a social relation, and will be destroyed in [anti]social struggle.

*That isn't to say that its name is totalising [even in a “western context”] or that its articulation is necessary for its destruction. Whilst cis-normativity is a subsuming social relationship, naming it as such is limited to a few "conscious" radicals. Many struggle against the cis, struggle as non-cis, without ever using these terms. The use of these terms here is not a denigration of their struggle.

___Likewise, this [appropriated?] academic language is used begrudgingly.

______Abolishing the cis doesn't need specialised theorists, but for each/all to live [un]spoken poetry.

_________Ac er mai enwau'r Sais sy fa nyn, ma'r gorthrwm a'r brwydr yn annwyl Walia 'fyd.

*As such, not-cis is used here: for all of us beyond the pale of cis. It is not the equivalent of "trans". Trans is both less and more than not-cis. Less in that not everyone who is not-cis identifies/is identified as trans, and more in that trans as an identity amounts to more than just being not-cis.

___If cis is to identify with the gender assigned at your birth, not-cis as an "identity" is a non- identification.

cis abolition is not those gender abolitionists___

*To be sure, there's lots of gender abolitionists. Not-cis erasing communizations [2], anti-feminist cis-manarchists [3], misgenderers using the "they" pronoun for everyone, transphobic TERFs and even TERFy/“truscum” transwomen [4]. In short, shitbags.

*But then the gender abolitionists [or gender nihilists] from a non-cis position, whose rants resonate with anti-assimilation. It's these that are worth talking about here.

assimilation and gender___

*The nihilists put it well. Outside, there's “the” trans flag in front of a cop-shop, hate crime initiatives, homonationalisms' Trans British army captains. Inside, essentialist policing of authenticity, by ourselves [or] of each other, finishing what the law started.

*But assimilation has no clearly bounded subject or agent, and no outside/in. It's a moebius strip drawing tighter. A relationship between the cis and the not-cis. An asymmetric, dominating one, but where the cis pulls us in closer and puts itself inside of us, only making us more distant from ourselves and each other.

___Like madness in the 19th century, the cis in “Britain” at least is more and more like those Quaker reformists, wanting [some of] us to take a seat at its familial table, to sit politely as if we were one of them, carefully watched [and still beaten elsewhere].

______We are talking about more than co-option. It feeds off of us [and spits us out elsewhere]. Not just through simple capitalist accumulation [exploiting our waged and unwaged labour, cis-tourism, commercialising our desires, careerism, spectacle...]  but also immediately in moments of struggle [cis-ally saviours, transphobic anti-transphobes...].

*Gender's [/non-gender's] relationship to this doesn't simply fit, even with regard to cis-patriarchy as a whole. Gender in both its narrowest, and widest senses, non-binary/fluid/woman/ man/indeterminate, masculine/femme/butch/camp. Gwisgo lasys sidan ac ymbincio. How these slot [or don't] into cis-normatvity, let alone cis-patriarchy isn't simple, despite the desires of TERFs.

*Maybe our gender nihilists still have more to show, or we have more to show them. [5]

___For sure, we can't say where smashing the cis will take us or our genders [if it will take them]. Masculinity without cis-men or patriarchy, femininity without TERFs or transmisogyny, non- binary without an assigned cis-binary, fluidity without prescribed subjects. "All that's solid melts into air".

______But despite this, and despite all the assimilationist desires, there's still some aggy bite in raging: "if I can't be [trans!]femme, it's not my revolution!".  

tactics___

*Maybe a difference in tactics. Tactics because there is still resonance - because whether it's a question of this abolishing gender or abolishing the cis, we're on the same side of the barricades.

___But also because there are some tactics that aren't that lost. Sure [conscious] identities are never totalising or essential or final. But where we have them/where they have us, let's escalate, use them till they brake [or brake them], make them again, re-appropriate, take, sabotage, visible then hidden, against the record or silent or all across their walls. Are our non-cis genders themselves a reproductive labour - can they be a revolutionary care? Weaponise them before we throw them away, before the assimilationist amnesty or hard-repression rears its head.

*Our nihilists leave so much unsaid, the what and the how - for and against whom. So does this text. But it's adamant all the same: through and/or from and/or towards gender, it's tactics which us non-cis accomplices need.

cis-abolition as a tactic____

*So why talk about cis abolition? Because, targeting the cis [especially its concrete content] rather than targeting gender [as an abstract form] seems to resonate with much more rage. It is explosive, against that we hate, rather than seeming to attack those struggling with us. For sure, gender abolition has proved amongst ourselves a tense provocation and opened divides. But the divides it gives rise to aren't between those who are against assimilation from those who are not, between the desires to abolish cis-patriarchy and the desires to live it again and again.

*But attacking the cis, and that which reproduces the cis, might do differently. And they might articulate much more nicely, for what it might be worth. Less ambiguity, for ourselves or for TERFs.

some problematics___

*Targeting cis-domination without reifying its power and without authenticity policing the non-cis?

___Arising from a targeting thats separated from attacking?

*Cisness as [dis]embodied in individuals, but also as a relationship of power?

___Accomplice cis bodies against the cis? Transphobia from trans people? Non-cisness as a process?

______Separate organising? Non-cising spaces?

*Perthynas y Gymraeg i gyffredinoliad negyddol yn Saesneg megis "non-cis"?

*The above with regards to the boundaries or [in]between of the cis and non-cis?

*Escalating anti-assimilation beyond being not-assimilated [we want it all [gone]!]?

tactical clarity___

*Abolish the cis.

*Tân yn “ein” rhywedd...

notes___

[1] Other than this the relations of cis/not-cis to colonialism and race are left empty here, because attempting to articulate from my position might only of left it emptier. For similar reasons, these relations to intersex struggles are also left unsaid, as is so, so much else. As an attack on the cis, and not a positive affirmation or program, I hope that emptiness isn't erasing.

Likewise, the focus here on cis-domination isn't done because transphobia can be abstracted from other dominations. Rather, where [increasingly everywhere] the cis dominates other dominations can't be abstracted from it. We need to talk strategically about attacking cis-normativity.

[2] “Endnotes: The Logic of Gender” https://endnotes.org.uk/en/endnotes-the-logic-of-gender. Not TERFy, but the total silence concerning cis/not-cis is a hardworked accomplishment.

“Communization and the abolition of gender” https://libcom.org/library/communization-abolition-gender#footnote6_tpqs0u5 give the slightest nod in a footnote.

[Sure, if these articles were talking from a cis position and didn't want to speak “for us”, but if so at least articulate that, don't erase the non-cis when talking about something that is directly about the non-cis.]

For an articulation of communization and gender that doesn't erase non-cis struggle, see “LIES Volume I: Identity, Abolition, Communization” http://www.liesjournal.net/.

[3] See for example, “AGAINST THE LOGIC OF SUBMISSION: Beyond Feminism, Beyond Gender” http://www.reocities.com/kk_abacus/vb/wd8fem.html.

[4] See for example, “New Narratives 2014” https://newnarratives2014.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/how-is-gender-harmful-and-what-does-the-idea-of-gender-abolition-mean-to-trans-women/.

[5] Cis abolition is not essentially gender abolitionist, or essentially not. It doesn't see gender as essentially oppressive, or as essential otherwise. See, even if essentialisms don't tie us down in one place, we always dance with or against them [at least in this way of talking]. Nihilists just dance with them in the negative ["the real movement to abolish the present state of things", "against the existent" etc.]. Here it is cis which must be cleared aside.